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by FireBeyond 3520 days ago
"If those treadmills were micro USB, they'd be trending rapidly toward obsolescence anyway."

Where "trending towards obsolescence" means "has realistically at least three years of non-negligible use for Micro USB", versus "was replaced by its manufacturer just over four years ago" (September 2012).

I'm yet to see gym equipment (a niche example) with Lightning, it's only 30 pin connectors.
1 comments
stouset 3520 days ago
Oh, FFS. 30-pin was around for what, 15-odd years? You're blaming them for literally nothing more than "the plug changing" because it just happened to be within the past few years.

If they'd gone with micro-USB, you would have the exact same complaint two or three years from now. That micro-USB devices still have 2 or 3 more years left of ubiquity is just a function of this exact moment in time, and you could have said that three years ago for 30-pin too.

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SysArchitect 3520 days ago
30 pin was introduced in 2003, it was finally replaced with Lightning in 2014 and thereby deprecated from use.

That's a 11 year run.

I bet those treadmills are not even that old yet.

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dpark 3520 days ago
Well, Micro-USB was announced in 2007. So by the time USB-C really takes over, it will have had maybe a 10-year run. So that's no better for compatibility life.
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SysArchitect 3520 days ago
I completely agree with you. Micro-USB has already shown that it is not the best standard moving forward, it is already at it's end as manufacturers are replacing the port on devices with a USB-C port instead.

So let's call it. Micro-USB, 2007 -> 2016 (9 years). It had less of a run than the 30 pin dock connector!

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I still have USB-B, USB-Mini and USB-Micro, and USB3-Micro-B devices... some were built even after USB-Micro was available, yet they still use USB Mini (which in most cases is a lot more sturdy than Micro). I have a ton of different cables for different devices because there was no real standardization until USB-C very very recently.

Why was the same vocal crowd not out when manufacturers switched from Mini to Micro and everyone had to buy all new cables?

With USB3 there is also a USB3-TypeB connector, which is not even backwards compatible with USB-TypeB...

http://www.datapro.net/techinfo/usb_3_explained.html

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