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by talldayo 656 days ago
To be honest, Lightning was always dead in the cradle because of it's licensing fee. Apple tried to take the high road for so long, but vendors actively avoided Lightning unless they could buy bootleg, unlicensed connectors. Apple basically took a serial standard hostage, and then insisted that it was okay because they did it before USB-C was finalized. There's no way Apple didn't know from the offset that they were diverging from the standard and creating e-waste, they helped design USB-C. The creation of Lightning was an exploitation of 30-pin's depreciation.
2 comments
riscy 656 days ago
The plethora of crappy, bootleg cables with USB-C connectors that are single purpose (power only, low-speed data only, etc) has created plenty of e-waste, in addition to confusion. I don’t see how this is an improvement over the licensing model, where you know every cable works the same.
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Dylan16807 656 days ago
But that's what all lightning cables are. Low power limit, low speed data only.
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thedrbrian 656 days ago
I can put 12w through a lighting cable. That’s fine for most if not all of their iPhones and iPads. Hell it’d be ok for my MacBook
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sgerenser 656 days ago
You can put 12W through all USB-C cables as well (AFAIK). The crappy ones might be limited to something between 12-50W, while decent ones allow for 100W or more.
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dzikimarian 656 days ago
> Hell it’d be ok for my MacBook

If you keep it turned off for entire day to charge then sure.

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talldayo 656 days ago
The licensed model failed. I own multiple gas-station Lighting cables with no data, only (5w) power. Ultimately everyone converges on the "fuck it, what's the cheapest thing on Amazon" mindset and licensing doesn't help.
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MBCook 656 days ago
The number of “USB-C” things I have that aren’t is infuriating. Won’t use a real charger or PD, only works with an A to C cable, only works when plugged in “right side up”, etc.

At least with Lightning and Micro-B you knew the score.

The good USB-C stuff is great. The rest is worse than B ever was.

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dzikimarian 656 days ago
What are they exactly? I haven't see such issue in years.
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MBCook 656 days ago
They’re not “real” computer devices but other things with charge ports. One is an air duster, for example.

I also have some credit card payment hardware that is clearly USB-B and they just swapped the port.

The computer world seems fine. It’s everyone else.

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archagon 656 days ago
According to DannyBee, it was Google, not Apple, that helped design the USB-C connector: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30033799
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