People say this as if Apple hadn't already been adding USB-C to their iOS devices for several years. There were pretty good reasons for holding off USB-C for the iPhone. It was likely to alienate a good number of customers.
I doubt Europe had anything to do with the timing.
They've added repair stuff years in advance for the upcoming mandate on right to repair. Funny how they know the path they should take but don't choose to take it until there's a future mandate. Then suddenly it's "out of the goodness of our corporate heart..." and y'all eat it up & make excuses for em.
I don't doubt it was in the works, but on what time frame?
Timing probably matters: when most of the market already agrees you can't wait for the last group, you have to strike before everyone defuses again.
And while I can imagine that apple had a plan here, the part that doesn't fit is that they protested the mandate. If this had no effect on their plans, why bother?
People have crazy long memories to consider this as happening "again," seeing as the lightning connector has been around for 12 years.
Who are the folks that only have one device, anyway? Surely almost everyone who owns a smartphone has at least one USB-C cable kicking around for something else?
My sisters are two living examples of said people. They both asked me why Apple was suddenly switching the cables for their new phones and tablets, when they already had everything on one cable type (lightning) and it was convenient. Now it's inconvenient for them and they didn't understand what the big deal was with usb-c.
Cables are the obvious one, as someone else mentioned. But I think people forget how many accessories have been sold (e.g. FLIR cameras [0]) that were Lightning only. Switching the phone to USB-C renders those expensive accessories obsolete.
I have a Lightning FLIR camera and it works identically well when used with Apple’s Lightning-to-USB-C adapter, it even works with my 2018 iPad Pro which kicked-off the iOS+USB-C process all those years ago.
My iPhone today is rather aged (and uses Lightning) so I’m switching to an iPhone 16 later this year, and I’m confident all of my Lightning accessories will continue to work do long as the apps are available on iTunes.
Related question: now that desktop iTunes is useless for iPhone app management - how the heck do I save and load the iOS I’ve purchased after they’ve been pulled from the store?
Yup, exactly. I have a flir one, and I’ll have to keep my old lightning iPhone around just so I can use the flir camera when I need it. There are probably a bunch of such peripherals. The key difference between MacBooks and iPads where they did switch to USB-C early is that dongles are WAY less convenient of a workaround with a mobile peripheral.
I think the lifetime of the lightning connector has been very reasonable. If they switched much earlier they would’ve really screwed over those who invested in lightning peripherals. I think it’s reasonable to expect the peripherals to last at least one phone upgrade.
Yeah maybe it still sucks for people who bought such peripherals in the last few years. But more and more stuff is done over Bluetooth now and we’ve had years where everyone should know that there wasn’t a future for lightning
