8 ms·

I probably dont get your sarcasm. But I never had a problem with Lightning. In the long run, I like the switch to USB-C... But when I got my first iPhone, USB

by lynx97 2y ago

I probably dont get your sarcasm. But I never had a problem with Lightning. In the long run, I like the switch to USB-C... But when I got my first iPhone, USB-C wasn't invented yet, so... Also, I like the AppStore for its reviews, and would actually NEVER activate an alternative appstore. No need to weaken my security on purpose. I know, its apparently an unpopular opinion here, but that is mostly because many people only comment with their dev hats on and are apparently unable to see things from user perspectives...

rahkiin 2y ago
To add: when apple switched to lightning they made a deal with hardware makers that they would support this for 10 years in order not to make all their hardware obsolete again. They did eventually change it after exactly 10 years.
- bigyabai 2y ago
  Not because their software would inherently break by switching to a different USB connector, or even by using a converter dongle. Apple signed this agreement because Lightning had a hardcoded DRM protocol baked into it to force third-parties to pay licensing fees. Of course they demanded a 10 year support window, it was a licensing ruse to make manufacturers pay a price premium to use the USB featureset. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MFi_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MFi_Program
  - rahkiin 2y ago
    Not everything has to be a ‘i win, you lose’. It can be a strategy and architecture where multiple parties get something out of it. In different ways.
    - bigyabai 2y ago
      Sure, FireWire is an example of Apple using innovation to actually innovate. Lightning is an example of Apple using DRM to paywall an ordinary and freely availible USB 2.0 featureset.
      - majormajor 2y ago
        Firewire was a speed/feature innovation. Lighting was a port innovation. Pay to play in either case. Other options available to Apple instead of Lightning: * stick with the iPod connector for longer * switch to micro-USB * never invent the iPod connector in favor of staying with Firewire or going to mini-USB and then switch to micro-USB or something else later anyway None of these are better. I'm EXTREMELY glad they didn't switch to micro-USB. I had no shortage of mini-USB and then micro-USB devices and the micro-USB ports/cables are pretty much the worst I've ever dealt with.
        josephg 2y ago
        Yeah. Also as I understand it, Apple is part of the USB committee and they were actively involved in the development of USB-C. Their experience developing the lightning connector actively led to usb-c being reversible. If not for the lightning connector, we wouldn't have usb-c as we know it today. Its also a stretch to claim apple doesn't like usb-c given how hard they've been pushing it on their laptops. In 2016, they started shipping laptops that only had usb-c ports - which worked around the chicken-and-egg problem we would have had otherwise. Dongle-gate was a real thing that annoyed a lot of people. But my desk is covered in usb-c peripherals - and that might not have happened if not for apple's "brave" choice.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        Someone 2y ago
        The same thing happened with the original USB. Windows machines, even laptops, shipped with serial and even parallel ports for years after the first iMacs went all in on it. That gave the market for USB devices an enormous boost. Without that, USB might have died.
        FateOfNations 2y ago
        People have really bad memories of Mini- and Micro-USB, or aren't old enough to have experienced that era. Those things were fragile. At that point in time, it made all the technical and business sense in the world to replace their existing proprietary connector with a new, improved proprietary connector. The MFi program was a thing before Lightning, it's still a thing today, and has nothing to do with the specific connector.
    - seec 2y ago
      The 3rd parties are not getting anything out of it. You literally pay for access to a tech stack that has nothing better than you would be able to do with USB. I mean the other side of connection was USB so it was a necessity anyway. If at least they upgraded the speed over the years, but nope stuck at USB 2. For a hardware project I looked briefly at the MFi terms and they just don't make any sense. This is why any good lightning cable was always more expensive (at least before you get some from China with contraband auth chips) Lightning is a major cash crab from Apple and revealed their actual playbook. Microsoft passed as a very bad players in the 90's but Apple is even worse. The only people not accepting that are deranged fans.
      - golergka 2y ago
        > You literally pay for access to a tech stack that has nothing better than you would be able to do with USB. Tech stack has the customers. You pay for access to customers.
        Dylan16807 2y ago
        This is a relative comparison versus USB. If it was USB, it would have the same customers behind it (plus more).
        seec 2y ago
        Best interpretation of that is rent-seeking. Not strictly illegal, but prone to regulation at the very least. Another way to put it is racketeering. I guess that Apple has been toying with the line for so long that people don't even understand where their interests lies...
      - IncreasePosts 2y ago
        You could turn lightning connectors upside down and plug them in before you could do that with USB
      - vr46 2y ago
        USB-C is a car crash of an implementation landscape, just because the interface is a single design, doesn't mean that you can rely on it. It is better than it was, but we've had several instances of issues with the USB-C, including my own personal favourite of my Nintendo Switch charging socket burning out because I used a non-Nintendo charger - an Apple one, completely compliant and as good as they get - to charge the Switch. A £50 repair. Some USB-C cables aren't data compliant. They just send power. There's all kinds of foibles with USB-C that have taken years to work on and this just isn't clear to tech folks, let alone non-tech consumers. The Lightning port has never done this to me, the device just charges and that's it. It transfers files and that's it.
mistercheph 2y ago
You never needed speeds in excess of usb 2.0? LOL, this is such old hat, guys in IBM t-shirts telling me how nobody ever needed more than 64K, and why go third party with your treasured computation when you can get the best, the infallible, the International Business Machine?
- ImJamal 2y ago
  Apple is choosing to limit USB C to USB 2 speeds to encourage people pay for a more expensive model. The iPhone 16 pro max has USB 3 speeds after all...
  - fingerlocks 2y ago
    No, it just shipped with a slower cable. You get high speed transfer with a thunderbolt cable
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      No, the device can only do USB 2 speeds. There’s no controller for anything faster.
      - fingerlocks 2y ago
        No. The regular pro model (not max) supports usb 3 speeds. I’ve verified myself and its on Apple’s tech site: https://www.apple.com/iphone-16-pro/specs/ https://www.apple.com/iphone-16-pro/specs/
        saagarjha 2y ago
        For iPhones "Max" is basically irrelevant when it comes to SoC specs; the phones are differentiated by whether they are "Pro" or not. The Pro (and Pro Max) support faster speeds, and the regular iPhones do not.
        2y ago
bigyabai 2y ago
[flagged]
- lynx97 2y ago
  We are not buddies. And I am not confused enough to believe NSO Group would be interested in me. This is plain paranoia you are using to try to win an argument. Calm down. Besides, where is the competitive harm if you are so happy with your Android? Look, I am happy with Apple doing some basic things to make the device relatively safe. I know nothing is absolutely safe. And again, I am not high profile, and I am also not paranoid.
- jermaustin1 2y ago
  > ... security firm gets a chip on their shoulder, they can install a persistent backdoor on your phone... But a random developer can't exfiltrate my data, which is the WAY WAY more common scenario that the previous poster was worried about. I agree with them. The Apple App Store prevents a lot more malware than the ability to install ANY software. I like the Mac App Store as well, its a large library of software that is virtually guaranteed to be safe from infecting your computer with a virus. Now, I know how to sideload onto my iPhone, I have homebrew on my MBP, but my brother/sister doesn't, my aunt can't, my uncle assumed his phone was facebook, and they are safer (from viruses) for it. Make installing viruses harder! I spent decades as the de facto IT person in my family, and when iPhone and Android came around, family members started buying MacBooks, my load got lightened a LOT.
  - bigyabai 2y ago
    Well, Apple will have to redesign their security model, then. If the iPhone relies on Apple's white-glove curation to stay secure, then European users are enough of a reason to overhaul their security model. It's great that you know how to sideload, I'm not saying everyone has to know how. I'm arguing that the option should exist regardless of if you pay for a $99/year subscription fee. It should be a part of owning the hardware you paid for and purchasing the right to control it as the user.
    - 2y ago
bboygravity 2y ago
You can't run an ad-blocker and you browse the web with JS turned on in Safari, but your Iphone is secure? yeah ok
- lynx97 2y ago
  I don't need an ad-blocker. I have YouTube Premium. And I really don't need Safari that often, actually. Besides, if we're really talking JS==insecure, 99% of users on desktop and mobile are insecure. I am sort of on your side, because I spend most of my web-time in Lynx in a tmux. But if I were to argue against JS, people would call me a weirdo. That war is over. I fought it until 2010.
  - bigyabai 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - lynx97 2y ago
      Can you please stop verbally spitting at me? I am not an American. I just have a different opinion on some things then you. Ever tried some empathy? Pragmatically speaking, I prefer YouTube Premium because I hate their inability to filter out scammy ads, and I still feel like supporting creators at least a bit. As a customer, its not always my call how much of my money goes to creators. Thats why I refuse to use Apple Music and/or Spotify. I spend my money on BandCamp, which I consider an appropriate compensation for other "sins" I might commit on the net.
      - theturtletalks 2y ago
        How does people having the ability to activate alternative app stores on their phones affect you? Or have a Pebble with similar functionality to an Apple Watch? Just don’t activate the App Store or purchase a Pebble and stay in your walled garden. We’re lucky our computers aren’t walled gardens because if Apple knew it would work this well with iOS, MacOS would be the same.
      - 2y ago
seanp2k2 2y ago
Yup, Apple made Lightning because USB-C wasn't a thing yet and MicroUSB is awful. Lightning is a whole lot better than MicroUSB, and they've been using it since 2012. MiniUSB B was pretty OK, Micro was just way too thin to be stable and would snap off frequently, in addition to being not very secure and hard to orient. Mini was thicker though, so while it worked fine for the HTC Apache and other Windows Mobile phones of the era, it wasn't going to be small enough to work on an iPhone. So many people complaining about a really robust connector that solved real problems and has proven to be pretty reliable for 13 years. I'm no huge Apple fanboi, and I'm happy to have all their stuff use USB-C now, but the hate for Lightning is way inflated IMO.
- Jensson 2y ago
  Why didn't they they work with the other actors to create a common standard 13 years ago? You know why, because they don't care about their users! And they even tried to stop the move to a standard many years later when the lightning connectors were outdated, making it even more clear.
  - rblatz 2y ago
    Like being a member of the USB committee and help make USB-C a good standard with a reversible connector like they did with lightning? Because they did that.
- The_Blade 2y ago
  don't let facts and data get in the way of rabble rabble rabble rabble if the worst thing is someone else's code then someone else's hardware
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  MicroUSB is fine, and Apple should've just used that (like every other phone manufacturer did, with great success). But Apple also has the world's biggest NIH complex, so they decided to invent a proprietary standard rather than go with something interoperable.
  - 2y ago
footlose_3815 2y ago
Proprietary, and for the first half of its run, they were insanely expensive. Thin flimsy, always breaking. Short by default. They got nasty and stained quickly. Over the years, third party cheap ones were risky. May damage port or device. Has a stupid chip in the connector so people can't easily replicate it like a USB cable. It was the purest example of proprietary capture in an age where the "The correct universal port" has been around for decades. The massive irony is not missed on me as they used USB mouses and keyboards to engineer a step backwards. There's things I like about Apple, but I could never bring myself to defend the lightning cable.

by lynx97 2y ago

rahkiin 2y ago

To add: when apple switched to lightning they made a deal with hardware makers that they would support this for 10 years in order not to make all their hardware obsolete again. They did eventually change it after exactly 10 years.

bigyabai 2y ago
Not because their software would inherently break by switching to a different USB connector, or even by using a converter dongle. Apple signed this agreement because Lightning had a hardcoded DRM protocol baked into it to force third-parties to pay licensing fees. Of course they demanded a 10 year support window, it was a licensing ruse to make manufacturers pay a price premium to use the USB featureset. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MFi_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MFi_Program
- rahkiin 2y ago
  Not everything has to be a ‘i win, you lose’. It can be a strategy and architecture where multiple parties get something out of it. In different ways.
  - bigyabai 2y ago
    Sure, FireWire is an example of Apple using innovation to actually innovate. Lightning is an example of Apple using DRM to paywall an ordinary and freely availible USB 2.0 featureset.
    - majormajor 2y ago
      Firewire was a speed/feature innovation. Lighting was a port innovation. Pay to play in either case. Other options available to Apple instead of Lightning: * stick with the iPod connector for longer * switch to micro-USB * never invent the iPod connector in favor of staying with Firewire or going to mini-USB and then switch to micro-USB or something else later anyway None of these are better. I'm EXTREMELY glad they didn't switch to micro-USB. I had no shortage of mini-USB and then micro-USB devices and the micro-USB ports/cables are pretty much the worst I've ever dealt with.
      - josephg 2y ago
        Yeah. Also as I understand it, Apple is part of the USB committee and they were actively involved in the development of USB-C. Their experience developing the lightning connector actively led to usb-c being reversible. If not for the lightning connector, we wouldn't have usb-c as we know it today. Its also a stretch to claim apple doesn't like usb-c given how hard they've been pushing it on their laptops. In 2016, they started shipping laptops that only had usb-c ports - which worked around the chicken-and-egg problem we would have had otherwise. Dongle-gate was a real thing that annoyed a lot of people. But my desk is covered in usb-c peripherals - and that might not have happened if not for apple's "brave" choice.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        Someone 2y ago
        The same thing happened with the original USB. Windows machines, even laptops, shipped with serial and even parallel ports for years after the first iMacs went all in on it. That gave the market for USB devices an enormous boost. Without that, USB might have died.
      - FateOfNations 2y ago
        People have really bad memories of Mini- and Micro-USB, or aren't old enough to have experienced that era. Those things were fragile. At that point in time, it made all the technical and business sense in the world to replace their existing proprietary connector with a new, improved proprietary connector. The MFi program was a thing before Lightning, it's still a thing today, and has nothing to do with the specific connector.
  - seec 2y ago
    The 3rd parties are not getting anything out of it. You literally pay for access to a tech stack that has nothing better than you would be able to do with USB. I mean the other side of connection was USB so it was a necessity anyway. If at least they upgraded the speed over the years, but nope stuck at USB 2. For a hardware project I looked briefly at the MFi terms and they just don't make any sense. This is why any good lightning cable was always more expensive (at least before you get some from China with contraband auth chips) Lightning is a major cash crab from Apple and revealed their actual playbook. Microsoft passed as a very bad players in the 90's but Apple is even worse. The only people not accepting that are deranged fans.
    - golergka 2y ago
      > You literally pay for access to a tech stack that has nothing better than you would be able to do with USB. Tech stack has the customers. You pay for access to customers.
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
        This is a relative comparison versus USB. If it was USB, it would have the same customers behind it (plus more).
      - seec 2y ago
        Best interpretation of that is rent-seeking. Not strictly illegal, but prone to regulation at the very least. Another way to put it is racketeering. I guess that Apple has been toying with the line for so long that people don't even understand where their interests lies...
    - IncreasePosts 2y ago
      You could turn lightning connectors upside down and plug them in before you could do that with USB
    - vr46 2y ago
      USB-C is a car crash of an implementation landscape, just because the interface is a single design, doesn't mean that you can rely on it. It is better than it was, but we've had several instances of issues with the USB-C, including my own personal favourite of my Nintendo Switch charging socket burning out because I used a non-Nintendo charger - an Apple one, completely compliant and as good as they get - to charge the Switch. A £50 repair. Some USB-C cables aren't data compliant. They just send power. There's all kinds of foibles with USB-C that have taken years to work on and this just isn't clear to tech folks, let alone non-tech consumers. The Lightning port has never done this to me, the device just charges and that's it. It transfers files and that's it.

mistercheph 2y ago

You never needed speeds in excess of usb 2.0? LOL, this is such old hat, guys in IBM t-shirts telling me how nobody ever needed more than 64K, and why go third party with your treasured computation when you can get the best, the infallible, the International Business Machine?

ImJamal 2y ago
Apple is choosing to limit USB C to USB 2 speeds to encourage people pay for a more expensive model. The iPhone 16 pro max has USB 3 speeds after all...
- fingerlocks 2y ago
  No, it just shipped with a slower cable. You get high speed transfer with a thunderbolt cable
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    No, the device can only do USB 2 speeds. There’s no controller for anything faster.
    - fingerlocks 2y ago
      No. The regular pro model (not max) supports usb 3 speeds. I’ve verified myself and its on Apple’s tech site: https://www.apple.com/iphone-16-pro/specs/ https://www.apple.com/iphone-16-pro/specs/
      - saagarjha 2y ago
        For iPhones "Max" is basically irrelevant when it comes to SoC specs; the phones are differentiated by whether they are "Pro" or not. The Pro (and Pro Max) support faster speeds, and the regular iPhones do not.
        2y ago

bigyabai 2y ago

[flagged]

lynx97 2y ago
We are not buddies. And I am not confused enough to believe NSO Group would be interested in me. This is plain paranoia you are using to try to win an argument. Calm down. Besides, where is the competitive harm if you are so happy with your Android? Look, I am happy with Apple doing some basic things to make the device relatively safe. I know nothing is absolutely safe. And again, I am not high profile, and I am also not paranoid.
jermaustin1 2y ago
> ... security firm gets a chip on their shoulder, they can install a persistent backdoor on your phone... But a random developer can't exfiltrate my data, which is the WAY WAY more common scenario that the previous poster was worried about. I agree with them. The Apple App Store prevents a lot more malware than the ability to install ANY software. I like the Mac App Store as well, its a large library of software that is virtually guaranteed to be safe from infecting your computer with a virus. Now, I know how to sideload onto my iPhone, I have homebrew on my MBP, but my brother/sister doesn't, my aunt can't, my uncle assumed his phone was facebook, and they are safer (from viruses) for it. Make installing viruses harder! I spent decades as the de facto IT person in my family, and when iPhone and Android came around, family members started buying MacBooks, my load got lightened a LOT.
- bigyabai 2y ago
  Well, Apple will have to redesign their security model, then. If the iPhone relies on Apple's white-glove curation to stay secure, then European users are enough of a reason to overhaul their security model. It's great that you know how to sideload, I'm not saying everyone has to know how. I'm arguing that the option should exist regardless of if you pay for a $99/year subscription fee. It should be a part of owning the hardware you paid for and purchasing the right to control it as the user.
  - 2y ago

bboygravity 2y ago

You can't run an ad-blocker and you browse the web with JS turned on in Safari, but your Iphone is secure? yeah ok

lynx97 2y ago
I don't need an ad-blocker. I have YouTube Premium. And I really don't need Safari that often, actually. Besides, if we're really talking JS==insecure, 99% of users on desktop and mobile are insecure. I am sort of on your side, because I spend most of my web-time in Lynx in a tmux. But if I were to argue against JS, people would call me a weirdo. That war is over. I fought it until 2010.
- bigyabai 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - lynx97 2y ago
    Can you please stop verbally spitting at me? I am not an American. I just have a different opinion on some things then you. Ever tried some empathy? Pragmatically speaking, I prefer YouTube Premium because I hate their inability to filter out scammy ads, and I still feel like supporting creators at least a bit. As a customer, its not always my call how much of my money goes to creators. Thats why I refuse to use Apple Music and/or Spotify. I spend my money on BandCamp, which I consider an appropriate compensation for other "sins" I might commit on the net.
    - theturtletalks 2y ago
      How does people having the ability to activate alternative app stores on their phones affect you? Or have a Pebble with similar functionality to an Apple Watch? Just don’t activate the App Store or purchase a Pebble and stay in your walled garden. We’re lucky our computers aren’t walled gardens because if Apple knew it would work this well with iOS, MacOS would be the same.
    - 2y ago

seanp2k2 2y ago

Yup, Apple made Lightning because USB-C wasn't a thing yet and MicroUSB is awful. Lightning is a whole lot better than MicroUSB, and they've been using it since 2012. MiniUSB B was pretty OK, Micro was just way too thin to be stable and would snap off frequently, in addition to being not very secure and hard to orient. Mini was thicker though, so while it worked fine for the HTC Apache and other Windows Mobile phones of the era, it wasn't going to be small enough to work on an iPhone. So many people complaining about a really robust connector that solved real problems and has proven to be pretty reliable for 13 years. I'm no huge Apple fanboi, and I'm happy to have all their stuff use USB-C now, but the hate for Lightning is way inflated IMO.

Jensson 2y ago
Why didn't they they work with the other actors to create a common standard 13 years ago? You know why, because they don't care about their users! And they even tried to stop the move to a standard many years later when the lightning connectors were outdated, making it even more clear.
- rblatz 2y ago
  Like being a member of the USB committee and help make USB-C a good standard with a reversible connector like they did with lightning? Because they did that.
The_Blade 2y ago
don't let facts and data get in the way of rabble rabble rabble rabble if the worst thing is someone else's code then someone else's hardware
bigstrat2003 2y ago
MicroUSB is fine, and Apple should've just used that (like every other phone manufacturer did, with great success). But Apple also has the world's biggest NIH complex, so they decided to invent a proprietary standard rather than go with something interoperable.
- 2y ago

footlose_3815 2y ago

Proprietary, and for the first half of its run, they were insanely expensive. Thin flimsy, always breaking. Short by default. They got nasty and stained quickly. Over the years, third party cheap ones were risky. May damage port or device. Has a stupid chip in the connector so people can't easily replicate it like a USB cable. It was the purest example of proprietary capture in an age where the "The correct universal port" has been around for decades. The massive irony is not missed on me as they used USB mouses and keyboards to engineer a step backwards. There's things I like about Apple, but I could never bring myself to defend the lightning cable.