Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by candiodari 1147 days ago
Oh you're giving lightning connectors too little credit. They also come with a LOT of logic to prevent people from charging their Apple devices with unapproved chargers. All added on top of USB 2 (and definitely against the standard, one might add)

Like a lot of Apple and huge company stuff in general, it's a flimsy reason to change something and introduce many limitations the huge company thinks will make them more money. It sure as hell is not about reversible connectors.

1 comments

What? I've plugged lightning cables into pretty much any imaginable sort of USB-A socket over than last decade and have never encountered one that wouldn't supply a charge specifically to a lightning cable. Please, be specific with what limitations you're referring to because this is counter to all evidence I've ever been witness to.
They supply a charge fine, but no standards-based fast charging.
They support Power Delivery 2 and higher just fine. I believe the new phones will use 3.0 PPS as well to more aggressively tune for charging speed vs heat.

USB Power Delivery 1 was a disaster, launched years after Apple had moved beyond 7.5W charging. Android phones typically also ignored it, using Qualcomm's proprietary charging tech.

If you want fast charging, use the bundled USB-C cable to charge your iPhone rather than the USB-A ones from years ago.

To flip it around, what advantage do you think one gets with official Apple iPhone chargers? Do you know of any evidence that Apple promotes their chargers working better than others? And if none exists, why would they sabotage customers who were never educated that hypothetically only Apple chargers charge fast?

Actually having just tested, I have a bunch of "aftermarket" lightning cables, and a few of them some of my iPads (I think the more recent ones) and most of my iPhones refuse to charge. Like at all.

So not fast charging, charging at all. They work on some of the iPads, so they do work.

Why do the phones refuse to charge then? Not fast charging, which I can sort of understand, charging at all.

What you mean to say is: USB Power Delivery as a standard didn't even appear until after Lightning was launched. Any fast charging didn't appear until USB-C specs that only became finalized in 2014.

And Lightning has been charging my iPhones pretty fast

There have been many fast charging standards that are available on way cheaper chargers that apple just ignored. It's not that big a deal, but it did force apple consumers to buy expensive "official" chargers to actually charger quickly.
> There have been many fast charging standards

"Many different standards" means "no standard".

> that apple just ignored.

Apple ignored them because none of them were standards until very, very late

Oh, so you're moving the goal posts to avoid discussing your lie. Got it.

But please, reference a USB2 or USB3 standard over a type A connection that enables fast charging too. This will be fun.