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Comment by JamesBaxter | Hacker News Reader

I suppose that if you’re upgrading to iPhone and already have one it is a waste to give you yet another charger. I wonder how much energy is used creating these cables that often go straight in a drawer because the previous cable is already conveniently plugged into the wall.

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I personally find uses for these extra chargers, I would never give one away; and USB-C chargers are especially rare in my house.

Allow me to personally offer to take any off the hands of anyone who feels they have too many.

Yeah in theory it's a defensible move, because we're moving towards standardized charging ports. However, Apple is the only one that's being weird about it, introducing the Lightning connector instead of e.g. switching to micro-USB. USB-C was still a while out when Lightning was introduced.

But honestly they have no excuse to not adopt Micro-USB or USB-C.

Lighting is way better than micro-USB, and somewhat better than even USB-C, which, as you correctly mentioned, was released years after its debut.

So that’s their “excuse”, and I’m glad for it every time I have to interact with a micro-USB cable.

And what would these benefits of lightning vs USB C be, aside from being endorsed and embedded in the Apple ecosystem?

At this point not that much. It’s slightly smaller, and most iPhone users already have a pile of lightning cables. It’s also nice to be able to charge your low-end iPad / Airpods / Apple mice and keyboards from the same cable. Historically there were a load of speaker docks that had a fixed lightning plug, but that’s mostly a dead market segment at this point.

I note how you didn’t ask about micro-USB, because you know it to be inferior.

Well, first of all, lighting predates usb-c by a few years, so it’s an advantage that we thankfully haven’t had to endure micro-USB in that time.

Then, lightning is a male connector which makes it more robust, compared to the female connector in USB-C. I’ve had multiple USB-C cables break when inserted a bit too aggressively, which has not ever happened in my years of using lightning.

There just isn’t a “wrong way to hold” the lightning connector, which isn’t quite the case with USB-C, in my experience.

Well... I have an iPhone7 with an unreliable worn-out Lightning port sitting next to me, so I can kind of see the value in having the cable wear out rather than the socket in the phone...

Try cleaning it. I’ve had dust accumulate in a lightning port making it unreliable. I thought the port had failed for the longest time but it was just dust.

And I don’t think lightning cables wearing out has anything to do with the standard and everything to do with Apples poor lightning cables.

I also can’t see how people think USBC is more robust. There is a tiny little wafer in the port... I get nervous just looking at it. At least with a lightning port it’s large enough to get something in there and clean it out. USBC just looks so delicate.

You’ve put it into words way better than I have.

God forbid people acknowledge Apple’s proprietary design is better...

I have the opposite problem. None of my USB-C cables ever seem to break, whereas a whole bunch of lightning cables of ours have broke, either fully or partially (partially being when one side works because of pressure or something).

My lightning cables break at least twice a year, and my iPhone 6S has a worn-out port - worst of both worlds. :(

Astute observation. Yes, I'm asking you to explain why the 2012 connector is better than the 2014 one, because that's the one I have doubts about, as opposed to the obsolete 2007 one.

Would you rather break a $10 cable or a $800 phone? I'd much rather the cable, though you seem to have different priorities to me.

The last point is referring to the cable tip? That's more to do with individual cable design than anything else.

So, it's not really better in any way, except for being on Apple devices, gotcha.

USB-C has the spring contacts inside the easily replaced cable, whereas lightning has the spring contacts inside the not-so-easily fixed phone.

So all else equal, USB-C is objectively the better design.

Lightning is symmetric, Micro USB is not.

Lightning is smaller than USB-C.

Also from experience Lightning is a hell of a lot more robust than both.

I've witnessed at least 4 original Apple Lightining cables working with a device and not working with another one.

My biggest issue with Lightning is that it doesn't support HDMI. iPhones (and iPads) transmit an encoded stream to the Lighting to HDMI adapters which then get decoded and converted to HDMI by a chip in the adapter. It adds encoding artifacts and latency.

As an iPhone owner, I don’t want USB-C. Not yet, anyway. The reason is that I don’t know how to be confident that a particular cable and power source will charge my phone well and won’t fry it.

I expect Apple knows its customers would like to have confidence about this and that’s why they are holding off.

With Lightning, I have been happy enough to plug into various non-Apple-brand chargers with USB-A sockets. Maybe charging might not be as fast as with an official charger. But it will likely work and I don’t expect the possibility of damage.

Not sure why you are downvoted. We have covered enough problems with USB-C and people are still crying for it.

Millions of non-Apple phone users have been doing fine for the past few years. Also by your logic, Apple would care about the potential damage to the iPhones and iPads but not about the iPad Pro and the entire laptop lineup?

I don't think the explanation "Apple fears USB C/USB PD will fry devices" fits the facts.

For one thing, this article claims Apple will ship a Lightning to USB-C cable - so the phone will need to accept whatever voltages that come out of USB C chargers anyway.

Second, Apple have adopted USB C on the Macbook - which would make no sense if they were scared of USB C frying devices. And they didn't go in cautiously on the macbook: They were one of the earliest adopters, and they dropped magsafe and USB A as they did it.

So I'm with Cthulhu_ - I don't see any good reason for Apple to stick with Lightning, except licensing fees.

> But honestly they have no excuse to not adopt Micro-USB or USB-C.

The only reason for usb-c on my phone is the convenience factor. Otherwise I find lightening superior in every other way. And micro-usb, you have to be kidding.

Most people sell or trade-in their old phones, however, and include the OEM charger to maximise their value.

I recently had to buy three expensive aftermarket chargers because we just didn't have enough OEM ones in the house.

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