Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The Portless iPhone: Let’s Talk!”.
Mkhd here all right, we’ve heard the rumblings. It seems like everyone’s just saying it. So, let’s talk about it. Apple, getting rid of the port in the next iphone, see all of the best and all of the worst things about apple products like the iphone come from the level of control apple has over them.
Now, if apple’s trillion dollar value is any clue, you know for most people, these are typically good. Things like we were just talking about this with the m1 max and how this vertical integration is. What enables this amazing efficiency and that kind of started in the iphones, with their great use of smaller batteries and less ram and their excellent image and video quality with their image processing pipeline all the stuff that people love about the iphone comes from this. But with all of that control, it also means, if you’re an apple person you’re along for the ride, for the misses too. Now, whether that’s you know a ultra-thin keyboard in the max that ends up breaking after two years or just antena gate or something bad about the iphone you’re along for the ride. So now the next thing for apple is getting rid of the port on the iphone. Possibly as soon as the next iphone lucky iphone 13, but there’s no way they just get rid of the port and don’t say anything right. And that brings us to maybe one of the truest most consistent facts in all of tech, which is that most of apple reporting can be boiled down to looking at the past. Looking at what the history of one of the biggest most consistent tech giants ever has done and applying that pattern to the future, assuming it will happen again assuming they will keep that up.
So when i do that, when i look back at previous iphones as they’ve moved towards this portless future, i’ve noticed that, with everything they’ve removed from the iphone, they always do two things one. They try to solve the problem that is caused by the thing they got rid of and probably charge you for it and two. They will always try to justify on stage why they got rid of that thing so solve and justify. So just look back at a few years of the iphone through this lens.
Let’S get rid of all the moving parts iphone 10. They got rid of the beloved home button right now. You would have a really hard time finding one reasonable person who was like oh yeah, get rid of touch id, get rid of the best fastest. Like most perfect biometric authentication, we’ve ever seen in a phone.
We don’t really need the home button anymore right, but apple had this vision of getting rid of this button, so they needed to solve and justify so they did in fact solve no touch id by adding this new thing called face id so they’re getting back. This form of biometric authentication and they justified getting rid of it because hey look at how much more screen you get look at how great this bezel-less thing looks. The gestures are great and this is the future of the iphone, and so you could still buy an iphone with a home button. The iphone 8, which was launched, or at least announced on the same day.
But it was very clear from that moment forward that that was the future of the iphone. So here’s another one remember when they wanted to get rid of the headphone jack in the iphone same thing solve and justify now this time this was in 2016 and it was a little bit more of a notoriously less convincing solve and justify, but they tried it. They solved no headphone jack by releasing and selling their own wireless headphones. The same day. They called them air pods and they turned out to be kind of a ridiculously popular product that made apple a lot of money, and then they went to justify on stage getting rid of the headphone jack. With a couple of things, this was the iphone 7. We’Re talking about, and so this actually became the first water and dust resistant iphone. I had to go back and watch the presentation again to remember that, but the thing is there were also already phones out there with water resistance and headphone jacks already, so they had to toss in a little extra uh. They had more space inside the phone now for a better taptic engine and a slightly bigger battery sure i guess, and they also tossed out this whole courage thing that went over great uh. They had the courage to move forward towards this wireless future. Okay. So, what’s next the lightning port they want to get rid of that too. So the question is now: what’s going to be their solve and justify, what’s going to be their solution to getting rid of the lightning port and what’s going to be their reason that they tell us for getting rid of the lightning port? So i spoke to mark german about this – probably the most reliable apple journalist on planet earth right now just about when and why they would do this pardon the quality it is from a macbook webcam. What do you think could possibly be apple’s, uh explanation or angle to justify or explain why they wanted to get rid of the port? The last piece you could plug in yeah. You know, i think, that their explanation for moving the charging port is going to probably be nearly identical to their explanation for removing the headphone jack. Their rationale is probably going to be the same one.
You don’t need it two. We have wireless three. It takes up. You know valuable space that they can use for other things, whether that’s making a larger battery or other little gizmos they can throw in there right.
I mean this is what would make sense to me, so my sense is that they’re going to add in screen fingerprint whether that’s the 21 phone or the 22 phone. That, probably you know, i’m not exactly sure, but i assume that’s going to take up a little bit more space inside the phone to have that sensor underneath the display right. So i would say you know what they’ll probably be like. This is the trade-off we’re gon na remove that pork, that you probably don’t use or need anyways and we’re going to put it put that under screen fingerprint a larger battery, better camera et cetera, et cetera.
Okay, so they add an in-screen fingerprint reader to the phone. The same year that they get rid of the port, maybe so they can say the extra space from getting rid of the port allowed room for those internals. Maybe that’s not technically wrong, but okay, maybe a little extra water resistance and boom. That can be apple’s justification for getting rid of the port sure, but i think the solve part is much harder here.
It’S why it seems to us logically like removing the port is ridiculous. Like it’s, it’s the most necessary part of every phone in history is already had ports, but here’s how i think apple can frame it so number one they’ll say we solved it with this whole magsafe thing, and now we’ve got this amazing wireless charging solution that slaps Onto the back of the phone, it’s perfect: it’s amazing and number two when’s, the last time you plugged in your phone for anything other than charging, and what really is going to need to happen to be honest with you? Is they can’t pull this off unless they put the bag safe in the box right at forty dollars this year? I’M sure they can get the margins down at higher quantities too being able to feasibly price it at twenty or thirty dollars. But i think you know time allows for for stronger margins on these products and time allows for lower prices. So i think, we’ll all even out trust me if they move to a portless iphone and don’t include the mag safe on the box. You know i’m going to lose my mind on twitter right, so you know that would be.
That would be pretty controversial and yeah. I would be shocked if they did that, but on the other hand you know they’re the same company that said they’re moving away for environmental reasons this year, but really requires you to go ahead and buy uh that new charger, for you know 40 or 60 dollars, Depending if you get the mag safe as well to really take full advantage of that full power charging, so i guess anything’s possible. So i agree with mark, i think magsafe kind of has to be in the box.
Logically, but little known fact do you know how the apple watch also ships with that little puck as their own little mag safe, there’s, two versions of that there’s. Actually a plastic and metal version of that little puck charger, depending on which apple watch you get. You might get either the plastic cheaper one or the metal more expensive one right now. The only magsafe available for the iphone, the one they’ve just invented is a metal one, and so i could easily see apple, making a new plastic version around next year or sometime between now and then, which will be cheaper, allowing them to toss it in the box And also save a little money now there are some other uses of the port on the iphone, specifically things like transferring data when you’re setting up a new, iphone or wired car play for the 99 of cars that don’t have wireless car. But again, if you look at the grand scheme of things, apple’s gon na say those are more niche things and they can dedicate teams of people to solve those problems like starting a while ago.
So they can make maybe a lightning adapter for wireless carplay. They can make maybe a perfected wireless iphone setup. I already use iphone setup wirelessly when i’m transferring my data for an old one, so they can work on that stuff between now and the next iphone and then they’ll have their solution.
They will have their solve and their justify what’s uh. What’S next, then, if they’ve gotten rid of the home button, they’ve gotten rid of the headphone jack they’re, getting rid of the port are the buttons next oof, that’s a good one. I don’t see how they can remove the uh, the buttons to be honest. I i’m gon na go ahead and say the buttons i think are here to stay for at least a couple more years, just because buttons are just such a difficult thing to solve and really difficult to justify, getting rid of, and actually, as a matter of fact, Replacing the buttons on the side of a phone with this pressure, sensitivity and haptive feedback has been done before and it wasn’t great. I reviewed the htc u12 plus in 2018, which did exactly this, and maybe the tech and the sensors and haptic motors is better. Since then, you know, maybe you could remove accidental presses and even the weird glitches and customization, and do it all better with today’s tech.
But even then it’s like, i can’t help but think what, if the phone freezes you know you already can’t yank the battery. But now you also can’t like hard reset with the buttons, because the buttons are frozen like buttons buttons. The way they are are pretty great. I there’s not a whole lot, you can improve about them and i think getting rid of them for the tiny, tiny little bit of extra space you might gain or maybe some better water resistance. It’S just a really tough sell. So i think buttons are here for a while, but again it’s not if it’s when will they eventually get around to changing that too fun fact, though, there is actually already a completely buttonless holeless phone. Did you hear about this? It’S been tried before last year. In 2019, along came the meizu zero. This phone had no charging port, no speaker holes, no physical buttons and no headphone jack. So we’ve had a completely holeless phone before.
How did it go? Well, they got their headlines for sure got a lot of people talking about it and then meizu made the phone an indiegogo project. It got a grand total of 39 backers, failed to meet its funding goal and died cancelled, so the world wasn’t really ready for that. Yet maybe someday we’ll look back and say that was ahead of its time that this whole meizu zero thing. It was just ahead of the tech available to it, but at the end of the day, i want to pass the question off to you, philip defranco style.
Where do you fall on this whole port thing? If apple gets rid of the port in the next iphone? Will you just be right up in line getting it and just switching to magsafe and calling it a day, or will you be on the other side of that spectrum raging in the comments about how apple created a problem and then solved it and conveniently sold you? The solution again, i’m curious, i’m sure there’ll be a lot of good comments below and then how do you feel about this whole buttonless, portless future that we’re moving towards because again it’s apple’s starting the trend, but as we’ve seen so often, maybe one or two years After apple does something ridiculous like getting rid of the headphone jack, it usually ends up becoming a trend, and we start to see it everywhere. So let me know if you’re on board with the whole thing or if you hate the idea, we’ll hang out in the comment section below and i think it’ll be pretty good, either way thanks for watching. If you want to listen to my entire conversation with mark it’ll, be on the next waveform episode so definitely subscribe to our podcast. If you haven’t already to check that and i’ll catch, you guys in the next article peace .