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Does USB Type C Herald the End of Apple's Proprietary Connectors?
An anonymous reader writes The Verge has an interesting editorial about the USB Type C connector on the new Macbook, and what this might mean for Apple's Lightning and Thunderbolt connectors. The former is functionally identical to USB Type C, and the latter has yet to prove popular in the external media and "docking" applications for which it was originally intended. Will Apple phase out these ports in favour of a single, widely-accepted, but novel standard? Or do we face a dystopian future where Apple sells cords with USB Type C on one end, and Lightning on the other?
Thunderbolt is not a proprietary connector to Apple. It is a standard that Intel has made available and i've seen non-Apple computers with Thunderbolt.
They would do whatever makes them more money, is there any doubt about that?
If apple can sell you a $40 adapter, do you think they would choose not to? They have a captive market, a group who blindly follows their every "invention" as the best thing ever ( note, that doesn't mean EVERYONE who uses an apple is this way). I doubt they would cut out that part of their profit.
It's Apple. Move on.
Remember displayport? Apple adopted it completely and nobody else wanted quite literally HDMI without audio. They made their own mini-connector which especially went nowhere. Then they dropped it and screwed over anyone who did adopt it early. Tada, Thunderbolt is out. Nobody wants or uses that either. In case you aren't seeing the pattern, Apple will drop everything and invent some new inferior garbage port that nobody will use instead of Thunderbolt or USB type C.
http://xkcd.com/927/
Looks like someone was looking to win the Hyperbole of the Year Award.
If the worst thing about the future is having to buy adapter cables, sign me up. Sounds like a vast improvement over a future where men spend 8 hours reciting the Koran every day before going out to shoot heretics and abduct more women into sexual slavery...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I don't know who the hell thinks it's a good idea to extend the PCI-E connection to the outside and to allow sticking any untrusted device into that. At least with "classic" USB the operating system has a fighting chance to fend off malware coming in through that (OK, some OSes don't even try). But with PCI-E? No chance.
I have no idea whether USB-C inherits this brain damage or not.
Since Steve Jobs came back Apple has only introduced proprietary connectors when there was a really good reason for them to do so. Lightning was introduced because Micro USB was considered sub-par by Apple. And let's face it: There is some truth to that. Lightning is sturdier, easyer to handle, has more data throughput and IIRC more relyable electrical specs. Say about Apple what you want, but unlike quite a few other tech companies they actually know what they are doing and why and they don't short-change hardware design decisions. Their market evaluation seems to prove them right.
In a nutshell: If Apple decides that USB C is worthwhile and offers upsides vis-a-vis lightning, it could be that this actually is the case, and Lightning actually is on the way out.
As for Thunderbolt: Unlike what quite a few tech experts think, it is *not* an Apple specific spec, but a standardised port. It's only that Apple likes to use it more than any other vendor.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Apple has never been a commodity computer company. Herd mentality always seems to head in the direction of the cheapest tech out there even though there are far superior offerings out there. Just look at how VHS won out over Beta. That's video tape for those of you too young to know or care how we got where we are.
Still, you can contrast with DockPort, which is a *VESA* standard.
Like Thunderbolt, it does enable an additional flux of data for peripherals and docks, but unlike ThunderBolt, it uses USB3.0 instead of PCIe for the peripherals.
(Also meaning that it will be more easy to use with portable devices, which tend to already have USB support built-in, but not necessarily a PCIe bus).
Also DockPort introduce high power availability for charging portable devices (again an advantage for portable device).
Now with TFA's anouncement, that means that even further does the two grow closer.
You can imagin USB-C to DisplayPort cable for portable devices using this (just like MHL standart enabled using micro-USB to HDMI cables).
Except that it also delivers power to charge the device (and doesn't rely on a 3rd different protocol like MHL).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
As mentioned elsewhere in here, Thunderbolt is fine as it's an open spec and is intended for different use cases than USB, and it also shares a port design with mini-Displayport (which we can thank Apple for openly releasing that connector standard).
Lightning, while a very good physical design for a connector will likely fall soon as the power benefits of USB-C are too good to pass up and iPad/Macbook Airs without it are going to seem antiquated when every other tablet and ultrabook will be sharing a universal charging system. However Apple is no worse a shape than every other phone manufacturer. They'll release new models with USB-C along with every other manufacturer as then every user can complain equally for the next couple years that they need all new cables and chargers.
If Apple double downs on Lightning and sticks with it I would be extremely impressed with their level of stubbornness.
Slow news day, Slashdot? Capitalizing on Apple market buzz?
FAIL.
Why can't they just provide a small spool of wire and some terminals on the laptop?
USB C still has that ridiculous plastic tab inside the female port that can break quite easily if you trip on the cable. Plus in a pocket it can fill with lint and prevent the cable from seating securely.
Thankfully USB C is reversible (finally!) but compared to the proprietary Apple connector, it still is inferior in my opinion.
e.g. in Europe the charger must be the same for all as a standard. I can easily see where this have to be for other connections as well.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It's just that there are many features that you have to license from that company...
I think it would increasingly create problems with EU legislation not to have USB port on telephone (AFAIK, so far they are circumventing this using adaptor, which is risky move with regulators). And USB-C is finally "good enough" for them not to push too hard on this, for banning iPhone in EU altogether would be a nightmare for them.
839*929
No, it heralds the beginning of another cycle of replacing various dongles and endless cables, much like what will happen when USB-C is eventually replaced with a standard that can accommodate 5K or 8K displays, more power, etc., which would generally be anticipated in about 3-4 years.
It wouldn't be that big of a deal to me, except for the fact that I need at least three sets of adapters for home, office, and weekend place, and ideally a fourth set for my travel bag. Between Ethernet, VGA, DVI, HDMI, USB, and SD this seems like a mess for me.
But what really pisses me off is that none of my USB receptacles that I have hard-wired in will work with the power requirements for the USB-C devices.
Apple also introduced expensive adaptators for VGA and HDMI ($79). I was shocked by the price, but at the same time they lowered the price of an Apple TV to $69, which makes it the chepeast way to connect a new MacBook to a TV.
Coincidence ?
How else can Apple sell, own and patent device interconnection um, devices, if they do not have proprietary connectors?
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Oh no a cable with a proprietary connector on it, end of the world!
Next question.
Because Apple makes a lot of money selling proprietary overpriced cables. They are overpriced enough that they can get away with including identification systems that attempt to prevent third-party cables from working.
Lightning was designed from the ground up to be a very sturdy plug supporting an iPad or an iPhone in a dock or with physical use. After checking out the drawings on usb-c it is much better than usb-micro, but it is still based on very thin metalsheet and I do not think Apple would change a superior design that they invented themselves to another that can not handle the spec.
Thunderbolt at (thunderbolt2 now) is of open to use by others using intel hw, but it is more for the pro market, or people that have better demands, it can handle displays bandwidth of 5k @60hz and run external disks as fast as internal, which is impressive. That tech won't disappear on apples pro machines.
I would guess the next iPad Pro would have usb3 bus speed, but I doubting actually that apple would integrate that in iPhones. Is the usb3 hw possible to make as small as the usb2 hw in the phone right now? if yes they will integrate it, but if not it would take time as they won't use space of their thin phones to that... As people using them mostly wirelessly....
Does USB Type C Herald the End of Apple's Proprietary Connectors?
I'm gonna go out on a very short limb and go with "no" as my answer. Apple always finds a way to do something a little different and I doubt that is likely to change anytime soon.
[Lightning] is functionally identical to USB Type C
What is meant by "functionally identical"?
Lightning is 8-pin and USB Type C is 24-pin, so...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
My current laptop, an ASUS ZenBook, is dying because it has a damaged power input port - the motherboard is cracked, and it is becoming increasingly unreliable. In the past year, two tablets in my household have died because the micro-USB ports which serve as their power connectors had ceased to work - presumably due to wear. And now Apple are bringing out a new laptop with just one port which is technically similar to a USB connector. How durable is it? How will it stand up to knocks and accidental falls? If that port fails, the machine is dead - and replacement of the port inevitably means soldering the motherboard, which is skilled and consequently expensive work.
The nature of a laptop which is used on the move is that it has a hard life. The Apple MagSafe connector is a brilliant design because it is not susceptible to wear and relatively invulnerable to knocks, trips and falls. I had already made up my mind that my next laptop would be a MacBook, simply because of the MagSafe connector. So I'm aghast at the decision to abandon it. It seems perverse!
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Lightning, while a very good physical design for a connector will likely fall soon as the power benefits of USB-C are too good to pass up
You might be right but it's not immediately clear to me how much this would matter for iPhones and iPads. I haven't gotten my hands on a USB-C yet but I'm not optimistic about it working physically as well as Lightning connectors though I'd be fine with being proven wrong. Lighting is a very nice physical connector but the main reason it exists is because the connectors for USB sucks so badly. Maybe USB-C will fix this but I'm not holding my breath.
For laptops Apple has their Magsafe connector which USB-C does not replace. I'd LOVE a single connector to provide both power and data but I think the jury is still out whether USB-C will be able to do that adequately. Would be nice if it did.
If Apple double downs on Lightning and sticks with it I would be extremely impressed with their level of stubbornness.
Apple isn't traditionally stubborn about changing interfaces so long as there are performance benefits to be had. They were among the first to drop a lot of legacy ports and were among the early adopters of USB, Firewire, Thunderbolt and others. True they've stuck with some proprietary or unusual stuff for surprisingly long (Firewire, SCSI, ADB, etc) but there were usually reasonable performance and/or user-base reasons they stuck with them as long as they did.
As I understand it presently, there's no ethernet on USB-C. That's really disappointing. I have applications that require the higher dependability of ethernet as opposed to wifi. And the whole USB to Ethernet dongle thing... that tends to not work so well, at least thus far. There's also the additional security of not being OTA, where anyone in range can intercept your packets.
I'm all for as wireless as possible -- charging, etc. -- but I really don't think it's a good idea to remove the hardwired network connection. Particularly in that ethernet is so well supported across the board.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Friend, if you let people get close enough to your hardware to muck with your thunderbolt connector, you didn't have any security anyway.
Restriction of physical access is an absolute first-level requirement for any kind of data / hardware security. Without it, you have nothing. And they have anything they want. There are no exceptions. Absolutely perfect, hardware-based Fingerprint lock? Just open the computer -- with a torch or diamond saw if required -- and walk away with the drives; read and/or decode 'em at your convenience.
Physical access means you have already 100% given up on security; you either trust everyone who has such access 100%, or you must actively restrict them somehow during such access -- guards, monitored cameras, etc.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"Will Apple phase out these ports in favour of a single, widely-accepted, but novel standard?"
Help me out, what the hell does that mean? If a standard is widely-accepted, how can it be novel?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Dell, HP,Lenovo, ASUS all are the worst for "special secret" connectors for power. In fact they are WORSE than apple as they change the damn connector from model to model. At least magsave has stayed somewhat the same for large chunks of time.
I really hope the EU adopts USB-C and forces the laptop makers all to use it for the power connection. It's utterly stupid that we have been forced to have random power plugs on laptops.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
mini USB ports became a shambles when all the new devices started breaking the specs to charge higher power devices. I din't follow this closely but it seems there are ways a USB device can can communicate that it would accept higher then default power levels. But in my experience this is totally broken. High power chargers from one manufactuer don't work with others. IN some cases the higher power devices just won't charge. When I plug my iphone into my car it constantly resets as it tries to draw too much power and the car circuit breaker kicks in. My Kindle won't charge at all on most of my wall plugs. My Dlink USB hub which has several high power ports on it will not supply high current on those when it is also plugged into the computer making them useless for charging high power devices (why have a hub you don't plug it into the computer?).
So it's total chaos in the USB world unless your phone or kindle will allow low power charging and the charging device doesn't overload when using such a device.
You also can't combine the high speed I/O functions on the USB with some low speed devices. Video output is non-standard.
The lightning blade style connector is incredibly strong, it's reversible, it's very easy to clean the socket when pocket lint gets in there. And there's so many apple devices out there that use it, there's no reason it needs to be a standard to be widely usable and widely available. There's plenty of authorized clones as well as even more cheapo knockoffs available at any gas station. In some ways being apple-only is an advantage since they can customize the power chips to get just the right power levels to the device by not trying to be everything to everyone.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
With all the shit running through one crappy port the logic board will over heat and crack thus rendering Cooks+Ive's "masterwork" a bricked pice of shit.
Time to dump Apple stock before the Dow cruse.
Here, it's keyboard, (mouse is wireless to internal bluetooth), Powermate, card reader, SDR1, SDR2, microscope, webcam, midi control surface, weather station, train controller.
Plus these more-or-less regular "visitor" devices: DSLR, HD Video camera , USB memory sticks, iPad.
I have 6 USB ports on my early 2008 series mac pro, and it's not enough. So I use a powered hub as well.
I'm not sure how many would be "enough" fast USB ports, given the space limitations of a normal tower case. But it would be way more than six!
Most of my custom control stuff -- lights, security system, salt tank aeration and filtering, antenna rotors, a couple other SDRs, gate locks and opener, sump monitor and AC power monitoring -- are now ethernet, most courtesy of various Raspberry Pi installations. Then there's the commercial stuff: the AV system, the DVR, the game machines, roku and appletv,
Ethernet is better for me, Distance, number of clients, tons of utilities for diagnosis and monitoring, and the speed is decent.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
there's a dongle for anything really. Apple just deprecates things slightly ahead of people realzing they soon won't need that. I recall when apple dropped the modem socket. I figured I needed that for sure and bought a modem dongle but then found I never used it. Ethernet had become easy to find then next time I traveled. When they dropped the ethernet socket, I bought an ethernet dongle. I used it about 10 times in many years. Wifi is just ubiquitous. Even when it's not around tethering to my phone was easier than reaching in the bag for the dongle and then finding a chair near an availble ethernet port. When they dropped the DVD I thought I'd miss it but oddly about the same time I stopped burning DVDs and started using thumb drives and DropBox only. The same was true when apple dropped parallel ports and then Floppies.
So apple will make dongles to bridge the momentary time you need to bridge with legacy devices, then you will find everything new you buy is wireless. It's interesting the headphone jack is still there since bluetooth chips are so cheap, easy to use, and are smaller than the headphone jack itself. I guess the problem for wireless headphones is powering them requires too many batteries.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
While all this is true, back in the day we heard the same sorts of arguments about Firewire being awesome for disk arrays, daisy chaining and video camcorders, and it never really gained any traction against USB, and instead flickered out. USB will no doubt just create a v4 standard to address shortcomings *just enough* to keep the protests at bay, and then with its wide install base and cheaper cost will no doubt trounce thunderbolt, and Apple will eventually drop it just like firewire.
History always repeats itself when it comes to connectors in the consumer space, because most consumers don't see enough benefit in their use cases to justify the high cost. Most are not running big arrays of disks in their closets. As a result, the cheap, widespread technology wins, not necessarily the most feature rich technology. Thunderbolt's best hope is that it can continue to live on in the enterprise space somewhere and not die completely.
They do, however, eventually listen to the market. Where are the firewire ports on your Apple?
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
What's the the actual bus speed for Thunderbolt? What I'd like to see is dock etc for laptops that support video cards. How about a dock with a upgradable video chip built-in, while the laptop's internal card is something more power-friendly (similar to how the hybrid Intel+Nvidia/AMD modes work already).
Better yet, have a dock or device that takes a standard slim PCIe video card, so you can put whatever card you want. Once you dock the laptop (or even one of those hybrid netbook/tablets), you're outputting to a nice fast GPU and the connected monitors etc. That gives you a machine that good on the go and can be used for gaming or media at home.
I foresee a mess coming because of the number of pins in USB type-C.
One of the big benefits to USB was that it was only 4 wires: power, ground, and a differential pair. Years ago, we all laughed at the Apple dock connector and it's gzillion pins. USB type-C seems like a throwback, with 24-pins, and a microchip. It looks like 18 of those pins require unique wires (since the ground and power pins can be shared). So that means that where I have a 4-wire USB cable now, the replacement is an 18-wire cable. Of course, most things won't need all of the features, so most cables will probably have far fewer wires than that. They'll omit the configuration wire, the sidechannel wire, the'll make the bus power a smaller gauge, eliminate some of the unused differential pairs, etc. If that happens, you will no longer be able to use any old USB cable for anything. You'll need to know what wires each USB cable has to know what devices it works with. So they'll start labeling them with nifty names like "USB type-C Lion" which has 18 gauge bus pins, and "USB type-C Gamma Monkey" which has 18 gauge bus pins and the sidechannel pins. And they will be more expensive.
It is tech used by Apple licensed from Intel. This almost looks like a branding issue. I bet underneath Thunderbolt and USB 3 C are very similar but because PC ID10T's were scared of Thunderbolt, but loved USB, Intel is changing directions, and focusing on extending the USB brand. I even wonder if it is Thunderbolt with a preinstalled USB 3 Dongle. :-)
That sucks. Over the past few years I've tripped over my Macbook's power cord several times with no ill effect. Back to watching where I'm going, I guess...
That is a severely regressive design move.
This computer should have retained magsafe for charging then had one of these USB-C things for, you know, port stuff.
My current MBP would have been knocked from table/chair to floor ten times now if not for magsafe. What the hell were they thinking?
I can only hope the next ultralight MB Pro retains magsafe and a couple of ports.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Who the fuck talks like this?
Tell your mom to cut back on the Spagetti-os. They're rotting your brain.
Magsafe is one of the major reasons I love macbooks. It's detsils like that which keep me from jumping ship to a Chromebook. (All I ever use on my computers is Adium, Chrome, and the terminal.)
That's crazy they're not using it. They should have just put more effort into designing a port that was magnetically secured. But maybe somebody else holds the patents on that. That would be ironic (for the new definition of ironic).
The USB nemesis.
Now they need to sell you an adapter that takes the one port and makes into 2, 3 or 4 ports for $80 or more.
Apple was part of the consortium of companies endorsing the mini-USB "standard". But did they use them in their devices?
Dystopian future? We're already there. A time when people actually consider buying overpriced crap and feel happy about being dictated to. Apple users don't want choices, they're followers -- they want to be ordered around, told how to hold things, told which form factors are garbage because Apple doesn't sell them and so forth and so on, ad infinitum. They like being members of the Connector of the Month Club -- Firewire and Thunderbolt, for example -- it makes them feel special to have the ability to buy overpriced external devices that Apple will deliberately obsolete on the next refresh.
Windows is THE proprietary OS.
Short term, keeping floppy drives would have made more money but Apple ditched them anyway. Same with DVDS drives.
I fail to see how USB-C to Lightning cables would be indicative in any way of a dystopia. I quite enjoy the Lightning port, myself. It's compact, reversible, and robust. As long as the cable connects to standard USB, I fail to see the issue. The only issue I see is the rabid anti-Apple zealots who would seek to force Apple away from Lightning.
FC Closer
if it doesn't suit you, DON'T buy one. They currently list 6 laptops, 4 are the same price or cheaper.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
So Thunderbolt is turing out to be the Firewire of the new millenium. The first iterations of Firewire were at least a generation or two ahead of USB. Now almost everybody who wants fast plug-and-play data transfer uses USB 3. If nobody uses your advance tech, it soon becomes obsolete since no users means nobody is going to fund its future development.