Before everyone freaks out, consider that it's highly likely that:
* All USBC Cables will work for charging
* Probably all USBC cables will work for connecting to accessories
* Data will only be allowed to pass to a certified accessory
I think this is more likely to be very careful about what accessories you can use versus trying to stop you from being able to use an average usb cable to charge.
You should not fear the FUD. There's incredibly miniscule danger. People buy shitty uncertified ultra-cheap USB cables by the millions & there's been next to no problems. Your devices will be fine. Almost all devices & chargers have quite good safety measures built in, so at worst, stuff doesn't charge.
USB-C has such a loud hate-mob after it. And it's really just not bad. It really mostly is great.
Most of them will be incredibly fine, not harm a fly, and offer like 2x+ more value than where we were before with charging which also had lots of no-name replacement brands & hard to get $100 OEM
chargers. While being completely intercompatible.
It's just absurdly epic, in my book. Pick a completely random no-name brand it and there's like 98% chance it'll do the job fine, if you want a $30 100w charger for ex. In most cases, I would not be afraid to plug it in and find out. I expect some cheap chargers indeed probably won't be able to sustain full load, but I also expect they'll shutdown fine & not harm anything. It just seems unfair to try to reach into the absolute bottom-most reaches we can find to judge, and even if we do, I think most people would be impressed & shocked how little harm is done here.
But more so, there's so many perfectly fine all-caps brands that do have thousands of reviews that seem either quite legit or mostly legit. Nekteck has a 100w gan charger you absolutely can do fine with for $40. PPS and multiport capabilities abundantly available at under $50? Can we not be impressed a bit here?
Making 20V 5A & not messing causing damage is not the worlds wildest problem, even if you are cutting every corner you can.
I've definitely bought a charger off Amazon that later shit the bed and the NAS device it was powering wouldn't boot. I wound up buying a whole new enclosure off of ebay before determining that the power supply went just slightly bad enough to make it power up but not successfully spin up the drives or whatever and boot. It didn't burn down my house, but it caused me way more hassle and economic cost than its price was worth.
I was trying to consolidate my chargers into a single charging station and I didn't realize started a saga. Eventually I had to give up. While I was getting down the rabbit hole, I tested dozens of different chargers and the results were quite unexpected. Though I didn't use an oscilloscope, the usb power meters used gave almost the same results, thus I would say the results were good. The best of those were a few ~$7 ones bought from Amazon, good/fair ones were either came with mobile devices or from popular brands such as A*r or B**n(I hid the names here deliberately to avoid being taken as ads). The worst were also among the two aforementioned popular brands. For A brand, its voltage dropped to 4.8V when under load ~1.8A but it caused significant interference that the USB light's switch stopped working after powered on. B brand were even worse, voltage dropped to 4.5V when under ~1.7A load.
So literally I gave up and continue to use what I have right now, at least for now.
I bought a garbage USBC cable and while it didn’t fry my device, it damn near got me in several car accidents. It was faulty and continually disconnected and reconnected for no apparent reason while I was driving. This meant losing navigation at total random, even when I needed information to make turns.
I have no idea why a brand new cable would behave like this but after several scary interactions on the road I stopped trusting the standard and bought a better cable.
1). If I have 4 USBC devices, and 1 USBC port, how do I connect them? With previous versions I buy a $10 hub. There are literally zero options to accomplish this with Usbc ( if I am wrong I would love to know about it, this is actually a problem I have)
2). The cables. Some cables support certain data. Some certain power. There are no markings to give me any of this information at all.
...albeit it'll only do data, and won't let you do P/D or video.
My impression is that the cheap-hub product got a lot harder to make because of how much more USB-C supports, such that you need to caveat any cheap product (as I had to there), and the products that do support all the USB-C features wind up being full dock-type hubs that start at around $70.
It has its own power supply. I have a USBC 14 inch monitor and a webcam plugged into the hub, and the hub plugs into my MacBook. The hub can power my external monitor, webcam and the MacBook.
> Leung, who has been testing USB-C cables and posting about them on Amazon(Opens in a new window), posted a one-star review(Opens in a new window) of Surjtech's 3M USB A-to-C cable. Why did it earn such low marks? It "seriously damaged the laptop computer I am using for these reviews, a Chromebook Pixel 2015, and two USB PD Sniffer devices (Twinkie)," he said.
> To further quell that fear Nintendo has provided a landing page that explains what’s safe — and it basically boils down to USB-A to USB-C with 56K OHM resistors. Bottom line? Don’t get cheap bargain bin cables and you “should” be okay according to Nintendo. Or you can just opt for USB-C to USB-C to be safe.
Nintendo is a good example of vendors gone wild when it comes to usb-c and how to do it wrong, but so are raspberry pi's and many other vendors initially. Apple adding yet some another abomination to the mix after the dust almost settled, simply just to maintain some market relevance when it comes to selling overpriced dongles and power supplies. It is unwelcome in the current mess of usb-c as staying just the own bastard thing externally with lightning. Did the EU really change any of the waste or spend? No, just filled whole new landfills with lightning accessories.
Everyone is still going to have to re-buy 4x $60-100 power adapters, a $50 headphone jack for usb-c, and most anything else the want to connect to it. If you share a household with (gasp!) android, then you still gotta keep a bin for the apple vs android/everyone else crap and/or label them.
> Everyone is still going to have to re-buy 4x $60-100 power adapters
This is untrue assuming you mean people switching from a Lightning iPhone to a USB C iPhone. Existing iPhones already charge over USB C PD (to Lightning) using the same USB C power adapters as a typical modern Android device or laptop, for example.
It hasn't been a major issue since the first few years of general use. Some people got burned and remember but not the other 99 cables that were fine.
You should still by from a trusted or well reviewed source/manufacturer. My issue is the cheaper long cables I have all work but charging is not fast, just normal speed.
> Buy good quality cables from name brands such as Anker.
Unfortunately that does not always help. My Anker cable started to burn next to me, while I was trying to fall asleep. It wasn't even USB-C, but still mini usb. Fortunately I didn't fall asleep fast enough and noticed a strange smell. Very scary, though.
How did support handle this situation when you reached out?
I tend to take a picture of the barcode / proof of purchase with my phone and tag it with the item name before I chuck the box. The one issue I had with an anker cable I submitted a ticket with a picture of the defect, picture of the proof of purchase / barcode and the invoice from Amazon. New cable arrived in a couple days. I was impressed. Their stuff seems to hold up.
Any more details on where you sourced the charger / cable? Power supply? US/EU?
While this may be true, it is just a short-term solution because the EU will just change the law again if it annoys too much. It would be far more easy for all of us to not only follow the letter of the law but also its spirit. But this wouldn't be a very Apple thing to do.
The stated goals of the eu law are about ewaste. Can you explain how you think the spirit of the law is that every device needs to support all accessories? Do earbuds have to support external hard drives?
USB stacks seem to have a lot of vulnerabilities. I would unironically prefer a non-data cable that just did negotiated power delivery, so I wouldn’t need to carry a trusted charger.
If consumers are fine then the vast majority of cables I’d see people owning would be Apple cables. That’s rarely the case. Most people are buying 3rd party cables even to use with Apple devices and I doubt any but a small minority even know what MFI is, never mind basing their purchasing decision on it.
Edit: To add to the anecdata, here’s a Reddit thread on the iPhone subreddit where the majority of folks are responding by saying they’re buying non Apple chargers.
But they are fine with it only because those safety mechanisms are not enforced by goverments already, and of course Apple is more than happy to be the one in charge of enforcing it.
For things with actual safety issues like batteries and power bricks, the government should be regulating them more. For things like "does this usb-c cable meet the required specs to provide consistent video and high speed data transfers?", this seems like exactly the kind of thing private companies can validate.
God forbid you buy one of those "cheaper" $20 rubber cables and live in a house with pets. No joke, I have went through more than a half dozen of those cables from regular wear-and-tear.
I wouldn't call that "Apple's own" cable. That's a third-party cable that they sell in their store, and is notably more expensive than their own officially-branded cables.
(That said, I do agree that their branded cables are generally overpriced for their level of durability.)
While their accessories are quite overpriced, it's not just "in the name of". It's in reality, too: there are quite a few teardowns comparing the insides of e.g. Apple chargers vs. generic chargers. Whatever issues you may have with Apple accessories, cheaper ones are often much worse.
>USB cables available online from any arbitrary retailer could be so wildly out of spec they burn out gadgets, or include some phone home thing.
Apple's tristar (or whatever they call it now on new models) should reject anything out of spec, I don't think a cable should be ultimately trusted that it will work due to very real world wear scenarios.
For many many years there wasn't a reliable seeming 3rd party lightning to HDMI adapter. I bought mine in about 2019ish? And besides Apple the only one I could find was a sketchy clone of Apple's.
Exactly this! I think the MFi chip just has to be on the device, then any cable works.
MFi is costly and annoying (Android's AOAP is much easier because there is no paperwork and no key distribution), but it does bring some security (like "I am plugging this authenticated MFi ethernet adapter that was audited and that shouldn't pretend to be a keyboard and do stuff on my behalf")
> * Data will only be allowed to pass to a certified accessory
How can you read that as a feature?
They want to protect users against themselves? What about a software interface for USB Host options (like OTG, how to present media, etc) is great. Does iOS already have one of those? A proprietary layer that stops you from using USB-C features unless they say it's okay is an abuse of their position. This is a money-grab.
Though I would like it to be more open (like the Android AOAP), I disagree with the "abuse of position".
They build a smartphone, they don't have to enable ethernet-over-usb if they don't want to (most Android phones don't). Just like they don't have to add cameras to their smartphones if they don't want to.
I guess they can totally say "you can only use MFi-certified ethernet adapter with iOS devices", and this actually brings security ("when you plug an ethernet adapter in your iPhone, you can be sure it won't behave like a keyboard and try to hack you").
Of course I wish everything was more open. But that does not make it an abuse of their position. Most software out there is vendor-locked and proprietary.
My understanding is that they would need to redesign the SOC since USB3 wasn't part of the standard A series chips. The few iPad Pro's that have USB3 have an external controller.
Why would only two of the four iphone 15 models support the higher speed then? Are they putting in 2 different chips for the same model? I think all of them are using the A17
Are there even Android phones out there with USB 3.0 or higher over USB-C?
My current gen phone also only support USB 2.0 and it's ridiculously slow to get data off of it. I usually put in an SD card, copy all data over and put the SD card into my PC.
> Theoretically it should be possible for a cable to spoof the ID of what it's connected to though, right?
Yes, but the authentication doesn't appear to be simple ID spoofing. This is from the announcement of the standard they're using:
"The USB 3.0 Promoter Group today announced the USB Type-C Authentication specification, defining cryptographic-based authentication for USB Type-C chargers and devices. Using this protocol, host systems can confirm the authenticity of a USB device or USB charger, including such product aspects as the descriptors/capabilities and certification status. All of this happens right at the moment a wired connection is made – before inappropriate power or data can be transferred."
Lightning accessories used crypto-based verification. I would be surprised if the next iteration for USB-C is not significantly stronger. So more than a simple spoof / replay attack will likely be required.
No, I don't think so. At least for MFi (which this rumor suggests they will extend to USB-C), there is an authentication co-processor. That's not just an ID, it's cryptography.
So theoretically it could be possible to break the authentication, but in practice, we can assume it's at least very hard.
That sounds not like they’re limiting it, just that they are not providing drivers for every device under the Sun and are not providing a mechanism to install third party drivers.
I'm not sure if I believe this rumor yet. I haven't seen that "This accessory is not supported" message on an Apple device in many years (and even then, it was only when a legit cable was starting to wear out). I've used several cheap chargers and accessories that I'm almost certain are not "Apple certified." Does this program even still exist? Also, iPad Pros have USB-C, and as far as I can tell they are broadly compatible with things like USB audio interfaces which I'm also fairly confident have not gone through any sort of Apple certification process.
> I haven't seen that "This accessory is not supported" message on an Apple device in many years
Well with the lightning cable it's pretty clear that it has to be MFi-certified, right?
> iPad Pros have USB-C, and as far as I can tell they are broadly compatible with things like USB audio interfaces which I'm also fairly confident have not gone through any sort of Apple certification process.
Sure. The thing is that MFi is some kind of authentication that goes on top. To me it really feels like they were forced to move to USB-C, so they did it, and now the rumor says that they are porting MFi to USB-C (which makes total sense, I don't see a reason for them to drop the MFi program).
"Activating" MFi with USB-C is just a matter of updating the software (assuming that they have the cryptography hardware in the device).
IMHO the rumor is really plausible. Actually I was expecting MFi to be there from the beginning on, and I was confused by the fact that it was not there: I don't see USB-C as a technical reason for them to drop MFi.
Hmm I guess that fan is just getting power from the device. MFi authenticates the data channel, but I doubt there is any data moving between the device and the fan, right?
That's because all those third-party vendors probably went out of business or abandoned Apple. I had lots of Y adapters to work around the problem Apple created but never solved: There was no way to charge the phone AND use an asinine headphone-jack dongle. The answer was a simple cable, with no power source.
Overnight, they all stopped working because Apple wasn't getting its fee from those manufacturers.
And now you have USB-C-Apple to keep you guessing.
So this just brings us full circle that now we're going to have still apple vs. everyone else connectors, power adapters, etc and now it's going to be more confusing as you won't always know the difference until something frys.
All this means is the first Chinese company to get their hands on the new chips will still reverse engineer it, clone the first keys they get, and resume dumping cloned apple crap gadgets without any certifications. All so Apple can keep selling goddamn dongles to the rich herds that don't mind the Apple tax.
Way to go, the perfect perversion of the intended results. I do hope the EU crams this down their throats and keep them on the hook for non-compliance by just creating a new divergent usb-c spec for themselves.
> And now you have USB-C-Apple to keep you guessing.
Pick a random USB C cable today.
Now tell me:
- what speed data does it support?
- how much power can it delivery?
- can it do video over USB C?
Now pick a random USB C powered device like sone Sony headphones or low end devices that come with a USB A to USB C cord. You try to charge it with a USB C to USB C cable and find it doesn’t work because the device doesn’t actual support USB C power delivery
USB-C devices have a "priority" number: Which number is up to the manufacturer. That number determines which device will be the host. There is a process for Power Role Swap to be initiated by the user, but I have never done this myself :)
I don't know if it counts as a divergent USB-C spec to be honest. For instance, I can create a device that takes USB-C for charging and for a keyboard, but that does not mean that my device must support ethernet-over-usb, right?
Such an iOS device could support USB-C charging, but e.g. only accept ethernet-over-usb from certified adapters.
I don't think that they can force the cable to be authentified, it's really just that there must be their authentication coprocessor on the accessory side.
USB is a universal serial bus - if you're using that bus to eliminate the universality or seriality of it's data, you may as well be using your own cable. If Apple goes through with this (and I suspect they won't), the antitrust response will drop like a Smash Brothers character announcement. It happened when they got cheeky with Dutch regulators, nothing is stopping it from happening again.
I think you are misunderstanding it. The fact that it is "universal" means that it can be used for different purposes. Not that it must support all of them.
Try to plug a USB-C keyboard into your laptop and use it as a webcam... because it connects with USB-C does not mean that it is a camera.
Nothing says that a smartphone has to support everything it can. Typically, ethernet-over-usb is not really a supported feature of Android. It can work, it works on some phones, and on others it seems like the kernel module is just not there (so it doesn't work at all). Is that an antitrust issue? I don't think so: the phone manufacturer just decided that their phones would not do ethernet-over-usb, that's their choice.
Lets wait and see. Most of the Apple rumors have about a 50% hit rate. Sometimes things are worse, sometimes better. I know that's not very exciting but there's just no point in reacting to something which isn't on the market yet.
There was the same complaints thing when the iPad Pro moved over to USB-C and that turned out to be a full TB3 implementation after a couple of generations.
> It is worth noting that the USB-C interface currently used by Apple in the 10th-generation iPad, iPad mini, iPad Air, and iPad Pro, do not contain an IC chip for authentication, meaning that this would be a first for ports of this kind offered by the company.
These are rumors, easy bait for clicks. I'll happily eat my words when this comes to fruition, but at this point is there any evidence Apple is actually interested in doing this?
The MFI (Made for iPhone) program is today a significant revenue generator, allowing Apple to take a commission on every certified iPhone accessory. if Apple wish to continue licensing accessories for money in this way they will likely need some way of identifying approved accessories as they can with Lightning today.
The MFI program largely makes money because Apple control the lightning connector interface and can thus be the gatekeeper. While I don't like it personally, it does make some sense to me the mfi program might want this feature for a USB-C iPhone and future iPad models.
Like others, I suspect it would be data access only limited to the certified devices - any old USB-C cable will likely still work to charge. This likely satisfies the EU charging law changes and lets them keep much of the MFI revenues.
That the MFI program exists is frankly evidence enough for me to believe Apple would do this - they sell many more iPhones than iPads, and the change can be incorporated into future iPad models.
You don't need to be Apple to work out that its a large number - the number of devices and cables bearing the MFI logo sold every year across the world is pretty nuts.
How much do you think Apple makes on certified devices - especially with all of the perfectly capable knocks off compared to the segments that they do break out - iPhones, iPads, services, wearables, etc?
Good question. The local Aldi here was selling charging cables the other day: micro-USB and USB-C cables were €2.99, the Lightning version €8.99; Same brand, length, etc.
While sure there's some extra margin on those cables it seems the cost of MFi certification seems to be more than just a penny per cable.
But I haven't encountered a cable or accessory that doesn't work in many years. Is the claim that Apple prevents non-MFI cables or accessories from working with iPhones? Because I am nearly certain that is not the case.
It is definitely the case. I guess that MFi does not prevent third-party chargers to work with a lightning cable, but it certainly does require authentication for data transfer.
Now, iOS supports ethernet-over-lightning, so you can plug an ethernet adapter and have it connect to your router. But it is illegal to make an accessory that would "integrate" an ethernet adapter. If you make an accessory, it has to go through the MFi protocol.
Here is an example: if you take a DJI drone and connect the remote controller to your iOS (lightning) device, it goes over MFi. It would be illegal (as per the Apple ToS) for DJI to use ethernet over lightning there.
This sounds naive, but why is it advantageous for Apple to limit transfer speeds? I understand adding a chip to control which accessories are fully compatible, but isn’t this a missed opportunity for Apple to tote new transfer speeds? Or would they only relegate transfer speeds for uncertified products?
I believe it's simply that their older SoCs do not support USB 3 because it has never needed it. And the base not-Pro models will probably re-use the last year's Pro SoCs as it did this year. My bet is the new Pros will use a new SoC, and then the year after base phones will re-use that SoC and have USB 3.
Even when they re-used the iPhone SoCs for iPads, their solution is to add a separate USB 3.0 host controller, while leaving the client USB on the SoC USB 2.0: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ipad-mini-6-is-still-us... . That didn't stop them from advertising it as USB 3.0 of course.
I still fail to see the case for a tech-savvy user to ever purchase or use a single Apple device.
We don't need an ecosystem that doesn't allow to change much on our devices. We don't need an ecosystem that won't even let us charge our devices with the cables that are supposed to fit them. Apple deserve to rot and die in its own arrogance.
MFi is there to authenticate the accessory (using an authentication coprocessor which supposedly cannot be reverse-engineered).
But that does not say that the chip has to be in the cable, does it? It just means that the iOS device may require authentication, so the accessory device needs the chip.
In that case, it's all compliant: we could reuse the chargers/usb cables. It's just that not all accessories will be allowed, which is another problem.
Of course I'm not a big fan of the MFi-related costs, and I think it would be nice to have an open version of it (just like AOAP on Android). But in terms of security, being able to cryptographically authenticate the accessory from an iOS app is actually nice.
Not necessarily. Tons of audio-connector cables stopped working overnight when Apple pettily disabled them. One end of the cable was Lightning, and the other two ends were USB A and a 1/8" stereo audio plug.
I see. Well I can't imagine that it would be fine to require an MFi chip in USB-C cables. Because that destroys the whole point of using USB-C cables indeed.
If the rumor is true, I would bet that it's more about bringing MFi to USB-C devices. Which is totally compatible with USB-C.
There's really no winning for Apple here. Whether they limit cable types or provide a disclaimer, people will go to their stores and complain "This phone is broken, it won't connect to my computer!". They'll train their employees to explain "Sorry not all USB-C cables are capable of transmitting data" much like they had to train them to say "No that iPad uses USB-C, you can't use a lightning cable to charge it".
No one will ever blame themselves, or the shoddy cables, they will always blame Apple.
True, but intentionally making USB-C less functional doesn't seem likely to solve the problem you describe either.
In addition to whatever "normal" confusion there is around USB-C, now you'll have people wondering why their expensive Thunderbolt 4/USB 3.x cable that works as a Thunderbolt 4/USB 3.x cable for every other device is behaving like it's 2005 when plugged into a brand new iPhone.
If you purchase a cable from somewhere else and it doesn't work with your iPhone, Apple will say "no idea, it's not our cable".
If your Apple custom USB-C cable doesn't work with your Android phone, Apple will say "no idea, it's not our device".
Apple only guarantees that an Apple iPhone can transfer data through an Apple (or Apple certified) USB-C cable. Nothing more, nothing less. They don't have to manufacture their cables to be compliant with USB-IF standards as the EU law is only about charging and not about data transfer.
The EU laws are to blame. The law should have been "the manufacturer will implement USB-IF compliant charging and connectivity" instead of "there will be a port that has the same form factor as USB-C that can be used for charging".
I believe the second revision of the law will be to this effect, which Apple will comply in 2030.
> Imagine where consumer electronics could be if they didn't have to be designed for the lowest common denominator.
I don't need to imagine, I can just look at the bajillion USB-C standards and versions that were not "designed for the lowest common denominator."
It got to the point where almost monthly we have posts on HN that discuss the clusterfuck that is USB-C naming standards, as well as giant guides on how to buy the correct USB-C cable without losing your mind. I bet you can easily find people ranting about it in the comment section of almost every thread that mentions USB-C on HN, even this one (and if not, just give this thread a bit more time).
At this point, I prefer to not try encouraging more of those fantasies of standards (like USB-C) "not designed for the lowest common denominator" becoming closer to reality.
When I read lowest common denominator, I think "backwards compatible".
Which has been hugely beneficial to technology. Imagine if WiFi standards weren't backwards compatible.
If technology wasn't built to the lowest common denominator, whilst you might accelera progress, you would do it at the cost of convenience and ease of functionality.
"No that iPad uses USB-C, you can't use a lightning cable to charge it".
As an iPad pro owner, I can confirm that not every USB-C cable or charging brick or USB outlet can charge an iPad either, and there's no shady MFi business involved. USB-C is a mess. If you had 5 USB-C cables and a lightning cable before and you were mad about that, you're going to have 6 USB-C cables now. One cable for everything is a myth/fantasy. My Quest 2 needs a special USB-C LINK cable. My monitor needs a special USB-C cable that can do 4K HDMI at 120hz(not all of them can!). My eGPU needs a USB-C cable with thunderbolt 3/4.
This comment seems delusionally weird-world to me.
Yes there are different USB-C cables. Official ones all support at least 5Gbps USB3 and 60W charging. Unofficial ones sometimes dump the USB3 and only have USB2.0 connections, which is a messy complication, but it's advertised pretty clearly from what I've seen.
There is so much fear-mongering going on, to convince folks USB-C is evil & awful & horrible. It mostly just works. You don't need a lot of cables: you need a regular USB-C cable and one expensive 40Gbps cable for special purposes.
I don't believe it's fear mongering to accurately point out that the convenience of mandating USB-C is oversold using real examples from devices I own. Ultimately, people end up needing device specific cables or permanently connected cables with specific features.
Another example: A gaming laptop that can be charged via USB-C at 100W PD but needs its own 240W power brick with proprietary tip to take full advantage of the GPU. If "USB-C charging" were a selling point I'd be disappointed.
That's already a problem with USB-C: try to charge a laptop with a small phone charger: if it doesn't provide enough power, it won't charge. Because it fits doesn't mean that it works.
Isn't this more limited to the end of the cable pumping out the volts? Take that same "small phone charge" and connect the cable to a bigger adapter and it should work.
It doesn't really matter in terms of support requests, it is equally confusing. Instead of an intuitive "it doesn't fit, so it won't work", USB-C forces the users to understand what they are plugging. Some are obvious of course (it probably won't charge if you plug a keyboard), but the chargers are not.
But yeah, at least the cables can be reused. And people will learn :)
> No one will ever blame themselves, or the shoddy cables, they will always blame Apple.
No one blames Apple when their non-MFI lightning cable stops working. Apple trained their customers to only trust accessories purchased from Apple stores. Even for non-electrical items such as cases or screen protectors. Don't worry, Apple will be fine.
I buy lightning cables directly from Apple. They cost 2-3x as much as generic ones on Amazon but last 5-10x as long. Meanwhile my kids have iPads that are so old they have home buttons and lightning ports, yet still work great while all their cousins have Kindle Fires that are pieces of junk that get replaced yearly.
And of course Apple gives me free delivery of the cables within 2-3 days (Apple Store a few towns over) while even with Amazon Prime I’m waiting sometimes a week for a cable or whatever to be drop shipped from far away.
I’m years away from having to deal with whatever BS happens with these USB-C cables, but I bet by that time the market will have already killed the decent 3rd parties and segmented things into two categories - junk and Apple.
My ye olde iPad 2 is still in use, even though the screen is cracked and the OS hasn't updated in god knows how many years.
Meanwhile I've got a few fancy Nokia Win10 tablets that are literal trash (OS stopped updating) and a pile of Android tablets that can't even display a web page properly. All newer than the iPad 2.
Would a USB-C port that cannot connect to anything but Apple's approved hardware even comply with the legislation? I thought the whole point was interoperability, particularly in term of chargers. If Apple sticks a port that looks like a USB-C port but that doesn't behave like a USB-C port, surely it won't be treated as a USB-C port?
I don't think anyone is talking about that. Currently you can use any USB-C or USB-A charging brick to charge your phone. And even non-certified Lightning cables charge the phone.
Considering that charging is the most dangerous thing a cable can do, Apple's motives for this sort of restrictions can be boiled down to the usual monopolistic approach.
"As a proof of concept, the three researchers created a malicious version of an iOS Facebook app that also includes a Trojan that runs in the background, capable of taking screenshots, simulating button touches, and sending data to a remote server."
That was done by exploiting developer mode, and was fixed by asking the user before any data transmission is enabled. The only thing that is allowed "blindly", and hence the most dangerous, is charging. No need for any racketeeri-- sorry, Apple-controlled whitelist.
How is it fixed when a significant percentage of the customer base will end up clicking yes, some due to ignorance, some by pure error? This isn't how security works.
Considering that charging is the most dangerous thing a cable can do
You must not have been around for the era when data exfiltration via charging cables and bricks was a thing.
Buy a charging cable from some random Chinese reseller on Amazon, and bingo — data in your phones goes back to the PRC.
I still have about five little black USB security dongles in my drawer from this era. They only allowed the charging pins to connect to the phone or computer. The data lines are physically disconnected. We used to call them "charging condoms."
MFi is not about the cable. It's about authenticating the accessory. I see it as some kind of DRM, because you can't reverse-engineer the protocol and connect your own accessory.
IMHO if USB-C stuff doesn't work with Apple's USB-C, then Apple's USB-C is not really USB-C and should n't get certification.
Standards must be defended against corruption and degradation, and if those standards are mandatory, then everyone's implementation of it must be compliant.
Actually, USB is generally a security concern (some corporations disable the USB ports in their computers). So there is a case to make for security by having more control on the data that goes over USB.
But I don't think that it is about authenticating the cable. Rather it's about authenticating the accessory. Which I believe makes sense in terms of security (well Android doesn't do it with AOAP and nobody cares, but that's a design decision).
I guess we shouldn't be surprised. It feels like Apple does this sort of thing out of spite. "You're going to require us to do something? Ok, but we're going to pervert it and twist it and avoid the spirit of the requirement."
It's interesting that you feel that Apple is somehow anti-USB-C, when Apple contributed to the standard and was an early adopter both on laptops and tablets.
I'll propose an alternative explanation to "Apple has contempt for users like me": At Apple scale, the first version of any radical change (and this is one, after a decade of Lightning) must limit risk. Based on that, of course Apple will initially limit connections to chargers known to work, and the way they do that is via MFi.
That’s hilarious.
EU: everyone has use USB-C now. Apple: hold my beer.
As much as I loathe "late stage capitalism" - the USB-C was a wrong choice from the very beginning.
* All USBC Cables will work for charging
* Probably all USBC cables will work for connecting to accessories
* Data will only be allowed to pass to a certified accessory
I think this is more likely to be very careful about what accessories you can use versus trying to stop you from being able to use an average usb cable to charge.