The iPhone is becoming an Android phone before our very eyes

Welcome to our 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 morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.

New iPhone 15 Exclusive Exposes Late Apple Design Decision

It appears Apple has made up its mind. Following numerous leaks around the company’s decision to remove, then restore, then partially remove the physical volume and mute buttons from the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, new CADs claim to show Apple’s final design decision. There’s a camera surprise too.

Apple Leak Reveals New iPhone 15 Pro Feature Shock

Thunderbolt 3 operates at up to 40 gigabits per second (Gbps), that’s equivalent to 5,000 megabytes per second (MBps). By comparison, the Lighting port on all current iPhones is limited to USB 2.0 speeds, which is 480 megabits per second, equivalent to 0.48 Gbps / 60 MBps. It’s a stratospheric upgrade.

Here’s when Apple’s remaining Lightning devices will switch to USB-C

When Apple released the 10th-gen iPad in October 2022, it officially retired Lightning from all new iPad models. But there is still one model remaining that has it, the 9th-gen iPad from 2021. We don’t know how long Apple will keep it around, but once it’s gone, we’re nearly certain that it won’t be replaced with a USB-C model.