First I want to preface this by saying that I have no insider knowledge of what may or may not be happening inside of apple. I don’t have any friends that work for the company or friends of friends or brother’s, mother’s, sister’s, cousin who works at Apple. This is pure speculation and I have convinced myself to about 60% that this is the case. But here are the chain of events as they happen that lead to the Question mark on my face.

About every two years-ish I replace all of the external hard drives I own just to make sure that I don't have any failures or data loss. (I could do a RAID-0 I know… but i like this way better, for now) I Have about 9 TB of data that is always in jeopardy.

So because of this, about two weeks ago I decided I would go and purchase all new hard drives. As I begin the search I couldn't decide if I should be buying thunderbolt hard drives, USB hard drives or Firewire hard drives.

After doing a few Bing searches and comparing price versus performance, I decided that I would go with one of the thunderbolt hard drives. As I searched around from store to store I realize that the best place to buy thunderbolt would be Apple seeing as though Apple is one of the only ones that actually use thunderbolt currently. So I ventured out to the Apple Store and to my surprise, every 2016 Hard drive was USB-C Only. and it wasn’t the mix kind, where you see “this hard drive supports Firewire, USB and Thunderbolt!” it was USB-C ONLY!

I asked myself multiple times why would Apple be supporting USB-C Instead of supporting thunderbolt, the platform they pushed so heavily for the last few years. And then it Dawned me that I remember hearing Apple’s newest laptop is USB-C only and that there are no other ports on the newest laptop. Even for the charger! The charger is even USB-C! So I ventured over to find the MacBook inside the store, and to my surprise what I remembered was correct.

This led me to use one of the Apple laptops in the store to search the web to find out what happened to thunderbolt? And why is USB-C here? as I don’t keep up with Tech like i used to. one search was all it took. I stumbled upon the article about thunderbolt 3.

Thunderbolt™ 3 brings Thunderbolt to USB-C at speeds up to 40 Gbps, creating one compact port that does it all - delivering the fastest, most versatile connection to any dock, display, or data device. For the first time, one computer port connects to Thunderbolt devices, every display, and billions of USB devices.

Thunderbolt™ 3 over USB-C is an exciting development because it delivers four times the bandwidth enabling more speed and video bandwidth than any other current standard. It also includes built-in support for 10 GbE peer-to-peer connections enabling the fastest file transfers and PC migrations, as well as blazing fast access to data storage.

-- https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-does-it-all

Because of this, I stood in the Apple Store puzzled trying to decide what decision to make. I Currently don’t have a product that actually supports thunderbolt 3, nor do I have USB-C hardware on any of my hardware that I currently possess, with the exception of an android phone. I decided that because I am in the middle of a technological shift its best just to not buy anything until I know the direction of things.

(Bing search also pointed out The new AppleTV has a USB-C port in the back of it as well)

Later I went to purchase a couple of android phones to mail to Brazil and I found a USB-C standalone turbo charger that I could send as an extra since USB-C is still kind of scarce. while waiting to check out with this charger I noticed that the charger was branded with “Compatible with iOS.” I was shocked to see this and triple check to make sure I was buying an official charger for the product.

Once I confirmed this I didn't understand why an android manufacturer would actually brand a charger that they're selling for their products that it's actually “Compatible with iOS” and then that's when it hit me that a lot is changing. I also noticed that USB-C is replacing both ends of the cable and not just one side. This also lines up with the macbook, as there is no traditional USB port on the Macbook Anymore. again, seeing a technology shift coming really soon.

earlier today i popped into a Verizon store to actually pick up a lightning cable for someone, because they had the crappy apple one and Verizon sells a colorful tough braided cable. the sales rep told me that they are buy one get one free.. i asked him why and he said “apparently, they are end of life. so we are just trying to clear them out of our warehouse.”

(A friend pointed out that i didn’t ask if all lightning cables are end of life or just that brand of cable…)

Putting more thought into it. If i was apple, and owned a audio company, i wouldn’t want to make headphones for two types of connectors. that literally makes me have to double my inventory for every product we have on the market… and there is no way i'm going to be able to convince the other manufacturers to switch to lightning. so for me to push more headphones out the door, i would just conform in this area.

Apple is usually always the first to adopt something and bring it mainstream.. So it wouldn’t be a surprise or a shock if this happened.. I wouldn’t even consider it a secret.

But hey, what do i know… i’m just speculating…

tldr:

I think iPhone 7 could be USB-C because:

Apple has made commitment to USB-C ONLY on their laptops for power and everything else.
Apple is selling all USB-C Hard Drives in their store (which shows more commitment.)
AppleTV also has a USB-C port on the back.
Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C are compatible with each other.
Lenovo/Motorola has made a iOS compatible Charger.
Verizon is EOL-ing their braided cable Lightning cables.

Speculation:

its smarter to make one connector for all headphones instead of doubling the number of SKUs for your product line.
apple is always the first company to take something that nobody cares about and makes it mainstream.

Would love to have some discussions about this now.