[ojosilva]

The article mentions that iPhone Pro and Pro Max will have a Thunderbolt port. A Thunderbolt 4 port means double the speed of USB-C, 40Gbps instead of 20Gbps. There's plenty of powerful and legacy hardware that runs on Thunderbolt, like dual 4k monitors, so basically it's about hooking up an assortment of peripherals to an iPhone via docking stations, hubs or bare Thunderbolt. The only limitation is what you can do with iOS as a desktop OS today, but if/whenever macOS and iOS merge (with the help of Apple silicon I infer), we could see a new shift in portable workstation paradigms from laptop to phone. Even though some of it is possible today it's not there yet. Just like with cameras, books, tv sets, the iPhone won't replace "computers" per-se but has the potential to carve a nice niche in portable workstations.

[input_sh]

I don't disagree with you that they have the necessary bits and pieces if they wanted to go down that road, but based on their past behavior I just don't see that happening.

They've removed Type A while Type C peripherals were basically non-existent, I still can't have reverse scroll direction on my mouse and my touchpad (without using a third-party app), I can't create workspaces with a four finger swipe on an external monitor (but I can on the internal monitor)... My point being that they do the barest of the minimums on a Macbook, so I find the idea of them going all-in on supporting peripherals on an iPhone rather silly.

[kayodelycaon]

Some iPads already have thunderbolt ports. I think any advancement in hardware integration would happen there before it happens in iPhones.