They're also moving towards everything wireless. I can't remember the last time I plugged my iPhone into my MBP. It syncs to iCloud and updates are all OTA.
> Never mind that wires will always be better ... than wireless.
For some values of "better". For me, not plugging in and needing to carrying around wires is always better.
> and more private
Wireless can be secure and unencrypted wired transfers can be sniffed via the electromagnetic radiation they emit. This isn't as cut and dry as some like to pretend.
Welcome to the difference between "in a security researcher's dreams" and "occurs frequently out in the real world".
I went to a security conference once where a presenter was telling me about a previous conf, where he was demonstrating a 'free wifi' box that snooped on all connections and pulled passwords out of them. He was demoing it on stage when the wifi went out in the other auditorium behind (also part of the sec conference). His magic little box then went berserk as huge amounts of security professionals at a security hacking conference then connected to it to try and re-establish their wifi. [1]
Compare this kind of story to the kind of setup you need to have to sniff EM radiation from a cat-5 cable.
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[1] The point of his story was that security professionals love to lecture others on correct tech use, but in reality the sec recommendations come so thick and fast that even the sec professionals don't keep up with them. How is a mere mortal to cope?
I totally agree that in general, wired will beat wireless for security. After all, you can also encrypt your wired connections. I was merely pointing out that it's not a guarantee that wireless is worse. It can be secure.
The "better" argument was my bigger disagreement. Wired isn't "better" in any absolute terms. I'll happily use wireless rather than wired for the convenience of walking across my house with my laptop. Or, you know, actually using my cell phone.
> For some values of "better". For me, not plugging in and needing to carrying around wires is always better.
Ha! I don't believe it for a second. The other day my iPhone went from 100% to dead in less than an hour - in airplane mode using only the music app and strava.
This anecdote seems lacking value. I don't know why your phone died in an hour, but given that you claim to have been in airplane mode, I don't see how "wireless" is relevant.
Given that you were using Strava, I'd guess you killed your battery running GPS, but that doesn't mix with airplane mode.
My MacBook doesn't have its own data plan, so when I'm out and can't sponge off someone's free WiFi (or don't trust it), I tether my phone. It's a great thing to be able to do.
And if I'm in that situation (often: in a library, a school parking lot waiting for my kid's basketball practice to end, etc.) I'm stingy about battery power. I turn off the Mac's Wifi (which makes a big difference), and wire tether my phone.
If this is so true, they should have erred in the other direction. Made the cable plug into usb-c by default, and make the wall connector usb-c as well. Then people like you can just keep it plugged into the wall and sync by iCloud, and I can plug my phone into my damn laptop without buying a new cable.
It's worth pointing out that when iPhone 7 came out the only Mac product with USB C was the small little MacBook. It wouldn't make much sense overall to ship iPhone with a USB-C lightning cable.
I would not be surprised if the next iPhone came with a USB-C cable.
You're doing it wrong. Apple wants you to just sync with iCloud; if you want to do things differently than how Apple wants you to do things, then you're not a very good Apple customer. You need to stop trying to think different.
Like the wireless keyboard, mouse and trackpad which you pair by connecting them to your computer with an USB-A to lightning cable, which is not possible with the current lineup of notebooks?
