Although Lightning is already lagging behind USB-C, Apple still makes sense when it comes to keeping Lightning so technology can go further.

The European Commission is often quite aggressive with US companies, and Apple is currently one of the “victims” of tough policies from the EU. Under the new policy being proposed by many members of the European Parliament, all phone manufacturers will have to use a single charging port to reduce technology waste.

If this policy is promulgated, Apple will suffer the most because all Android manufacturers have switched to USB-C. Apple itself is also fragmented when using Lightning on iPhone and USB-C on iPad Pro. Compared to USB-C, the 8-year-old Lightning port has serious weaknesses: lower data transfer rates and no support for fast charging.

Lightning is really old fashioned

In the official feedback released a few days ago, Apple said that abandoning Lightning would cause an unpredictable harm: preventing the advancement of technology. Although Lightning is outdated, the Apple view is actually not that absurd.

To understand why Apple dared to “flap” the EU, let’s take a look at Android smartphones before the USB-C era. Until 2015 and 2016, most Android manufacturers continued to use old microUSBs. Compared to Lightning, microUSB has many weaknesses, of which the most annoying is obviously the asymmetrical design that annoys users. Technically, microUSB also has a 25% lower power limit than Lightning. Having an attached chip also allows Lightning to create an additional layer of protection for iPhone users: they don’t have to worry about their phones being attached to a “strange” device containing a wiretapping chip. microUSB does not have this feature at all.

In its statement, Apple made it very clear that, if in 2009 the company was also forced to use microUSB (as the EC requested at the time), improvements on Lightning would never have happened. appear.

If Apple agrees to switch to USB-C, Apple will lose the right to create innovations that once helped Lightning surpass microUSB.

In other words, the right to create its own connection port has allowed Apple to bring more innovations on its chargers and chargers in the past. It was Apple’s breakthroughs that also influenced the design of USB-C later: before USB-C, many Android manufacturers used to use the asymmetrical “SuperSpeed” port and caused more fragmentation of USB. again. Against the EU bill is not only to protect the outdated portal of the present, but also to protect the innovations of the future.

In fact, the current controversy may soon become meaningless if the iPhone 2020 switches to USB-C. Apple itself has contributed greatly to the popularity of this connector when removing all the old ports and equipping only one USB-C port on the MacBook launched in 2015, when most Android brands. still using microUSB. The replacement of Lightning is now inevitable, and perhaps indeed Apple is not struggling to preserve life for this port. Apple only tries to keep the right to surpass competitors whenever they want.