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Back in 2012, Apple released the iPhone 5, which was a big deal, not just for giving us more screen

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real estate than previous models, but also for introducing the Lightning connector.

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And while it was a welcome change from the previous big fat 30-pin cable,

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we're still stuck with it eight years later and it hasn't exactly aged well.

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Of course, there is that old saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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But the Lightning connector has the obvious problem that the rest of the phone world has moved on

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to USB Type-C, which is faster and more versatile.

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So why is Apple stubbornly holding on to such an old connector,

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other than keeping a proprietary standard around to make more money?

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It might surprise you to know that Apple is actually part of the USB implementers forum,

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the original group of companies that worked on USB Type-C.

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However, Apple really wanted to go ahead and start getting thinner,

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sleeker devices to market, and given their timetable for the iPhone 5,

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they didn't want to wait around for the USB-C standard to get finalized,

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so they slapped their own miniaturized port onto the phone instead.

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And given that USB-C didn't start appearing in smartphones until 2015,

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that initial decision does look like it made some sense.

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Open standards in the tech industry take a notoriously long time to get approved

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and make their way onto gadgets, and even the lengthy approval process

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does not mean that they will end up working perfectly. In fact, the public release of USB-C didn't go very well,

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with lots of poor quality cables and accessories hitting the market.

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This meant Apple was quite happy to stick with their proprietary connector,

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which gave them much more control over what consumers were actually getting.

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Apple either produces Lightning devices itself, or licenses out the spec to third parties of its own choosing,

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and while that approach drives up costs, it admittedly does make quality control a bit easier.

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But Apple had another reason not to make the switch to USB-C.

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It already caught a lot of heat for switching to Lightning in the first place.

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Do you know how many Apple accessories you see in your average big box store

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that use Lightning connectors? Well, back in 2012, there were tons of similar accessories that used the 30-pin dock,

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and switching to Lightning rendered all those older accessories obsolete

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as they would only work with iPhone models that were quickly becoming outdated.

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I mean, before us didn't even have LTE.

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So, Apple didn't really want to alienate its consumers yet again,

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by pulling the rug out from an even larger accessories install base.

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And in fact, the company has directly said this more recently

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in statements regarding the European Union's push to get standard connectors on most wireless consumer electronics.

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Apple would also face logistical issues in switching its supply chain over to USB-C

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when it's been set up for so long to crank out Lightning products on mass.

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And although it's definitely inconvenient that iPhones don't use USB-C,

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they also don't really need to. It's true that Lightning is a relatively slow connector,

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as its speed seems to be somewhere in between USB-2 and USB-3.

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But data transfer over a wired connection is quickly becoming less and less important for smartphones.

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Contrast this with the fact that Apple has put USB Type-C

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on Macs and iPads, which makes more sense

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since these are full-fledged computers and need to be compatible with a wider universe of PC peripherals.

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And then you go, oh yeah, okay. So does this mean that we're going to have the Lightning connector for a long time to come?

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Well, perhaps not. As plenty of rumors have been flying, that Apple will come out with a portless iPhone in the next few years.

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Because there's no reason Apple couldn't do that now that they use wireless charging across their entire lineup.

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Of course, that might still really mess up the iPhone accessory market,

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but do I really need that Circa 2013 iHome Alarm Clock anyway?

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So thanks for watching, guys. Like, dislike, check out our other videos,

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because if you do, I'm going to replace all of our black shirts with purple ones like this.

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This is actually a sample we're working on of our own purple shirt.