At a Wall Street Journal Tech Live event, Apple representatives Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak talked about a lot of different things, such as USB-C on the iPhone, why iPadOS still doesn’t have the Calculator app, and iMessage on Android.
Apple executives have confirmed for the first time that iPhones will soon switch to USB-C. They say this is because a new EU law will require all devices to have a USB-C port for charging by 2024.
But Greg Joswiak made it clear that Apple doesn’t like being forced by law to change the connector. He said that Apple tends to trust its own engineers and standards instead of relying on standardization. He also said that the switch from Lightning to USB-C for the iPhone will lead to more electronic waste.
When asked why iPadOS doesn’t have a calculator, Joswiak said that there are “a whole bunch” of them in the App Store and that he himself uses a third-party app.
Craig Federighi talked about the reasons why Android phones don’t have iMessage. He said that it wouldn’t have been used by enough people and would have slowed down the development of an iOS-only messenger. Federighi said that iMessage on Android felt like it was “thrown to the wind” and “wasn’t going to serve the world.”
Federighi was also asked about a letter he wrote in 2013 in which he said that iMessage on Android would make it easier for iPhone-owning parents to buy Android phones for their kids. He told her that he had never heard of such a letter.
