Apple released several Macs at its “Scary Fast” event Monday night, including a new 24-inch Mac with a faster M3 chip. But if you buy one, you’ll get the same old accessories as before, color-matched to your chosen machine—and you’ll still need a Lightning cable to charge them.
Apple is kind enough to supply one in the box—and you’ll get one if you buy the Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, or Magic Keyboard separately as well—but it’s strange that Apple didn’t use the opportunity to upgrade its Mac accessories to USB-C. They’re one of the few remaining devices that haven’t switched to USB-C and the ones that make the least sense.
Quite frankly, Apple’s Mac accessories should have never had a Lightning port. The trio of accessories switched from replaceable AA batteries to rechargeable batteries when the second generation arrived in October 2015, six months after Apple launched the 12-inch MacBook, the first Mac with a USB-C port. Apple could have easily brought the same port to its Mac accessories as well—or at some point over the past eight years.
But instead, Apple is still selling Lightning Mac accessories and presumably will continue for a while. If they follow the iMac cadence, in fact, we might not see USB-C Mac accessories until 2026 as Apple doesn’t have to make the switch from Lightning to USB-C since they’re existing products. But it would be nice to be able to use the same cable that charges your Mac and iPhone rather than hunting for a Lightning cable.
Author: Michael Simon, Executive Editor
Michael Simon has been covering Apple since the iPod was the iWalk. His obsession with technology goes back to his first PC—the IBM Thinkpad with the lift-up keyboard for swapping out the drive. He's still waiting for that to come back in style tbh.