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Having a standard plug is great, I hope we stick with it for decades and gradually the situation will improve as everyone gets used to the standard. USB-C gets

Having a standard plug is great, I hope we stick with it for decades and gradually the situation will improve as everyone gets used to the standard. USB-C gets rid of all the stupid previous decisions on the physical connectors (orientation required but not obvious, fragile clips, too large, too small), the physical side of things is now set and hopefully all devices, chargers and outlets will now converge on usb-c. Yes getting the right cable can make a difference but the situation is so much better than before, partly because phone manufacturers were forced by the EU to adopt one connector early one. I’m so glad Apple’s proprietary connector is gone.

nixpulvis 6mo ago
Lightning remains a better physical connection. So many USB-C connections I have are flimsy as hell.
- fao_ 6mo ago
  Hmm. I don't see how. I'm poor so the quality of cables I can afford or buy is much worse than the average tech worker — I'm limited to either the cable that comes with e.g. my phone, or some 1.5m cables I bought from Amazon four years ago, and I've never had a flimsy or dodgy USB-C connection, even though those cables were put through hard work while I was homeless (and honestly I'm really, really surprised — they should be breaking by now). Now, HDMI, on the other hand... yeesh
- torben-friis 6mo ago
  Can't say why, but in my personal experience USBC is far less likely to stop working due to lint in the socket, which is fixable but annoying.
- Aboutplants 6mo ago
  I really have never had any issues with USB-C, lightning on the other hand was the complete opposite. Fascinating we have had the exact opposite experiences
  - venusenvy47 6mo ago
    I'm mostly concerned about USB-C repeating what I consider the mistake they had with micro-USB: having a thin post/tab inside the socket of the phone. It puts the most fragile part of the interface on the most expensive side (the phone). It would make so much more sense to put that breakable inner tab on the cable side, so you only need to replace the cable. Lightning doesn't have that inner tab on either side, so I find it much more durable.
    - yunyu 6mo ago
      On the flip side, lightning puts the part that wears out most quickly (the retention springs) inside the device, while USB-C does the opposite. The same argument can be made for both sides.
      - avadodin 6mo ago
        I'm not an Apple fanboy but I do use Apple phones which still bear the lighting connector and not even once has the male outlived the female —no brand, no shape, not with any head–start. Lightning females are basically eternal for all intents and purposes even if they do feel a bit looser at the end of the terminal's lifetime by eg letting water into the connector part itself. I don't know that it is any worse with USB-C as all usb-C devices I own are far more sheltered from everything. USB-C is still welcome though because all other types are barely pluggable into a compatible device.
  - jval43 6mo ago
    I love the Lightning connector, and think it feels better than USB-C. My Intel MPB has terrible USB-C ports where the cables just fall out all the time. But to be fair I've also had many issues with Lightning. A few shorted out and became unusable and burnt on one side. And those were 100% original bought in the Apple store, as were the 5W chargers and iPhone this happened with. Knockoffs were generally terrible and might stop working. A "genuine" cable bought from big retailer turned out to be a knockoff once after a software update, resulting in annoying popups from Apple. And some knockoffs were so bad they didn't stay in. Even certified Mfi ones from Belkin somehow felt different, like the tolerances were slightly off. Those worked though. Overall, I think it's had a good run and was underrated as a connector physically, but on the whole I like USB-C and it's more open ecosystem more.
- ssl-3 6mo ago
  Lightning works great. It's a wonderful connector. Of all the Lightning-equipped devices I've ever owned (1), I've only ever had one single issue with it that required replacing a cable. 50% failure is an admirable and lofty bar that all electrical connectors should strive to meet. Lightning is so awesome and universal that Apple has never even bothered fitting it to a pedestrian device like a computer, and has reserved it for only their most very-exclusive, high-tech devices (like the portable telephones and mice that were once available at astutely prestigious retail locations such as Wal-Mart). Seriously, this Lightning connector is like the best Kool Aid ever. It's a shame that they stopped making it; it could have been everywhere, if only it had more time in a truly free market. 12 glorious years was clearly not enough time. It deserved so much more.
  - cge 6mo ago
    For that matter, every device with a Lightning connector except for a limited set of iPad Pro models in a limited set of situations, was USB 2.0, and even those unusual situations were 5 Gb/s USB 3.2 Gen 1. Power seems to have topped out around 18 W. The specs are not comparable with modern USB C, and it isn't clear that the connector itself would have been adaptable to comparable specs without significant changes.
- xethos 6mo ago
  Except for how either Apple or the pinout forced it to be (excluding very rare situations) stuck at 480MB/s. USB-C can hit 20GB/s. Lightning also tops out at lower wattages. And by the time you revise the pinout, you effectively have a different connector. Lightning was nice-ish to plug in, but the wear-component was on the expensive device, not the cheap cable, and pairing it with the shit data transfer rate makes it a terrible connector
- grey-area 6mo ago
  I disagree, lightning is more fragile as it has a single point of contact which can bend, they also become unusable if the exposed contacts get damaged or corroded. Apart from that though it was proprietary, which is awful for lots of reasons; that’s the main reason I’m happy to see it gone.
delfinom 6mo ago
Standard plug is great but government need to mandate labeling. I'm stuck putting wire labels on every USB c cable I own. I can't tell the difference between a 3A and 5A cable otherwise, same for usb2.0 only cables vs 3.1 vs 3.2 4x,whatever the fuck.
- sq_ 6mo ago
  I wouldn't be against better labeling, but I've found that I don't have to worry about it too much, day to day. USB-C has allowed me to grab one decent two-port charging brick, two solid 6ft cables, and charge just about everything I own just by keeping those in my backpack. If I think I'll need to move any data fast, etc., I just throw my one good USB4 cable in my bag, too. I will admit, though, that I've had some crappy situations at work where it turned out my flaky monitor setup was due to the stupid work-provided docks coming with cables that only supported 10Gbps. Better labeling would've solved those ones.
  - coldtea 6mo ago
    Charging is the place it matters less.
  - kami23 6mo ago
    Hah same exact setup one brick two ports and it charges everything even my laptop! I've been eyeing some of the ones with built in batteries, but I get a lot of mileage of one brick in the bag. The steam deck forced me to finally pay attention to the usb-c ecosystem and I can only imagine how some non tech people might get with mysteriously bad or slow charging. I find it crazy that Apple went back to magsafe in the m4 (maybe earlier but that's the machine I have at work). But at least you can still charge over usb-c.
    - sq_ 6mo ago
      I can't get myself to do the battery-built-in-to-charger thing. I've always treated portable power banks as semi-disposable since they do eventually get worse and fail, and it feels icky to me to tie ~immortal charging gear to something that will die. I did have the same feeling about flashlights for camping/hiking with lithium batteries, though, until someone walked me through just how much better they are than lugging around AAs.
rootusrootus 6mo ago
> I’m so glad Apple’s proprietary connector is gone. Apple made Lightning when the rest of the world was still mucking about with Micro-USB, which I would argue is just about the worst connector ever in common use. The only type of cable where I routinely kept a half dozen on hand because they failed so damn often. I do like USB-C, but despite being superior (physically) on paper, it's not as robust as Lightning, definitely more finicky. But it has more capability, which is important.
- HexDecOctBin 6mo ago
  How do people find Lightning cables robust? Every single one I got from Apple failed around the one year mark. So much so that I finally started buying cheap knockoffs that only lasted 6 months but cost a tenth of official ones. To compare, I haven't seen a single Micro-USB or USB-C cable fail on me whether expensive or cheap. Am I simply uniquely unlucky in the matters of Lightning cables?
  - accrual 6mo ago
    My Apple Lightning cables weren't great either. They typically either started coming apart at the stress relief sleeve or the contacts would somehow corrode (other cables in the same container were fine). I settled on buying packs of 3rd party braided cables for myself and parents so we could switch them out more easily. With MagSafe, I rarely use a cable at all anymore!
  - zimpenfish 6mo ago
    > How do people find Lightning cables robust? Had every Apple device that used Lightning and consequently have had a veritable smorgasbord of cables from official to Poundland to weird keyring ones; never had a single one fail. Then again, I've not had a MicroUSB or USB-C cable fail on me either (without obvious physical damage like the one I half-melted by injudicious aiming of a blowtorch.)
  - vasac 6mo ago
    A few years ago, I bought a bunch of magnetic cables (with both Lightning and USB-C connectors - the cables are the same; only the connectors differ). I haven’t had any issues so far.
graemep 6mo ago
USB-C is much better than micro or mini, but still lacks the robustness of A. I would far rather have something a few mm bigger but tough.
- grey-area 6mo ago
  Anything bigger is too big for smaller devices like phones.
dTal 6mo ago
USB-C is very far from a perfect connector. The female side still has a fragile plastic tongue that can break. They also reliably wear out with use, both the cables and the socket. We've all seen them fail. Actually all the USB connectors do eventually, because they all rely on a thin piece of sheet metal not bending when lateral force is applied. And, reversibility notwithstanding, they are still hard to fumble into place compared to (say) RJ45, or 3.5mm TRRS. I have no love for Apple and their proprietary nonsense, but even lightning is a strictly better connector than USB-C - easier to insert, less fragile, better wearing. Still too many wires though. I wish we'd used something like TRRRS, and stuck to 4 wires. Very robust, any orientation, easy to fumble in blind.
- crote 6mo ago
  [dead]
- tliltocatl 6mo ago
  TRRS might work for power, but it sucks for signal integrity - ergo no high-speed for you. And 4 wires is nowhere enough. You need two for each differential pair. No, half-duplex is absolutely not okay, it's the worst design decision in pre-SS USB.
- cassepipe 6mo ago
  Tangeant but then it means that framework's expansion card design for their laptop is a great idea: When the expansion cards plug into the mainboard they are already on a rail that prevents lateral stress, plus generally don't un/plug them often and you let the cheap replaceable expansion card takes on the wear.
- justin66 6mo ago
  > USB-C is very far from a perfect connector. The female side still has a fragile plastic tongue that can break. They also reliably wear out with use, both the cables and the socket. We've all seen them fail. Strange comment. My USB C cables have only ever failed around the strain relief after lengthy use, as with any cable that gets handled a lot. I've got a few where I can feel the resistance gradually lessening when plugging and unplugging, but nothing has failed. As someone who wants to keep devices for a while the greatest thing about the USB C power standard sounds a little like faint praise, but: pretty much all my laptops relying on USB C for power will allow me to plug power into a different USB C port if the one I habitually use wears out. Lightning was more failure prone, not just wearing out the goofy plugs but with failures on the device side. Micro-USB was a nightmare.

nixpulvis 6mo ago

Lightning remains a better physical connection. So many USB-C connections I have are flimsy as hell.

fao_ 6mo ago
Hmm. I don't see how. I'm poor so the quality of cables I can afford or buy is much worse than the average tech worker — I'm limited to either the cable that comes with e.g. my phone, or some 1.5m cables I bought from Amazon four years ago, and I've never had a flimsy or dodgy USB-C connection, even though those cables were put through hard work while I was homeless (and honestly I'm really, really surprised — they should be breaking by now). Now, HDMI, on the other hand... yeesh
torben-friis 6mo ago
Can't say why, but in my personal experience USBC is far less likely to stop working due to lint in the socket, which is fixable but annoying.
Aboutplants 6mo ago
I really have never had any issues with USB-C, lightning on the other hand was the complete opposite. Fascinating we have had the exact opposite experiences
- venusenvy47 6mo ago
  I'm mostly concerned about USB-C repeating what I consider the mistake they had with micro-USB: having a thin post/tab inside the socket of the phone. It puts the most fragile part of the interface on the most expensive side (the phone). It would make so much more sense to put that breakable inner tab on the cable side, so you only need to replace the cable. Lightning doesn't have that inner tab on either side, so I find it much more durable.
  - yunyu 6mo ago
    On the flip side, lightning puts the part that wears out most quickly (the retention springs) inside the device, while USB-C does the opposite. The same argument can be made for both sides.
    - avadodin 6mo ago
      I'm not an Apple fanboy but I do use Apple phones which still bear the lighting connector and not even once has the male outlived the female —no brand, no shape, not with any head–start. Lightning females are basically eternal for all intents and purposes even if they do feel a bit looser at the end of the terminal's lifetime by eg letting water into the connector part itself. I don't know that it is any worse with USB-C as all usb-C devices I own are far more sheltered from everything. USB-C is still welcome though because all other types are barely pluggable into a compatible device.
- jval43 6mo ago
  I love the Lightning connector, and think it feels better than USB-C. My Intel MPB has terrible USB-C ports where the cables just fall out all the time. But to be fair I've also had many issues with Lightning. A few shorted out and became unusable and burnt on one side. And those were 100% original bought in the Apple store, as were the 5W chargers and iPhone this happened with. Knockoffs were generally terrible and might stop working. A "genuine" cable bought from big retailer turned out to be a knockoff once after a software update, resulting in annoying popups from Apple. And some knockoffs were so bad they didn't stay in. Even certified Mfi ones from Belkin somehow felt different, like the tolerances were slightly off. Those worked though. Overall, I think it's had a good run and was underrated as a connector physically, but on the whole I like USB-C and it's more open ecosystem more.
ssl-3 6mo ago
Lightning works great. It's a wonderful connector. Of all the Lightning-equipped devices I've ever owned (1), I've only ever had one single issue with it that required replacing a cable. 50% failure is an admirable and lofty bar that all electrical connectors should strive to meet. Lightning is so awesome and universal that Apple has never even bothered fitting it to a pedestrian device like a computer, and has reserved it for only their most very-exclusive, high-tech devices (like the portable telephones and mice that were once available at astutely prestigious retail locations such as Wal-Mart). Seriously, this Lightning connector is like the best Kool Aid ever. It's a shame that they stopped making it; it could have been everywhere, if only it had more time in a truly free market. 12 glorious years was clearly not enough time. It deserved so much more.
- cge 6mo ago
  For that matter, every device with a Lightning connector except for a limited set of iPad Pro models in a limited set of situations, was USB 2.0, and even those unusual situations were 5 Gb/s USB 3.2 Gen 1. Power seems to have topped out around 18 W. The specs are not comparable with modern USB C, and it isn't clear that the connector itself would have been adaptable to comparable specs without significant changes.
xethos 6mo ago
Except for how either Apple or the pinout forced it to be (excluding very rare situations) stuck at 480MB/s. USB-C can hit 20GB/s. Lightning also tops out at lower wattages. And by the time you revise the pinout, you effectively have a different connector. Lightning was nice-ish to plug in, but the wear-component was on the expensive device, not the cheap cable, and pairing it with the shit data transfer rate makes it a terrible connector
grey-area 6mo ago
I disagree, lightning is more fragile as it has a single point of contact which can bend, they also become unusable if the exposed contacts get damaged or corroded. Apart from that though it was proprietary, which is awful for lots of reasons; that’s the main reason I’m happy to see it gone.

delfinom 6mo ago

Standard plug is great but government need to mandate labeling. I'm stuck putting wire labels on every USB c cable I own. I can't tell the difference between a 3A and 5A cable otherwise, same for usb2.0 only cables vs 3.1 vs 3.2 4x,whatever the fuck.

sq_ 6mo ago
I wouldn't be against better labeling, but I've found that I don't have to worry about it too much, day to day. USB-C has allowed me to grab one decent two-port charging brick, two solid 6ft cables, and charge just about everything I own just by keeping those in my backpack. If I think I'll need to move any data fast, etc., I just throw my one good USB4 cable in my bag, too. I will admit, though, that I've had some crappy situations at work where it turned out my flaky monitor setup was due to the stupid work-provided docks coming with cables that only supported 10Gbps. Better labeling would've solved those ones.
- coldtea 6mo ago
  Charging is the place it matters less.
- kami23 6mo ago
  Hah same exact setup one brick two ports and it charges everything even my laptop! I've been eyeing some of the ones with built in batteries, but I get a lot of mileage of one brick in the bag. The steam deck forced me to finally pay attention to the usb-c ecosystem and I can only imagine how some non tech people might get with mysteriously bad or slow charging. I find it crazy that Apple went back to magsafe in the m4 (maybe earlier but that's the machine I have at work). But at least you can still charge over usb-c.
  - sq_ 6mo ago
    I can't get myself to do the battery-built-in-to-charger thing. I've always treated portable power banks as semi-disposable since they do eventually get worse and fail, and it feels icky to me to tie ~immortal charging gear to something that will die. I did have the same feeling about flashlights for camping/hiking with lithium batteries, though, until someone walked me through just how much better they are than lugging around AAs.

rootusrootus 6mo ago

> I’m so glad Apple’s proprietary connector is gone. Apple made Lightning when the rest of the world was still mucking about with Micro-USB, which I would argue is just about the worst connector ever in common use. The only type of cable where I routinely kept a half dozen on hand because they failed so damn often. I do like USB-C, but despite being superior (physically) on paper, it's not as robust as Lightning, definitely more finicky. But it has more capability, which is important.

HexDecOctBin 6mo ago
How do people find Lightning cables robust? Every single one I got from Apple failed around the one year mark. So much so that I finally started buying cheap knockoffs that only lasted 6 months but cost a tenth of official ones. To compare, I haven't seen a single Micro-USB or USB-C cable fail on me whether expensive or cheap. Am I simply uniquely unlucky in the matters of Lightning cables?
- accrual 6mo ago
  My Apple Lightning cables weren't great either. They typically either started coming apart at the stress relief sleeve or the contacts would somehow corrode (other cables in the same container were fine). I settled on buying packs of 3rd party braided cables for myself and parents so we could switch them out more easily. With MagSafe, I rarely use a cable at all anymore!
- zimpenfish 6mo ago
  > How do people find Lightning cables robust? Had every Apple device that used Lightning and consequently have had a veritable smorgasbord of cables from official to Poundland to weird keyring ones; never had a single one fail. Then again, I've not had a MicroUSB or USB-C cable fail on me either (without obvious physical damage like the one I half-melted by injudicious aiming of a blowtorch.)
- vasac 6mo ago
  A few years ago, I bought a bunch of magnetic cables (with both Lightning and USB-C connectors - the cables are the same; only the connectors differ). I haven’t had any issues so far.

graemep 6mo ago

USB-C is much better than micro or mini, but still lacks the robustness of A. I would far rather have something a few mm bigger but tough.

grey-area 6mo ago
Anything bigger is too big for smaller devices like phones.

dTal 6mo ago

USB-C is very far from a perfect connector. The female side still has a fragile plastic tongue that can break. They also reliably wear out with use, both the cables and the socket. We've all seen them fail. Actually all the USB connectors do eventually, because they all rely on a thin piece of sheet metal not bending when lateral force is applied. And, reversibility notwithstanding, they are still hard to fumble into place compared to (say) RJ45, or 3.5mm TRRS. I have no love for Apple and their proprietary nonsense, but even lightning is a strictly better connector than USB-C - easier to insert, less fragile, better wearing. Still too many wires though. I wish we'd used something like TRRRS, and stuck to 4 wires. Very robust, any orientation, easy to fumble in blind.

crote 6mo ago
[dead]
tliltocatl 6mo ago
TRRS might work for power, but it sucks for signal integrity - ergo no high-speed for you. And 4 wires is nowhere enough. You need two for each differential pair. No, half-duplex is absolutely not okay, it's the worst design decision in pre-SS USB.
cassepipe 6mo ago
Tangeant but then it means that framework's expansion card design for their laptop is a great idea: When the expansion cards plug into the mainboard they are already on a rail that prevents lateral stress, plus generally don't un/plug them often and you let the cheap replaceable expansion card takes on the wear.
justin66 6mo ago
> USB-C is very far from a perfect connector. The female side still has a fragile plastic tongue that can break. They also reliably wear out with use, both the cables and the socket. We've all seen them fail. Strange comment. My USB C cables have only ever failed around the strain relief after lengthy use, as with any cable that gets handled a lot. I've got a few where I can feel the resistance gradually lessening when plugging and unplugging, but nothing has failed. As someone who wants to keep devices for a while the greatest thing about the USB C power standard sounds a little like faint praise, but: pretty much all my laptops relying on USB C for power will allow me to plug power into a different USB C port if the one I habitually use wears out. Lightning was more failure prone, not just wearing out the goofy plugs but with failures on the device side. Micro-USB was a nightmare.