“The object of affection outside Apple is USB Type-C, which is quickly becoming the go-to connection port for this year’s top-shelf devices, bringing the new charging standard tantalizingly close to becoming universal for your household’s smartphones, tablets and laptops,” Ben Fox Rubin and Stephen Shankland report for CNET. “And what’s not to love about this blandly named flavor of USB? It’s one port that can be used for charging, running video to a TV and downloading files. It’s also reversible so folks don’t have to fumble to orient cords properly. With lots of devices using that standard, people won’t need to fill a drawer with different cables; they’ll just need a USB-C cord or two for PCs, phones and tablets.”
“Yet things are rarely simple in the tech world, especially when Apple is involved,” Rubin and Shankland report. “The Cupertino, California, tech giant on Tuesday unveiled a new keyboard, mouse and trackpad that charge using Apple’s proprietary Lightning port, the same type found on the iPhone and iPad. For now, at least, that dashes the hope that Apple may move to a standard everyone else is slowly embracing.”
“People can be forgiven for thinking Apple, the most valuable company worldwide, may shift away from Lightning to USB-C: In March it introduced a new MacBook laptop that uses a headphone jack and just one port, which happens to be USB-C. But with the new accessories supporting Lightning, it now seems less likely Apple will make such a change anytime soon, forcing many users to keep swapping different cords,” Rubin and Shankland report. “‘I’d be shocked if they went that way with the iPad and the iPhone,’ said Mike Feibus, principal analyst at TechKnowledge Strategies, of Apple switching to USB-C.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Why would we want our Apple Magic peripherals to have USB-C ports when we have, at all times, Lightning cables hanging off our iMacs for iPhones, iPods, iPads, and now for Magic Mouse 2, Magic Keyboard, and Magic Trackpad 3?