> Never mind that wires will always be better ... than wireless.

For some values of "better". For me, not plugging in and needing to carrying around wires is always better.

> and more private

Wireless can be secure and unencrypted wired transfers can be sniffed via the electromagnetic radiation they emit. This isn't as cut and dry as some like to pretend.

Welcome to the difference between "in a security researcher's dreams" and "occurs frequently out in the real world".

I went to a security conference once where a presenter was telling me about a previous conf, where he was demonstrating a 'free wifi' box that snooped on all connections and pulled passwords out of them. He was demoing it on stage when the wifi went out in the other auditorium behind (also part of the sec conference). His magic little box then went berserk as huge amounts of security professionals at a security hacking conference then connected to it to try and re-establish their wifi. [1]

Compare this kind of story to the kind of setup you need to have to sniff EM radiation from a cat-5 cable.

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[1] The point of his story was that security professionals love to lecture others on correct tech use, but in reality the sec recommendations come so thick and fast that even the sec professionals don't keep up with them. How is a mere mortal to cope?

I totally agree that in general, wired will beat wireless for security. After all, you can also encrypt your wired connections. I was merely pointing out that it's not a guarantee that wireless is worse. It can be secure.

The "better" argument was my bigger disagreement. Wired isn't "better" in any absolute terms. I'll happily use wireless rather than wired for the convenience of walking across my house with my laptop. Or, you know, actually using my cell phone.

I wish we had some sort of wired equivalent privacy for wifi.

Yeah things are hitting the point where i ponder setting the router to disconnect on inactivity, to approximate the behavior of dialup.

> For some values of "better". For me, not plugging in and needing to carrying around wires is always better.

Ha! I don't believe it for a second. The other day my iPhone went from 100% to dead in less than an hour - in airplane mode using only the music app and strava.

This anecdote seems lacking value. I don't know why your phone died in an hour, but given that you claim to have been in airplane mode, I don't see how "wireless" is relevant.

Given that you were using Strava, I'd guess you killed your battery running GPS, but that doesn't mix with airplane mode.

I hear you. The first I do with anything Apple is to turn off everything cloud, Siri, whatever. Then sync phone with USB or (bleck!) iTunes WiFi sync.