It’s looking likely that the next iPhone will have USB-C instead of lightning, so I thought it’d be fun to speculate about how Apple will talk about the change.
More courage?
Bragging about transfer speeds, hopefully. 
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Our users love USB-C on their Macs and iPads (yada, yada, yada) and now . . .
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Here a few of my (fatuous) thoughts.
- We love Europe too!
- Still able to stick it in upside down!
- One plug to rule them all!
- Not backward-compatible; always plug-n-play!
- Out with the Boomers, in with Gen-Z!
- Not just for Android or Galaxy!
–
JJW
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Courage.
(And twenty more characters.)
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Interesting question!
I suspect they will only talk about the benefits at the launch but leave the media, retailers , YouTubers, podcasters and bloggers to point out that they were forced to do it.
It’s good to have a bad guy that other people open blame for doing something you’ve wanted to do for years.
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They will publicly thank the EU 
for taking steps to standardise the industry and for joining Apple’s efforts to reduce electronic waste. /s
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This 10000000000000%
Telling the truth? That the EU forced it.
Honestly nobody cares as much about Lightning being ‘an issue’ as much as the EU and tech journalists pretend.
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…by immediately making every lightning cable accessory e-waste… wonderful
I agree, no matter what they say the reason is regulation, not the end user.
It will be nothing short of a complete pain for most as we have lots of lightning accessories and cables. I for one never transfer anything via cable to my PC so it would offer no improvement, even if they went super fast.
It’s another good reason not to upgrade this year - I want to get more use from my accessories and do not want to generate unneeded e-waste.
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I’ll still need lightning for a while thanks to AirPods, keyboards, trackpads, and the like.
(Given their terrible life expectancy, I’d say most of my Apple lighting cables will fray long before I no longer need them… 
)
Still, I wonder if they’ll address the issue of no longer needing lightning cables. Maybe they’ll offer a recycling program along with trade-ins or something.
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Definitely. More regulations like these are bad, end of. Government regulations should only be there to protect us where they are needed. Sorry, but ‘burden of having another hi-tech cable’ is not something they need to step in and do, particularly not when such a huge volume of folks, openly / freely buy Apple tech all the time with a massive, healthy variety of alternatives also freely available. Things like this is why we (the UK) left. You wouldn’t believe the level of detail these kind of sweeping rules leak into. Not ‘racism’ like the polarising media will tell you… gosh.
It’s going to be a nightmare in practice. Especially for those of us who play tech support at home. Look at old USB, we all had so many knocking around including cheap ones from random tech gadget purchases. With some being ‘power only’ or the old, ancient slow standard. Not all USB-C cables are created equally. It will be a nightmare knowing which cables can do what, more so now with the capabilities of a Thunderbolt cable / display / sound / ethernet / data / power…
Now, we’ll all be using it way beyond its desirable applications…
That would make sense, seems logical. Therefore, don’t expect the EU to do any such thing!
I HATE this narrative. People will still be using Lightning in 5 years for iphones, iPads, Keyboards, trackpads and Airpods.
People keep fixating on those that will buy a brand new iphone 15, but there are hundreds of millions (if not billions) of devices which use lightning which are going to be around for quite a while.
Apple will probably still sell iPhone SEs, 13s and 14th for at least the next 12 months which have lightning (I can’t see them re architecting all of those models this year) as the EU only requires USB C for those devices released after the required date.
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I must be doing something right because I can’t recall ever having a problem with a lightning cable, Apple or 3rd party 
. Which is fortunate because I also need them for “AirPods, keyboards, trackpads, and the like.”
If I were a betting man I’d wager a shiny new quarter that Apple will not mention lightning cables but will announce all the accessories that will be available with USB-C.
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Yeah, as with most things, the EU is yet to present an actual benefit from this move that is in line with its purpose as an organisation. Sure, it would have happened eventually but that should be left to us, Apple and what we do with our money.
Lightning is fine. Prove it, you say?
It’s on your iPhone and all its accessories which you chose to buy and use daily. Enough said.
If the iPhone came with the 30-pin connector still, I’d still have bought and used mine.
Just imagine 2008, if the MacBook Air was released and HAD to have a number of EU mandated ports on the side… they’d have settled for forced VGA I bet back then as being a handy ‘one cable’ every screen device had at the time…
Same here. What’s happened now is I actually have a couple spare from my later devices in the boxes, waiting to go. I’ve also not had them break like in the past either, they last years and naturally, you accumulate them from new devices, accessories etc. And last I checked, they’re recyclable.
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Maybe Apple will include a Lightning-to-USB-C adapter for those who want to continue using their lightning cables albeit at a slower charging rate. I wonder how many iPhone users still have USB-A wall power adapters for their lightning cables.
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I don’t see why the EU can’t just mandate that the little 2cm adapter just be included in the box from this point on. Then the USB-C-gelicals can just stick it on, bit of tape, and live their weird dream of one cable for everything
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