Comment by karmelapple | Hacker News Reader

Comment by karmelapple | Hacker News Reader

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I’d tend to agree, although look at the success of new connection technologies Apple pioneered when they were coupled with things that already did similar things.

FireWire, all speeds: was always coupled with USB or other tech that possibly didn’t carry data as fast as FW, but was “good enough” for lots of things. FireWire never really took off aside from digital video cameras, and that got phased out over time, too. DisplayPort: nope.

Compare that to the original iMac, which dropped the serial and SCSI port. People gasped, but in not too long (at least now, looking back in it), USB was everywhere.

And now USB-C. Would it have been as popular as it currently is - on lots of chrome books, many phones, even the Nintendo switch - if Apple has not been so gung ho on it? Possibly, but a bit of me doubts it.

I REALLY don't see Apple as leading the charge on USB-C. I see them as a laggard given their refusal to put a USB-C port where it's most useful - on their phones. They also weren't the first to put the ports on their laptops.

Just because they ship a laptop with 4 USB-C TB ports and nothing else doesn't mean they're driving USB-C adoption nearly as much as say Samsung or Huawei. If anything because they literally don't use the same port across different types of devices unlike other phone/laptop sellers... They're discouraging USB-C adoption and making dongles more appealing since you will still need dongles if you're using all Apple even if you have USB-C native stuff.

Apple aren't pushing people towards expensive new standards they're just making consumer unfriendly decisions. Making it so you can't use USB-A does not mean you're making it easy to adopt USB-C... They make adopting USB-C unnessecarily painful.

USB C in Chromebooks pre-dates apple's usage. And several other manufacturers were putting USB c in their devices before apple even announced. And apple still isn't using it in their phones.

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