And yet with the EU taking a first stab at (smartphone) OS lockdowns, it’s guaranteed most of the top comments here on HN are just buckets of vitriol being poured on it. As happened with the EU forcing a universal charging standard. Or privacy protections.
It such regulation comes, it will be taking away freedom to take away freedom from the free market. Interesting concept, and interesting mental gymnastics will be done.
I cannot fathom how Americans can point at the EU successfully forcing phone manufacturers to switch from 40 different types of proprietary chargers (we used to have different chargers for different models within a phone series ffs) to 1 and say “wow fuck the EU for taking away the freedom that obligated me to have a dedicated charging drawer”. That is the true mental gymnastics.
Same with privacy. What sane human thinks “yes please, farm, process and store into perpetuity all the intimate data points of my life”..
The issue is we were already down to 3 different plugs - micro-usb, usb-c and lightning. Most android phones are already usb-c, so it's a pretty blatantly targeted measure.
I'm mostly concerned about it locking out the development of new standards that aren't USB, even if that was an unlikely development anyway.
