There are a lot of rumors swirling about the iPhone 8, from the gossip that it could come with wireless charging to whispers that it may be made entirely of glass. But there’s a new one that’s curious and exciting in equal measure: Apple might finally be joining the rest of us in the twenty-first century and ditching their proprietary ports for USB.
The Wall Street Journal has a new round-up of claims, and while most of them are more or less unsurprising, like Apple using a flexible OLED to make their phone tougher, the WSJ also claims that Lightning is done. USB-C ports, which Apple already uses on its MacBook Pros will allegedly take Lightning’s place, standardizing ports across Apple’s current products.
This is a small switch, but it has huge implications. Apple’s insistence on using proprietary connectors that force people to carry around dongles has been company policy almost since day one. Of course, in the ’80s and ’90s, everyone was trying to make everybody else use some ridiculous adapter, but thankfully, in 2009, almost every mobile phone manufacturer agreed to go with USB, with Apple being the sole holdout. The intervening decade has meant that while most of us can use anybody’s charger and cords, Apple fans are still living like they’re in the latter days of the Clinton administration, technologically.
This change would be a step away from that policy. Part of this is that USB-C is basically Lightning in USB form, so Apple might have decided the virtues outweighed having to mingle with the proles. Of course, this will cause some pain to everyone who was heavily invested in Lightning, but at least now their phones will resemble something from this century.
(Via Mashable)