[lxgr]

So you're saying that's what they wanted to do all along, it just took them almost ten years, and it just happened to neatly coincide with the EU regulation as well?

Sure, and they're now allowing game streaming apps and retro emulators on iOS because that's what they always knew was best for the world anyway. What a coincidence (with the DMA, in that case)!

> Apple didn’t invent any of them and open them. They were all existing standards.

Counterpoint: Magsafe. They had USB-C and went back to something proprietary.

Another counterpoint: Thunderbolt wasn't an open standard until very recently, and I can only imagine that Intel gave Apple some heavy discounts on the controller chips used (or even their main CPUs) to push the standard.

Apple doesn't always hate standards and interoperability, but they will absolutely try to push their proprietary protocols and interfaces whenever it's in their business interest.

[MBCook]

USB-C didn’t exist when they went to Lightning, it wasn’t an option.

The fact all their other products were moving seems to indicate they’d move to USB-C on the iPhone as well. Rumors had them working on it for years.

Now maybe it would have come out this year and not last.

MagSafe: they added something back. You can still charge with USB-C. Works fine, I do it.

Thunderbolt: that wasn’t Apple. Intel invented it and Apple put it to use. I have no idea if it’s open or closed, that’s my fault. What I meant was it wasn’t an Apple invention. Besides, what else had that kind of bandwidth at the time in a cable? It’s not like there was some common better thing they shunned.

[simondotau]

Counter-counterpoint: When Apple introduced the Lightning connector in 2012, they described it as their connector "for the next decade".[0] Their switch from Lightning to USB-C on the iPhone came just over ten years after that announcement. Perhaps it was EU regulation, or perhaps it was Apple wanting to make good on a ten-year-old promise of connector continuity.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82dwZYw2M00&t=1571s

[scarface_74]

> Counterpoint: Magsafe. They had USB-C and went back to something proprietary.

They added MagSafe and still kept USB C charging.

> So you're saying that's what they wanted to do all along, it just took them almost ten years, and it just happened to neatly coincide with the EU regulation as well?

They had already starting to move iPads to USB C

[lxgr]

> They had already starting to move iPads to USB C

Which they're explicitly selling as laptop alternatives, at least the Pro line.

People were already connecting all kinds of things (audio interfaces, mice, ethernet adapters etc.) to iPads using the hilariously named lignting-to-USB-host "camera adapter", and all of that is just better over USB-C.

On the iPhone, the vast majority of people only use the port for charging and maybe listening to music; the few additional iPhone sold to people that actually use them with external storage for ProRes cinematography probably pales in comparison to the lost revenue from MFI license fees.

[scarface_74]

When the camera adapter was first released, usb-c didn’t exist.

And how much do you think Apple really made on MFI licenses as a percentage of revenue? It was a rounding error and many of the knocks off people bought from Amazon weren’t even licensed.

[sunnybeetroot]

They have both MagSafe and USB C now, and MagSafe is much better as a charging adapter anyway. Maybe a USB C MagSafe could be invented?