Considering pretty much the only use case for USB data transfer on the iphone is copying pro res video to an SSD, which can only be recorded on the pro, this seems like a good tradeoff. No point raising the cost for casual users who will never use this feature.

You can find USB 5Gbps in a Pixel 6a that costs 300 USD on Amazon. USB 3 is not exactly some fancy new expensive tech.

You can get a breakout board for few bucks yourself and that's still going to be more than Apple would have to pay.

The actual answer is that they used last year's SOC which had only USB 2 support.

The port is capable, but does the Pixel actually move data that fast over it?

> The port is capable, but does the Pixel actually move data that fast over it?

My girlfriend's Pixel 4a can transfer about 4x USB2's real world maximum. Just tested it.

USB 3 isn't new, it dates back to 2008. Every Pixel phone except the original Pixel 1 (USB 3.0) and Pixel 3a (USB 2.0) supports USB 3.1.

My bad, I was thinking about the Pro models' 10Gbps maximum and was looking for comparisons at that speed. I replaced what you wrote with the phone I had in my head!

The max speed isn't as important as much as the fact it can go past the USB 2 limit in speed.

Hey now, many of us still load up with mp3s via iTunes. I am on a wired desktop and wireless sync does not work for this.

‘Many’ of us are using iTunes to sync mp3s?

What are you getting at here? Spotify doesn't have everything, the least of which is music I make myself.

He's saying you're an extreme edge case that's <0.01% of the population and shouldn't expect gargantuan corps to cater for your edge case as it doesn't make financial sense.

I am sick of this "extreme edge case" bullshit when there is 20+ years of historical precedent. We did not go away and this shit did not come out of nowhere. The tech is already there and its maintenance is minimal. Just because some young shits running the numbers in the bay area are obsessed with and surrounded by the latest and greatest doesn't mean the rest of the world marches to their bullshit drumbeat. Especially when we keep seeing the things we used to own turn into rentals.

Stop shitting on the long tail!

And fuckin stand up for your rights and privacy as a consumer!

When did tech become so conformist?

No, but people not satisfied with what Spotify has are like a tiny percentage of non-mainstream music listeners (whether one can point to X major artist not being on Spotify does not really change that. Even if it still didn't have the Beatles most users could not care less).

It isn't about "major artists". Fuck them, their music universally sucks. It's about underground artists, unsigned, or anyone locked out the bullshit distribution model that is shoved down artists' and the public's throats. It is a very large community.

While I don’t use iTunes anymore and don’t plug my phone in to transfer, I’ve uploaded 400+ GB of Phish to Apple, and I’m able to download and stream it just as well as the latest Taylor Swift album. If I wanted to load my phone up with the whole catalog (still thinking about doing it), I’d probably plug my phone in. But I’m also more than happy to stream those shows and download my favorites. It really is my favorite service/product Apple offers full stop!

If you use Apple Music, you can upload mp3s (preferably ALAC to avoid lossy transcoding because it always converts to AAC) to their servers and stream them from any of your devices. For me it's the killer app for Apple Music. It's the reason I switched to it from Spotify.

actually, in finder, you may enable “show this device on wifi” and…no more needing cables for syncing! :) … this probably is not available on windows itunes though.

It is available on Windows too, in iTunes. You need to connect the cable once to enable it. I’m using this to sync my music and backup my iPhone.

Windows here, but thanks.

But it really puzzles me how that feature needs wifi. Regular TCP/IP has everything you need to discover devices on the network and connect to them. What exactly is 802.11x adding here?

I would say it's referring to WiFi on the phone side, rather than the Mac/PC side. Though you can plug an Ethernet adaptor into an iPhone it's very rarely done and so most people would understand they want to sync with their phone over WiFi, as opposed to USB cable.

Apple seems to mostly use Bonjour (mDNS) for these whether using a local network (and indeed that is the case for this wifi sync feature), but they also have a few features/frameworks that can also be setup over an Apple specific "peer to peer wifi" connection which is bootstrapped with bluetooth and switches to peer to peer wifi for fast data transfer, similar but not the same protocol as WiFi direct (according to https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/12885). This is what AirPlay2 does for example. That is one way WiFi could matter for such a feature versus Ethernet.

This wifi sync definitely works with Ethernet on the Mac side (personal experience)

Define "everything you need". Are we talking about finding out other hosts on a LAN? Or modern devices and their capabilities?

There are lots of added protocols (e.g. Bonjour) because TCP/IP alone is not about discovery.

And of course here we're talking about syncing over wi-fi. How would TCP/IP alone, without Wi-Fi enabled, cut it? It would sync wirelessly over ...cable ethernet?

All you need for discovery is broadcast access, and TCP/IP grants that. The discoverer broadcasts, "I'm looking for devices!" And the discoveree replies "Here I am!" Boom, connection is made. This is how game server browsers worked for LAN play back in the day.

Is it really so inconceivable that a phone is connected to a wi-fi gateway on a regular LAN?

Because that is how my network is set up here at home.

Note that this can annoying make your Mac refuse to shut down because it is doing something wirelessly with your phone.

Why do you hate capitalism? Not engaging in monthly services, consuming additional ads, or letting Apple sniff your data in the cloud.

I too am saddened by what feels like a deliberate tactic to further cripple the already locked down cable interface. On Android, I could trivially upload and download all of my data without an intermediary.