As far as I can tell, it’s a minuscule number. Apple has done everything in their power to remove the need to ever plug into another device. Backups are handled with iCloud, files are done in iCloud (although file management is pretty poor on iOS) and pretty much everything else can be done without needing to connect to iTunes anymore.
The only usecase I can think of is developers needing physical port access (though at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if you could remotely connect a device) and maybe anyone who’s moving large numbers of files on and off their phone (which doesn’t seem to be terribly well supported anyways)
Apple engineer here, you don’t need the physical port for that either. You need only plug in your device once, to pair it with Xcode, and from then on out you can run and debug the app over the network.
Honestly this part is cool. Much as I do enjoy Android’s development process, just getting started with iOS development is cleaner. Every time I start an Android project, I have to fight with drivers, fight with ADB, etc. Test Flight and Co. are really well supported tools.
Way more than a few cents. The iPhones don’t use a separate physical usb controller due to lack of space. It’s handled on the chip.
The non pro this year is using last years pro chip which doesn’t have the capability for usb3.
To bring usb3 to the non pro they would have had to put the A17 in it, which is limited due to TSMCs production for the 3nm chips. They would have had to both reduce the number of pro models for sale (which they would never do), and raise the price of the non pro which would have just pushed people up to the pro model which would be limited in stock already because of splitting the chip between the two models.
It’s not as easy as just adding a different controller.
My guess is one of two things they’ll do since thunderbolt 5 was announced a couple of days ago too.
They’ll either put thunderbolt 4 on the pros next year with 40 gig like the iPad Pro has, and regular usb 3.2 gen 2 like the iPad Air does, with the rumored SE getting usbc with an A16 chip and usb 2 like the base iPad.
Or, they’ll go with a four tier model and introduce the long rumored ultra with thunderbolt 5 and 80gig speed, the pro getting thunderbolt 4, the regular getting usb 3 gen 2, and the SE keeping usb 2.
The spring event when they announce the M3 Macs will probably give a clue to it.
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