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this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Money.
Now that USB-C is the required cable, people can go out and buy any cheap cable they want. The law turned a proprietary cash cow into a low return commodity item.
This argument always cracks me up. I have been able to buy cheap lightning cables effectively since they started making lightning cables lol. It’s not like Apple somehow locks the phone from charging, physics is still a real thing and electricity can still flow through them, even without the MFi aspects.
If you wanna hate Apple for being a massively bloated and money-hungry corporate nightmare, that’s fine, I’m with it, but do we really all think they made it to $3 trillion valuation on… fucking cables??? 😂
No, they made it to 3 trillion with cables, overpriced PCs, overpriced notebooks, overpriced Phones, overpriced watches, and locking software of all these so the easiest way to use different devices together, is to use another apple product.
Oh, and cultivating a fan base of people who uncritically buy anything they make with the notion that it's "better than anything else" when in reality that could not be further from the truth.
Ok, so you listed basically all of their business strategies, which is exactly my point. It’s not a business built SOLELY on proprietary ports and cables, yet that aspect is what gets the most attention and criticism.
I wouldn't say that's really accurate. It is true that it is the aspect that is getting the most attention now, but thats only because its recent, in the news and EU forced their hand upon it.
Apple among regular consumers has been criticised for years, if not decades for its overpriced hardware and among more technical crowd has always been criticised for its closed source and incompatible software.
Of course, people who say their entire empire is built upon a bunch of cables are wrong lol
Correct! For me, the closed source “walled garden” approach is the most frustrating.
But, dude, dude, dude… remember the 30-pin transition debacle? I’m having bad flashbacks lol
I am not old enough to remember that I'm afraid. But I do still have some of those 30 pins phones and chargers
Yeah but there has to be some reason they were so opposed to this. I don’t get it either though.
Because Lightning came out years before USB-C was ready and is already an established de facto standard. There are well over a billion devices in use right now with Lightning ports on them, and billions of Lightning cables. You're balancing the advantages of switching to a "standard" against the reality that their customers already have Lightning stuff. I went several years with my Switch as literally the only thing I owned that used USB-C. Even now it's still common for gadgets to ship with micro-USB. USB-C has taken a long time to reach real ubiquity.
Lightning is also physically smaller and easier to plug in than USB-C.
Anyway, the point is that USB-C was not (and is not) this significantly, obviously superior experience for Apple's existing customers. There are real, tangible downsides that make it more expensive and more environmentally wasteful for at least hundreds of millions of iPhone users who will be upgrading.
Not sure why you are getting downvoted. That’s a pretty good answer.