Bye-Bye Lightning Connector, Hello USB-C?

[Anderton]

I haven't been following too closely, but I'm hoping that USB4/Thunderbolt 4 is going to unify all that bullshit into a single, actual "standard". Not holding my breath, though.

 

Good, because you'd have to hold your breath for a long time. So far it seems that a USB-C Thunderbolt port supports USB, mostly, but a USB port doesn't support Thunderbolt. So people are going to have to look for the little lightning bolt logo, not to be confused with lightning connectors. Meanwhile, although there will be (hopefully) less dealing with different adapters, there's going to be a proliferation of dongles so your USB device can connect to USB-C.

 

Really makes you appreciate MIDI, doesn't it...

[Marzzz]

If Apple would get with the standards, I'd buy more of their products.

Damn right! And we would still have floppy drives!

So you are saying floppy drives are still standard?

For all we know, they would be if Apple hadn't forced the rest of the industry to innovate. Each time, they were chastised by the PC world when they changed or eliminated something, but then everyone followed suit in short order.

 

Again, cable connections may become obsolete if everything from charging to file transfers, etc. becomes wireless.

[Anderton]

For all we know, they would be if Apple hadn't forced the rest of the industry to innovate. Each time, they were chastised by the PC world when they changed or eliminated something, but then everyone followed suit in short order.

 

To be fair, though, Apple didn't have 40 zillion legacy machines running databases using Windows 3.1 in governments and businesses worldwide. We're talking about very different business models. Apple can not only afford to be more agile, their customers demand it. I've always said that with Apple, what you get in return for the higher price tag is state-of-the-art technology (and often, killer industrial design).

 

But I also disagree strongly with some of the profit-driven decisions being made by Apple and Microsoft, like trying to convince people that local storage is only for people not modern and hip enough to trust everything to the cloud. Remember that, every time Amazon has an outage...and I know people don't take this seriously, but X-class solar flares are a question of when, not if. I have a Blu-Ray drive, and it's fabulous. Inexpensive storage sizes are 25 and 50 GB, and it's extensible to support discs up to 200 GB. The format is vastly more robust than DVD, with an estimated minimum archival life of well over 30 years.

 

Do any computers come with Blu-Ray drives? Not that I know of. Apple and Microsoft want you to use their cloud services, which are immensely profitable. They're also hackable, and subject to change without notice (hey Google, how many images can I store for free?). Of course they don't want you to have local storage, that means less money for them. Ultimately, I believe anyone who doesn't back up both locally and to the cloud is asking for trouble. The hype is that all you need is "the cloud"...but I've never seen a cloud that stayed in one place for more than a few minutes.

 

I still have a USB drive that mounts floppy disks It comes in handy every now and then.

[analogika]

I haven't been following too closely, but I'm hoping that USB4/Thunderbolt 4 is going to unify all that bullshit into a single, actual "standard". Not holding my breath, though.

 

Good, because you'd have to hold your breath for a long time. So far it seems that a USB-C Thunderbolt port supports USB, mostly, but a USB port doesn't support Thunderbolt.

Ah, but a USB 4 port will support Thunderbolt 3.

 

Except when it doesn't quite. But generally, this should be⦠well, ought to⦠er.

 

https://liliputing.com/2020/11/differences-between-thunderbolt-4-usb-4-thunderbolt-3-and-usb-3.html

 

Really makes you appreciate MIDI, doesn't it...

I suppose.

We've been able to work around its limitations with massive parallelisation (my first MIDI setup had one out, and sending Sysex would lock up the entire playback for about twenty seconds), but the whole MIDI market in its entirety is *tiny* vs. the PC/mobile/computing industry. Like, insignificantly tiny. And the devices are typically in use for decades â a considerable number (relatively) of machines from the very dawn of MIDI are still in use today, and a number of earlier ones have been incorporated into the MIDI world by way of retrofit or MIDI/CV interface over the decadesâ¦

 

But boy, MIDI is a whole 'nuther box. Why won't the sustain pedal connected to my JX-8P reliably trigger in MainStage? Is it the ESI interface or the 35-year-old MIDI implementation on the JX? Why will it work fine when I record MIDI into the DAW and play it back, but it will randomly cut off notes (sometimes more than two, sometimes any more than four, sometimes not) when I use it to control a software instrument?

 

Not to mention the differences in latency among devices and⦠oh boy. You're probably WAY more experienced with these issues than I am.

[analogika]

If Apple would get with the standards, I'd buy more of their products.

Damn right! And we would still have floppy drives!

So you are saying floppy drives are still standard?

For all we know, they would be if Apple hadn't forced the rest of the industry to innovate. Each time, they were chastised by the PC world when they changed or eliminated something, but then everyone followed suit in short order.

 

Again, cable connections may become obsolete if everything from charging to file transfers, etc. becomes wireless.

 

Remember when they released a laptop without an optical drive⦠in 2008?

 

Anybody miss CD-ROMs?

[David Emm]

For Halloween, I'm going to re-purpose all of my defunct/obsolete cords and cables. It'll be either C'thulu tentacles or Predator dreadlocks. Its quite a pile.

 

William Gibson foresaw a future where we all had jacks in our necks for utter immersion in the Net, but he didn't consider the standards changing until you had a line of them down your arm. How's that RS-232 rot doing, Benny?

 

I took up an M1 Mac at a good time. The necessary crossovers have been so smooth, I feel suspicious. I foresee Thunderbolt coming into play, but this time, the upgrade hasn't come with any screaming or chairs being thrown from hotel windows, Keith Moon style. That's almost as amazing as the technology itself.

[Anderton]

Anybody miss CD-ROMs?

 

No, 800 MB isn't even close to enough these days for storage! But I sure wish computer companies had graduated to Blu-Ray drives, for the reasons given in this post. I haven't found anything better for long-term, local storage. 100 GB discs are about $7 each. Of course...the question is that it doesn't matter if Blu-Rays last 40 years, if nothing can read them 40 years from now. But that's a problem with any archival storage.

 

Hard drives are good, and SSDs are extending their lifespans, but everything I have that needs to be archived (mostly for clients) is backed up remotely to the cloud, and locally to Blu-Ray.

[analogika]

Hard drives are good, and SSDs are extending their lifespans, but everything I have that needs to be archived (mostly for clients) is backed up remotely to the cloud, and locally to Blu-Ray.

 

I keep stuff on multiple hard drives and copy them to multiple newer drives every couple of years. I'm *hoping* that's enough.

 

FWIW (knock on wood), I've had more issues with file formats/plugins going obsolete than with losing actual data, in the last thirty years...

[Anderton]

Hard drives are good, and SSDs are extending their lifespans, but everything I have that needs to be archived (mostly for clients) is backed up remotely to the cloud, and locally to Blu-Ray.

 

I keep stuff on multiple hard drives and copy them to multiple newer drives every couple of years. I'm *hoping* that's enough.

 

It almost certainly is, just remember that concurrently with hard drives having longer lives, the ones that fail do so more quickly than they used to. It's kind of like a hard drive will last for 10-13 years or 3-6 months, with nothing in between. The higher the drive capacity, the more this holds true. I don't know why this is so, but it has been documented by hard drive companies, it's not just anecdotal. So copying to multiple newer drives is definitely a good idea.

 

FWIW (knock on wood), I've had more issues with file formats/plugins going obsolete than with losing actual data, in the last thirty years...

 

Same here, but the only reason I haven't lost data is due to backing up. I just threw out three hard drives last week - they were old, couldn't be read, and had used up their useful life. Where I've experienced the greatest failure rate is USB thumb drives. They're usually pretty good, but I wouldn't trust them for long-term storage.

 

What has surprised me is how my re-writable/erasable CDs from 25 years ago still work. Based on what manufacturers projected at the time, they should have died years ago.

 

Finally...I think one reason Blu-Ray hasn't gotten wide traction is because DVDs are kind of flaky, and people don't realize that Blu-Ray discs are very different - they're far more durable, better at data retention, and highly scratch-resistant.

[analogika]

Same here, but the only reason I haven't lost data is due to backing up. I just threw out three hard drives last week - they were old, couldn't be read, and had used up their useful life. Where I've experienced the greatest failure rate is USB thumb drives. They're usually pretty good, but I wouldn't trust them for long-term storage.

 

This mirrors my experience. I've recently thrown out some defective drives, as well, when I started copying the archives over to new media. After creating two new copies of everything, I placed all the "still good" older-generation drives in a box in storage, where I lost them due to a building explosion.

 

 

I treat thumb drives as disposable data shuttles, not "storage" media, per se.

[David Emm]

I just threw out three hard drives last week - they were old, couldn't be read, and had used up their useful life.

 

HA! Sounds like ME! I'm a lot of all three of those now.

 

I take your Blu-Ray comments reflectively (no pun intended) because when a few like you and Robert Rich were praising them, the costs were so high, it was either the required gear for that or synths & their accessories at my house. I think I'd go there on your say-so if I hadn't just taken the leap into SSD. There's also the fact that my output has been miniscule, so the best-of tech never made that kind of sense anyway.

 

My flash drives ALL still work; I've had maybe 15 CDs total go flat; and I just had my very first-ever Seagate drive get so corrupted, it was crashing the new Mac! Its a cigarette-pack-sized 1 TB from 3 years back, so I was surprised. My old 250 GB and 500 GB drives still deliver, too. Interesting thread that's teaching me a few new things.

[Anderton]

I take your Blu-Ray comments reflectively (no pun intended) because when a few like you and Robert Rich were praising them, the costs were so high, it was either the required gear for that or synths & their accessories at my house. I think I'd go there on your say-so if I hadn't just taken the leap into SSD.

 

Just remember that SSDs are limited to a certain number of read-write cycles, and they will fail. As a result, SSDs are often sold on the basis of being optimized for writing, reading, or mixed use. Using them for something other than their intended usage shortens their life span. For example, a program that is constantly updating its data would need a writing-oriented SSD.

 

Another tradeoff is long life vs. capacity, and the type of NAND technology being used - Single-Level Cell design (which stores one bit per cell) is more reliable and faster than Quad-Level Cell design (which stores four bits per cell). However, SLC SSDs are much more expensive. A lot of consumer SSDs use a Triple-Level Cell design, which is a compromise between cost, speed, and reliablity. A 400 GB SLC is around $500. 3D TLC is more reliable and faster than standard TLC, and 3D QLC is more reliable and faster than QLC. 3D QLC also good for write-intensive applications, and that's what PC Audio Labs installed in my computer.

 

Finally - and this is really important - SSDs are more sensitive to power outages, abnormal shutdowns, "dirty" electricity, nearby lightning strikes, etc. If you're reliant on SSD, run, don't walk, to the nearest place that will sell you an uninterruptible power supply with filtering.

[Notes_Norton]

<...snip...>

I'm not a hacker, I use the Mac system that Apple sends me. Band in a Box is Mac compatible, some Mac users probably run your programs on a Mac, which is good for your business.<...>

Most definitely. I make sure my Band-in-a-Box files are compatible with Mac. It's not only good business, but it's the right thing to do. I've been doing this since the early 1990s. Mac is currently around 5% of my sales. That's about what it is for PG Music as well (or so says one of the reps).

 

For writing styles, I guess I'm in Microsoft jail. This has nothing to do with MS, but everything to do with PG Music. The StyleMaker app in the Windows version of BiaB is more advanced and has more features than the same app for Mac. The Mac version will play the better styles I write on the PC, but I can't make them there.

 

And while I'm stuck with Windows software, I'm not stuck with Windows hardware. If I want to transfer files to and from my PC to my Android tablet or phone, copy them to a flash drive and load them on the Android. If I want to by a Lenovo, Acer, or Dell computer, my files and apps are still going to be fine. And if I want to change a graphics card, or anything else inside a desktop computer from a competing brand other than my computer manufacturer, it's easy and possible.

 

I remember loading about 400 vacation pictures from my Windows computer to my iPad to show them to my sisters when we met at a restaurant. I bought a >$30 Lightning to USB cable and found I still couldn't transfer the files to my iPad. I had to buy another app for that. So I loaded 400 pictures to my website and downloaded them, one at a time, to my iPad which took scores of hours on my then slower DSL connection.

 

After my Australia vacation, I used MS File Explorer to drag them to a USB flash drive, and the Galaxy file manager to drag and drop them to my Android tablet. Ten minutes and I was done.

 

I know that I'm not everybody, and I know there is more than one right way to do this, but for people like me, Apple would sell more computers if they adopted some standard features. I like Macs and iPads, but I don't like that they don't play well with others.

 

But I really don't know which business model actually works for Apple, just what would work for me, personally.

 

Insights and incites by Notes

[KuruPrionz]

<...snip...>

I'm not a hacker, I use the Mac system that Apple sends me. Band in a Box is Mac compatible, some Mac users probably run your programs on a Mac, which is good for your business.<...>

Most definitely. I make sure my Band-in-a-Box files are compatible with Mac. It's not only good business, but it's the right thing to do. I've been doing this since the early 1990s. Mac is currently around 5% of my sales. That's about what it is for PG Music as well (or so says one of the reps).

 

For writing styles, I guess I'm in Microsoft jail. This has nothing to do with MS, but everything to do with PG Music. The StyleMaker app in the Windows version of BiaB is more advanced and has more features than the same app for Mac. The Mac version will play the better styles I write on the PC, but I can't make them there.

 

And while I'm stuck with Windows software, I'm not stuck with Windows hardware. If I want to transfer files to and from my PC to my Android tablet or phone, copy them to a flash drive and load them on the Android. If I want to by a Lenovo, Acer, or Dell computer, my files and apps are still going to be fine. And if I want to change a graphics card, or anything else inside a desktop computer from a competing brand other than my computer manufacturer, it's easy and possible.

 

I remember loading about 400 vacation pictures from my Windows computer to my iPad to show them to my sisters when we met at a restaurant. I bought a >$30 Lightning to USB cable and found I still couldn't transfer the files to my iPad. I had to buy another app for that. So I loaded 400 pictures to my website and downloaded them, one at a time, to my iPad which took scores of hours on my then slower DSL connection.

 

After my Australia vacation, I used MS File Explorer to drag them to a USB flash drive, and the Galaxy file manager to drag and drop them to my Android tablet. Ten minutes and I was done.

 

I know that I'm not everybody, and I know there is more than one right way to do this, but for people like me, Apple would sell more computers if they adopted some standard features. I like Macs and iPads, but I don't like that they don't play well with others.

 

But I really don't know which business model actually works for Apple, just what would work for me, personally.

 

Insights and incites by Notes

 

There are quite a few ways to transfer those photos, this is the one I would probably have used. Log in to the internet on your iPad, create an email address - or use one you already have on there. On your Windows computer, put all of your photos in a folder.

Open WeTransfer (www.wetransfer.com) and drop the folder into the transfer box. Send it to the email address on the iPad. Open the email, open that email, start the WeTransfer process and go do something else. All of your photos will be on the iPad shortly, no hardware needed and cost is zero.

 

There ARE ways to get these things done!

[Anderton]

Of course, Apple wants you to buy cloud storage, and keep your photos there. As the Mandalorian says, "It is the way."

[analogika]

I remember loading about 400 vacation pictures from my Windows computer to my iPad to show them to my sisters when we met at a restaurant. I bought a >$30 Lightning to USB cable and found I still couldn't transfer the files to my iPad. I had to buy another app for that. So I loaded 400 pictures to my website and downloaded them, one at a time, to my iPad which took scores of hours on my then slower DSL connection.

 

After my Australia vacation, I used MS File Explorer to drag them to a USB flash drive, and the Galaxy file manager to drag and drop them to my Android tablet. Ten minutes and I was done.

 

The Files app that Apple added to iOS 11 in 2017 made this a *lot* easier, though it was a little iffy about which particular external drives it supported â though support may have improved since then.

[Notes_Norton]

KuruPrionz, WeTransfer solution is no faster than uploading them to my own nortonmusic.com 'cloud' and downloading them to my iPad.

 

My Internet Connection is much faster now that Xfinity is here, and I dumped ATT's DSL. I was about 3 miles from the end of the fiber optics and everything was sloooooooow. ATT passes so few miles of cable here, and we are between a salt water lagoon and a fresh water wetland, so they really don't want us or care for us. It's too expensive for them.

 

Yes, there are ways to get things done, and if there was a piece of software I needed that was only available on an Apple product, I'd buy it and put up with the inconvenience.

 

There is a piece of software I need on Windows, the Band-in-a-Box StyleMaker app.

 

So I'll choose an Android tablet and use good ol' sneakerware.

 

I have nothing against Apple. The computer and OS is just a tool. I need the Windows tool for my 'moonlighting' business, so unless Apple wants to make it easy for me to switch between Windows and Apple, it's not in my immediate future.

 

I don't know if playing well with others would be a good move for Apple's bottom line. I just know what's good for me.

 

Back when PC was DOS I greatly preferred my Mac Classic. And I kept a Mac around until they went to Intel CPUs. My big, beautiful eMac was suddenly obsolete. About that time I found a beta tester for my Mac files and I didn't need the expense of the extra computer.He is a good friend and lives only about a mile away and is thoroughly into Macs.

 

I think the Mac OS is nice, and their hardware is top-notch, it just doesn't fit into what I need right now.

 

Notes

[KuruPrionz]

KuruPrionz, WeTransfer solution is no faster than uploading them to my own nortonmusic.com 'cloud' and downloading them to my iPad.

 

My Internet Connection is much faster now that Xfinity is here, and I dumped ATT's DSL. I was about 3 miles from the end of the fiber optics and everything was sloooooooow. ATT passes so few miles of cable here, and we are between a salt water lagoon and a fresh water wetland, so they really don't want us or care for us. It's too expensive for them.

 

Yes, there are ways to get things done, and if there was a piece of software I needed that was only available on an Apple product, I'd buy it and put up with the inconvenience.

 

There is a piece of software I need on Windows, the Band-in-a-Box StyleMaker app.

 

So I'll choose an Android tablet and use good ol' sneakerware.

 

I have nothing against Apple. The computer and OS is just a tool. I need the Windows tool for my 'moonlighting' business, so unless Apple wants to make it easy for me to switch between Windows and Apple, it's not in my immediate future.

 

I don't know if playing well with others would be a good move for Apple's bottom line. I just know what's good for me.

 

Back when PC was DOS I greatly preferred my Mac Classic. And I kept a Mac around until they went to Intel CPUs. My big, beautiful eMac was suddenly obsolete. About that time I found a beta tester for my Mac files and I didn't need the expense of the extra computer.He is a good friend and lives only about a mile away and is thoroughly into Macs.

 

I think the Mac OS is nice, and their hardware is top-notch, it just doesn't fit into what I need right now.

 

Notes

 

Got it, I used to have Century Link DSL here. They advertised "Up to 10mps" and it was cheap because Bellingham is a college town. That was back when 10mps was pretty fast, relatively speaking.

I used one of those "internet speed tester' pages and got a result of 1.3mps, slow as molasses. I switched to Comcast and I dislike them much less than Century Link. Their advertised speed is correct at least. Of course now things are much faster in general, 25mps is the slow speed now and it's plenty fast for me.

 

So I understand the frustration of profoundly slow internet. I used to start a download of a program just before going to sleep and usually in the morning it would be done. Having a Mac certainly did not speed that up any.

 

I'm not worried in the slightest about your choice of tools. We all do that in one way or another, humans are interesting. It's no different than your choice of reeds for your saxophone or my choice of guitar strings.

 

Now,, when somebody starts claiming that "Apple/Windows/Linux whatever is intentionally "trapping" you into their system, then I may pop up and disagree.

They ALL do that, it's more a matter of which cage you are less unhappy being trapped in. You happen to prefer being trapped by Windows, I am more comfortable being trapped by Mac.

I've used both for employment and I still use both. I'm a maintenance coordinator for Association Management. The company got me an HP laptop with Windows 10 and the Microsoft 2016 suite. They also gave me a company iPhone to use for work. Every day people send me photos of the problems they would like fixed. Lots of these photos arrive embedded in the email instead of attached, not sure why but it happens often. When it does, I've had zero luck getting those photos to "release" so I can attach them to work orders. Outlook may have that function hidden in some cryptic menu widget but I've tried their "Help" menu (there is no menu to help you with "Help" but they could use one), and my simple and fast solution is to open the email on the iPhone, tap once on the photo and use the page that pops up to email the photo to my Outlook email. Then it arrives as an attachment and I can drag it into my work order.

 

I'm not sure if it's stupid or I am be either way I don't like it. But it is an example of an Apple product easily solving a Windows problem.

[Marzzz]

But I also disagree strongly with some of the profit-driven decisions being made by Apple and Microsoft, like trying to convince people that local storage is only for people not modern and hip enough to trust everything to the cloud. Remember that, every time Amazon has an outage...

LOL, you are talking to a physician who still uses paper charts...!

[Anderton]

But I also disagree strongly with some of the profit-driven decisions being made by Apple and Microsoft, like trying to convince people that local storage is only for people not modern and hip enough to trust everything to the cloud. Remember that, every time Amazon has an outage...

LOL, you are talking to a physician who still uses paper charts...!

 

I call paper and pencil a non-volatile, erasable, mobile memory system

[analogika]

Yeah, I suppose being involved as a partner in development qualifies as "exclusive"â¦

 

USB has indeed been a shitshow â which "universal" "standard" includes no fewer than EIGHT DIFFERENT PLUG FORMATS?

 

USB-C is a clusterfuck inasmuch as the whole complexity is moved from the socket connector into the CABLE, with no way at all to tell what it will support â does it do Thunderbolt 3 full spec, or just USB 3.1 Gen 2 at 10 Gbit? Or USB 3.1 Gen 2 at 10 Gbit with DisplayPort? With or without Power Delivery? Or does it do 20 Gbit? Or just USB 3.1 Gen 1 at 5 Gbit? With or without DisplayPort? With or without Power Delivery? Or just USB 2.0 spec with or without Power Delivery, but no support for DisplayPort? Or does it have USB4 spec at 40 Gbit? Also, Power Delivery has various standards.

 

Which of those cables support DisplayPort Alt. Mode, I have no clue whatsoever.

 

I haven't been following too closely, but I'm hoping that USB4/Thunderbolt 4 is going to unify all that bullshit into a single, actual "standard". Not holding my breath, though.

 

HOORAY! The USB Consortium has finally found a solution to the problem of user confusion: ANOTHER layer of graphics for manufacturers to ignore, or put a sticker on the laptop for, or eventually support, or print somewhere in a corner of the box that you immediately threw away when you unpacked the cable.

 

PROBLEM THOLVED, THANK BOG.

 

[Anderton]

 

Oh well, at least they're not continuing the USB 3.12x Mega vs. USB 3.2.45a Turbo designations.

[Anderton]

Bobby Owsinski wrote a blog post about USB-C being mandatory, and saying it would be bad for musicians and artists. He says "the proposal is primarily aimed at smartphones (especially by Apple), but all other electronic devices are caught up in the wording as well."

 

He then goes on to say "Mandatory USB-C ports will keep us firmly planted in 2021 with little chance to break out beyond in terms of file daily transfers and backups. It will make it more difficult to make use of better processors in the future that might be more power hungry. It will keep the data transfer rates maxed out at what they are right now, with no chance to upgrade as faster rates become more available."

 

However, the only products covered by the EU are mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones, headsets, hand-held video game consoles, and portable speakers. They specifically do not include other products, even consumer ones like earbuds, smart watches, fitness trackers, or for that matter, laptops and computers. It's only the consumer devices mentioned above.

 

These are all products that sell millions and millions of units, and I suppose one could argue that faster data transfer for getting photos out of your phone is crucial to life as we know it...but I suspect most people do that wirelessly, anyway. I just don't see this impacting musicians and artists. If Apple wants to put a SuperSonicMagic port on their next generation of computers that transfers 4 billion gigabytes per millisecond, nothing is stopping them. And, they'll be able to sell a SuperSonicMagic port-to-USB-C dongle so they'll end up making money on it anyway.

 

I just don't see the doomsday scenario Bobby foresees, given how this is restricted to a limited set of consumer devices.

[analogika]

Rather than a doomsday scenario, let"s just imagine that someone (Apple?) is going to come up with a next-gen connector that does everything the current connector does, but connects magnetically and is entirely waterproof to 150 ft.

 

We"re all stuck with USB-C, because that"s what the law mandates.

 

Not good.

[Anderton]

Rather than a doomsday scenario, let"s just imagine that someone (Apple?) is going to come up with a next-gen connector that does everything the current connector does, but connects magnetically and is entirely waterproof to 150 ft.

 

We"re all stuck with USB-C, because that"s what the law mandates.

 

Not good.

 

Then they can just include a USB-C connector and a rubber stopper, as well as the new connector. That will let people use their mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones, headsets, hand-held video game consoles, and portable speakers underwater, down to 150 feet

 

I love magsafe on my laptop, and thought it was a big mistake to get rid of it. So, I was disappointed that magsafe on the new iPhones isn't the same thing. Also, charging is slower than a Lightning connector (so it would presumably be slower than USB-C) and the wireless charging technology is less efficient. There's more info about the tradeoffs here. Some of the reader comments are interesting.

 

I'm pretty sure I'm going to trade up to a new iPhone soon...I'm not going to use a phone once it can't get security updates. So whatever Apple has is what I'll use.

[Anderton]

Resurrecting this thread because I have something new to complain about - we need a label on USB connectors if they're power only for charging, and don't transfer data. Spent 30 minutes wondering why I couldn't pull photos off an Android phone until I thought to check the cable I was using.

 

Doh. Okay, I should have known, but I WOULD have known if there had been some kind of indication on it!

[Groove On]

I get the feeling Apple wants iPhones to be completely wireless, so we may never see USB-C on an iPhone; Apple might jump directly from lightning ports to no jacks at all; leaving USB-C ports just for iPads and Macs.

[Anderton]

I get the feeling Apple wants iPhones to be completely wireless, so we may never see USB-C on an iPhone; Apple might jump directly from lightning ports to no jacks at all; leaving USB-C ports just for iPads and Macs.

 

Entirely possible. Well, at least until there's some study in Sweden or wherever that shows constant exposure to wireless radiation causes people to become stupid. Come to think of it, that would explain a lot about what's going on in the world these days

[Groove On]

... constant exposure to wireless radiation causes people to become stupid. Come to think of it, that would explain a lot about what's going on in the world these days

... isn"t all radiation technically wireless ... ?

[David Emm]

I get the feeling Apple wants iPhones to be completely wireless, so we may never see USB-C on an iPhone; Apple might jump directly from lightning ports to no jacks at all; leaving USB-C ports just for iPads and Macs.

 

Entirely possible. Well, at least until there's some study in Sweden or wherever that shows constant exposure to wireless radiation causes people to become stupid. Come to think of it, that would explain a lot about what's going on in the world these days

 

I wish I could concur, but we're awash in such an electromagnetic fog 24/7, it seems iffy to focus on cell phones. Gimme a reading on total field strength at various points in time, where *I* live. Then show me the study that tells me how many brain cells were killed over my last 15 years.

 

I'm just too fatigued by ambient stress to give anything too much of the blame. I asked for it because I bought it. I don't buy an Oberheim Eight-Voice in any form because I'm too old to scream that hard anymore.