Mac USB-C accessories could be here soon

Slowly but surely, Apple is removing all traces of the Lightning ports from its devices thanks to a European Union law that comes into force next year. 

But if you’re a Mac user who swears by first-party accessories, you’ll know that USB-C hasn’t yet reached Apple’s line of ‘Magic’ devices yet: the Magic Mouse, Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad all still use Lightning connectors.

This was previously tipped to change at the company’s ‘Scary Fast’ M3 Mac event back in October, but didn’t — perhaps because Apple has stock it needs to run down before making the switch. But you shouldn’t have too long to wait, if another leaker is correct.

“Spring 24, Apple Magic Mouse, Magic Keyboard, and Trackpad Updates, USB-C,” writes Instant Digital in a (machine-translated) post on the Chinese social networking site Weibo. The leaker has a mixed track record — right about the Apple Watch 9’s performance boost, wrong about the new iPad mini 7 launch date — so take this with a moderate pinch of salt.

Although spring is a pretty large window, running from March to May, an arrival at the start would seem likely, given just yesterday we heard that Apple could be planning a March launch for the M3 MacBook Air, OLED iPad Pro and larger iPad Air. While USB-C Mac accessories may not be exciting enough to announce on their own, they’re certainly a nice extra to include at a hypothetical Mac and iPad event.

The big question is whether the update to the accessories will be a simple port switch, or if we might see some other quality-of-life upgrades included as well. 

While Instant Digital doesn’t offer any insights either way, providing meaningful improvements would be one way of pushing people towards an upgrade. At the very least, we’re hoping Apple adds backlighting to the Magic Keyboard and finds a more sensible position for the charging port on the Magic Mouse. 

But even those modest improvements might be expecting too much from Apple, given the Magic accessories look extremely similar to how they did back in October 2015, when they last received a significant update. Short of a move to braided cables and the introduction of a Magic Keyboard with Touch ID two years ago, precious little has changed in eight years.

A move to USB-C will inevitably come, given the EU law change and Apple’s cooperation on its other products. Whether or not Instant Digital is correct about the exact timings, it doesn’t hurt for Mac owners to wait a little longer to see if Apple has compelling improvements to offer alongside the port change. 

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