Thanks to European Union legislation coming into effect next year, Apple is slowly but surely removing all traces of the Lightning port from its devices. [Magic Mouse, Magic Keyboard, and Magic Trackpad still all use Lightning connectors.

This was suggested to be changed at Apple's "Scary Fast" M3 Mac event in October, but was not. However, if another leaker is correct, we won't have to wait much longer.

"Spring '24, Apple Magic Mouse, Magic Keyboard, trackpad updates, USB-C," Instant Digital wrote in a (machine translated) post on the Chinese social networking site Weibo. This leaker has a mixed track record of being right about the performance improvements of the Apple Watch 9 and wrong about the release date of the new iPad mini 7, so the article should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Spring is a pretty big window, from March to May, but given that we just heard yesterday that Apple may be planning a March launch of the M3 MacBook Air, OLED iPad Pro, and larger iPad Air, it seems likely that we will arrive at that starting point A USB-C Mac accessory may not be exciting enough to announce on its own, but if it were to be announced at the Mac and iPad event, it would certainly be a welcome addition.

The big question is whether the accessory update will be a simple port switch, or whether it will also include other quality-of-life upgrades.

Instant Digital offers no insight one way or the other, but providing meaningful improvements would be one way to get people to upgrade. At the very least, we hope Apple adds backlighting to the Magic Keyboard and a more sensible location for the Magic Mouse charging port.

However, given that the Magic accessories look very similar to when they last received a major update in October 2015, we may be expecting too much from Apple for even those modest improvements. Aside from the move to braided cables and the introduction of the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID two years ago, little has changed in the last eight years.

Given the change in EU law and Apple's cooperation on other products, the transition to USB-C will be inevitable; whether or not Instant Digital is right about the exact timing, it will be interesting for Mac owners to see what attractive improvements Apple offers in parallel with the port change It wouldn't hurt to wait a little longer to see if there are any attractive improvements that Apple will offer alongside the port changes.