Because a government full of people who know nothing about technology must be the right answer. What other areas of the iPhone should the government force Apple to standardize? FaceTime? AirDrop? iOS itself?
Everything where high interoperability is more beneficial for consumers than proprietary solutions by individual companies. As a rule of thumb, everything where standardization brings more benefits to consumers than innovation.
Note that as consumer, I can't vote with my money for standardization. I can only vote for one of the proprietary solutions. So if 70% of consumers stick to one option, and 30% stick to the other option (because of other product features), standardization will never happen through market forces, even if 100% of the consumers would want it.
It gets even worse when more than 2 options are on the market, and vendors gain an advantage by locking customers in to their proprietary option.
So it would be more beneficial that Apple is forced to make FaceTime interoperable and all messaging platforms. Should the government enforce that too?
It’s perfectly possible to have sensible hardware standards where doing so will not impede the market without insisting that all software be also standardised.
For the record I think it would be useful for Apple to have the built in Facetime client be able to communicate with other phone platforms. I don’t think Apple should be compelled to offer that currently.
Let’s say back in the day when Apple has the Apple Desktop Bus for low speed peripherals and Nubus for cards, would you also have been in favor of the government forcing Apple to use PS/2 and ISA?
The Android market is just like the PC market of old - a slow moving race to the bottom. Even today, most low end Android phones are still using Micro USB.
I have a hard time understanding the question. If something is overwhelmingly beneficial for everyone, I don't mind at all if market or government make it happen. I just want it to happen.
Again, to not be misunderstood, I'm not sure if charger standardization is indeed overwhelmingly beneficial for everyone. That is what I believe we should discuss here.
But there is never anything that is “beneficial for everyone” and the government does in the best case what is beneficial to their specific voters - even if it is detrimental to others. There is a very high bar for me to say that the government should step in. A powerful Government is more harmful than a powerful business.
