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Nothing Phone builds a blue bubble iMessage bridge while Google and Apple fight over RCS (www.androidcentral.com)

submitted 1 year ago by DannyMac@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] kirklennon@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

how is Lightning better than a USB-C?

It's physically smaller, doesn't require the thin little piece inside the port on the device, and the rounded corners make it easier to insert without lining up perfectly. To clarify, I'm not saying this makes USB-C bad, but the physical design just isn't as good.

Be real here: Apple only stuck with Lightning because it’s stupid easy money for them. Cables are hella cheap to make, and if you make them in-house, you basically spend like $2 at most to manufacture 1 cable.

Third parties sell Lightning cables and Apple sells USB-C cables (really nice ones, actually). There's no significant monetary impact to Apple regardless of which connector they have.

Lightning has the upside of both that and forcing people into the Apple ecosystem because their old phone cables can charge the new phones.

I thought the whole argument in favor of USB-C was that because it's a standard, people already have cables for it or can buy them for dirt cheap. If that's the case, the fact that people also have Lightning cables wouldn't be a major reason to stick with an iPhone when upgrading.

[–] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works -1 points 1 year ago

Man you're just proving you have no idea what you're talking about with every response.

With lightning, Apple essentially added DRM to the connector, requiring cable manufacturers to pay Apple for each sold cable.

"Lightning also introduced additional protocols that could only be officially supported through the MFi program."

"The Apple MFi Program has no fee to join, but there are two costs associated with membership; a company wanting to join has to pay for a third-party identity verification and pay royalties to Apple once approved, and neither cost is mentioned in Apple’s MFi FAQ documentation. Royalty fees in particular are covered by an NDA, making finding actual pricing difficult.

According to an Apple Insider article from 2014 (which is the newest pricing source available), MFi royalties run $4 USD per connector (e.g., a lightning port) on a device. It is unknown if this information is still correct. I contacted Apple and received this response:

All publicly-available information about the MFi Program is available on our FAQ page: http://mfi.apple.com/faqs. Unfortunately, we are not able to provide further details about the MFi Program beyond those provided in the FAQ."

Additionally, the point of standards in general is to reduce waste and make interoperable devices much easier across manufacturers, something Apple consistently has proven they have to be forced to do. For example... iMessage and the lightning connector. They can provide excuses all they want but the truth is plain to see, they frequently hoard technology for themselves and intentionally make products that don't function with existing products in the name of profit.

Don't get me wrong, it's smart of them to do from a monetary standpoint, but that doesn't make it right and consumers should be smarter.