Phones don't run on fuel (and you can recharge a phone with any electricity supply)
That analogy would be the charging port. Until the EU forced them to use USB-C, they refused to let you use anything but their proprietary (inferior) connector.
This is fiction. Apple co-developed USB-C, it's their tech, in particular the physical and electrical design in collaboration with Intel and HP (and Google and Microsoft on software drivers).
Changing connectors - after the 30 pin to lightning era - is a very annoying and wasteful thing where they and their customers wanted to wait as long as possible to do. On the other hand, Apple is legendary for pushing users to new ports far faster than the market is ready for them - original USB in 1997, and USB-C on laptops in 2015!
It was non-customers and competitors that pushed for USB-C. Th EU's mandate may have sped this up by a single annual iteration at best. Lightning cables are still ubiquitous to this day.
they refused to let you use anything but their proprietary (inferior) connector
Ah, the mask comes off!
The thing is, people who actually used lightning widely agree that it is better than USB-C. The tactile click is just miles better, to name just one example.
Tactile click? Really? Weird hill to die. You're willing to accept inferior hardware, more ewaste, and a tighter grip by Apple for a silly little click?
The Lightning port is also incredibly physically robust. You can use it as a phone stand without worrying about damaging it. You can’t say that about USB-C.
My favorite part of how robust it was was how literally every single Lightning connector had the same pin burn out. USB-C wishes it were that consistent.
Speeds aside (we talking about charging) lightning was in every way superior to USB-C. Still is. I would rather have lightning-like connector replace USB mess, but have to settle on USB-C.
I know this is the common wisdom (especially around these parts), and yes, I know the timing lines up, but I'm not convinced. Apple was actually on the USB-C steering committee, and they adopted USB-C as the One True Standard for Macs years before PC makers went whole hog on it. (One can argue they did it prematurely, or at least too aggressively, but that's a different post.)
So what's another explanation for sticking with Lightning so long?
1. When they changed from the original giant stupid fragile dock connector to Lightning, which was obviously a better connector, people screamed at them. A lot. For a very long time. It was all just a plot to make people buy new proprietary cables, you see. If USB-C had been fully finalized even a year earlier, they'd have probably gone with that instead of Lightning, but it wasn't, so they couldn't. Nerds like you and I might say, "Great, but why didn't Apple switch as soon as USB-C was widely available," to which the answer is: just try and imagine the shit they would get if they made people buy all new cables, again, just a few years later. Not gonna happen.
2. Your parentheses around "(inferior)" are doing a lot of heavy lifting there. The two connectors are very similar conceptually, and have slightly different tradeoffs: a Lightning port is thinner than a USB-C port, but USB-C's design puts the spring pins that actually make the connection in the cable rather than in the port, which is probably a better idea. Even so, it's not as if USB-C is just overwhelmingly superior to Lightning the way either of them are compared to, say, the original giant stupid fragile dock connector. There wasn't a whole lot of pressure to switch quickly.
3. Having said that, switching over time made technical sense, particularly once the Macs started going all-in on USB-C. There's no convincing reason the rest of Apple's devices wouldn't have followed suit eventually even without external pressure. Yes, "but they make more money by being proprietary," but counterargument: c'mon, the amount of extra money Lightning brought in was loose change in the couch cushions on Apple's scale, and they knew full well that people were going to buy USB-C cables from them at inflated prices at the same time they were buying their iPhones/iPads anyway. They are literally making up the difference, and more, in volume.
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That analogy would be the charging port. Until the EU forced them to use USB-C, they refused to let you use anything but their proprietary (inferior) connector.
This is fiction. Apple co-developed USB-C, it's their tech, in particular the physical and electrical design in collaboration with Intel and HP (and Google and Microsoft on software drivers).
Changing connectors - after the 30 pin to lightning era - is a very annoying and wasteful thing where they and their customers wanted to wait as long as possible to do. On the other hand, Apple is legendary for pushing users to new ports far faster than the market is ready for them - original USB in 1997, and USB-C on laptops in 2015!
It was non-customers and competitors that pushed for USB-C. Th EU's mandate may have sped this up by a single annual iteration at best. Lightning cables are still ubiquitous to this day.
Ah, the mask comes off!
The thing is, people who actually used lightning widely agree that it is better than USB-C. The tactile click is just miles better, to name just one example.
What mask exactly?
Tactile click? Really? Weird hill to die. You're willing to accept inferior hardware, more ewaste, and a tighter grip by Apple for a silly little click?
The Lightning port is also incredibly physically robust. You can use it as a phone stand without worrying about damaging it. You can’t say that about USB-C.
My favorite part of how robust it was was how literally every single Lightning connector had the same pin burn out. USB-C wishes it were that consistent.
Speeds aside (we talking about charging) lightning was in every way superior to USB-C. Still is. I would rather have lightning-like connector replace USB mess, but have to settle on USB-C.
I know this is the common wisdom (especially around these parts), and yes, I know the timing lines up, but I'm not convinced. Apple was actually on the USB-C steering committee, and they adopted USB-C as the One True Standard for Macs years before PC makers went whole hog on it. (One can argue they did it prematurely, or at least too aggressively, but that's a different post.)
So what's another explanation for sticking with Lightning so long?
1. When they changed from the original giant stupid fragile dock connector to Lightning, which was obviously a better connector, people screamed at them. A lot. For a very long time. It was all just a plot to make people buy new proprietary cables, you see. If USB-C had been fully finalized even a year earlier, they'd have probably gone with that instead of Lightning, but it wasn't, so they couldn't. Nerds like you and I might say, "Great, but why didn't Apple switch as soon as USB-C was widely available," to which the answer is: just try and imagine the shit they would get if they made people buy all new cables, again, just a few years later. Not gonna happen.
2. Your parentheses around "(inferior)" are doing a lot of heavy lifting there. The two connectors are very similar conceptually, and have slightly different tradeoffs: a Lightning port is thinner than a USB-C port, but USB-C's design puts the spring pins that actually make the connection in the cable rather than in the port, which is probably a better idea. Even so, it's not as if USB-C is just overwhelmingly superior to Lightning the way either of them are compared to, say, the original giant stupid fragile dock connector. There wasn't a whole lot of pressure to switch quickly.
3. Having said that, switching over time made technical sense, particularly once the Macs started going all-in on USB-C. There's no convincing reason the rest of Apple's devices wouldn't have followed suit eventually even without external pressure. Yes, "but they make more money by being proprietary," but counterargument: c'mon, the amount of extra money Lightning brought in was loose change in the couch cushions on Apple's scale, and they knew full well that people were going to buy USB-C cables from them at inflated prices at the same time they were buying their iPhones/iPads anyway. They are literally making up the difference, and more, in volume.