The EU has finally won this one!

Lightning is/was actually pretty great. Also remember that it was introduced before USB-C even existed.

Not fair. It was a great cable. It came out when everyone else was using mini and mico usb which both sucked hard ass. They weren’t reversible, and they broke easily.

Meanwhile in the Apple Store

USB-C to Lightning Adapter

Lightning was significantly ahead of the competition when it came out in 2012. Micro-USB is a terrible collection of ports. C came out two years later though, and quickly surpassed Lightning in almost every way.

Lighting was a good cable when apple made the switch from 30 pin connector and android was still trying to figure out whether they would use microUSB, miniUSB, and whatever the sam hell is. And there was no interoperability

Once USB became the standard their was no real reason to hold onto lightning other than it being proprietary and them wanting to hand hold their users

Good. Apple's whole ecosystem can go.

They never would if switched if it wasn’t forced on them. I’m glad they were forced no matter how apple spins it

Yes, Lightning was better than MicroUSB but by now I hope we can all agree, that it has overstayed its welcome

Ok, I have to take issue with this. I will never be an apple user, but until USB-C came out I was honestly jealous of the lightning cable. It is reversible and consistent, two things other phone chargers never were. Sure, for data transfer it's outdated as hell now, but it is still good enough for most uses

Inb4 apple places a chip in the cable that only handshakes with apple devices?

Prefacing this question with the fact I'm an Android user and have never owned an iPhone. Saying this in the hopes people won't think I'm an Apple fanboi trying to make a point...

I haven't been that interested in the EU legislation around this until now; I'm curious what happens when something comes out that is better than USB-C? Are companies stuck until new legislation is passed or is there some sort of auto update to the standard written in?

welcome to 2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C

It WAS a good cable about 6 years ago when even flagship phones still used micro USB. I would have killed for lightning on my old android phone. However, usb c just takes the cake, every cake. It has its own problems but the tradeoffs are miniscule compared to lightning.

I'm pro USB C all the way, but I definitely appreciated the lightning connector. It's smaller, fewer things to go wrong with it, less delicate... so to speak.... at least the female side seems to be from my experience. The male side isn't half bad either, but the cables apple used for their USB to lightning wires was basically trash. Every time I witnessed someone with a bad iPhone charging cable, the connector was generally fine and the wire was torn to shreds.

The biggest weakness of the standard was that it was stuck on USB 2.0. Beyond that it was pretty good.

I still like USB C more, both for speed and for how ubiquitous it is; but, being fair to lightning here, the center area were the pins are is a failure point, one wrong move and it's toast. Granted it's nestled in there pretty good and the chances of that actually happening is pretty small, but lightning doesn't have this issue.

Lightning is far from perfect, but they did a good job.... for the time. Right now the only benefit to lightning is twofold, it's everywhere, and the connectors basically never broke with normal use. At the time micro-B was horribly fragile. C is way better than micro-B was, but I still think that lightning has the crown for durability IMO.

With all that being said, USB C all the things. Lightning was a shining example of a better way, and hopefully we learned from that. I don't know what comes after USB C, but I hope the improvements are significant. It will be a while before C goes anywhere though.

It only took them 10 years or so!

I may be stupid.

But I have no idea how people are comparing "better" or "worse" cables. I always just assumed they were just cables.

Edit: for people downvoting me, I'm not saying they are just cables, I'm just saying I don't know what the difference is, and asking for an explanation. Please calm down.

Yes! I hope they can force apple (and others) into more interoperability and repairability (the two things apple hates the most), ruining their disgusting business model by re-enabling competition and benefitting users and environment.

No 🤣

I think the apple connector was a good one. Nothing wrong with it except that it was apple licensed. Whereas USB-C is a standard. Also, because of Power Delivery over USB-C I think that should make USB a standard connector on way more devices. It's a one-stop shop for data and power needs.

I can also see PD becoming the power system used for all small devices, especially once there's (if not already) some very low cost single chip (or very simple reference circuit) solutions for handling the negotiation. Also it will need more of the available PD chargers/supplies to support more voltages.

My work laptop already uses PD, and that was useful when I forgot to take the supply once. Just used my 45W PD charger that I DID pack, and it worked fine (it should have 65W, but it seemed not to discharge).

Who knows, maybe houses in the future will be built with some PD wiring too alongside the standard mains power.

Lightning was a good cable. It’s just that Apple didn’t improve it any for a decade and never opened it up so it could have been a standard.

It’s smaller and more durable. It’s just slow and proprietary.

Me with popcorn reading all the "x USB came out this year and is actually named this".

i am happy the standard has won but tbh, i prefer the lightning type of connector (male). if only Apple standardized this instead of USB-C which is far more fragile.

but as I am not going to buy an iphone anytime soon , this is a non-news to me. :)

This is asinine. Apple has shown a strong commitment to supporting particular standards for extended periods. For example, the iPhone's 30-pin connector was maintained for over 10 years. Similarly, the Lightning port, its successor, has also been around for about a decade. (And, it should be noticed, started being used two years BEFORE USB-C existed.) Additionally, Apple has supported the Thunderbolt standard throughout its life cycle.

Apple has always been judicious about the ports it adopts. The company is not known for having a plethora of ports catering to multiple generations of connector technologies. Instead, when Apple picks a standard, it tends to go all in. Take the case of USB-A: Apple was one of the early adopters of this technology and supported it for approximately 20 years before making the switch to USB-C. To put this in perspective, the time between the USB Mini to Micro switch and the Micro to USB-C transition was shorter than the lifespan of Apple's 30-pin and Lightning connectors.

It's unreasonable to assume that Apple would restrict the cables that can be used in a standard USB-C port. The USB-C standard is built on the principle of universal compatibility. Restricting this would not only break with the standard but also limit the very advantages that have made USB-C popular among consumers and manufacturers alike.

Nah. The only thing usbc has over lightning is transfer rates and charging speed.

Transfer rates don’t matter because how often do you dump 128gb over the wire and 500Mbps isn’t good enough?

Charging speed kinda matters but not really because the charge controllers on the phones are throttling down the lightning chargers anyway.

Remember: the eu is forcing usbc, a port designed for general purpose use that has a bunch of delicate pins and a plastic tongue, to replace lightning, a much simpler port designed to go in pockets.

This will ultimately make you unhappy.

I preffered lightning too usb-c i have had several phones where the usb c connector failed but my iphone was the first phone in a long time that i replaced for reasons other than the charging port. I would have been very happy if lightning had become the standard.

I’m all for the switch to USB C but Lightning as a connector is objectively better. It’s smaller, more durable, feels better to use and even looks better.

If it hadn’t been proprietary, it would have pretty much been the perfect connector.

Edit: hey guys instead of mindlessly downvoting without saying anything, I’d love to hear your point of view, I’m always open to changing my mind.

Android wins again.

USB-C that basically Apple created and started pushing hard since 2016 (only ports on MacBooks at the time) ✨ damn I love Apple

Somewhat unpopular opinion: Lightning was by far the better connector.