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Comment by Scriptal | Hacker News Reader

Why did they not make the charging port USB C?

I feel like a lot of this mess with needing a different dongle and special wire for each product would have been less of a big deal if everything they did just moved to USB C all at the same time. Now if you want to charge your air pods with a macbook pro you need a cable to go from usb C to thunderbolt (not included) or an adapter to use the previous-gen-usb to lightening cable it does come with.

It feels to me like the different product development teams at Apple didn't communicate with each other at all w.r.t. what ports to use.

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Apple is standardizing on two cables.

All of Apple's "accessories" (things that will request charge from a host over their cable: phones, tablets, keyboards and touchpads, and now headphones) have a Lightning port.

All of Apple's "computers" (things that won't: computers that are wired for power, and devices that are wired for power like the Apple TV) have, or will have, USB-C ports.

The vague middle case is laptops, like the new MBP: they do charge over their USB-C cables. But they'll only do this from a wall-socket power adapter; they won't attempt to drain the battery of a peer device they're connected to.

Besides that HCI hint of charging semantics, though, Lightning is just physically different in a few important ways that Apple relies on: for one, the connectors are solid metal, so an upward-pointed male connector can be used as a freestanding dock. That's not true of USB-C. Apple isn't going to converge them.

Does that imply my USB C battery won't work with my new MacBook Pro? :(

I believe the switching from charging a device and charging your laptop is done in software. The spec allows any USB C device to charge any other in either direction AFAIK.

It should charge. I have an Anker usb-c battery pack that I use to power my 2016 macbook.

Any battery with USB-A and USB-C ports (or just USB-C ports if you go out and get the USB-C to Lightning cable) that also supports USB-PD should be able to charge both your USB-C laptop and phone.

I ended up getting this battery [0] from Anker, and it's done a great job with my 2016 skinny Macbook and iPhone.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015FMV3JE/ref=oh_aui_deta...

I've been wondering this for quite some time. Thanks for the clearly explained response. Is this documented somewhere or just something you've observed?

> Why did they not make the charging port USB C?

Because there are about half a billion potential customers out there who already have phones that charge via lightning?

Since when has that ever bothered them?

There was the dock connector -> lightning connector switch.

There's the ADB -> USB switch back in the day.

And now there headphone jack -> wireless thing switch.

Apple cares not one whit for obsoleting the stuff you have.

Nevertheless, the phone these are designed to be used with (the same one you mention on the 2nd to last line of your post) still charges via a Lightning port. They may be merciless about the whole planned obsolescence thing, but they aren't stupid.

The dock connector lived for 13 years, ADB lived for about as long, and both were obsolete and replaced by better ports.

I don't doubt that one day iPhones may use USB-C or whatever replaces it, but the lightning port is going to be around for a long time - it was designed to last at least a decade, and I don't doubt that it will.

I get the feeling we're going to see lighting on apples mobile devices for a very very long time yet.

Yes, the official statement during the presentation of the Lightning connector was "for at least the next decade" if I recall correctly.

Wasn't that long before we knew what USB-C would look like though?

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