this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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That’s a fair point. Apple has been known to do that in the past with FireWire.
But I guess on the issue of whether or not — at the time, two years before usb-c was readily available — apple should have used usb-c or lightning (the thing they helped make), you would assume they would go with lightning over waiting until an unknown amount of time for another plug to be available.
When I say they were stubborn to change from that, they were/are simply stubborn to change from that. I wish they would have pulled the bandaid off when they switched to usb-c on iPad.
Though, that said, barring speed/power, I do actually think the lightning connector is a superior design. It’s simpler, and there’s nothing to break inside the port on the phone/device. I wish usb-c was physically the same or similar.
FireWire was legitimately superior at the time, particularly for video transfer.
I still have to disagree. There was no reason for them to develop lightning in the first place. It has 0 advantages over technology already available at the time, and their adapters use the technology they're trying to upsell anyways- USB.
As for the last subjective part of your statement: "The Apple Community forums are full of people posting stories about their broken cables, and it appears to be one of the most common issues that Apple users are facing."
Edit: I wish I could find a conclusive source for lightning vs micro-usb charging speed in 2012, it has proven difficult. This article suggests an extremely negligible 0.3A difference that effectively did nothing because all phone batteries at the time had a 1A charging maximum https://www.gearmo.com/things-to-know-about-lightning-cables/
Lightning cables had, and have, substantial advantages over micro-USB:
I'll preface this by admitting I misspoke. Lightning did develop into a better technology once the power delivery got better and I forgot they desperately needed the slightly higher PD for the 4th gen iPad. I also completely forgot about the logical data layers afforded by the extra pins because it's such a strange niche to need direct output for your phone rather than just moving the files to a computer. However, this still doesn't explain why they wouldn't just switch to USB-C when it was released and proven to serve all these functions, and I take issue with every other point you made.
I would love conclusive, hard data on this but this has been spread everywhere and it's completely anecdotal. I've seen the "40K to 10K" comparisons but the 40K mating cycles minimum is attributed to the lightning port while the 10K mating cycles minimum is attributed to the micro usb/usb-c cable.
Really?
Apple's very own branded lightning cables are terrible quality. I don't see why you wouldn't hold a first-party manufacturer accountable for their low quality standard and then turn around and point to a low standard for third-party manufacturers.