The switch to USB-C is good! Except for all the dongles you’ll need to get there.
Article proceeds to show pricing for a thunderbolt cable instead of USB 3.
Can’t stoke outrage with honesty.
and yet people will still buy them.
Brand name obsession is one hell of a drug.
Apple fanboys are the definition of sheep
The problem is that they have the money, we have just mouths
You can have money and still respect price-value ratios.
It’s ok, they’re helping me power my index fund. xD
I mean, yeah. I use Android because I hate Apple’s walled garden and smug attitude, but when I was shopping for a phone recently it kinda became clear how Apple has gotten their market share in North America.
Android manufacturers simply refuse to use sensible naming schemes and many of the best Android phones aren’t available in the US at all. Not to mention a constant push to follow Apple up whatever blind alley they happen to be going in at the time. I’m still salty about headphones jacks.
I love a lot of Apple’s products, but their wires are easily the worst of the worst. They’re expensive and made to fall apart after like 6 months.
I’m still using the cable that came with the 5s. What are you doing with the cables?
I’ve had several fall apart from usual wear and tear. If you roll them up, pack them, run them on things, pull them in and out of bags/pockets etc they wear down pretty quickly compared to even mid range aftermarket cables. I have some nice baided cables Ive had for 10+ years. I can’t imagine and apple one lasting that. Unless it just sits plugged into an outlet all the time, any cable last forever like that.
The main predictor of cable wear is whether people are using the phone while the cable is attached.
If you just leave it to charge they will last for u years. If you continue to use them while they are charging, life span of the cable is measured in weeks.
Why would that make a difference?
Have you ever bent a paperclip back and forth until it broke? Same concept.
Connecting to my car’s head unit.
Gotta love the Macbook charger cables that wear down to exposed wires after a few years of normal use. Some will even give you a small sparky lightshow reminding you it’s time to be a consumer again!
I currently have an iPhone cable that is frayed at the neck of the iPhone connection end. It’s from repeated bending from completely normal use. I had to stop using it because it was actually making my iPhone hot and was having sluggish connection issues. This is now the 3rd cable to do this and that includes MacBook cables too.
Apple intentionally makes them cheap because they’re such an easy moneymaker for them. I have tons of old cables from other devices that have never had this issue, so I know this isn’t some isolated thing and I’m somehow the stupid one in the scenario. Their cables are terrible.
I don’t understand this. Why is this dongle needed? Wouldn’t existing usb-c to lightning cables solve all cases? When would somebody need to turn a male lightning cable into a male usb-c cable instead of just using an existing cable of some sort?
To put it another way, I have never needed anything like this for my usb-c iPad. What use cases would the iPhone be in that the iPad would not be in that makes this single necessary?
Anybody who is jumping into usb-c is better off just buying the right cable rather than an adapter.
This kind of dongle would be for Lightning accessories that plug into the phone, like headphones or speakers, where you can’t just swap out a cable because it’s built in. No more lightning port means those electronics would be useless for the new phones.
I can see that one use case, but boy is this an awful form factor for it. I would expect a longer cable in order to allow the device to sit flat somewhere rather than hanging off a short cable attached to some peripheral.
Also that same thing could be achieved with the Apple Pencil adapter that is female lightning to female usb-c, and costs less.
The only cable I think I would need that I don’t already have would be a C-to-A cable to plug the phone into the car. My car doesn’t support wireless CarPlay.
What lightning dongles do people use that they would need that adapter for?
I don’t need any of these, I already have the USB-C cables for my laptop, that was the whole point of switching to USB-C. Also in the cover photo is that a USB-C to USB-C dongle? What use is that??
Nah it’s a $29 USB-C to Lightning dongle
That’s kinda dumb but also incredibly niche, prob low volume
I’m sure they’re hoping people will buy them to connect to existing Lightning cables for charging, but the main use would be connecting to a handful of lightning-based peripherals.
Yes, niche use.
What’s wrong with something like this?
It isn’t made by Apple, therefore it must be bad and probably will break your phone /s
There’s really nothing wrong with it, it’s just that Apple knows they can charge anything for the silliest things and a wave of mindless consumers will buy without thinking
I simply can not fathom the obsession people have with Apple products when they so egregiously price gouge their customers.
Mac minis are $600.
A physically smaller Minisforum UM480XT with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD is $249.
The Mac Mini is a significantly better value.
No it isn’t. Do you need help understanding the numbers you’re reading?
Not at all. The Minisforum is overpriced garbage compared to the Mac Mini. They’re not even remotely comparable.
I’m sure it is. So?
Mac minis are $600.
I’m sure it is. So?
Maybe go waste someone else’s time? Child.
And yet, people buy iPhones instead of 3 Mac minis.
People buy expensive Android phones too. What’s your point?
My point is that Apple is price gouging.
Neither one counter example nor whataboutism change the fact that Apple products are overpriced in general (and always have been). Or how do you explain their unparalleled profit margins?
What is ‘captive labor’ for $800, Alex
What a ridiculous argument. They make as much money as the market will bear. Anything else would be a disservice to their shareholders.
Yeah. Well, the whole point since the top level comment has been that people are willing to pay too much for their hardware…
I give up. Stay happy with your overpriced devices.
I’m glad you give up. I’ll continue to pay for devices that provide me with an appropriate level of quality for their cost. Feel free to use whatever Android device you can afford.
I’m not a fan of their MacOS based products, but I prefer iOS for the fact that I can rely on getting timely updates. For a good long while. That is not something that is generally true with Android. I’m fine with paying for that level of support.
Last time I looked, no Android vendors provided close to the same level of support.
That said, if I was a business and needed to field in house apps to mobile devices, everyone would be getting an Android device. Custom apps for iOS are a pain in the ass.
All this arguing aside, good job EU. Good legislation at work right there. Whether people claim it’s better or not everyone in the end wins. Single adapter used with all devices, single cable provided for charging and data transfers. Simplicity and eco friendly. Everybody wins, especially iPhone users since now they don’t have to deal with shitty cables costing 40$ which fall apart 3 months after purchase.
In other news: Water is wet
Though it should be pointed out, this article is a little wonky. No iPhone needs a thunderbolt 4 charging cable.
But if you want to really get all the juice in and out of your new iPhone, especially if you’re buying a 15 Pro or Pro Max, you’ll need the $69 Thunderbolt 4 Pro Cable
I mean, that is an outright lie. There is nothing a TB4 cable would add over a USB 3.2 cable here.
The premise of the article is you buying an adapter from Apple to make your old stuff work with the new phone and highlighting how ridiculously priced they are. It’s not a lie, as this is the actual price of the adapter. Sure, you can buy third-party stuff just like you can buy a phone from a different manufacturer and avoid the issue altogether, but that’s obvious, no?
Not talking about an adapter, but a simple usb-c to usb-c cable with usb 3.2 standard, They are basically wothless. I have a about 30 of them sitting in a box at the office.
There is simply no reason why you would need an expensive thunderbolt 4 cable to charge a phone or transfere data at 10Gbps. Either these “journalists” are lying or they don’t understand USB.
A) you obviously glossed over (or intentionally omitted) the very next paragraph when you quoted the article in your original comment.
(I should remind you here that the beauty of USB-C is that Apple’s not the only company in charge of it. There are tons of cables out there, and for most people, there’s no reason you should need the mega-fast ones anyway. Just get the charger that matches your charging speed and your wall plug, and you’re golden.)
B) if this product had no use, Apple wouldn’t have spent money manufacturing it.
C) if this cable is useless, what cheaper alternative does Apple offer that is capable of giving you both fast charging speed and fast data transfer speed?
A. I’m not ommitting it. It still suggests that there would a benefit of using a TB4 cable. There isn’t.
B. The product is very useful if you want to connect something with actual thunderbolt 4 capabilites. Like laptop to a docking station. It’s just that in the case using the higher-standard cable doesn’t add anything overusing a cheaper one.
C. If you just care about charging, you can get a offical apple cable for $20. They don’t sell USB 3.2 cables from what I can see in their shop. So bascially if you want to use the new IPhones max transfer speed (which is just double what what you can do with the cheap one) they force you to buy a cable that is 10x more capable and costs 4x as much.
But you can could get a cable that can utilise the full capacity for around $10 bucks from Samsung or other major brands.
It still suggests that there would a benefit of using a TB4 cable. There isn’t.
They don’t sell USB 3.2 cables from what I can see in their shop. So bascially if you want to use the new IPhones max transfer speed (which is just double what what you can do with the cheap one) they force you to buy a cable that is 10x more capable and costs 4x as much.
Please refer back to my original comment stating the premise of the article. You just described the exact reason why they included this cable in the article (including your phrasing of ‘forced to buy’). It’s because Apple doesn’t offer you any alternative.
So why not properly mention alternatives? What’s your point here? Because this basically just confirms this is thinly veiled apple ad.
Strange ad considering they’re mocking Apple’s high prices and telling you there are cheaper alternatives out there but okay.
