This is going to take some time.
With the announcement that the Apple iPhone 15 and Apple iPhone 15 Pro would have a USB-C port, I will have to consider my options. I’m ready to embrace the change and say goodbye to the Apple Lightning port. However, there will be an adjustment period.
If you’re like me, you have a drawer full of accessories, charging devices, and other gadgets that all use the old charging standard. It’s been around forever, and this is a big change for Apple — presumably related to European regulations.
I have to start with a pair of Apple AirPods Max headphones, which have a Lightning port. What that means is the charger by my bed and in my kitchen use the port. (At least the normal charger for my phone is a wireless pad.) And then there’s the mountain of cables I already have — in the car, down in my living room, connected to various charging blocks in my house.
What will mostly need to change is the fact that I’m used to having a certain type of charger, and almost all of those cables will now be useless.
Except, they won’t be. I will still use them for the AirPods in my house when I am not charging with a wireless pad. My kids won’t be upgrading too soon, so they will need the old chargers, especially in the car. I’ll likely keep an iPhone 14 around for quite a while as a back-up.
And, there’s some nostalgia as well. I like the higher-end charging cable in my car — it’s thick, braided, and has lasted for years. It’s almost cool (if we can say that about charge cables), with a dark gray appearance and a sturdy USB connector. It has served me well.
Somehow, now I need to go out and buy about a dozen new USB-C charge cables and replace all of these existing Lightning cables, and probably toss most of the old ones.
This is not a gripe. The USB-C change is more than welcome, especially since I tend to use USB-C for many other gadgets in my house. It’s not like I can steal those cables, though, since they are used for quite a few different devices — from digital frames to other phones.
This does finally reduce the gadget charging world down to two main cables, since I still have quite a few Micro USB cables laying around. It took me a while to realize that it’s standing at about one third USB-C in my house, one third Micro USB, and one third Lightning.
For some reason, Micro USB has lasted longer than anyone expected. I have earbuds, game controllers, and plenty of back-up power devices that use Micro USB. And some of them are not even old or outdated — they still use that format.
What this might mean is that Apple will usher in a new age of focusing on USB-C as the main standard, and we’ll eventually see Micro USB phased out for good.
That might be just around the time a new USB standard emerges.