back in 2012 apple released the iphone 5 which was a big deal not just for giving
us more screen real estate than previous models but also for introducing the
lightning connector and while it was a welcome change from the previous big fat
30 pin cable we're still stuck with it eight years later and it hasn't exactly
aged well of course there is that old saying if it ain't broke don't fix it
but the lightning connector has the obvious problem that the rest of the
phone world has moved on to usb type c which is faster and more versatile so
why is apple stubbornly holding on to such an old connector other than you
know keeping a proprietary standard around to make more money it might
surprise you to know that apple is actually part of the usb implementers
forum the original group of companies that worked on usb type-c
however apple really wanted to go ahead and start getting thinner sleeker
devices to market and given their timetable for the iphone 5 they didn't
want to wait around for the usbc standard to get finalized so they
slapped their own miniaturized port onto the phone instead and given that usbc
didn't start appearing in smartphones until 2015 that initial decision does
look like it made some sense open standards in the tech industry take a
notoriously long time to get approved and make their way onto gadgets and even
the lengthy approval process does not mean that they will end up working
perfectly in fact the public release of usbc didn't go very well with lots of
poor quality cables and accessories hitting the market this meant apple was
quite happy to stick with their proprietary connector which gave them
much more control over what consumers were actually getting apple either
produces lightning devices itself or licenses out the spec to third parties
of its own choosing and while that approach drives up costs it admittedly
does make quality control a bit easier but apple had another reason not to make
the switch to usbc it already caught a lot of heat for switching to lightning
in the first place do you know how many apple accessories you see in your
average big box store that use lightning connectors well back in 2012 there were tons of
similar accessories that used the 30 pin dock and switching to lightning rendered
all those older accessories obsolete as they would only work with iphone models
that were quickly becoming outdated i mean the 4s didn't even have lte
so apple didn't really want to alienate its consumers yet again by pulling the rug
out from an even larger accessories install base and in fact the company has
directly said this more recently in statements regarding the european
union's push to get standard connectors on most wireless consumer electronics
apple would also face logistical issues in switching its supply chain over to
usbc when it's been set up for so long to crank out lightning products on mass
and although it's definitely inconvenient that iphones don't use usbc
they also don't really need to it's true that lightning is a relatively
slow connector as its speed seems to be somewhere in between usb2 and usb3 but
data transfer over a wired connection is quickly becoming less and less important
for smartphones contrast this with the fact that apple has put usb type c on
macs and ipads which makes more sense
since these are you know full-fledged computers and need to be compatible with
a wider universe of pc peripherals and you go oh yeah okay so does this mean
that we're going to have the lightning connector for a long time to come well perhaps not
as plenty of rumors have been flying that apple will come out with a portless
iphone in the next few years because there's no reason apple couldn't do that
now that they use wireless charging across their entire lineup
of course that might still really mess up the iphone accessory market but do
you really need that circa 2013 ihome alarm clock anyway
check out freshbooks freshbooks is the cloud accounting solution for business
that allows you to work from anywhere with their mobile app and create
professional invoices in seconds when you're on the go you can snap pictures
of your receipts and track your mileage on the iOS app as you drive so you can
maximize your deductions at tax time you can never miss an update so you can see
when a client has viewed their invoice and when it's overdue and right now you
can get 50 off three months of fresh books when you sign up for a paid plan
at freshbooks.com techwiki so thanks for watching guys
like dislike check out our other videos leave a comment with a video suggestion
and don't forget to subscribe because if you do i'm going to replace all of our black
shirts with purple ones like this this is actually a sample we're working
on of our own purple shirt