One of the last major holdouts against USB-C has majorly loosened its grasp. All the accessories that come with Apple’s newest iMac—the Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse, and Magic Trackpad—ship with USB-C charging and connection ports rather than the Lightning ports they have featured for nearly a decade.
“These accessories now come with USB-C ports, so users can charge all of their favorite devices with just a single cable,” Apple writes in announcing its new M4-powered iMac, in the way that only Apple can, suggesting that something already known to so many is, when brought into Apple’s loop, notable and new.
Apple’s shift from its own Lightning connector, in use since 2012, to USB-C was sparked by European Union policies enacted in 2022. Apple gradually implemented USB-C on other devices, like its iPad Pro and MacBooks, over time, but the iPhone 15’s USB-C port made the “switch” somewhat formal.
The iMac and its color-matched accessories kept with Lightning until today’s new release. The back of the iMac has long featured USB-C ports, but the accessories were charged with USB-C-to-Lightning cables. This leaves the iPhone SE and iPhone 14 as the remaining Lightning-port-ed Apple gear that Apple still sells. Apple’s Vision Pro battery pack contains a kind of Lightning-style connector, although not a true Lightning cable. The forthcoming iPhone SE will, given the need to sell it in Europe, almost certainly feature USB-C as well.
It has been a slow, brokered, and uneven path, but it’s getting to the point where a collection of good USB-C cables and charging bricks can power most of your computing devices… except for those with very specific charging demands, like a Raspberry Pi or the cheap or old stuff that still takes USB micro. And some things just refuse to give up barrel chargers, like certain enterprise laptops and network switches.
Regardless, it’s a big day for those who only want one kind of cable on their desk.
