4 ms·

I don't understand the obsession with USB charging. This makes no sense at all to me. How would my life be materially better if my phone charged over USB? My la

by dpark 10y ago

I don't understand the obsession with USB charging. This makes no sense at all to me. How would my life be materially better if my phone charged over USB? My last phone charged over USB and I can't say it felt better. At this point, you might be tempted to claim that I would be able to use the same cables as other devices. To this, I'll point to the ongoing switch to USB-C and note that's you're buying new cables anyway. Micro USB was a shitty plug. USB-C is better, but you can actually thank Apple for that, because it's a reaction to the Lightning plug.

ng12 10y ago
Come visit my company gym, we have 20+ perfectly good treadmills that all have outdated iPhone chargers. The best part about micro USB was that it was absolutely ubiquitous. If my phone was dying at a friend's place or at my neighborhood coffee shop chances are I could charge my phone. My least favorite thing about my 5x is that it's USB-C. I regret upgrading before USB-C became more commonplace.
- treehau5 10y ago
  Exactly. Could you imagine buying a home if the electrical outlet wasn't standardized? (In the US). Just ask the rest of the world how frustrating it is when every country has their own plug.
  - thomasfoster96 10y ago
    Homes tend to have a longer lifespan than phones.
    - treehau5 10y ago
      True, but the people living in them don't. People in the US move, and they move a lot. Please use the downvote button for comments that are not relevant to the discussion, not as the "I disagree" button. We aren't reddit. My point is factual, 26 million Americans move every year. The challenges and hassels would be comparable if we had different plugs for all our appliances and electronics are analogous to the problems we have with different standards for charging ports on our cell phones, just a larger scale.
      - dpark 10y ago
        That's not relevant to the negative impact of custom electrical outlets. New residents don't alleviate the hassle of, say, ungrounded plugs.
        treehau5 10y ago
        As analogies go, try to go for the spirit of the comparison, not the specifics. Imagine what the market for appliances would look like if we had to accommodate for different outlets. Imagine if your kitchen aid stand mixer you bought for 600 dollars wasn't compatible with the apartment complex you wanted to move into. Or your iron, or your tv, or your charger for your laptop, or your hair dryer.
        dpark 10y ago
        It's a bad analogy, though. For one, USB isn't very standardized either. There are many USB standards and we're in the midst of a transition from Micro USB to USB-C that will create the exact same compatibility problem for at least a few years as Micro-USB and Lightning. Before Micro-USB we had mini-USB. None of these are even remotely backwards compatible. Meanwhile we've been using the same basic electrical outlet for decades, and it's backwards compatible with the one we used for decades before that. Also, my oven is actually an entirely different plug from my TV, and my dryer is different still. My lightbulbs connect through a totally different interface that doesn't even look like a plug! I actually seem to be doing okay with that.
        treehau5 10y ago
        You are picking the extremes to show why my analogy isn't good, which is unfair. You don't move your oven with you when you move, and washer/dryer is rare, but 220 volt outlets are standardized in the US as well. If you are moving your washer and dryer with you, and oven, the place you are moving to will have standardized 220v plugs. There is a physical limit on how much electricty certain plugs can handle. The bulk of the consumer and kitchen appliances you take with you use the same plug. Micro-usb is pretty much ubiquitous for the vast majority of non-Iphones. The point is because of Apple continuing to "move us forward" we will never have something to standardize around.
- dpark 10y ago
  I don't know how this is an issue for Apple. If those treadmills were micro USB, they'd be trending rapidly toward obsolescence anyway. I'll note that almost everyone who complains about lightning seems to not be an Apple user. Apple users seem fine with the horror of not sharing cables with Android devices. Apple users are also pretty happy that random hotels and whatnot have docks for their phones.
  - ng12 10y ago
    > I don't know how this is an issue for Apple Oh, it's absolutely not. Apple makes a killing selling adapters. It's the users who get screwed.
    - dpark 10y ago
      I don't know. I bought a lightning cable for my office a week ago for maybe $6. A quick search on Amazon shows an equivalent USB-C cable is actually more if I want to buy from a company with a name I recognize.
      - ng12 10y ago
        What are you talking about? Direct from Apple it's $20, on Amazon both will run you $5-$10. But that's not the point anyways -- I'm still using a micro-usb cable that I bought before Lightning was even released. I've had to spend $0 on proprietary nonsense. Also, another point: I have a medical device and a Kindle which both charge via micro-USB, meaning I only had to bring one charger when I traveled. Huge benefit.
        dpark 10y ago
        So don't buy direct from Apple. An AmazonBasics lightning cable is 6.50 right now. The cheapest brand I recognize for USB-C is Anker at 7. So no, USB-C is not meaningfully more expensive but neither are iPhone users getting ripped off unless they choose to. Apple customers aren't getting "screwed" as you claimed. If you're still using micro USB, I hate to break the news, but you will absolutely be buying some new cables in the future.
- 7952 10y ago
  The best approach is to just have USB sockets and let the user supply the cable.
ryanhuff 10y ago
I don't care about USB charging. What I do care about is not having to carry an awful dongle to listen to music. Been there, done that. And, I care about not having to charge my headphones before I listen to music. People might say I should just leave the dongle on my headphones. I lived through that already with an Android phone years ago, and it sucked.
- dpark 10y ago
  That's a perfectly valid criticism. I think ditching the headphone jack, while having little effect on me personally, isn't a great move. At the same time, Apple has a long history of ditching compatibility early (floppy drive, cd drive, vga, etc) and with generally good effect long term, so I'm not sure that they actually made the wrong decision here.
  - nocman 10y ago
    Except that (as I recall) the floppy drive was completely obsolete when they did that, so almost no one cared. And the CD drive was not very painful either. The story is completely different for the headphone jack. It is not in the least obsolete, and it being missing is a huge pain for a lot of people. It was a completely bonehead move on Apple's part IMHO. I know they had their reasons for doing it, but I still think it was a big mistake.
wcummings 10y ago
My blackberry has micro AND mini usb. I live like a king. A king who doesn't carry a charger but whose phone is kept charged.

by dpark 10y ago

ng12 10y ago

Come visit my company gym, we have 20+ perfectly good treadmills that all have outdated iPhone chargers. The best part about micro USB was that it was absolutely ubiquitous. If my phone was dying at a friend's place or at my neighborhood coffee shop chances are I could charge my phone. My least favorite thing about my 5x is that it's USB-C. I regret upgrading before USB-C became more commonplace.

treehau5 10y ago
Exactly. Could you imagine buying a home if the electrical outlet wasn't standardized? (In the US). Just ask the rest of the world how frustrating it is when every country has their own plug.
- thomasfoster96 10y ago
  Homes tend to have a longer lifespan than phones.
  - treehau5 10y ago
    True, but the people living in them don't. People in the US move, and they move a lot. Please use the downvote button for comments that are not relevant to the discussion, not as the "I disagree" button. We aren't reddit. My point is factual, 26 million Americans move every year. The challenges and hassels would be comparable if we had different plugs for all our appliances and electronics are analogous to the problems we have with different standards for charging ports on our cell phones, just a larger scale.
    - dpark 10y ago
      That's not relevant to the negative impact of custom electrical outlets. New residents don't alleviate the hassle of, say, ungrounded plugs.
      - treehau5 10y ago
        As analogies go, try to go for the spirit of the comparison, not the specifics. Imagine what the market for appliances would look like if we had to accommodate for different outlets. Imagine if your kitchen aid stand mixer you bought for 600 dollars wasn't compatible with the apartment complex you wanted to move into. Or your iron, or your tv, or your charger for your laptop, or your hair dryer.
        dpark 10y ago
        It's a bad analogy, though. For one, USB isn't very standardized either. There are many USB standards and we're in the midst of a transition from Micro USB to USB-C that will create the exact same compatibility problem for at least a few years as Micro-USB and Lightning. Before Micro-USB we had mini-USB. None of these are even remotely backwards compatible. Meanwhile we've been using the same basic electrical outlet for decades, and it's backwards compatible with the one we used for decades before that. Also, my oven is actually an entirely different plug from my TV, and my dryer is different still. My lightbulbs connect through a totally different interface that doesn't even look like a plug! I actually seem to be doing okay with that.
        treehau5 10y ago
        You are picking the extremes to show why my analogy isn't good, which is unfair. You don't move your oven with you when you move, and washer/dryer is rare, but 220 volt outlets are standardized in the US as well. If you are moving your washer and dryer with you, and oven, the place you are moving to will have standardized 220v plugs. There is a physical limit on how much electricty certain plugs can handle. The bulk of the consumer and kitchen appliances you take with you use the same plug. Micro-usb is pretty much ubiquitous for the vast majority of non-Iphones. The point is because of Apple continuing to "move us forward" we will never have something to standardize around.
dpark 10y ago
I don't know how this is an issue for Apple. If those treadmills were micro USB, they'd be trending rapidly toward obsolescence anyway. I'll note that almost everyone who complains about lightning seems to not be an Apple user. Apple users seem fine with the horror of not sharing cables with Android devices. Apple users are also pretty happy that random hotels and whatnot have docks for their phones.
- ng12 10y ago
  > I don't know how this is an issue for Apple Oh, it's absolutely not. Apple makes a killing selling adapters. It's the users who get screwed.
  - dpark 10y ago
    I don't know. I bought a lightning cable for my office a week ago for maybe $6. A quick search on Amazon shows an equivalent USB-C cable is actually more if I want to buy from a company with a name I recognize.
    - ng12 10y ago
      What are you talking about? Direct from Apple it's $20, on Amazon both will run you $5-$10. But that's not the point anyways -- I'm still using a micro-usb cable that I bought before Lightning was even released. I've had to spend $0 on proprietary nonsense. Also, another point: I have a medical device and a Kindle which both charge via micro-USB, meaning I only had to bring one charger when I traveled. Huge benefit.
      - dpark 10y ago
        So don't buy direct from Apple. An AmazonBasics lightning cable is 6.50 right now. The cheapest brand I recognize for USB-C is Anker at 7. So no, USB-C is not meaningfully more expensive but neither are iPhone users getting ripped off unless they choose to. Apple customers aren't getting "screwed" as you claimed. If you're still using micro USB, I hate to break the news, but you will absolutely be buying some new cables in the future.
7952 10y ago
The best approach is to just have USB sockets and let the user supply the cable.

ryanhuff 10y ago

I don't care about USB charging. What I do care about is not having to carry an awful dongle to listen to music. Been there, done that. And, I care about not having to charge my headphones before I listen to music. People might say I should just leave the dongle on my headphones. I lived through that already with an Android phone years ago, and it sucked.

dpark 10y ago
That's a perfectly valid criticism. I think ditching the headphone jack, while having little effect on me personally, isn't a great move. At the same time, Apple has a long history of ditching compatibility early (floppy drive, cd drive, vga, etc) and with generally good effect long term, so I'm not sure that they actually made the wrong decision here.
- nocman 10y ago
  Except that (as I recall) the floppy drive was completely obsolete when they did that, so almost no one cared. And the CD drive was not very painful either. The story is completely different for the headphone jack. It is not in the least obsolete, and it being missing is a huge pain for a lot of people. It was a completely bonehead move on Apple's part IMHO. I know they had their reasons for doing it, but I still think it was a big mistake.

wcummings 10y ago

My blackberry has micro AND mini usb. I live like a king. A king who doesn't carry a charger but whose phone is kept charged.