Why the long-awaited Lightning ban still took Apple by surprise

You know how it is: you’ve got all year to do your Christmas shopping, but you always end up leaving it so late that you have to pay for premium delivery. Despite our best intentions to get things done early, we always do them at the last minute. Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

This, I assume, is what’s been going on at Apple Park, whose residents seem bizarrely unprepared for the looming EU ban on the use of Lightning ports to charge smartphones. The company officially had two years to get ready for the new regulations, and it’s been on the cards a lot longer than that; yet Apple still finds itself having to simply halt the sale of three of its handsets in Europe with no obvious replacements.

Obviously Apple has taken steps to get ready for the change, namely launching two generations of flagship iPhones with USB-C ports in the fall of 2023 and 2024. The 15- and 16-series iPhones comply fully with the law and will continue to be sold. But according to the French-language site iGeneration, the iPhone 14, the iPhone 14 Plus, and crucially the 3rd-gen iPhone SE violate the regulations and as of January 2025 will no longer be available to buy in EU countries.

This strikes me, frankly, as a sub-optimal response to an extremely predictable situation. Apple’s strategy is to sell recent iPhones at a premium price but to target budget buyers with older models. With the iPhone 13 only recently dropped from sale and the 14, 14 Plus, and SE soon to follow it, the range will be left with no cheap option; instead of starting at $429, it will start at $699. (Or 17 eggs in our quaint European currency.)

This won’t be a problem for long, admittedly. A few months after the ban comes into force Apple will launch the 4th-gen iPhone SE, and by next fall the iPhone 17 will come out, dropping the iPhone 15 into the $599 slot currently occupied by the 14, and we’ll be back to normal. But the iPhone is Apple’s most lucrative product line in history, and I dread to think how many eggs Apple will be leaving on the table by going nine months without its full range in a major market. Think of how many Europeans will potentially be pushed into the arms of Google’s lower-cost Android empire.

What’s extra odd is that Apple could have fixed the situation quite easily. The last iPhone SE launch was way back in spring 2022 and the company could have arranged matters so that the 4th-gen model came out before the ban began. Or–and forgive me for being so radical here–it could even have switched from Lightning to USB-C before being forced to when it was a customer-friendly thing to do rather than a legal necessity. If the iPhone 14 was the first post-Lighting iPhone, or if it was retroactively upgraded to support USB-C, things would now be a lot simpler.

But this was always going to be difficult, because it was in Apple’s interests to fight against the transition for as long as humanly possible. Cupertino left its Christmas shopping to the last minute because it never wanted to buy any presents in the first place and still thinks it shouldn’t have to. But the sad fact is that Christmas is coming, whether we like it or not.

Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.

Trending: Top stories

These are the Apple stories that were bigger than the iPhone in 2024.

Jason Cross lists six ways Apple Intelligence levels up with iOS 18.2 and macOS 15.2.

The real Apple Intelligence is the AI we met along the way.

The best releases of 2024 all took Apple in a bold new direction.

The Apple Car is dead. Where does that leave Apple’s auto ambitions?

Here are five exciting Apple products to look forward to this spring.

How Apple Intelligence can turn anyone into a star student (without cheating).

Turn your iPhone into an iPod before Apple won’t let you anymore.

Podcast of the week

In the latest episode of the Macworld Podcast, we’re taking a look at the year in review for Apple. What were the big products, events, and happenings that were landmarks in 2024 for the company?

You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.

Reviews corner

The rumor mill

Report: The OLED MacBook Pro will dump the notch for a camera ‘hole’.

Leaked iPhone 17 frame shows wide, Pixel-style camera bump.

The ‘MacBook with a modem’ dream may finally come true.

MacBook Air likely to get an upgraded Center Stage camera in 2025.

Satellite connectivity may be the next Apple Watch Ultra killer feature.

Apple hopes to save Vision Pro with a fresh gaming strategy.

Software updates, bugs, and problems

Apple just gave us a few dozen reasons to update our devices right now.

Why iOS 18.2 is a must-have update even if you don’t run Apple Intelligence.

Jamf details scary iCloud flaw that was exploitable until this fall.

Hate the new iOS 18 Photos app? Here’s how to fix it.

And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us on Facebook, Threads, or Twitter for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.