Wired CarPlay is not holding Apple back. I think they just figure it’d be harder for them to repair partially-bricked iPhones if they had no port to do DFU or whatever. That or they actually have done the market research and customers said they’d hold off on buying a portless iPhone because it’s a stupid idea.
Apple prototypes a lot of stuff including a smart car. Despite what people think, Apple doesn’t do everything at the whim of the EU.
But Apple could definitely make the “non-pro” phone portless- exactly the way they arbitrarily force USB 2.0 speeds (hello 2004!) even on the iPhone 17 non-pro’s port - rendering it worse than Wi-Fi for data transfers.
They must have market research proving it would cost them sales. That’s the only thing holding them back.
And when you view what Apple is doing from their long-term vision of the iPhone becoming a transparent piece of glass, it starts making sense.
WiFi speeds are decent for data.
Wireless charging is 2 hours to a full quick charge and efficiency gets better every generation.
As for wired CarPlay somebody would make dongles.
Also the iPhone Pro models support up to 10Gbps wired for data transfer. Now let’s talk about using external video. I don’t need a special dongle. I can use a standard USB 3 cable just like I use with my computer.
Or if I need HDMI, again I can use the same USB 3 to HDMI cable that works with Mac or the God awful Microsoft Surface (not the convertible) I had to use for a year at a prior job.
Then we can get into simple things like how do you connect mass storage devices to your phone or audio equipment?
- I don’t need a USB-C to headphone adapter, there are plenty of USB C headphones and the mixer my wife uses has a USB C interface for computers and it works with her iPad and I assume my phone. It shows up as an audio input/output device. You plug up a regular old USB C to USB C cable.
- you don’t need an “HDMI adapter”, you use the same USB C to HDMI cord that computers have used since USB C was introduced on computers over a decade ago.
USB C has supported video natively for over a decade. I use the same USB C - USB C cable to plug up my phone to my external monitor that I use for my Mac
Bluetooth doesn’t transmit data at 10Gbps like USB C does on an iPhone Pro or even USB 2 speeds of the cheaper iPhones.
You don’t need special Apple compatible dongles for any of these use cases. They all support the standard USB protocols
