Apple Inc. should have moved to USB-C charging on the iPhone and other mobile devices a few years ago. After all, it switched to USB-C on some laptops in 2015 and on the iPad Pro in 2018.
Instead, it’s left its most loyal customers with a confusing patchwork of options. If you’re an Apple fan entrenched in its ecosystem—with an iPhone, AirPods, iPad, Apple Watch and MacBook—you need at least three different chargers: Lightning for the iPhone and AirPods, USB-C for the iPad Pro and MacBook, and MagSafe for the Apple Watch. The watch charger can double as an earbuds charger, so that helps. And Apple recently rolled out a second variant of MagSafe to charge its laptops. But it’s a far cry from the clean, simple approach to technology espoused by Apple.
Before you bring out the world’s smallest violin, I acknowledge that this is very much a First World problem. Anyone who can afford all those devices isn’t suffering too much. Still, it’s an area where Apple can and should make improvements.
As I outlined over a year ago, Apple’s charging strategy could look a lot simpler. And it soon will, thanks in part to the European Union. For about five years now, the EU has been pushing device makers to unify around USB-C for the sake of interoperability and environmental benefits. (Fewer kinds of chargers ideally means fewer of them wind up in landfills.)
This past week, the EU took another step in that direction with a law that requires makers of many devices—phones, tablets, cameras, headphones and headsets, e-readers, keyboards, mice, mobile navigation systems, and portable game consoles and speakers—to switch to USB-C by the end of 2024 for new products. This will extend to laptops in spring 2026.
Though lawmakers approved the EU regulation in June, the European Parliament signed off on it this past Tuesday, sealing the deal for the law to take effect in about two years.
Publicly, Apple has pushed back on the shift, saying last year that “strict regulation mandating just one type of connector stifles innovation rather than encouraging it, which in turn will harm consumers in Europe and around the world.”
Behind the scenes, though, Apple has been preparing for this law. I think the company will even handily beat the due date with its most visible products. The iPhone 15 is essentially a lock to get USB-C in the fall of 2023, beating the mandate by a year. The one remaining iPad without USB-C (the entry-level model), should be getting the port by the end of this year.
That leaves the AirPods, Magic Mouse, Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad as the lone devices that will need to eventually make the switch.
The law states that the shift applies to new devices. So, let’s assume Apple rolls out an iPhone SE in March 2024 with Lightning and not USB-C. That wouldn’t make that device out of compliance in the EU because it launched before the end of 2024. It just would mean that the 2025 or 2026 model would require the change.
I don’t think Apple will take that long to bring USB-C to all of its devices, though. I’d bet the next versions of the regular AirPods, AirPods Pro and AirPods Max all move to USB-C, and that transition should be done by 2024.
I’m expecting major Mac updates, including a new iMac and Mac Pro, next year. One could probably assume that move coincides with accessory updates. Given that Mac accessory changes are few and far between, I think it’s a safe bet that those accessories will move to USB-C in their next incarnation.
So why is Apple publicly pushing back on the law while privately planning the shift anyway? Well, the move is better for consumers and for the Apple ecosystem at large—and the company gets that. But it can’t publicly agree with the EU because then it would seem that a government is guiding its product development plans and that would set a bad precedent: If you don’t like how an Apple product works, try to change it via law.
Apple wants to be able to say that it decided to shift to USB-C for its own reasons. I’m sure Apple will explain it away as being speedier for powering up and making data transfers, as well as a more unified approach to charging across its products.
Still, I think the USB-C era will be far shorter-lived than the tenure of the 30-pin iPod connector or Lightning—at least for Apple’s mobile devices. The iPod connector was around for about 11 years, and Lightning will have lasted roughly that same length of time on the iPhone. I still believe that Apple’s future is wireless and that some version of the canceled AirPower dream from 2017 will eventually come to fruition—well before a decade from now.
At some point in the next few years, Apple will probably begin transitioning entirely to inductive charging on the iPhone and iPad, matching the Apple Watch.
The EU says that smartwatches are exempt from its new law, as are devices that don’t charge over a wired connection. So I’d bet that inductive charging and Apple’s wireless future is an effective workaround.
That’s assuming the company can finally figure out the technology. AirPower, which was announced in 2017 and scrapped in 2019, obviously didn’t do the trick.