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Comment by AWildC182 | Hacker News Reader

....Why did the Pro get USB-C but the Mini is now shipping with Lightning? I'm so confused. I just want all my shit to have one charging cable.

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To be able to charge the first-gen Apple Pencil? Which of course raises the question about why they made it compatible with the first-gen Pencil instead of the second-gen. (I think it's reasonable that they didn't want to revamp the edges of the iPad, which would have to have been done to enable inductive charging.)

Addressed in the DF posts. The new pencil requires a flat sided device and wireless charging rig which the Mini doesn’t have, probably due to cost issues. There’s also the matter of product differentiation.

I'm glad they didn't, my main soundcard uses the lightening connector its not optimized for usb c, for musicians there are tons of existing lightening based devices we would have to toss out for usb c so for musician users having lightening and 8th inch audio jack are superior to usb c.

I use my 4th gen Mini as an electronic flight bag (charts, weather brief, etc) when flying but all my other gear is USB-C and I have to constantly inventory my bag to make sure I have both a USB-C and a Lightning cable lest either my phone (backup EFB device) or ipad dies on a long flight.

It'd be so easy to just have all of them. Well, for a normal company.

This is like .01% of users though.

No, there are millions of users with lightning accessories.

Anecdote: I have a MIDI keyboard that I hook up to my iPad Pro through USB (A to C). I actually own a few small keyboards and none of them use Lightning. What are these Lightning accessories you're referring to?

I talked to an apple store employee yesterday about this:

He said one of the reasons for USB C in the Pro is that the tablet draws too much power to charge and operate at the same time over lightning. Also, for 'pro-level' jobs like editing 4K, USB C has much, much faster transfer speeds.

> He said one of the reasons for USB C in the Pro is that the tablet draws too much power to charge and operate at the same time over lightning. Also, for 'pro-level' jobs like editing 4K, USB C has much, much faster transfer speeds.

That doesn't sound right - current iPhones support the fast charging rates of the 18W Apple iPad charger over lightning. And the 10.5" and 12.9" iPads Pro support USB 3 (5 gbps, not 10 gbps like the new iPads) speeds over lightning.

When will people learn that USB-C as it currently stands is just a bag of hurt. iPad Pro has USB-C with an enormous controller size that wouldn't fit into iPhone and provides the speed and flexibility of connecting it to a Display. Which something iPhone wont need ( for now ).

I am hoping USB4 will fix all of these and made two spec of cables. One for Sub 25W, one for 100W. Along with stricter control no USB-C connector. May be then it would make sense to make the the transition.

Because regular iPad owners have iPhones -- so that's one cable across all the devices these owners have.

It’s not an iPad Pro.

No, it's even newer, so we'd expect it to use the same cable if Apple wants a nice transition for their users. But their rent-seeking penny-pinching CEO doesn't care about producing a good product lineup any more. He just cares about margins, and this saves a few cents per unit.

No, it’s an existing iPad with a new chip in it. That’s cheap and easy to make.

You want USB-C? Ok. That means new case. Might as well make other changes because you have to pay for tooling again. And all the assembly lines have to be updated. And people retrained on the new assembly procedures.

All that costs money. And they want to hit a low price point. So they put a new chip in the old thing (and a new screen? But same size) and don’t have to raise the price.

The mini is already more expensive than the iPad. You think an extra $50-70 would help it sell better? All for USB-C?

$50-70 to switch to USB-C? That seems like a pretty healthy exaggeration.

How the hell are you being downvoted for this?!

Have people gone insane?

No, people are reading the original comment about how switching to USB-C would require all-new tooling for the production line for the Mini, because it's not as simple as "just swap out the Lightning port for a USB-C port and keep everything else identical so no extra manufacturing cost whatsoever."

The assertion being made isn't that the USB-C port costs $50. It's that switching to USB-C would require up-front investment that keeping the Lightning port -- which is also still being used in all of Apple's phones and all of the other "non-Pro" iPads -- doesn't.

Right, the cost is up-front fixed costs. So if they sell 10 million iPad Minis, then the estimated cost was $500-700 million? Doesn't that seem a bit implausible?

Apple puts USB-C ports on their pro-level devices so they can use pro-level peripherals, but that isn’t a significant benefit for their consumer-level devices.

In terms of compatibility, continuing to use Lightning is probably better for the target market of the consumer-level devices. More importantly though, using Lightning lets Apple ensure that any accessories will provide a reasonably good experience since they distribute all the connectors to approved third-parties through the MFi program.

This was exactly my point above, but I seemingly have worded it in a way that was was unpopular. This is iPad Air and iPad Mini, not iPad Pro: Apple didn't see the need to figure out how to jam USB-C onto a "standard" iPad when Lightning does just fine.

But it’s not only that Lightning does just fine technically (even though that’s true), it’s that Lightning gives Apple more control over the whole product ecosystem and therefore the experience of using the product.

They don't want to "transition" anything to USB-C. They use USB-C for consumer electronics that can equally-well be a USB host or USB client (like the iPad, or the Apple TV.) They use Lightning for consumer electronics that will only ever be a USB client (like the iPhone or the other iPads.) They set this policy as soon as USB-C came out, and haven't deviated from it since.

No.

!remindme 2 years

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