They design the chip that powers the phone. Apple designs their chips to include exactly the IO they need, and nothing more. The A18 chip does not have the IO to support USB-3 speeds on the port. No A18 device supports USB 3 speeds.
It's maddening but it is a question of cost; it's just pennies, and Apple is for sure not passing on the savings to us.
Backup/restore is one common usecase. It's painfully slow with current speed. AFAIK only Pro model support USB3 speeds. Someone more knowledgable can maybe explain if there is any technical/cost reason behind it (I honestly don't see one ).
I believe most people do iCloud backup/restore nowadays. I only do manual backup/restore once every few years when I upgrade my iPhone (even then, I could probably do that via iCloud also)
The only issue is now you pay for icloud for life. Terrible service just try pulling a lot of photos off of it. Basically can't be done because no matter the tool you try you get connection timeout issues after a couple dozen photos. I have like 60k photos on a family members icloud account that we can't get at all. Stuck paying icloud now for that person. Frankly at this point I'd pay for physical media mailed if that were an option.
Yep. And the incentive at Apple is to keep making people use more cloud and have them pay more for it so they can say they make more profit from the service division.
It's quite bad, because it's a rug pull that Apple did. Before all the cloud/service nonsense, what differentiated Apple from the rest was your ability to fully own and manage their devices easily without having to rely on some "forever" subscription.
If people wanted some cloud crap, they could have gone with Google or even Microsoft. But current Apple doesn't care, it cares more about money than a fundamental philosophy that sets them apart.
> what differentiated Apple from the rest was your ability to fully own and manage their devices easily without having to rely on some "forever" subscription.
I'm not sure that's ever been true of the iPhone. Apple's app store is the only way to install software, you're tied to their cloud from day 1. Its not a paid subscription that you're locked into, but they make sure everyone pays in some way.
why wouldn't it be cost? even if it's only a few cents per unit, they're still going to sell millions of these, it all adds up and the best place to cut costs is in the places where most people don't actually care.
It's maddening but it is a question of cost; it's just pennies, and Apple is for sure not passing on the savings to us.