after they already had a better cable
Better how? There is nothing in the iPhone 15 that was improved after changing the port. For the iPhone 15 Pro, faster transfer speeds are now supported but if we are honest, how many iPhone owners will ever transfer anything to or from their phones using a cable? I remember doing so once in the past 5 years. Using the cloud or AirDrop is significantly more convenient. On a device as small as the phone fast charging at higher wattage than what Lightning already provided is most likely going to murder your battery.
Now there’s landfills of useless lightning cables, while we can still use micro-usb for a lot of other old devices.
I don’t see why we couldn’t still use Lightning cables for old devices the same way as we can use micro-usb cables for old devices? Apple and other manufacturers have sold billions of devices and accessories utilizing Lightning. It’s not going to disappear any time soon.
proprietary
prə-prī′ĭ-tĕr″ē
adjective
Owned by a private individual or corporation under a trademark or patent.
I don’t see why we couldn’t still use Lightning cables for old devices the same way as we can use micro-usb cables
Because Lightning is proprietary. There are no old devices outside of Apple’s ecosystem that use Lightning.
Fucking everything uses/used micro usb. Flashlights, controllers, vapes, Rokus, etc… basically any consumer electronic you can think of had a version using micro usb on it for something at some point.
But Apple has alone sold a billion devices using Lightning. Many of those devices will likely remain usable for years.
Sure, but all of them will assuredly have a direct official USB-C replacement, that is also better in other ways(i.e over the base iphone 14, besides usb-c, the base 15 also gains the A16 SoC and dynamic island), in the near future. Nobody is saying get rid of those older devices just to be on the new standard, but eventually people WILL upgrade. Whether that be for new features,faster performance, better audio quality, or just plain wanting to be done with Lightning, something will cause them to upgrade.
Despite being obsolete in every single possible way, this isn’t the case for micro-usb. Unlike with Apple devices where there’s always a tangible, if maybe not worthwhile, upgrade on the newer model, there are SO many things micro-usb is used on that NEVER need to be replaced unless it physically breaks. Until they literally break, my micro-usb charged flashlight is just as good as my usb-c flashlight, my decade old alarm clock powered by micro-usb is just as good as a brand new usb-c alarm clock, etc…
