WSJ Tech Live 2022 Apple Interview
Apple’s software engineering chief Craig Federighi and marketing chief Greg Joswiak spoke with tech columnist Joanna Stern at The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live event in California on Tuesday. A full video of the interview is now available on YouTube.
Some good questions, but not a lot of real answers here. It’s notable that they neither defended Lightning as a technology nor indicated that they were working on anything better. They just like the name and the large installed base—and don’t like governments telling them what to do.
Apple’s vice president of worldwide marketing, Greg Joswiak, today said that Apple will have to move to USB-C on iPhone and its remaining devices that still have a Lightning connector in order to comply with new EU rules.
I wonder if the EU law works somewhat in Apple’s favour here. Apple were clearly already on a journey to USB-C with the rest of their products. Although some would argue, the iPhone was destined to be port-less. However, this allows Apple to redirect any possible negativity towards the switch to USB-C to the EU.
I know ordinary people in my life who don’t use social media or follow tech news at all and they are getting annoyed with the iPhone using “Apple proprietary port” instead of what everything else uses. This is anecdotal, of course, but this wasn’t a thing I heard 5 years ago, and now it comes up all the time when I talk to people about what they like/dislike about their iPhone.
Previously:
- Surface Pro 9
- EU Passes Law to Switch iPhone to USB-C
- Apple Is Building a Demand-side Platform
- Facebook Blames Apple, Usage Declines
- Picture This Clothing and App Tracking Transparency
- Peloton Blames App Tracking Transparency
- App Tracking Transparency Helps Apple’s Ads
- Why There’s No iMessage for Android
- Why There Is No Calculator on the iPad
2 Comments RSS · Twitter
The biggest impact won't be individual users, but friends and coworkers. Most people don't walk around 24/7 with their phone's power adapter and cable in their pocket. At home, it's no problem to keep the right adapter handy, but out in the world, being able to share with others will be a huge benefit.
At least a couple times a week, I hear someone running low on battery ask "Does anyone have a charger?", which is always met with half a dozen people asking "USB, or the Apple one?" It seems to be a law of nature that there's always exactly one person in the room with a charger. Half the time it's the wrong one.
Our crazy world of Apple-versus-everyone with chargers today reminds me of the 1980's and 1990's, when everything from floppy disks to text files were different on Mac and PC and Unix, and any other now-long-dead platform you might have been using.
Today, we have Unicode, and no user worries about having the wrong kind of text file, and no computer company seems distraught that they won't be able to innovate in character encodings. Path dependence exists, but compatibility is the killer feature of a collaborative world.
For those o use who have invested in the development of custom Lightning devices certified by MFI using the Accessory Framework, the question is will this finally be implemented on USB-C? Our customers can no longer use our Lighting Sesnors on iPads. Now it will be iPhones. Guess who gets blamed first?