These pieces of Apple technology are no longer welcome

Apple has a reputation for being a relentless driver of new technology. Just look at the classic example of its delivery Original iMac Without a floppy drive or legacy ports, or an iPhone design without a hard keyboard, or even Kill the iPod mini to make room for the iPod nano. Apple really projects an image of pushing technology forward without staying in the past.

While these examples get a lot of attention, Apple today is a larger, more top-heavy organization, and a warship that can't turn away. As a result, transitioning to new technology takes time, and often what happened before, months or sometimes even years, is not captured.

As much as Apple likes to see itself as an unstoppable force charging forward, you don't have to look too closely at its product lineup to see a lot of products still clinging to the past, even if it's for purely practical reasons.

You cannot return to the home button

One of the original trademarks of the iPhone was the single button on the front. The home button evolved, got a Touch ID sensor, and eventually went from a physical button to a capacitive sensor with touch technology. But its demise was heralded by the introduction of the iPhone

Jason Cross/IDG

Jason Cross/IDG

Jason Cross/IDG

But this design first appeared in November 2017, that is, nearly seven years ago. Although the home button has been phased out from both the iPhone and iPad lines, it's still around today. The third-generation iPhone SE, arriving in 2022, is still a product in Apple's lineup and proudly carries the classic design introduced by 2016's iPhone 7.

However, it seems that the days of the home button are numbered. Rumor has it that the fourth generation of the budget phone will appear next spring, and it will finally adapt to the modern iPhone design. The home button will disappear in about eighteen years.

There's a curve that describes the practicalities of this type of design: As Apple produces more of a particular design, it becomes cheaper, but eventually as it expands the range of its new models, the old design becomes skewed, meaning it's now more expensive to keep. Especially for just one model. So in the end, Apple saves money by changing the design of the SE to look like the rest of the phones and saying goodbye to the famous home button.

Lightning

When Apple introduced the Lightning connector in 2012, one would have thought, judging by the response, that Apple had committed genocide. Its predecessor, the 30-pin connector, originated with the iPod in 2003, but in those nine years there's been an explosion in accessories based on it — just keep in mind that people who started using an iPhone in the last decade will probably never be able to. I've seen the common alarm clock/speaker with a built-in docking connector.

foundry

foundry

foundry

So, last year, when Apple first replaced the Lightning port with a USB-C port on the iPhone, one might have expected a similar outcry. But the fact that USB-c has already been around on Macs since 2015 and was introduced in the iPad in 2018 may have helped ease the switch. In the intervening years, wireless technology, including Bluetooth speakers and qi charging, has made replacing the physical connector less problematic.

However, Lightning has not yet disappeared from Apple products either. In addition to the older iPhones that Apple still sells (the iPhone 14 series, and the aforementioned iPhone SE), the Lightning port is still used to charge Apple's Magic Keyboard, trackpad, and mouse (name a more popular trio, if you can). And if that wasn't enough, it's also creeping in somewhere else: the first-generation Apple Pencil, which has remained compatible with all the older iPads out there.

The rumored iPhone SE update will no doubt switch to USB-c and Apple will likely (hopefully?) update its Mac accessories in the not-too-distant future – perhaps when a new Mac mini debuts? But this Apple Pencil, well, it may take a few more years before it's finally erased.

Status quo trade-off

Are you sitting comfortably? Good, because now I'm going to add an entire Apple product to the list of legacy technology that still stands: the Mac Pro.

foundry

foundry

foundry

The Mac Pro may be important to Apple from a psychological perspective, signaling that the company feels just as at home in a professional environment as it does on the desk (or lap) of the average person. But even many people who might want a Mac Pro today frankly won't get much from it — or not much more than they could get from a Mac Studio with similar specs. While the Mac Pro is still perhaps the most expandable in Apple's lineup, this is largely due to the inclusion of internal PCI slots which some users may need. However, they may be of limited use due to unavailability of compatible devices.

I'm not saying all this to defend the Mac Pro He should disappearing, but simply to point out that it's a product category that goes back decades and may never completely disappear, but it's still fundamentally how computers used to He is. For a company that prides itself on constantly moving forward, it seems Apple still can't let go of the past.