"I'll change my phone to C."
This is the flag that many people set before the release of the new generation of iPhones
Judging from the information currently revealed, such a flag can continue to stand
After it was first adopted on the iPhone 5 in 2012, the interface formed a huge ecosystem
The latest news from iDropNews said that Apple will continue to use the Lighitng interface in the iPhone 14 series this year
It's a cliché
When the MacBook Pro adopted the Type-C interface in 2015, the outside world predicted that the iPhone 6s would also replace the interface
And then it's been predicted until now.
When Apple CMO Phil Schiller introduced the Lightning interface at the iPhone 5 launch in September 2012, he called it "the modern interface of the next decade."
He really believes what he says
Ten years ago, the iPhone's Dock and Lightning interfaces had absolute performance and scalability advantages for Android's micro USB interface at that time
The Micro USB has only 5 digital signal designs, while the Lightning interface has 9 digital signal designs
And the Lightning interface can be inserted without any deviation, convenient and easy to use
Due to the exclusive interface, Apple has introduced MFi (Made for iOS) certification, Apple's licensing of accessory manufacturers
For Apple, MFi certification not only ensures that accessory manufacturers produce products that meet their own standards, but also can charge certification fees
Two years after Apple launched the Lightning interface, Android manufacturers have also upgraded the interface from micro USB to Type-C
The universal Type-C connection method does not only appear on Android mobile phones, many tablets, laptops or desktop products also provide a Type-C interface, but the transmission protocol is some USB, and some are Thunderbolt
Even Apple itself has successively replaced the iPad product line and the Mac product line with a Type-C interface
This makes the iPhone with the Lightning interface an outlier
Although Apple has launched a series of adapter accessories, there is no user experience in the complicated mutual transfer method
And Lighting theoretically only supports USB 2.0 (480 Mbps) data transfer, which seriously lags behind the competition, slow to transmit large-volume ProRes video, and wastes 1TB of memory capacity
As long as Apple kills the Lightning interface, it can solve these problems, but why not?
Most media interpretations are that the annual licensing fees (hundreds of millions of dollars per year) charged by Apple through MFi certification have received soft hands
On the one hand, on the other hand, we may never use an iPhone with a Type-C interface
Former Apple design director Jonny Ive has publicly stated that Apple's ultimate goal is to make the iPhone look like "a piece of glass"
At the same time, Apple has also repeatedly expressed its ambition to "create a wireless future", so in the future, when Apple removes the Lightning interface of the iPhone, it is not replaced by a Type-C interface, but all interfaces are eliminated
Before MacSafe implemented fast wireless data transfer, Apple may transition by upgrading Lighitng's data transfer rate
So there are some things that years can't do
Ten years later, iPhone users still use the Lighitng interface
Ten years have passed, and we only have one more day off on May Day in 2012, and we still have only one extra day off on May Day in 2022