It just got slightly easier to charge your personal cloud of Apple devices.
Today (Oct. 19), Apple started accepting pre-orders for its latest smartphone, the iPhone Xr, but it also slipped out another small piece of hardware, noticed by the folks at 9to5Mac. The company released a new magnetic USB-C charging cable for the Apple Watch.
Previously, Apple only sold USB-A cables, the standard USB style that’s also used for its iPhones and countless other gadgets. But the company is slowly swapping over to USB-C cables, which have a higher data transfer rate, can support more types of data being sent over them, and charge devices at the same time. They also happen to be the only type of ports on every MacBook laptop released since 2015, meaning that iPhone and Apple Watch users can’t charge their devices from their computers with the cables that come with their products.
Apple started selling USB-C to Lightning (the iPhone charging port) cables around the time the new MacBooks came out, but didn’t offer a similar cable for Apple Watches. The new cable will run you $29, but at least it does mean you theoretically only need to bring one charging brick to charge all your Apple devices when you travel.