Apple officially missed the mark on USB-C with this year's iPhones

The latest Apple iPhones, the XS and XR, have been announced and, once again, Apple has made the incredibly frustrating choice of including a USB Type A Lightning cable and a low-power 5W brick in the box instead of a USB-C cable and charger.

Apple has not explained why it insists on selling its latest, best-selling smartphones and, in most cases, more than $ 1,000 with the same cable it has built since Lightning's introduction in 2012 It may be a simple question of cost. The company may be afraid to alienate customers with a new unknown cable.

But USB-C is not new or unknown at this point, especially for Apple's most loyal customers exclusive choice of port on almost all laptops sold by Apple.

In 2015, when Apple opted for the 12-inch MacBook, and then consolidated that decision with the 2016 MacBook Pros, it was based on the fact that it would move the industry forward by forcing people to use the new Port. But years later, the growth of USB-C was still terribly slow in the industry, and many new products refuse to put the port on their devices since the adoption "is not here yet. "

Apple is part of this problem: including USB-C cables in Lightning reinforces the fact that USB-C is not a "real" standard port. Why should accessory manufacturers invest in the USB-C if Apple does not consider them a side project?

The frustration also comes from the fact that USB-C cables are not the only ones that are more practical than legacy USB cables. it is that they are legitimately better. The USB-C supports higher power than the old Type-A standard, and it's the only way to get a fast charge on an iPhone 8, 8 Plus, X, XS, XS or XR . Not only does Apple charge users of its most expensive phones a $ 20- $ 30 fee to use these devices with their laptops, but it also connects them with an even worse experience.

And it's not like Apple is worried about alienating its customers by no longer including a type of cable inherited from the box with its phones. If that was the case, he would still include the dongle with his new iPhones.

All this highlights perhaps the biggest frustration with Apple and USB-C: the fact that the company refused to put the port on its iPhone devices. Apple's membership in Lightning makes no sense. This gives the company a port that it can fully control, instead of relying on often messy and different specifications for the USB-C. And there is also the MFi program, which essentially allows Apple to accurately determine what kinds of accessories can work with its phones and tablets, as well as the additional license revenue it gets from each authorized Lightning device.

Imagine a world where Apple made the change with the iPhone 7 to not only destroy the headphone jack, but also switch to USB-C? Or maybe last year's iPhone X, announced as the bright future of the company's mobile devices, would it have been a good place to make the change, given all the other updates that Apple doing.

This is the kind of change that would almost certainly lead the entire industry to the glorious standard of universal port (which, again, Apple already uses exclusively on its laptops). Do you think that there would be a dry helmets or USB-C dongles if Apple had put all the power of its new iPhones behind them?

In addition, rumors of a possible iPad USB-C only call into question the reason why there is no iPhone USB-C. There can be no question of confusion of switching standards. After all, everything is well suited to switching to Lightning, and Lightning ports are now more prevalent than the old 30-pin connector.

Instead, we're not just stuck by the Lightning ports, but by a terrible USB Type-A cable inherited to boot. And as long as Apple does not intend to recognize the port standard it claims to try to popularize, we'll be stuck in this void for the foreseeable future.