What happens when there is a better USB-C plug - isn't there a concern that locking into the current standard means in 50 years the EU is still stuck. I imagine we're in uncharted territory given in less then my lifetime USB was invented and has gone through at least 14 iterations e.g. it's been changing very fast.
Unfortunately I fear even asking this question probably angers some, but I think it's an interesting question because unlike other things in history we're seeing such rapid iteration. Maybe the laws in the EU have accounted for this - it just seems like a short term good thing that could be not so great in a few years down the road... thoughts?
The law explicitly states that it has to be reviewed every couple of years to determine whether USB-C it is still the best choice, or there has been sufficient technological progress to warrant a switch to a newer standard.
The fear for a "lock-in" is completely unfounded, as the EU previously quasi-mandated Micro USB and switching to USB-C was no issue whatsoever. Besides, nothing is stopping manufacturers from including both USB-C and another charging connector.
But if the whole world adopted this kind of regulatory stance, there would be much less incentive to invent that better cable because you now have huge regulatory bodies that may block its adoption and thus mean most of that work was money and time wasted. This kind of thing may tilt the risk / reward of research towards the riskier end of the spectrum.
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing— just that it’s not without consequences.
> if the whole world adopted this kind of regulatory stance, there would be much less incentive to invent that better cable because you now have huge regulatory bodies
Imagine you didnt have law on shape and voltage of ordinsry power plugs in a house, and if you buy a samsung power socket to ibstall in your house, you mist buy samsung fridge and samsung washing machine and samsung hair dryer
This was exactly the phone charging situation before the EU made a similar proposal[0]. Previously every phone brand and model used a bespoke charger so that you were forced to buy a spare charger from the vendor. Of course Apple continued to do its own thing by skirting the intent of the law.
That hasn't been true in quite a while, the market has unified around two standards (lightning and usb-c) without EU's intervention. Their previous recommendation from 2010 was for micro-usb and it was toothless as it wasn't a mandate.
The current authoritarian power play for pushing usb-c on Apple is completely unwarranted by the market conditions. It's pure politics.
Pretty disingenuous representation. The market unified around USB-C, except for Apple, who continued to be the sole player pushing proprietary charging ports
Therefore, regulation is actually only impacting one player, and is extremely likely to reduce electronics waste, which makes it quite a nice political move. The claim of "authoritarianism" makes no sense, because governments are regulatory bodies and this regulatory move has clear motivations and positive expected outcomes, plus is incredibly easy to enforce.
My electric razor uses a different cable connector to charge, my battery charger, my bicycle lamps (two different brands) ... All purchased in the last 5 years. The EU regulation isn't just about mobile phones.
> Imagine you didnt have law on shape and voltage of ordinsry power plugs in a house, and if you buy a samsung power socket to ibstall in your house, you mist buy samsung fridge and samsung washing machine and samsung hair dryer
You seem to be conflating the wall socket with the on-device socket.
I have several AC powered devices that use the same wall socket plug but have different on-device sockets - some with very different shapes. Even a single manufacturer may require different power cables: the original PS2, PS3, and PS4 all have different and incompatible power sockets and cables (squared/polarized 2-prong, "standard" 3-prong, and figure-8 2-prong, respectively).
US homes often have 220V sockets for large appliances (electric clothes dryers) as well as 110V sockets for smaller appliances (handheld hair dryers.) The sockets/plugs/cables are different and are not compatible.
As I understand it, every iPhone already comes with a charging cable in the box that plugs into a standard USB C power socket. Already better than anything with a wall wart power supply.
But I'm pretty much in favor of addressing the absurd proliferation of incompatible wall warts and other DC power supplies, even though they plug into the same wall socket.
Perhaps that's a clearer version of what PP was trying to say? But the analogy doesn't hold up well, because:
1. There are currently several kinds of wall power voltages and plugs/receptacles commonly in use the US. Notable examples are the various 220-240V NEMA receptacles and the various 110-120V receptacles such as polarized 2-prong, unpolarized 2-prong, and 3-prong/grounded.
2. Although there are code requirements (e.g requiring that new outlets be grounded and polarized, or requiring ground fault protection in bathrooms) it doesn't appear that they mandate a particular plug or receptacle design (?) Though the NEMA (trade association) developed plugs can and do conform to the code requirements.
3. Power cords and on-device sockets aren't entirely standardized, but it's not nearly as big a deal as if there were dozens of 110-120V wall socket types rather than the three in common use.
But we already kind of have this problem. If I order a microwave from the UK and ship it to my other European country, then I'm already dealing with a power plug that is incompatible. This also means that the power plugs can't be optimal (ie there's room to improve), because all the different variants can't all be optimal at the same time.
And yet, actually ever improving the power plug design is probably never going to happen.
Unfortunately the UK is no longer in the European Union, so their plug is never going to be unified.
The EU seriously considered unifying wall sockets, but in the end it turned out to not really be worth the effort. Most devices have either a Europlug or CEE 7/7 plug, which are compatible with virtually all wall sockets in the EU.
Italy and Denmark are slowly switching their proprietary wall sockets to the more common Schuko variant, if I recall correctly, so improving it isn't impossible!
Within the EU, if you order a microwave from France to be delivered to Ireland it should be provided with the correct plug.
Generally, something larger like a microwave or TV would come with an alternative power cord. Something smaller comes with a 2-prong European plug and a semi-permanent UK/Ireland adapter.
(Incidentally, the EU considered changing to a single mains plug, but wisely decided it wasn't worth the hassle.)
>That's a really strange thing to see here on HN. Where did you get this idea?
Why is this strange? I see this kind of ignorant nonsense here all the time.
This site is absolutely full of software people who, because of Dunning-Kruger, think they're experts at everything technical. Electrical engineering isn't that far from the software world (computers are electrical, and their design is within the EE world), so software people frequently think they're experts at anything EE when in fact they don't even understand Kirchoff's Laws, much less the realities of modern-day AC and DC power transmission.
There's been multiple discussions here in recent months with these people advocating absolutely idiotic stuff like a whole-house 5V DC supply, showing they don't even understand Ohm's Law.
On a side note, it's very frequent that I see posts here from people who apparently have never heard of an ad-blocker, yet are complaining about ads.
I guess you never been in a data center in the last 10 years. All modern DCs run on DC power because stepping down voltage is easy and 95%+ efficient. Why do we backhaul electricity across the country by DC and convert into AC to our house and then back into DC for our stuff? Add renewable energy generation like solar cells and battery storage and AC makes no sense.
Theres a reason why china is spinning up DC power grids while posts like mine get bashed on.
Data Centers that use DC still have AC to the racks, then a UPS or similar device converts to DC and distributes to the equipment on the rack. DC is inefficient for long distance, unless you are talking HVDC which is another story and it is disingenuous to act like they are comparable.
Three phase to the home?! Whaattt?! If you want to rectify yourself some DC power, 3-phase is awesome.
Are there three phase sockets available? I'd think you could build things like high power audio amplifiers or power supplies at radically better price points, if this were actually usable from the wall in places.
There is IEC 60309, but those are too bulky to be practical for home use. Three-phase power is basically only used for permanently installed equipment, like an electric stove, heat pump, car charger, or solar panels.
3 phase is 120 degrees out of phase. Wall power only has a single phase, 360 degrees. Via +/- rectification the situation gets more complex. The key thing, as the other commenter points out, is that there is always always power available. Where-as with wall-power you literally drop to zero voltage as you go + to - & back.
You always have power available at any instant. The capacitor is only for smoothing the ripple, not holding energy while none is being delivered. 3-phase motors just work too.
Fact that the US main power distribution network(eg: pacific DC intertie)runs on DC that we concert back to AC for regional distribution and then back to DC to power our houses like lights, tv, electronics etc. AC is inefficient long distances and still needs to be converted to DC to power our stuff.
Rectifiers (which convert AC to DC) are quite efficient. Apparently up to 98% [0]
And then there is the voltage conversion, which traditionally happened on the AC side (inexpensive and simple AC transformers are generally why the transmission and distribution systems are AC). Modern power supplies allow for buck/boost on the DC side.
I think you can make a legal arguement that the way the standards are enshrined in law and there are legal consequences for straying from agreed upon standards, that it is indeed standardized by force of law.
Further to the de jure standardization related to consumer safety laws and civil cases, the insurance industry has created a de facto standardization by refusing to cover or pay out if non-standard electric plugs and receptacles are or were used.
No, you can have receptacles of any shape in the USA, at least at the federal level.
However it's not uncommon for this to be enforced by law, for example it is a legal requirement that in the UK all goods sold must adhere to the BS 1363-1 standard.
Ok, how about at most state levels then? I seriously doubt you could wire up new construction in a completely nonstandard way and then expect to pass inspection.
I'm pretty sore 100% of all US states mandate that all new construction adhere to the National Electrical Code (NEC). Specifically, NFPA 70. They just delegate the authority as to what's "standard" to that non-governmental body.
Every few years the National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA)--which is a non-governmental nonprofit--publishes an updated standard and then it's up to all the state legislatures to update the laws to require the new standard.
The problem is that the NFPA doesn't just post the NEC for free on the Internet. You have to pay for it (which is ridiculous) and it's copyrighted and as such, illegal to just give away. There was a lawsuit in Georgia that was supposed to determine whether or not that situation was OK (having laws that require expensive fees to view may be unconstitutional since that's like having secret laws). I don't know what the outcome was of that though.
> I'm pretty [sure] 100% of all US states mandate that all new construction adhere to the National Electrical Code (NEC).
There are four states who have not adopted the NEC on a statewide basis, leaving any such decision to the local authorities having jurisdiction: Arizona, Illinois, Mississippi, and Missouri.
Part of the Georgia problem is that our laws are the same way! The legislators would vote to adopt case law that had added notes/ guidance by a third party, the third party would change fees to view what is then now the law!
> But if the whole world adopted this kind of regulatory stance, there would be much less incentive to invent that better cable because you now have huge regulatory bodies that may block its adoption and thus mean most of that work was money and time wasted.
Actually, the only incentive left is to make significantly better cables; the incentive to make marginal "improvements" in order to achieve vendor lock-in is removed.
It's USB-C but we reformulated the cable plastic for slightly longer release so it's now USB-Cxr. New patent, double the price but we're going to reuse the certification.
If the whole world adopted this stance maybe I wouldn’t an overflowing box of useless, obsolete cables. Maybe I wouldn’t need separate chargers and cables for my phone, tablet, ebook reader, and other assorted devices.
The amount of waste produced because companies are incentivized to produce incompatible devices like charger cables is staggering. The additional cost burden on users is unnecessary. The theoretical benefit of a better cable is not worth it.
Can you help me understand what you're saying? It comes off as so over the top that I find it absurd, but maybe we just have different backgrounds/experience.
1) Companies are not incentivized to produce incompatible cables, the industry has done a remarkably good job of settling on basically a single standard, so the incentives seem to run counter to what you say. The major hold out introduced their own cable standard 2 years _before_ USB-C even existed, and even they were rumored to be moving to USB-C anyways. (I'm sure people will credit the law with this even if it had nothing to do with it.) Would it have been good if they had switched to USB-C earlier? Sure, but that would mean... people throwing out their old cables that worked perfectly fine.
2.) Would the amount of charging cables you have purchased in your lifetime even fill up one regular-sized (13 gallon-ish) trash bag? I don't know how many charging cables you are buying or what your uses are, but I'm struggling to see how it's a "staggering" amount of waste. I'm a somewhat avid electronic geek, I own multiple Raspberry Pis and other hobbyist electronics. No way would I even come close. When I do buy new cables, 90% of the time it's for reasons like the old ones have worn out, or I have a new device that needs to be permanently plugged in.
~~~Edited to add~~~ All my consumer electronics devices have stopped needing their own charger for years now. I use the same charger and swap out a cord.
There is an entire product category of "universal power adapters"[1] that wouldn't exist if GP's problem weren't an issue - and that was back when most adapters were just "dumb" power sources that provided a fixed voltage with fixed maximum current.
There is no way to combine Micro USB, USBC, Thunderbolt and whatever Microsoft was doing with Surface devices into one adapter without separate electronics for each port.
> 1) Companies are not incentivized to produce incompatible cables
They absolutely are. I figure, it's not even greed (most of the adapters were included with the devices) but simply "designer convenience". It's certainly easier to design a device if you can choose an arbitrary input voltage and max power for your device.
It'll also certainly make your life as a manufacturer easier if you only have to provide warranty for devices that are run with your own power adapter.
Also, Apple in particular seems to have an aversion to follow any kind of standard not set by themselves if they can in any way avoid it. See Lightning, Thunderbolt, MagSafe, etc.
Doesn't mean this is better for anyone else except from the manufacturer.
> 2.) Would the amount of charging cables you have purchased in your lifetime even fill up one regular-sized (13 gallon-ish) trash bag?
I haven't measured but this isn't the point for me. But it used to be that the amount of adapters that you had to take with you were increasing: I.e. if laptop, phone and ipod all had different adapers and you were travelling, you had to take three of them with you.
> All my consumer electronics devices have stopped needing their own charger for years now.
As someone who designs device, I would HATE having to use a proprietary connector/device/protocol. I'm small time, so maybe engineering departments at major companies see it differently.
Right now I can design a product that uses one of the USB standards and pick from literally thousands of different pre-made parts that handle all the silly things for me. If I'm fine with 5v/2a power, I can just drop a $.0292 (that's the prototype price, it drops drastically at higher volumes) piece into the design and know that any cable and charger will work with it.
If I need more power than 10 watts I can spend $.50 on a usb-c plug and PD controller.
I truly don't understand why companies would fight this for most devices.
The one thing I'm worried about is what happens when someone comes up with something truly innovative (say, a phone battery that can charge at faster than 100 watts). Does that mean they will be penalized if they have to use a proprietary connector since usb-c is unable to meet that?
Then last part, I think, is the question. They could certainly … use a port with the same form-factor and eMarkers to indicate capability, submitting their new technology to the USB-IF as a proposition for standard/enhancement.
We already have, though, a glut of the pre-made components you talk about that cut every corner as close as they can-hopefully not so far as to start a fire, because you can’t sell to dead customers, but up to then? Go for it.
The number of implementations of PD has been a mess, with various chunks of a particular profile unavailable, inconsistently, along with no meaningful distinction between various versions of PD on most devices. Cables are often trash, and there is no certification for them required at all, until you get up to the point that Intel will smack you with a folder of lawyers if you try to call something a Thunderbolt cable without getting it certified. So we can all go out and buy just Thunderbolt cables and be sure it’ll work with everything else, and it’s all well and good until our wallet notices the hit.
Surely it can’t be that hard to just … check that stuff meets the standard, as in cGMP-style adapted to electronics (to the extent it isn’t already). Right?
Thunderbolt cables are extra thick to support the signaling that thunderbolt requires, so unless you're actually using that cable for data, it's more cumbersome. And shorter - max of 10ft. Which may be fine for you, but no thanks. And also, optical Thunderbolt cables can't carry power, so there's no guarantee that a thunderbolt cable will even do power delivery. If it's longer than 10 ft, then it won't.
"Companies are not incentivized to produce incompatible cables, the industry has done a remarkably good job of settling on basically a single standard"
If constrained to cell phones and tablets only I might sort-of agree with you, but right now the rest of the industry is fragmented to the point that it's not advantageous for any vendor to have its own weird cable except for Apple.
Even still, laptops can charge and dock via USB-C but they still often have their own weird-ass connectors and chargers.
But this also ignores the pre-Android years of every cell phone manufacturer having their own chargers, etc.
"Would the amount of charging cables you have purchased in your lifetime even fill up one regular-sized (13 gallon-ish) trash bag?"
If we're only talking about cell phones, close but no. But if we include similar devices that have used similar chargers and now use USB-C (ebook readers, MP3 players, tablets, handheld gaming devices) then yes. Easily.
Starting in the late 90s, I've owned something like 15 cell phones, and I think ~10 of them had unique chargers. Several MP3 players starting with the Creative Nomad and ending with a Fiio X5 (I think? I lost it on a plane). Three or four handheld gaming devices including a Sony PSP, IIRC.
And that doesn't include things like smart speakers (Amazon Echo devices now use USB-C I think? But the first few didn't), and a slew of other devices that could've used the prevailing standard (USB micro or mini or now USB-C) but didn't.
And that doesn't even include the parade of assorted data connection cables...
And, finally, that is only my personal use. I have a family, so when I say a "staggering" amount of waste I'm taking into account all of the various unique and now dead-end devices/connectors/cables that my wife and kids have churned through.
So - would I trade the potential for innovation on the off chance someone is going to come up with a super-duper nifty new cable vs. having a legislated standard? Yep. Happily.
This happened because the EU forced them to agree on a single charger/cable standard and it happened to be micro-usb for a while. Before this every mobile manufacturer had their own version of a charging AND data cable, separately..
USB-C is also inferior to lightning for laptops, but here we are. It's got this stupid internal tongue on the recepticals that will break if you try and clean the port with an office standard paperclip with any real force.
Hope you don't do anything involving tiny particles like sand or wood or cloth (like is found inside of pocket in the form of lint)!
That "stupid internal tongue" is why USB-C can now carry 160 Gbps, while Lightning can only do 0.45 Gbps. Yes, it kinda sucks for cleaning, but it makes it future-proof.
Lightning is that limited because Apple chooses for it to be, not because of the port. They made a double-sided variant with high speed data before.
The port can't directly drive all the weird miscellaneous pins that USB-C has, but it does have four high speed lanes, the same as USB-C. On a physical level it can reach the same speeds.
They absolutely did. "Sort it out or we will make a law" is what enforcement looks like.
Before that, everyone had their own variant of the barrel plug. A few crappy low price vendors just used micro usb instead, since they couldn't possibly have a proprietary moat to speak of anyway.
It's one of the examples where consumer legislation worked.
struggling to see how it's a "staggering" amount of waste
multiply the quite low volume of cable/adapter trash the average individual consumer has by the very large number of consumers. Now picture all that junk in a landfill taking up space and leaking various chemicals as the sun and weather slowly degrade all the plastics, glue etc.
I'm not disagreeing that less waste is good, but really, we're talking about an area about 500 meters on a side and 10 meters deep -- for the entire world. Car tires take up roughly 30 times as much space.
It's not the regulatory bodies deciding. It's the industry agreeing on when to move on. If they co-operate and design the new version in the open, there's no risk of wasted time. If they don't... it's a good lesson I guess.
Of course it's the regulatory bodies deciding. What do you think they're doing right now, what this article is about? There is no mechanism for "industry agreeing" that the rule should be discarded.
If only there was a specific document which talks about the consolations with industry experts to ensure future developments update the requirements... (There may be a more recent version of that doc available) https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/46755/attachments/3/...
In other words the regulatory bodies decide. They might, if they feel like it, ask some people who actually know something in the process of making that decision, but that doesn't mean they'll listen or care. Why are you denying this basic reality?
If you have a jaded view of the EU out to get you by (checking notes) ignoring the directive and not consulting with the experts so that they can force you to use a specific connector even when better options get created... Sure, I don't think we see the same reality.
I am interested in examples of similar legal systems working as expected/desired. I live in the USA and the trope that I am exposed to here is that of bureaucracy slowing things down unnecessarily, special interests capturing regulatory[1] bodies and having undue control to the detriment of progress or society as a whole while benefiting said special interests.
> Sure, I don't think we see the same reality.
Possibly exposure to different governments acting different ways.
First the bureaucrats would need to care. That’s a pretty big hump - people don’t like change. Instead of people going “yay, we’ll all finally be on the same connector” you’re going to have people going “no, I already have all of these cables and USB-C is good enough!”
You’ll also need the various players on the other side to invest in development for something new with absolutely no guarantee that the EU will approve it. Honestly, if they wanted to mandate this they should have at least just said it’s in effect for ___ number of years and no longer.
But this seems like a perfectly valid argument to have. I hate that I currently have at least 5 different "usb-like" cable types in my household: usbc to usbc, usbc to lightning, usba to usbc, usba to lightning, usba to microusb, and I probably still have some mini USB cables in some boxes.
I'd really hope that if something new is proposed it will be only once every player have decided to put their weight behind it to propose and push for a change.
The EU doesn't need to be out to get anyone for this to be true. Why make up an argument and argue against it, instead of reading and thinking before replying?
I didn't read the person you responded to as saying the EU was out to get anybody, I think that's an unfair characterization. They were just saying regulatory bodies move slowly, which is a completely reasonable statement, and indeed may be considered a feature of regulatory bodies.
On the topic of whether they will or not, I don't see a point in speculating: we'll find out soon enough.
If your connector really is better, so much as to obsolete USB-C, then you may be able to get the authorities to make your connector the new standard. So there is still incentive, and an incentive to make something that is genuinely better, not just for vendor lock-in.
Also to keep in mind that this regulation is a consequence of how the market developed in the last 20 years. The EU gave the industry a chance to sort out the situation before regulation, to which it mostly did with USB-C, but Apple refused to play along, also, cables haven't improved since USB-C, 9 years ago. So with a lack of substantial progress both in terms of standardization and technical improvement, the EU took the decision to regulate.
> cables haven't improved since USB-C, 9 years ago
Not to distract from your point, which I agree with, but that is just plainly untrue. A USB-C cable from 9 years ago almost certainly doesn’t support current standards for power delivery and data transfer.
I may be recalling it incorrectly, but wasn't the EU's stance on chargers the reason phones stopped shipping with proprietary chargers and started using USB? Accessories were big money for phone manufacturers so I don't think they would have done it without regulatory intervention. I think the adoption of Micro USB (and now USB C) was a huge improvement for consumers and the environment.
There is already very much reduced need to invent a better plug that isn't backwards compatible because USB-C is extremely flexible in that you can negotiate what will go over the pins.
E.g. USB power delivery has already been ramped up several times to the point where it can deliver up to 240W (USDB PD 3.1)
That doesn't require any regulatory body to agree, just the USB Implementers Forum.
While there may well eventually be a reason to upgrade the actual plug, there should be resistance to that to encourage people to try to find ways to make it work that's backwards compatible with current equipment first.
I feel this argument is like saying there's no point in developing free and open software because there are already other pieces of software that were adopted, and are de facto standard.
In my opinion, this actually promotes the development of technology to be shared for the benefit of everyone, not just to help with vendor lock-in.
If you are talking of MS Office... I am afraid that yes, the various free/open alternatives (especially to Word) were a wasted effort (of course, it could be that MS made their products more affordable in part because they were worried by the possibility that Open Office etc. could become "good enough" to make people switch, but honestly, this March I got a perfectly legal copy of Office for Mac for less than 75 USD... and I bought it because I was asked to prepare some slide for a professional group and I preferred to buy the whole packet out of my pocket than risking issues with "export to Powerpoint" from Keynote).
LibreOffice and other free and open source alternatives to Microsoft Office are definitely not a "wasted effort". LibreOffice is able to handle just about all of the home and small business use cases of Microsoft Office, and many people are able to skip buying Microsoft Office licenses because this free alternative is available to them. Also, Microsoft Office still does not support Linux outside its feature-limited web app edition, while LibreOffice does.
In my experience, the moment you bring a non-MS Office document to a meeting with people who pay you for the content of your document you are always risking to have problems/complains about one or more images going missing, the fonts acting strange, the print (either on paper or as a PDF) coming out wrong.
Granted, the latest episode was more than 5 years ago, but at 75USD for a local (i.e. non-cloud) licence I prefer not to take any chances.
Maybe "wasted" is too harsh a word, but I cannot say that in more than 30 years of work I ever found any real use case for non-MS documents.
If I am writing personal letters or putting together a few slides for, I dunno, my TTRPG campaign, everything goes, even Google or Apple stuff (both are free, the latter is free because it comes with the HW itself, if you use a Mac).
But when I know that there is a chance to get money for my document, the expectation on the customer's side is to get something that works with their Microsoft stuff, and I will comply.
YMMV of course, and I have surely missed any advance in Libre/Free Office for years. But as I said, I prefer to play it safe, and the cost of a licence is not really low.
An office suite is an essential tool that people expect to have in a computer. Being able to use this tool without needing to pay a license fee makes computing more accessible to everyone. While $75 (USD) might be affordable to someone in the U.S., the price for a Microsoft Office license is considerably higher in developing countries relative to average incomes. (Also, the U.S. retail price for a Microsoft Office Home & Student 2021 license is $149.99.)
Sure, if your employer or client expects you to use a particular piece of software, you're more than likely going to use that software to meet their expectations whether it's Microsoft Office or LibreOffice. However, many people use office suites outside of these specific business arrangements and LibreOffice is there for them if they don't want to pay that $75 to $150.
Tying this back to the original discussion about device connectors, if Microsoft ever neglects Microsoft Office like it once did with Internet Explorer, I can see alternatives eventually overtaking Microsoft Office in the office suite market just as Chrome overtook Internet Explorer in the web browser market. In the USB-C vs. Lightning situation, Lightning is the Internet Explorer of connectors, the proprietary connector that has a much lower maximum data transfer speed and much more limited device compatibility than USB-C. Although USB-C is now the de facto standard for device connectors, just as Microsoft Office is for certain business use cases, neither is guaranteed to stay that way forever. If the design of the USB-C connector is unable to incorporate some important technological advancement, it will certainly be replaced by an alternative just like Internet Explorer was replaced by Chrome and just like Lightning is being replaced by USB-C now.
Too late for edit: "cost of a licence is not really low" should have been "of a licence is NOW really low".
I do not really disagree with the points that were posted in response, anyway.
I just stated that "working in a country where MS Office is the de facto standard", all the other free alternatives (including Apple products - so it's not a dig against non-commercial products) are "not viable alternatives FOR ME" (special emphasis on the last two words).
Come on, there can't be that much better of a cable in the future. You already have speeds that are instantaneous on one file and I bet the transfer time to transfer all your pictures an videos from your phone is under an hour, for an operation you are maybe doing once a year ? Time for a full charge is also probably under an hour, that's not unreasonable.
Being standard is a better feature than speed.
Event if they double the speed, it can wait ten years and who knows in the speed may have quadruple by that next window.
Connectors are dying anyways. I rarely plug my iPhone in to anything, since I’ve moved to wireless charging. I wouldn’t be surprised if an iPhone is released eventually with no port at all.
Wireless charging loses 30% of the energy. It looks bad on the carbon sheets of the products, and Europe is also moving towards regulating carbon a lot.
Depending on the source you read, wireless charging is 75% efficient while wired charging is 85% efficient. MagSafe (the phone kind) should be even more efficient since the magnet focuses charging and so doesn’t create as much heat.
I notice my phone getting hot on normal qi chargers, but not on a MagSafe charger.
In reality it doesn't make any difference at all (especially in comparison to bigger issues) but the numbers do and it's the numbers that will guide the development of low-carbon policies.
> The law explicitly states that it has to be reviewed every couple of years to determine whether USB-C it is still the best choice, or there has been sufficient technological progress to warrant a switch to a newer standard.
But under these rules, wouldn’t that necessitate that a new standard develops and becomes the more popular one despite not being used because it can’t be sold in all the places that ban non USB C? How would you imagine that happening? It seems like in order for a new standard to catch on you can’t ban non USB C.
The more places that implement this non usb c ban the less a new standard can emerge. The regulation scales poorly in that regard.
> it can’t be sold in all the places that ban non USB C? How would you imagine that happening?
The same way it happened for microusb->usb-C. Think of the law as more of a "get along shirt" applied to misbehaving kids/companies than a specific ban/enforcement. The big players can still decide on a new standard and start using it.
The process would be something like this: someone has a need that usb-C connector can't solve, some working group makes a new connector, large phone producers agree to start using it, they start using it.
Also, just like with usb-C, we'd most likely see the new connector on the laptops before the phones. If some new capability is needed, phones are unlikely to be the initial devices to need it (given low power / small size)
Isn't the regulation now different for usb-C than it was for microusb? In that, Apple could ignore microusb, and still sell their phones in Europe? What if Apple now comes out with a new standard much better than usb-c for their newest iPhone? They could not ship it now in Europe. So, all these examples referring to microusb are just really sloppy thinking. Which is exactly what I would expect from a huge bureaucracy.
Yes, the regulation is different now, a custom dongle won't be allowed this time.
> What if Apple now comes out with a new standard much better than usb-c for their newest iPhone?
Then they go to other manufacturers and say "we have a new, much better idea. we should collaborate on it, so that it's standardised and we can all use it next year". Then they all ship it in Europe and we all have a much better connector. Win win win unless you want very proprietary connectors.
> Then they go to other manufacturers and say "we have a new, much better idea. we should collaborate on it, so that it's standardised and we can all use it next year". Then they all ship it in Europe and we all have a much better connector. Win win win unless you want very proprietary connectors.
You somehow smoothly glossed over the part where Apple (and friends) have to convince a bureaucrat to allow them to do any of this. Where political imperatives ('we're gonna crack down on [foreign] big tech companies!') might incentivise a regulator to say no. Where the new cable no longer uses metal X, and all the manufacturers of metal X successfully lobby to 'save jobs' by protecting the old standard. And so on and so forth.
Apple will certainly jump at the chance to spend money and time subsidizing its competitors research costs, in return for absolutely no competitive advantage. That's definitely what motivates people in the real world.
Reality check: this approach means the rest of the world will have better tech whilst what's sold in the EU remains frozen in time.
Check the companies involved in any standardised connector/protocol currently used. For example USB implementers forum includes HP, NEC, Microsoft, Intel and... Apple. HDMI forum includes... Apple. NVMe contributors includes... Apple. The times of one company doing their own proprietary thing are close to gone.
You're talking about the company that just re-introduced MagSafe, its widely praised proprietary power connector, and claiming the times of one company doing their own proprietary thing are close to gone? Apple is cleaning up in the PC market and has been for years by being as proprietary as possible.
They reintroduced it in addition to USB charging and only on the most recent MBP models. They're doing both standard and proprietary thing at the same time which is quite different from the connector battles we had in the past.
They’re supporting both standard and proprietary. My MacBook Pro is connected to a multi port USB-C charger 99% of the time, which also charges my phone and my headset. MagSafe sits in the backpack when I need to work somewhere else than my desk, which doesn’t happen much. I’d argue it’s the best of both worlds.
If it only supported MagSafe I’d be seriously annoyed.
You do see that we're discussing the underlying principle here, right? Please, try to put aside the specifics of the exact hardware and understand that what matters here is the EU's descent into attempting to centrally plan technology. This tendency isn't specific to power cables, it's a clear trend across many sectors.
The EU had already centrally planned my 240V wall sockets and RJ-45 Ethernet plugs and I’m seriously grateful for it. I’ll happily accept USB-C for low voltage low amp DC charging on that list.
The are multiple wall power plugs standards in use today in EU. And I am not aware on any being mandated on the device itself. And RJ-45 is so big that it wouldn't even fit on the slim edge of my MacBook Air - I would love for it to be replaced with some modern alternative.
They reintroduced the non-standard connector because usb-c limits were slowing down the charging time. Its not just a preference thing, its a functionality thing. Macbooks charge faster with magsafe.
Magsafe delivers 140 watts compared to 100 watts for usb-c. That difference is not insignificant for people who aren't plugged in all day.
Magsafe 3 uses USB-C on the other end of the cable. It uses the support for up to 240 watts that the USB forum announced a few months before Magsafe 3 was announced.
And if they weren't stingy with the patent, it could become the standard if everyone else agreed as well. And I say this as someone who prefers magsafe over usb-c.
In Europe those times are indeed gone now. If that's the natural way of things, why force anyone in the first place? Forcing a company to throw away their battle-tested technology? And all the equipment and cables with it? What kind of a huge bureaucratic fuck-up is this? This is not helping anyone, not the environment, not people. Well, it is helping some bureaucrats to justify their existence.
> However, the MoU also allowed for the use of proprietary charging interfaces, and one such solution continued to be used (and still is) by a major mobile phone manufacturer, thus preventing full interoperability. In addition, the MoU never addressed the environmental issues arising from the continued existence of those different charging interfaces and charging communication protocols.
So the reasons are:
1. We want everyone to do the same, no exceptions. In particular, we don't like Apple and the lightning standard.
2. It's better for the environment.
Now, 2. is clearly wrong, as now just all the people already in the Apple ecosystem need to switch their lightning equipment to USB-C equipment, adding tons of waste.
And 1., well, is no reason at all. It's how you successfully stop innovation.
> 2. is clearly wrong, as now just all the people already in the Apple ecosystem need to switch their lightning equipment to USB-C equipment, adding tons of waste.
As opposed to now, when I buy twice as many cables on their own wear lifecycles because my phone doesn't connect to the same thing as my Switch or my Laptop?
If you say 2. is clearly wrong, what are your numbers specifically that disagree with the research summarised in the "Impact" section? Or do you disagree with some part of the linked study? (Which does already take the forced replacement into account)
Yes, of course I disagree with these numbers. First, the study says it doesn't take into account the impact of wireless charging. Well, all I do is wireless charging these days, so already the study is worthless in that respect. Furthermore, a lot of benefits it attributes to unbundling, which Apple already also does for quite a while. Finally, these are made up make-belief numbers without any solid backing, given that all these factors are not really included. Personally, I didn't need another cable for the last 5 years, and I am a heavy Apple user. Somebody else was complaining that they need another cable between their switch, laptop, and iPhone. Yes, the cable is what makes the environmental difference here. Ridiculous.
Apple has been known for doing a whole bunch of R&D which affects the industry. Hell, they were heavily involved in USB-C, and got no competitive advantage from that R&D spending – they just got the opportunity to make better products. Same with WebGPU and other web standards (and, well, there's the freely available WebKit!).
"Companies won't invest R&D into making freely available standards because if it's freely available it's not a competitive advantage" is clearly not something which bears out in the real world.
Couple of years? The only mention I can find of a review is every 5, per[1].
I assumed the directive had some "go with the flow" upgrade path, but after reading the directive I can't see any wording to that effect.
If the USB-IF depreciated USB-C in favor of a USB-X the EU's directive wouldn't change, the only "upgrade path" appears to be that the commission will "asses" whether the directive should be changed every 5 years, starting in 2025.
I think the EU should have done something about Apple's insistence on their own custom connector, which is clearly only there to create a moat at this point.
But it also seems like if we'd had this law 10 years ago we'd still be using micro-USB everywhere.
Who in the EU bureaucracy is going to risk their neck in approving a new connector, which might become the next industry standard, but might also be a rubber stamp approving future Apple-like fragmentation.
Looking at the USB connector history, it actually looks like most plausible "what if this was adopted X years ago" would have resulted in USB-C being adopted even earlier. The USB-C spec was finalized in 2014, and I had my first phone with USB-C in 2016. It's hard to come up with a timeline where a requirement for Micro doesn't get replaced by C in that time window, while not getting us ahead of where we are now.
We can imagine that micro-USB got standardized in 2015, so in anticipation of that the first USB-C phone I bought that year came with micro-USB instead.
The law would then have been reassessed in 2020, at which point some EU bureaucrats would have had to weigh "reversible connector" etc. on one hand, and "take the career fall for forcing half a billion people to buy new chargers" on the other.
I'm pretty sure that in this scenario I'd still be using micro -USB in 2050.
I live in the EU, and I can't even drive two countries over without encountering incomparable electric sockets, and that's 19th century technology.
I think that says something about how willing the EU is to standardize, v.s. rocking the boat.
If the law had been passed in 2015, they probably would have picked USB-C as the newly finalized, and increasingly adopted, standard. Micro had already started to show its flaws by that point. Also, it's not like everyone in the EU needs to buy a new charger overnight; plenty of people would have a while before their next replacement, and plenty of others would have already gotten some other peripheral with the new port.
I can buy that, but I also think that we're now much less likely to replace USB-C, even if the reasons to do so in the future are just as compelling as the reasons for migrating away from micro.
Actually, I think (but I'm no lawyer) that if the USB-IF wants to standardize a new connector, they'd want to call it USB-C v2.0.
The law seems to implicitly defer to them to define "USB-C". If the consortium wants a new standard they could either reuse the name, or wait 2.5 years on average for EU approval or rejection.
> Who in the EU bureaucracy is going to risk their neck in approving a new connector, which might become the next industry standard, but might also be a rubber stamp approving future Apple-like fragmentation.
It's easy to do if there are regions in the world that aren't so tightly regulated. Then they can just look at what works elsewhere. If USB-D comes out and the rest of the world moves to it, it's a no-brainer for bureaucrats to get behind the switch.
It's much more complicated if the rest of the world fragments into say... 3 different standards that are all better than USB-3, but are mutually incompatible.
You can look beyond "popular", create something significantly better than current tech and then convince other actors to phase out all their existing chargers in favor of it.
But what if there is a German and a French vendor lobbying for their own standard making an agreement between German and French governments impossible? They will probably just stick to the status quo and ignore the issue leading all of us into a lock-in. We have seen those patterns in the past..
> The fear for a "lock-in" is completely unfounded, as the EU previously quasi-mandated Micro USB and switching to USB-C was no issue whatsoever. Besides, nothing is stopping manufacturers from including both USB-C and another charging connector.
If micro-USB was mandated, it would have prevent the use of the Lightning connector that I have quite enjoyed for the last 10 years or so, instead I would be stuck with the IMHO inferior micro-USB.
My iPhone has a lightning port and wireless charging. That's two.
How long until wireless charging is the default? Particularly combined with the iPhone's magsafe that allows charging to occur while the device is at any orientation?
> How long until wireless charging is the default? Particularly combined with the iPhone's magsafe that allows charging to occur while the device is at any orientation?
Given how inefficient wireless charging inherently is... ideally never, by legal force if required.
Wireless charging by definition has no physical port - if you have to plug it in, it's not wireless.
No manufacturer is going to waste space that could be use for battery and further compromise water/dust proofing to add another port, for a total of 2, even if it's better than USB-C because the opportunity cost is too high.
The better connector would start on laptops, maybe high-end tablets too, and it would take a few years anyway before it moves to phones. That's what happened with USB-C at least.
So phones will be stuck on USB-C until the EU wills that it be changed.
The EU will supposedly upgrade the mandate when a better standard comes along … but who gets to determine if the new standard is “better” enough to trigger a replacement.
Some will want it replaced while some will demand that we keep the current standard. Can the EU really speak for everyone when people can have conflicting needs and wants?
Ever thought what would happen if there are competing standards next round that are quite close in capability but are nonetheless significantly different - with pros and cons that are important to various people.
I wonder how that’s going to play out in the EU and how ugly things could get - especially with lots of money on the line.
Also who watches the watchmen? The EU is clearly not immune to corruption given recent scandals.
None of these would be issues if there wasn’t a stupid mandate. People will just use what they want and what is best for their needs.
This EU regulation diminishes the incentive of researching and developing a new technology in this area. This is a fact.
And no, innovation usually does not come from a bunch of companies sitting down to cooperate on a new version. First there is individual innovation, then there is consolidation, even if these come with changes from the original.
> There's still an incentive to be the company that replaces the technology.
That may be the case. But the innovation won't be deployed to Europe first.
Technologies and standards need adoption first before they'll be taken seriously by bureaucrats. And you're going to have a hard time getting adoption if it's literally against the law to do so.
Funny enough, if Micro-USB has been mandated by the EU, Lightning wouldn't even exist and everyone would have been stuck with the IMHO chunky Micro-USB.
Micro-USB was mandated by the EU. That's a large part of the reason we even have a standardized charging port.
This has been enforced since late 2012 (in draft since 2008) and is the reason why Apple had to include the micro-USB adapter in order to sell in the EU.
There is no reason for speculation since facts are available on your friendly neighborhood wiki. What we're seeing now is that the law is updated to enforce USB-C, which has been accommodated for a while.
The intent is not to standardize on an implementation forever, but to make the industry agree on a standard.
It wasn’t mandated the same way USB-C is today. It had enough flexibility that Apple could implement the superior Lightning connector. If the EU mandated micro-usb the way they are USB-C, Lightning would not have been released.
Please explain why you think this is true, it is far from obvious. I don't have time to read the legalese in detail, but from reading an abstract it doesn't seem to be the case.
We had a fkin usb-c with godspeed of data transfer and 120-240W transfer and is universally adopted across different devices and brands and Apple still is using a fkin usb 2 with proprietary connector. There is innovation, Apple decided it's users don't need that to sell them overpriced accessories
Lightning is capable of faster speeds. They just (probably rightly) decided it wasn’t worth the cost to put that in their phones when basically nobody transfers data on their phone using a cable. I believe one iPad had it before they switched to usb-c.
So why they did replace lightning in ipads and didn't use it for macbooks to create a full lightning ecosystem? Suggestion: because it is not capable and they know that lightning is nothing more than a cash cow for overpriced accessories
Or because they knew their "power-users," as in people with laptops and iPad Pros, would prefer USB-C. They probably wanted to keep control over accessories on the iPhone not only for straight up financial reasons, but also to make sure "it just works."
Anyways, USB-C is obviously technically more advanced - but it doesn't really matter for phones much, does it? Most people only ever transfer data on their phones from/to the cloud.
It does matter. Much faster charging, much faster transfer for prores 4k videos. The fact that a lot are using cloud doesn't mean few use cable for data transfer
But if enough governments of the world mandate one technology... no innovator will have the appetite to market something better (whether that be Apple or a startup).
It's good that no government mandates one specific technology then. This regulation is essentially "the industry needs to agree on one approach or else" - when there's need to change, they can re-evaluate.
You just sell to industrial customers first. Look at AC power outlets, they're heavily standardized but also regional. It doesn't inhibit the existence of other power delivery options for customers with special needs, there just isn't much consumer demand because standard outlet designs as Good Enough for most people's actual needs.
Sometimes that is good. The EU power plug is probably better than the earlier US standard one, but it isn't enough better to switch everything i own to use it. (220 vs 120 volts is an issue that i'll ignore for this discussion). I'm sure engineers could do better than the EU plug, but not enough they would switch.
Standards are good for everyone, even when very old and seemingly outdated.
Being "locked" on a a few not awful standard connectors is a good thing.
The Edison screw bulb is very simple, reliable, still used today even if I am sure that many companies would have invented more sophisticated standards over the years, I am glad they did not.
I still use audio jack connectors as much as possible, and I think that the world would be a slightly better place if we had universal AC power plugs.
The Edison screw works quite badly for LED bulbs commonly used today. The electronics are all buried in the base part, which has very limited cooling, so they get extra hot and kills the lightbulbs prematurely when the LEDs themselves last much longer. It is also not standardized w.r.t. voltages, power limits, etc, making it prone to user error.
The European and British plugs both have noticeable advantages compared to the American one, in that it is much harder to get shocked by them or cause arcing. Also, a universal plug would be much more helpful in a world with the same electric power systems everywhere, which is not the case.
Though, it isn't the screw connector that makes led bulbs a bad fit. It is the AC power delivery. And, yes, hvdc is likely better, but only in recent times with modern equipment. And even then, probably more debatable than makes sense.
> Standards are good for everyone, even when very old and seemingly outdated.
This is definitely not the case. As an example, the Official Standard way to encode data structures in the 90s was ASN.1 from the ITU. Problem is, ASN.1 kinda sucked and so nobody uses it anymore outside of cryptography. Then the Official Standard became XML. Eventually people decided that also wasn't that great and switched to JSON, which is a totally unofficial standard defined by one guy.
Your approach / the EU approach would mean REST APIs would all need to be encoded with ASN.1 or XML.
This is more evidence that engineering for every complicated case will give you a complicated standard. And note that most of the complaints are often retread with arguable advances later.
JSON is still an odd one. 90% of that standard is "javascript, but only numbers and strings are allowed." With some extra shitty rules around comments and no real specification for what numbers do in the host language.
ASN.1 is good though. What sucked was everyone implementing their own serde tooling. In another, better world we'd have consolidated around ASN.1 DER and not wasted all that time and energy with XML, JSON and so on.
If it was really that good there'd be plenty of great open source implementations and tools by now, but in reality nobody wants to use it. Note that protobuf didn't have this issue.
But weren't those standards defacto? I share your penchant for the shape of a bulb socket and purposely bought a phone that still provides an audio jack... but afaik regulators never dictated those shapes.
The regulations get updated, you aren't stuck on usb-c.
What EU wants to avoid is Apple giving "unfair" advantages to their own chargers (which could either come from Apple making better chargers or artificially slowing third party ones) defeating the purpose of having less electronic waste.
> The regulations get updated, you aren't stuck on usb-c.
Isn't there a chicken and egg problem there - no one will release products with new power interfaces, because they aren't releasable in Europe.
I suppose such products might get released first in the US, but which large tech company if going to ignore the EU market when releasing important products?
> Isn't there a chicken and egg problem there - no one will release products with new power interfaces
Yes, that's the point. Instead of anyone releasing products with new power interfaces the goal is to have industry-wide discussion on adopting new standards for everyone.
I think it's reasonable and only a positive thing. If the industry will decide that USB-C isn't enough they will revise the standard.
> the goal is to have industry-wide discussion on adopting new standards for everyone.
That’s not part of the regulation whatsoever
> If the industry will decide that USB-C isn't enough they will revise the standard.
But the industry doesn’t come together and pick a standard. The EU did. The closest industries came to picking a standard were freely choosing from many different formats that emerged.
Imagine what it would take for the executives at Apple, Samsung, Motorola, etc. to come together and all agree on some new format that perhaps one of them developed. Now consider that the EU would still have to approve it. The conclusion made from that Herculean effort might just be null and void. Also consider that this sounds a lot like is collusion. These companies would never get as far as sitting down with each other and are even less likely with this EU regulation.
What’s worse is this all completely subjugates new players, who may be more likely to innovate and which can’t abuse any existing user base, to the current phone market. They would never have a seat at the table.
"Imagine what it would take for the executives at Apple, Samsung, Motorola, etc. to come together and all agree on some new format that perhaps one of them developed. Now consider that the EU would still have to approve it. The conclusion made from that Herculean effort might just be null and void."
The EU does not really care on the standard and does not judge the technical decision - it cares about that there is one standard.
So if Samsung, Apple and co come together for the next improved standard, then this is exactly the purpose of this legislation and no one has to fear if the EU is in a good mood afterwards.
Moreover, "Imagine what it would take for the executives at Apple, Samsung, Motorola, etc. to come together and all agree on some new format that perhaps one of them developed" is not actually hard to imagine, if you just drop Apple from the list.
It is specifically Apple that has been the plays-badly-with-others child in this domain; the industry as a whole doesn't seem to have had much of a problem with the general idea.
The EU is the final arbiter. Top phone companies all agreeing on a new standard does not change the regulation. And even so, that just sounds like regulatory capture.
The regulation specifically states, that it needs to be updated regularily. So when a new and better USB comes out - then this will be the new standard - not automatically, but allmost.
Rumor is Apple basically invented USB-C and gave it to the standards body (which includes Samsung, Google, Microsoft, etc.), but didn’t take credit because being associated with Apple would harm its adoption.
I hear this point a lot from standardization-inclined folks, and strongly disagree.
Standardization works to turn already existing solution into a widespread commodity. Standardization does not work efficiently to invent new better ways of doing things.
The only viable driver for innovation is experimentation, not making new ‘better’ standards on paper inside some walled “industry” committee.
> Isn't there a chicken and egg problem there - no one will release products with new power interfaces, because they aren't releasable in Europe.
Yes - seems plainly obvious to me.
What’s more, the more countries to implement this makes it more unlikely to see different chargers. Maybe a better charger is released in the US. Now what if the US bans it? Are they going to innovate for the Brazilian market? The regulation scales very poorly.
Don't worry too much, USB has been steadily making a progress even if it's not expected to be mass adopted for several years. In fact, it was too much to the level that now it brought all the fragmentation headaches to everyone. If this regulation can slow them down and give vendors time to improve their implementation quality, it would be actually better for everyone.
No, the EU follows the industry standards. The industry standards for connectors are currently decided on by USB-IF, as almost the entire industry is a member of it. This means that when USB-IF releases a new standard, the EU will add it to the legislation.
Like you point out, the “unfair[ness]” of making better chargers faster than the EU standard can keep pace threatens to revert to least common denominator experience in the name of less waste.
Not really: following public standards will never be seen as unfair. So a manufacturer merely implementing USB-PD 5.0, which allows for 2 megawatt via water-cooled copper, to fast-charge their devices is in the clear.
I’m all for some kind of universality, but this authoritarian method does not strike me as a good idea. You lament their concern with fairness, by giving unfair advantages to the USB-C license holders/patent holders?
I’m not even sure people understand that Apple also contributed heavily to the development of USB-C along with other companies, some of them European.
The irony is that I believe the Lightning Connector, the iPhone connector, has been the longest standing standard connector (11 years now) and the introduction of the Qi “wireless charging” is also a good argument against this narrow sighted EU authoritarian/communist mentality that some apparatchiks can make better decisions than those who actually do and create things.
Has someone actually asked Apple to lay out its reasons for not adopting the larger and bulkier USB-C? Could it be that it has something to do with trying to engage in economic warfare against Apple because it’s harder to compete?
The EU tried the soft approach for many years, and Apple stubbornly refused to play. "This authoritarian method" of representing the populations they are meant to represent as part of a democratic society rather than letting companies continue to do what they want came with ample warning.
EDIT: Someone asked about the mandate for it, and deleted, but worth pointing out that the EU parliament supported this with a majority of 602 to 13, so it has support literally from the far left to the far right.
Yes, a completely reasonable choice when they made the goal clear (reducing waste) and literally everyone else managed to work together and Apple was the only one who decided to play stupid games.
We may tolerate the fiction of corporate personhood in some circumstances, but companies are not people, and their "rights" should be strictly limited - especially when they purposefully ignore the wishes of elected representatives for a decade.
Apple has had 2 style plugs in 20 years. They are there only ones who have done that. You’re someone just brainwashed over this when I am confident of you just paused for a second and thought about what utter foolishness you supported, you would realize that very thing. If any of the tech companies has “reduced waste”, an oxymoron in its own right, then it’s Apple. I use cables for latest iPhones that were made for phones that are now 10 years old, and I also use the same cables and chargers for iPads I use for iPhones. I implore you to just stop, center yourself and think your own thoughts about all of this. It’s rather bizarre when people are so mixed up in the head of over things because they repeat propaganda rather than thinking their own thoughts and following deductive logic to its final conclusion.
From the fact you've spontaneously brought up corporate personhood as a bit of a strawman to pummel, it seems like your disagreements with the operation of the modern economy may go beyond mere cable standardisation.
Apple refused to implement mirco-USB when the EU issued guidelines to use USB because of electronic waste. Apple refused to even talk to the EU about it. So with Apple refusing to engage with the elected representatives of the EU then the EU got to the point of having to force Apple to engage; legislation.
TLDR: The EU wanted less e-waste. Apple refused to engage, so the EU forced them to engage or leave.
The problem is that the EU is illegitimate and a circus clown shoe of pencil necked bureaucratic authoritarians.
I’m not even a fan of Apple look e for different reasons, but the very same reason Apple is likely not even engaging the EU clowns and their attempt at making Apple products worse with Micro USB (what a horrible design and technology because of it), it’s also the very same reason that the EU cannot ban Apple, because Apple is to god and the market leader in design and creating good products that people actually want.
I can assure you that Apple’s lightning connector has caused there to be less waste than any other manufacturer.
Case in point too; I just bought a temporary Nokia phone. And here it is, 2023, and they’re still using that horrible MicroUSB design plug that you have to look at every single time to make sure you get the plug in correctly. OUSD also discriminatory against the blind who have to feel they plug itself to figure out which way is up, whereas I can plug the lightning connector into any of the Apple devices in pitch black darkness because they go in the same every time.
USB is managed by a nonprofit, and the specification is freely available for anyone to use. You do not need to pay them anything to make a USB device, nor do you need their permission for it.
You do need to pay them a (very reasonable) yearly fee if you wish to use the USB logo on your product though, and this includes agreeing to subject your product to compliance testing. As far as standards bodies go, USB is just about the furthest from "authoritarian" you can get.
In what way does it generate more e-waste than any other cable? Unless you switch back and forth between iPhone and Android regularly, you’ll need roughly the same number of cables regardless of the platform.
I need different cables to charge my ipad/mac and iPhone.
I can charge basically all (dozens) of my gadgets using usb-c cable, but I still need to carry additional outdated lightning with me to charge the damn phone.
I don't think this is in any way authoritarian, no one's personal freedom is at stake here. The regulation is for hardware companies, not you.
There is no "unfair advantage" to USB-C patent holders, it's a standard that the industry settled on in a cooperative fashion in which Apple was itself a major player.
No one prevented the industry from working on a "patent-free" different standard.
Point is, you can't and shouldn't promote _different brands of connectors_ as it defeats the purpose of having less waste if in a household iPhone users are gonna use a different charger from the others.
It never crossed your mind that there may be a reason that Apple does not want to use the USB-C standard for all its disadvantages over the lightning connector that they have now had for 11 years. Apple has had two types of plugs over 20 years now. Can you say that about Nokia? Samsung? Etc?
The thinnest smartphone ever sold was the Vivo X5 Max, which was 4.75 mm thick, and it still managed to squeeze a headphone jack into it, despite Apple's feeble protests that such things are impossible. USB-C (2.5 mm) is significantly thinner than a standard headphone jack (3.5 mm). Between the screen, the circuit board, the battery, and the back cover (including the camera lenses), you're never, ever going to see a smartphone so thin that it couldn't fit a 2.5 mm port. This is a non-excuse.
And lightning is usb2.0 and what it can do to be backwards compatible and offer 240w or more for charging and gigabits of data transfer like latest usb-c is unknown. But what we do know? Usb c is superior and it has been for years and Apple didn't switch to it on phones to sell users proprietary accestories that connect only by that port
You mean the great connector that is so bandwidth-deprived (and doesn't support alt-modes) that Apple has to send lower-than 1080p video with bad artifacting down the cable?
USB-C is perfectly good for the moment in time we live in.
Imagine if goddamn power plugs in your wall were starting to be different because some company thinks a different format is better.
Or if they started to pull some "you can only charge your car with this very specific type of connector, but not others" and cars are much more impacted and sensitive by arguments like yours.
I have to ask - Do some people just throw the word "Communist" every time they disagree with something? Is this also a "Socialist" standard? Possibly also "woke"? :->
As for longevity, dunno; Micro-USB was around since 2007 and is still in use. Usb a of course is decades strong. And the European preference of Micro-USB does not seem to have prevented other standards. And of course, 3.5mm connector has been around for way way longer (until Apple decided to murder it in cold blood:). There's Ethernet of course. IEEE and various C-series cables?
They're using that word not because they disagree, but because it's an accurate description of what the EU is becoming.
Communist states centrally plan the economy. Everything is specified by government committees down to tiny details like the production levels of individual factories, what they produce, how, and what does or does not get researched.
The EU has developed a penchant for micromanaging the details of private industry to an extraordinary degree. The similarities to communist central planning are clear to see:
1. There is no democracy. The Commission does what it wants. The EU proclaims itself to have a parliament, but the body that uses that name isn't the same as a normal parliament.
2. They love to specify the details of trivial things like exactly how fast kettles operate, the exact way the curvature of bananas are classified, how browsers display cookie UI, and now the way phones plug into chargers.
3. All the above is justified via the usual terms ideologically left wing people like to use such as "fairness", "cooperation" etc.
None of this is a surprise because the EU traces its roots to a document written by communists called the Ventotene Manifesto, and prior Commission presidents have even celebrated Marx.
Thank you for your response, I appreciate the time and perspective; I stand by my observation though:
None of what you listed I see as a defining feature of Communism. It feels like some people have heard that "Communism is a bad thing that Russians did", and then they apply it to anything and everything they disagree with or may have centrally-planned authoritarian approaches.
"Centrally planned undemocratic / authoritarian" has so many wonderful implementations and versions, and communism is barely one of them :)
I remain unconvinced to see "USB-C Standard" as a "left-wing communist conspiracy" :-/
Well, I didn't mention the Russians. The Chinese, the Cubans, the North Koreans all do micromanagement of their citizens lives as well. North Korea has a law that regulates what hair styles citizens may have. This way of thinking isn't specific to the USSR.
The USB-C standard is fine. Nobody is attacking USB-C in this thread. The left wing quasi-communist stuff comes from the absurd assumption that it is the last word in cable design and therefore it should be illegal to use anything else. That is the sort of planning error that led communist states to poverty.
" I’m all for some kind of universality, but this authoritarian method does not strike me as a good idea."
Rent to high? No problem, make increasing rent illegal. Got a homeless problem? Make it illegal to be homeless. Don't like changing your power cord? No problem: illegal. All these ideas would be like playing chess with the ability to only think one move ahead. It would be like having a 12 year old king pronounce today is ice cream day [all while facing certain thermonuclear war].
When a better USB-C plug happens, the standards will get updated, instead of millions of people having to buy 10 versions of a damn plug NOW.
It's not like the EU standardizes emergent and rapidly evolving things, it's a freaking plug and "stuck in the past" isn't exactly how I describe the EU.
No one is buying 10 versions of a damn plug. Only a gadget enthusiast who changes their phone type every year would see that problem. If you stick to Android there is one plug. If you stick to iPhone there is one plug.
If you have an iPhone and basically any other device like a MacBook, Sony headphones, Nintendo Switch, Sony PS5 controller, the list goes on and on, then you actually need two plugs.
German speaking. While I see your point on unfair behavior of companies like Apple forcing customers to buy gazillions of adapters, I'm afraid the downsides of those regulations are being downplayed by the EU regulators in kind of an arrogant tone:
- GDPR, e-privacy and such only led to us having to click away cookie banners. Someone should make a study how much of the GDP is wasted because of those micro-interactions maneuvering around dark ui patterns. Still, Big Tech is just collecting the data in different ways and the regulations will never be able to catch up.
- Over time, we saw many smaller companies were put under pressure by some lawyers to also "obey the law". It massively incentivized legal uncertainty for many local companies. We will see the same pattern with generative AI and the obligation to make transparent where the data it's trained on is coming from.
- We have lately seen regulations being misused by some governments to stop things they didn't like (see Italy's government and their take on ChatGPT).
I am not so sure that regulating power plugs isn't just another iteration of stupidity of doing the opposite of what they claim.
> isn't there a concern
Yes, there is, but there's a few things mitigating the concern IMO
1. The "locking in" is not universal, it mostly concerns portable devices and has exceptions for higher wattage requirements
2. USB-C is a very flexible format, at the moment I think Thunderbolt 4 is the maximum commercially and that can deliver 40Gbs and 240W
3. What's locked in is a minimum, you can have two different charging ports on any device as long as one of them is USB-C
So as far as I can see you would incur into problems if you:
1. Want less than 100W of power
2. Need more than 40Gbs (I think thunderbolt 5 will bring this to 80?)
3. Don't care about compatibility with headphones, mice, keyboards, external hard drives etc which more and more are going to switch to usb-c
5. Can't physically put more than one charging port on the device
6. They can't afford to make the case for an exception from the commission
This is certainly a possibility but I think it's a minor one, and personally it's worth it if it means I can bring less chargers around (it's less highlighted but for devices with certain capabilities this law also mandates compliance with power delivery standard)
My approach to the whole thing is that I more or less see USB-C as a parallel to electrical sockets, we might be missing out on some theoretical improvements but I'll take that chance
> means in 50 years the EU is still stuck
The commission can adapt the law through implementing regulations and it can still be adapted or repealed through the standard process, I can see as realistic us in the EU missing out on some fancy new port for 2-3 years (which I grant would suck) but doubt it'd be more than that
Probably something similar to what happened when the EU mandated mini-USB B for phones and USB-C was rolled out.
Just in case: every phone used to have its own proprietary charging port. Typically (but not always) contemporary models of the same brand had the same port, but that was it. This led tp a ton of chargers - and e-waste, because 2 years later the charging port had, of course, changed.
The EU came and legislated this nonsense out of existence - and good riddance to that!
That was mini-usb-b. We've moved on to usb-c nowadays, and the EU is expanding the legislation to cover most chargeable items.
Your worry is relevant, but the EU's track record in this particular field is absolutely stellar and more than sufficient to assuage me.
If the new plug comes from a big company (like Apple) then maybe they have the time, money and lawyers to push it through the bureaucratic layers a couple of years until maybe it gets approved.
However, there is very little chance for that to happen now, considering most of innovation comes from small startups who don't have the resources or disposition to research something that is illegal to put on the market. So we are stuck with USB-C and committee-driven "innovation" for the foreseeable future.
Hopefully Apple will not adopt this forced mandate on other markets and maybe they can innovate there and back port the improvements to the EU. Most of tech innovation currently happens in the US anyway. We'll see, but I am not optimistic. Large companies always benefit from regulations since they have the resources to comply while denying a possible differentiator for small companies.
Right, just like how USB-C was invented by small startups like AMD, Intel, Apple, and Google. Before standardization the only "innovation" we were seeing was how many obscure connector shapes people could come up, all using the same voltages and currents.
> something that is illegal to put on the market
It is not. You can 100% put something on the market which has both your MagicConnector 3000 and USB-C.
The EU previously issued a Memorandum of Understanding, which basically just asked phone manufacturer nicely to please use USB micro-B. There was no mandate or enforcement (obviously, because Apple never released a phone with micro-B).
The USB-C law is an actual law which can't be ignored. The law will need to be updated when USB-D comes out.
It would have been ridiculous to drop lightening for micro-b. The whole e-waste argument I found lacking. I hope Apple makes a Freedom phone if the EU interferes too much with progress.
Why this question appears every time with this topic? It has already been answered at least one thousand times. Are these just trumpists jaqing off[0]?
EU laws are not like physics laws, you can change them. That's why so many people are employed in policy and law making.
So if it happens that in the land of cable freedoms they come up with something much better, it would be adopted. At first, those electronics which can accommodate more than 1 type of charging plug will start getting this new plug alongside with USB-C and if there's actual demand for it they law will be changed to allow only that plug.
I don't know how much if this is about environmental concerns, I'm under impression that EU is never happy about rent seeing companies and tries to standardise everything. That's probably why it's going after browsers and App stores: it expect company products to be picked for competitive reasons, not compatibility reasons. Another example is EUs enforcement of standardized EV charging plugs, arguably Tesla plugs can be better but overall it's better for everyone to be able to charge everywhere even if it was possible to have slightly better charging plugs on some stations.
I imagine, the US citizens are confused by all this due to the nature of how EU and US function. With GDPR, the American audience was imagining that startups will go bankrupt when trying to comply with EU law and there were tantrums about some people abandoning their projects because they don't have resources to deal with EU regulations. Maybe it's because how lawsuit happy the US is, maybe it's because how the laws are enforced in US is different than most of EU - I don't know, but in general Europeans feel differently than Americans about the government involvement.
How do you know how to change the laws if nobody is allowed to try different things (thus innovate)? USB-C didn't come from nowhere, and it wasn't a given that it's better than MicroUSB - first the market tested it, then it became a standard.
EU laws have worldwide effects, there's no land of cable freedom anymore.
You're free to try other things. You're just not free to leave out a USB-C plug as long as that is the standard, and you will run into trouble if you try to play stupid games with adding power delivery profiles to your USB-C support that try to circumvent the goal of these regulations of removing device-specific cables or chargers.
If Apple "only" ends up offering a certification mark for USB-C chargers that have been tested with the iPhone and makes that easily accessible, they might well be in the clear. If they try to add power delivery profiles that are unavailable to everyone else, chances are the EU will react.
EU laws don't expand beyond EU. EU consist about 5% of the population, 95% can have whatever they like. Yes, there's Brussels effect but that effect work when the trouble of designing or producing something else is not worth it.
Also, you are not banned from engineering other solutions. The police isn't going to knock on the doors of engineers who are suspected to develop better charging cables :)
EU is the second largest market in the world. Of course everything is going to be made in a way that's sellable in the EU.
> Also, you are not banned from engineering other solutions. The police isn't going to knock on the doors of engineers who are suspected to develop better charging cables :)
We are discussing under an article where the regulator has sent a "stern warning" to a company. I don't think what you're saying makes sense. If I tried to sell my better plug in my home market, the police would come knocking.
You mean like how EU-compatible AC plugs/voltages are sold everywhere else in the world? Of course, manufacturers can have different versions of things for different geos--or just not sell in the EU if it's not profitable to do so (which presumably won't be the case with the iPhone).
No they wouldn't, because you are not a giant corporation like Apple. Stop assuming your scrappy little startup and a trillion-$ corporation with massive market share have similar interests, this is like an ant worrying about a fence designed to block elephants.
In reality if you come up with some kind of better plug, you will sell to a specialist market that would recognize the benefits (dentists or musicians for example) and then expand into other markets. You could try selling direct to consumers but guess what, nobody would buy it unless it had connectivity with other devices, and manufacturers wouldn't go out of their way to adopt it unless it delivered overwhelming advantages at low additional cost.
If you need to sell it on both markets and can't have two production lines, I guess your product will have USB-C port and your superior charging port, like the new MacBooks having type-C and magsafe.
Having three computers of different brands in the family (an HP, a Lenovo and a Microsoft Surface), it's certainly been useful in the past to be able to share a single charging port for all computers and most phones in the family.
In fact, USB-C and magsafe are complementary. USB-C is commonly used by displays to provide docking station functionality, so I can buy any display and use it with any computer (instead of having to buy a proprietary docking station that is different for each model). If I'm travelling, I can enjoy the more robust magsafe connector but I can also use USB-C if needed.
It's good because until you invent this new cable, we can have everything work with USB-C.
Not betting on your ability to come up with a new type of charging cable is not as big deal as you imagining it is. Maybe you should come up with a prototype before demanding all type of charging cables be allowed?
This probably means your invention don't add enough value. Throw it away like all other prototypes who fail to create enough value to warrant a production line.
Depending on the rest of the world for tech, research and innovation is why us, Europeans, are worried about these authoritarian EU mandates which can only cause us falling further behind the rest of the world.
Gaia-X funneled money to large corporations that used it to market their shitty corporate services and that allowed them to beat actually innovative cloud computing startups.
I'm not familiar with this. Did it happen due to the EU regulation which dictated that Gaia-X have to funnel money to large corporations? Which regulation specifically you are blaming this to?
By definition, we cannot know the creations and innovations we are missing due to the unintended second-order freezing effects of regulation. This is why we need to be extremely skeptical of regulation and only accept it in truly important and non-trivial cases (unlike a damn charging plug).
There is a clear push from European elites for a halt in progress, aiming to maintain a status quo and preserve their existing advantages. Modern corporation not under their control threaten them. As progressives, it is crucial that we fight to ensure that Europe continues to advance instead of turning into an Amish village and we won't have all to emigrate to the US.
EU citizens are sceptical of the corporations and their ability to regulate themselves. Different attitudes, the American psyche definitely allows for better innovation and business environment but on the other hand in EU we don't have carcinogens in our bread.
It is O.K. to have two or more different societies, those feeling like they need more freedom for business can go to the US. It definitely makes the US much more competitive but a lot of people like Europe the way it is.
EU is not some company in Belgium, it is made of elected and appointed people from all the EU countries. It's not like EU making up things that members didn't ask for. EU creating a regulation is not like Twitter forcing a new policy over its users.
> It's not like EU making up things that members didn't ask for.
The EU does opinion polls to find out what people's top concerns are. Guess what: mobile phone connectors, cookie popups, GDPR and all the other crap the EU engages in never gets anywhere even close to the top of the pile.
We saw what the EU does when a member asks for changes requested by their "EU citizens". It told the UK to fuck off and then threw a hissy fit when the Brits actually did so.
Opinion polls are one thing, the EU itself is mede up of elected officials and officials appointed by elected officials.
If UK wants to block travel and resident rights of EU citizens and keep access into EU markets, that's obviously where the EU has to say fuck off. Non-British have opinions too and the opinions are overweeningly that if you want to be in EU you have to have the same rights and obligations like everybody else. No one is obligated to provide others with privileges just because they threaten to leave, they are free to leave and enjoy not being in the club. Which is silly because all those "EU rules" are put in place together with the British anyway.
In democracies opinion polls are regarded as important because people's opinions matter. The EU doesn't care about them because the EU is not a democracy.
Even if you pretend the distance between voters and decision makers doesn't matter, here's a simple test: did your countries elected official vote for von der Leyen? You don't know the answer because the process by which she was selected is totally opaque by design. We don't even know if there was a vote at all. We don't know why she was selected. The MEPs were given a choice of her or nobody else. So please don't tell people that the EU is democratic or made up of "officials appointed by elected officials".
"If UK wants to block travel and resident rights of EU citizens and keep access into EU markets"
The EU granted residency rights automatically to everyone from the EU who was living there, and the EU still told everyone in the country to fuck off - including millions of those so-called "EU citizens" whose so-called rights suddenly stopped mattering.
But this is really a sideshow. The fact is, nobody in Europe was going on protest marches about USB-C or kettle speeds. The EU spends time on this stuff because it's made up of powerful but bubble-living bureaucrats who don't care and don't have to care about what matters to everyone else.
I was in UK when the Brexit referandum was held, it wasn't about EU granting residency rights or anything like it. After UK let EU, nothing was done that couldn't have been done when EU. That's also why UK's public opinion changed.
Anyway, you are entitled to believe in alternative facts. You are also entitled to believe that all EU does is regulating USB-C, that's fine. You are also free to believe that EU officials do things that no one cares or wants and keep getting elected.
I haven't claimed anywhere that all the EU does is regulating USB-C, why do you think that? I gave several other examples of micromanagement.
> You are also free to believe that EU officials do things that no one cares or wants and keep getting elected.
The EU officials who create regulations are the Commissioners, who are not elected. That isn't an alternative fact, it's just a fact. I continue to be amazed at how EU supporters keep pretending this isn't the case. Can't tell if it's ignorance about their own political system or just too embarrassing to admit.
We can't know what innovations are missing due to corporate greed or the ubiquity of AC power transmission either. You're making the same argument as people who think Tesla had the secret of cheap and abundant wireless power transmission but the knowledge was suppressed by shadowy elites.
It's kinda hard to believe you seriously believe you might end up living in an Amish village. Perhaps you should visit the US and be surprised at how mediocre a lot of stuff is.
I know that if a corporation fails to innovate competition and free markets ensure other more innovative companies have the opportunity to come up and eat their lunch. That mechanism simply doesn't work with governments and regulation because they are absolute monopolies without competition.
I lived in the US and while Europe (where I live now) has pretty old towns and manicured lawns I know that nothing modern and innovative comes from here: iPhone, software, SpaceX, even Tesla. Largest European company is a luxury brand and the most powerful economy in the EU turned out to be an empty shell controlled by and built on on cheap Russian energy. California alone dwarfs the largest EU countries put together.
Wtf are you smoking? You can add other ports, the law is about mandating usb-c. If you want thunderlightening port or anything you want besides usbc, like HEADPHONE JACK, you can doo this...
Why is it inferior? Last time i checked lightning can't do 240W charging or 40gbps data transfer? Just like afaik typec doesn't have corrosion problem lightning has, also type c is universally used across the majority of brands, heck even in ipads and macbooks, you say apple deliberately choose to replace 'superior port' with 'inferior type c'? Lmao)
Lightning connector is smaller, more robust being a straight male connector as opposed to some weird female-in-male contraption. The port is beveled so it slides easier unlike USB-C whose edge catches and I always have to fumble around. Not as bad as the old USB connector were, with their legendary 3 flips to find the right orientation, but still.
No idea what corrosion you are talking about as I never encountered it. I don't need 240W to charge my iPhone, is't not a freaking Tesla and I prefer to prolong the battery life. I will give you the data bandwidth even though today's wifi is quite fast but for laptops MagSafe is an even better charging port, and I hope someday for iPads too.
So your only argument why type c is inferior is that it is smaler and slides easier and you deliberately choose to ignore all it's advantages... I had used both and I don't really see a difference in connecting a cable to the phone, both are easy to manage. Corrosion is a problem for lightning, if you didn't get it, you are very lucky, but you can find a lot of complains with a google search. You want to preserve battery and that's fine, I want too, that's why I use ADAPTIVE CHARGING that decreases charging speed at the end for exactly that. The thing is, if manufacturer wants to add faster charging, it can. Wifi is not fast enough for transfering gb's of data, especially when dealing with proraw 4k footage. Magsafe is faster, but you see, they still left type c, because some people don't want to carry 3 charging cables with them to charge iphone, ipad and macbook. And tbh max speed for magsafe is what? 140w? They could have done this with usbc, but at least they gave consumers a choice, a choice that doesn't exist for lightning
Choice is exactly what we had before the usb-c authoritarian mandate. Now it's only that for devices that are size-limited.
I am glad you are happy about your connector - but please understand I am not. I was happy with lightning and now I have to throw a bunch of cables away and replace them with an inferior (for me) alternative.
Apart from all the existing answers - usb-c did not come to the phones first either. It was available and tested in many other places first. And it makes sense, because if we ever need over 40Gbps of data, or over 200W power, it's extremely unlikely we'll need it for the phones.
The lightning cable has whatever you want on the other end. The only thing needed is a cable. I only want 1 port on my phone. I don't really care what that port is. I'm very uncomfortable with government mandated ports.
Using the lightning cable has more onerous standardisation and compliance requirements (not all of which are purely technical requirements) than USB. This is one of the reasons that there is less availability of lightning port accessories.
It's called the "Made for iPhone" program; if your device doesn't comply and you don't pay Apple then your lightning port cable / device is limited in the power it can draw / supply (1A @ 5v I think), and data speeds (480Mbps from memory). It has a yearly fee as well as a per connector fee (so pass through cables attract double that cost); it used to be USD4 per connector but that was nearly 10 year ago so it's probably higher these days.
I don't have a problem with vendors doing this. I prefer standards but since one side of the cable is a standard I think it is fine. Implementing ports cost money . Developing for Apple customers costs money. One can choose their market based on costs.
I understand the lightening standard show it's age and is in need of an upgrade. Why the EU is involved in the decision making process is lost to me.
The EU's stance is primarily about e-waste, and secondarily about lower costs through competition. Having one standard does a good job of achieving both; lower costs through economies of scale, and less waste because when you get a new phone you don't need to replace all your accessories. It's not perfect but it is better than the alternatives.
Having one gate keeper (for example "Made for iPhone" USDx per device / cable) profiting off this isn't good and isn't conscionable from a public policy perspective; it would amount to a private benefit imposed tax.
The gatekeeper is only minding their own product and customers. I don't buy the e-waste issue. The only extra thing the lightening cable creates is the very cable itself. How much e-waste does a cable with a single type of connector create? The whole thing makes no sense to me. I certainly don't see a moral problem.
I realise you don't buy the e-waste issue, but the EU does; I don't mean this in any derogatory way, but the EU cares more about e-waste than you do. Primarily in an economic fashion; waste is costly at a government and social level. Also in the EU it is an political cost as the EU public actively votes on this issue (various green parties are in government in various coalitions in various governments as well as having a sizeable influence through the EU parliament either as primary green parties or green leaning parties). EU politics is far more nuanced that US politics, mainly because proportional representation which is exceedingly common as opposed to first past the post like in the US and UK.
So the EU are, in effect, voting in their own self interest. And again it's not just the cables, but the chargers as well; the EU forced mobile phone companies to stop packaging chargers with phones as well.
Nobody is insisting the cutting edge technology from 10 years ago is superior to today’s. I’m arguing that whatever company should be free to choose I/O interfaces without supervision.
But you were given specific examples of where your preferred tech falls short of others - examples that you asked for - and you chose to ignore them and switch to a different argument. That's kinda rude.
Sorry about that. Yes USB-2 is the limiting factor. I don't think it is quite as bad as you stated. They made 2 statements one about the tech being 13 years old. I agreed that the tech was 13 years old. Admitting that I felt I was implying the limits of the lightening port were dated and had technical limits.
I guess if the original poster hadn't made the gratuitous comment I would have been more focused on answering their valid comments. This is a good lesson for me to not be trolled and others to not make gratuitous comments. Finally apologizing if someone feels one has been rude.
USB-C didn't exist in a usable ratified standard at the introduction of Lightening. 4 years is a long time in tech.
If the EU wanted a standard port for charging. I believe induction charge port would have been a better standard to work on. Think how simple an induction charging standard could be.
If you would've read the EU law, they considered wireless charging, but at the moment the landscape is changing very rapidly. They'll let the industry collaborate first, but if Apple or some other company won't play the ball, EU will step in again.
In keeping in line with your stance, I hope that you are also uncomfortable with the government mandating your power sockets, your lightbulb plugs, the 120V/240 running through your power lines, the pipings running through your house, the bands used by phones, and much more.
That, or you could accept that USBC is fine and that there is absolutely no needed improvement that cannot be done in the form of USB-C. Slapping magnets on USBC is not prohibited if that's what your heart desires. In the mean time, you'll live with charging your phone with 100W, I promise.
Ah the good old "if you are in favor of a government regulation, you ought to be in favor of all government regulations!" fallacy
By your own logic, you couldn't oppose the government forcing every GPU to have a VGA port, or every NVMe drive to have a sata port because hey do you also oppose standardizing 240v???
Thank you for making the perfect argument! My GPU does in fact have a VGA port. Also an HDMI, and a DisplayPort. See how that works ? The government does not mandate that there will be only one USBC port and nothing else. If you want to play with Thunderfire v5 Turbo Proprietary Edition, feel free to!
It may not be a technical problem could be a form factor problem. Lightening more than anything else is a great form factor. All the technical arguments ignore the fact the it's best features were not technical.
> That, or you could accept that Serial SCSI is fine and that there is absolutely no needed improvement that cannot be done in the form of Serial SCSI. Slapping magnets on Serial SCSI is not prohibited if that's what your heart desires.
Or Apple provided a small, uni-oriented, high-speed interface when none existed.
They were raked over the coals for dropping the 30 pin connector and promised to wait a long time before switching. Meanwhile USB-C was developed and the EU decided to interfere. What I wish is we stopped developing at parallel interfaces.
OK, just buy phones with one port. I think you're just experiencing FOMO because it's possible that you could end up with a port that's not The Best or having to buy a less aesthetic phone.
I think I'm experiencing uncalled for government regulation. I would rather have no port change in the next 10 years. I'm not asking for change the EU is.
I think it's a fair concern. I'm glad the EU is unafraid to hold Apple and other incumbents to account, but I'm not convinced the particular issue of mandating charging ports is one I'd want my government wading into. I'd rather see that focus put into eg. protecting privacy.
Maybe instead of mandating USB-C, the EU should have said that you can use any connector you want, but whatever you use must be an entirely public domain open standard, with no proprietary extensions allowed whatsoever. Then Apple wouldn't have an incentive to use Lightning anymore, since the only way they'd be allowed to would be to give up its MFi gravy train.
The same thing that happens when you need a better electrical outlet; it gets offered in an industrial context and if it's really good then consumer demand will drive its adoption.
Unfortunately I fear even asking this question probably angers some
Please don't post like this. It's not a new or original insight and you're moving the discussion toward emotionalism rather than facts.
It is.time to be done. All thus 'innovation' around connectors means innovation around things using the.connectors is more expensive. What is not being developed because there is no standard and thus you couldn't connect your new gadget and still sell it for a.reasonable price.
> What happens when there is a better USB-C plug - isn't there a concern that locking into the current standard means in 50 years the EU is still stuck.
This will probably also kill any R&D in that space, because why would you invest in searching for a better charging port only to have it denied by the EU.
Lol and a lot of Apple's charging cables are Lightning to USB C now. I can't wait to get a USB C iPhone. All my stuff is USB C, from my Braille display to my game controllers. It'll make things so much easier to only need one kind of cable for everything.
I learned about an interesting corner case last week: devices that use USB-C physical connectors but have USB 2.0 PHY. You can get away with a much longer cable at that lower Baud rate, but that cable likely won't work for most USB-C devices.
Some manufacturers have even introduced charging-only cables which don't even have the USB 2.0 wires. This isn't allowed by the specs, but that doesn't seem to be stopping anyone.
I think it is allowed. The PD spec mentions requirements for charging-only cables, these can actually be certified, if I understand correctly.
I also think it's not necessarily a bad thing since it minimizes the risk of 20 volts short circuiting into D+/D- lines of a sufficiently abused cable.
I recall hearing Alex Lindsay talk about only ever buying Thunderbolt cables now because it’s so uncertain of the USB3 cable you’re buying will actually do everything you want it to do.
I’ve been messing around with implementing a USB C port on a board I’ve been working on. The chip I’m talking to is only USB 2.0 so there’s a whole pile of things to figure out related to getting any given host to talk right to my thing. It’s cool, but complex.
I think Apple should just make USB-C the norm for iPhones.
But the idea that a trans-national government over 750M people should be trying to regulate in this level of detail is just obviously a recipe for disaster. For every one time they successfully push a company to do something correct -- but ultimately trivial, like this thing -- there are going to be 10 cases where some bureaucrat makes a bad decision and they're like fifteen steps removed from any kind of oversight, or where no uniform rule-making makes sense over the vastly diverse areas of the EU. Humanity is just not capable of making a bureaucracy of this size that makes decisions at this level of detail in a on-average-good way.
And now think about all the normed parts you encounter everyday: screws, material, plugs, tools, fuel... All of those stabdards have been enforced at one time. Including adminiszartive commitees, staffed mostly by industry (!), to revise them and keep them updated.
Edit: One can make the case about the roman empire, and some really old civilization in India I am too lazy to look up, building quite impressive empires running on engineering and other stabdards across gigantic portions of thebthen known earth. That neother of those exists anymore is hardly the fault of those norms.
One visit to an industrial fastener store will let you know that there is no such thing as a standard screw/bolt. Even metric Mx machine screws (which are the closest thing I can think of to a standard) have 4 different common pitches, and you can have them custom made to ANY pitch.
And a look in enineering literature and norms, EN for example, woupd tell you thatvall those different screw types, from heads and pitches to strength and surface treatment, are, in fact, stabdardized and normed.
And of course you can get custom parts for everything. Those are, as the name implies, custom and not standard.
The point is that EN standards are set by industry, not government. This is a reply to a comment about supposed government regulations around what a screw is allowed to be.
And they are based, after having replaced a bunch of national predecessors like DIN, on an EU regulation providing the legal basis for them.
Ehich makes Apples bahvior even worse, litterally everybody else managed to agree on common standards, but thay had to insist on proprietary tech to the point they got their set of legislation.
> But the idea that a trans-national government over 750M people should be trying to regulate in this level of detail is just obviously a recipe for disaster
Why? Standards harmonization has big upsides too.
For example, the EU PPE safety standards are so good that there aren't even North American equivalents for many products.
If you buy a climbing carabiner in the US, it's being tested according to a test procedure defined by the same EU bureaucracy you deride.
What's the electrical failure rate of every appliance in your home, and the associated risk of death by electrocution? If you don't know offhand, it might be that you are implicitly relying on UL standards to keep you safe and whole.
Consumers don't have perfect information, so the risk is asymmetric. If you assume the market will sort out risk and quality so we don't need standards and enforcement thereof, I don't believe your model is aligned with reality.
Many responses to my comment made the same argument, so I’ll just reply here.
What do you see as the main safety differences between Lightning and USB-C? As both systems have been in use at scale for some time now, this should be easy enough to answer quantitatively.
My understanding is that they offer equivalent safety, in spite of Lightning not having been standardized by the EU, but I may be wrong.
The person you replied to did not imply that there was a difference in safety between lightning and usbc, they just used safety as an example of regulated standards with which to attack your reasoning. The EU is mostly seeking to reduce waste by standardising common parts.
You're missing the point. It's not that Lightning is bad, it's probably great (I don't have any iThings to compare). But left to themselves, it's entirely plausible that Apple will just abandon it in a few years in favor of some exciting new technology called Laser or Quantum or Telluric. Sure, people will complain, but they'll upgrade because there are some other great new features on the iPhone 17, plus clinging to old stuff makes people feel poor.
Lighting has been the standard for Apple devices longer than USB-C existed, since 2012. The previous standard, the 30-pin connector was introduced in 2003.
Your response does zero to address (absolutely rightful) negative comments on your original comment, nor is it related to your original comment that sounds like a parody of a Wall Street liberals before they start crying for government bailouts.
It's just a poor Red Herring argument that you provided.
Nonsensical. Many companies cut corners to save a buck. You're assuming companies want to be in markets for the long run under conditions of perfect competition (ie total market transparency). In reality many business owners are more than happy to make a million $ selling a shitty product then move on to some other market under a new name. You have to make quite a lot of money before the advantages of a reliable brand that consumers can readily identify exceed the incentives to make a quick buck.
Proof: look at all the craptastic companies that sell ersatz products on Amazon. For some kinds of products they can be almost as good as much more expensive offerings, for others you might get a great deal or you might get an explosive paperweight.
This is not how incentives work. Companies can and have creates inferior and dangerous products for the sake of profits. See the Phoebus cartel and the BMW emission scandal.
Without government force companies will not act in the interest of the consumer or employees. Seatbelts, airbags, and crash testing are obviously fantastic standards, but require significant and continuous cash expenditure. Few or no auto companies would invest in them without the public mandating it. Indeed, many companies lobbied and vehemently protested it when first implemented.
I remember the world before micro USB chargers and it was a disaster only mitigated by regulation. Calling it trivial is missing the forest from the trees. It was a good decision and it's good to finally see an end to this madness after 15 years of 'Who has a Nokia/Samsung/Sony charger?' to 'Who has the USB a/b/c/iPhone cable?' to hopefully 'who has a charger?' in five years.
Humanity does not have an alternative to bureaucrats because lassez-faire markets optimize for maximum company profits over all time spans instead of consumer convenience.
The fact that my headphones, laptop, telephone, and even my electric shaver all use the same (usb-c) charger now is a complete game changer. I can't imagine what kind of hubris Apple has to not snap to that.
Why? It's small, reasonably robust, easy to connect. The first time I got a USB-C device I was shocked at how elegant and well-engineered the connection felt. As consumer devices go, it's great.
For context, I was a pro sound engineer in the film industry for many years, so I have lots of experience with industrial grade connectors and operating in hostile environmental conditions from heavy rain/marine environments to desert dust storms. There are times when I go straight to industrial/military manufacturing specifications, but USB-C is still great.
If only there were some kind of distinction we could draw between health and toxicity regulation versus "which charger for your phone is better." I just can't think of what it could be.
It’s not really about the hardware interface. It’s about a single standard for charging infrastructure so that economies of scale and zero barrier to entry makes charging tech a commodity as it should be, not a product with premium pricing enforced by a proprietary interface.
The market dynamics are the real target. The interface is being targeted because it’s the tool used to distort pricing and create a pseudo-premium product.
Anker now makes far superior chargers for Apple products, cheaper and with more features than the original. But they are forced to pay Apple licensing fees for their proprietary but not really superior interface.
or every one time they successfully push a company to do something correct -- but ultimately trivial, like this thing -- there are going to be 10 cases where some bureaucrat makes a bad decision
This is a truism, but does it have any basis in reality? Certainly, if every manufacturer were forced to use USB-C for everything it could lead to an innovation problem, but I don't think makers of new products are forbidden from offering innovative kinds of connectivity, which the market might or might not decide to adopt. Nor is the issue trivial just because it's physically small, any more than the design of electrical wall sockets is of low importance.
They're making Apple do it because they have huge market share, a long history of foisting different physical connectors on their customers and generating a significant amount of electronic waste as older models are abandoned. Crucially, the charging devices end up being unwanted because they don't work with anything else including other iphones. Sure, they could enjoy a longer life with the use of adapters, but physical adapters are Not Great.
It's a pity, because Apple does innovate and some of their innovations are very cool, eg the magnetized charging ports on Macbooks was an Apple first iirc. But they also have a reputation for stiffing their own customers by ignoring backward compatibility , assuming that most of their customers will grumble but keep paying for the new model because they like the ecosystem.
Have you ever, like, actually interacted with a bureaucracy? I don't mean a governmental one, necessarily. An even mid-sized company's HR department, let's say. I was just trying to get a medical evaluation for my son: I called them and they spent 10 minutes on the phone with me explaining that they were going to send me four emails before they had a 30 minute call with me before they were going to do the actual evaluation of my son. They told me that I could fill out the two surveys in the four emails that they sent me via, and I quote exactly, "A desktop or a laptop or an iPad, but not an iPhone: this is for security reasons."
It's hilarious that your big question is: "Does the idea that bureaucracies routinely make money-and-time-wasting decisions have any basis in reality." You should investigate this reality at some point.
Of course. Some of them are awful and some of them are fine. You might as well reason that 'Apple is a corporation; corporations are essentially large bureaucracies; therefore anything produced by Apple will embody all the flaws of bureaucracy.' And indeed many people make arguments like this here on HN daily, arguing that large companies can't innovate because they're simply not agile enough.
It's not that bureaucracies can't be terrible, they absolutely can. But it's overly simplistic to argue that they're constitutionally terrible by virtue of merely existing.
Apple is a bureaucracy and I'm sure they make lots of bad decisions. But they're a much smaller bureaucracy then the EU, operating on a much smaller range of decisions.
What I actually said was that a very large bureaucracy operating over a gigantic domain and trying to make rules at very fine levels of detail across that domain would make bad decisions. Like, say, "we're regulating the entire economic system of half a billion people in very diverse economic circumstances down to the level of exactly what heads should be in what phone chargers."
The gazillion iPhone users in the EU use this twice a day, in physical space, and honestly that feels ok rather than nit-picking. If they do an EU-only model, I’ll absolutely go out of my way to get one
Sorry, just did a quick Google and didn't look past the headline figure. I don't think that it substantially changes the point, but I regret the error.
The Commission staff who signed these contracts are clearly idiots. Why do you assume they aren't paying 10x what the natural market rate would have been? Pfizer realized the EU would sign literally anything to be able to say it was going to save the day by purchasing vaccines. That's the absolute perfect time to set prices well above what you normally could charge!
Seems like a problem with Pfizer exploiting its monopoly position to hold public health hostage as much as bureaucrats choosing to have a signed contract with an overly-generous safety margin over getting the best possible price over some unknown timeframe.
They had a combination of pharmaceutical expertise and manufacturing capacity that made it easier for them to play hardball than it was for Moderna or Janssen. Substitute 'market power' for monopoly if you prefer, my point is that they were pursuing their own economic interests while negotiating deals so they share responsibility with the public officials for the outcome.
> Of course the EU can make bad decisions in one area without precluding them making good ones in others.
That's the whole point: they cannot. You guys are missing the problem here. The exact same systems and people who made the bad decisions about masks and vaccines are the ones making the decisions about phone chargers.
You can't say well obviously that decision was bad, but this one is good. Some of us recall that when the EU was writing blank cheques to Pfizer as part of a collective scheme to do purchasing for all of Europe it was being widely hailed as a genius move. So much money saved! So efficient, to do bulk purchasing. Now every single reply to my post admits that the decisions were terrible but this time it'll be different because this time the decision is obviously right.
Give it some years and people will be pointing to the USB-C decision as an example of EU dysfunction and HNs will be replying, "just because that decision was bad doesn't mean this one is!".
First, it's not the exact same systems and people; second, the circumstances are not analogous - a public health health emergency has a different set of considerations from a chronic junk problem; third, you have surely made some bad decisions in life as well as good ones, but you would probably be upset if people around you reacted to everything you did on the basis of your worst failure.
Sure, burning warehouses full of covid masks is absurdly wasteful. But do they really drop to zero effectiveness on their expiration date? Experience says no. If they're not fit to surgical standard, maybe they can be stamped with some identifying mark and redistributed as dust masks or something. The main reason the default option is to burn them is because history suggests that otherwise businesses will buy them and resell them as medical-grade or whatever without fully informing prospective customers.
Do you have a proposal for dealing with commercial mendacity that's less severe than just abolishing all state efforts at procurement or establishment of consumer standards?
> You can't say well obviously that decision was bad, but this one is good.
I absolutely can and will say that.
A football manager can make bad decisions and lose 5-0, and yet the same manager can then win the next game with the same team. Furthermore, in the case of the EU, these are not even the same people, context, or decision.
It's like when people claim standardized air port codes are made by the same people who sit in the security council, because both are UN bodies. It doesn't make it any more true.
As somebody who last night got an Apple stem out of their daughter's lightning port using a SIM card ejector tool, I'm torn. You can't do that (safely) with USB-C because of the female plug design.
This is one of the strongest pushbacks against USB-C that Apple have:
USB-C: You break the stem, you have a useless device and functioning cable
Lightning: You break the stem, you have a functioning device and useless cable.
One of these is clearly more optimal considering the cost difference between the two. Anecdotally, I have had problems with USB-C ports that I did not have with Micro-USB and (so far) with Lightning (admittedly I have only been an iPhone user for a year or so).
Of course, this directive is the correct stance and direction - having a standard and forcing it on everyone. It's just a shame the one they chose may be inferior.
You forgot the springs. Lighting has the springs in the device, while USB-C has them on the cable. That is why Apple stopped improving Lighting and developed USB-C. The stem can break, but it is far more rare than a tired spring, which is an inevitability.
I recently repaired a family member's iPhone. A crappy Lightning cable had been used and the tip metal piece of the plug had somehow broken off and gotten stuck inside the socket.
> Perhaps the "benefit" you describe is only relevant because the proprietary Apple cable design is so poor?
No, the lightning connector's design is actually less prone to snapping than USB type c. Whether or not that it is an advantage is subjective, given that cables are inexpensive and the devices they're attached to generally are not.
In my opinion lightning is a vastly superior connector to USB-C. It's easier to insert and it's more robust and doesn't present issue if you do need to remove a snapped connector as was mentioned in the parent comment.
In an ideal world, Apple handed off the lightning connector off to the USB consortium and that turned into the type c connector. I don't know if there are physical limitations that would ultimately limit lightning, which has only ever gone as high as USB 3 speeds, but as far as using it on devices that I'm plugging and unplugging, it's much nicer.
As it is in the real world, it's a dead end and I am eagerly waiting to get rid of lightning so I can use one connector for all my portable devices.
I have a different experience with lightning. Almost all my lightning cables show burn marks on the connector on one side and charge only in a particular orientation. This behavior reproduces with new cables and new iDevices. Anecdotally, I never had any issues with USB-C charging.
> This behavior reproduces with new cables and new iDevices.
Considering that this is almost certainly related to your own personal behavior and/or environment, it isn't surprising that you find it reproducible, albeit a bit odd.
It only charging one way indicates corrosion, probably on the cable itself, but possibly on the female port on the device itself. Burn marks probably means there's a grounding issue somewhere. Neither of them have much anything to do with lightning connectors, unless you suppose that the pins being outward facing rather than inward has something to do with the corrosion.
> Considering that this is almost certainly related to your own personal behavior and/or environment, it isn't surprising that you find it reproducible, albeit a bit odd.
Hey, before you accuse people of doing the wrong thing, make sure you're right. Lighting has historically had shorts issues when inserting, and Apple has tried their best to resolve the problem. They never 100% resolved the problem however, although it is far less problematic with newer plugs. It's a big part of the reason why Apple went all in with USB-C so quickly after introducing Lighting.
If someone else has the problem 100% of the time, and you have the problem 0% of the time, I think it is reasonable to presume the fault lies with them or their environment (or at least, not the hardware).
I have exactly the same problem, the middle connector on one side always gets burned. A quick search on google shows that this is a common problem, so I would actually check if this is a common problem or not before defending Apple.
If someone has an issue with their lightning connector shorting out once or twice, that could be chalked up to a manufacturing defect. If it happens always, which they said it does, then it's almost certainly not.
I've seen it a couple times, but not with Apple cables. Some of the 3rd party cables have the exterior metal of the connector just sort of snapped/crimped/pressed on and that pulls off to be left in the socket. You have to dig that out before you can put a cable in. To make things more confusing, the broken cable end usually goes in, so the user tells you "I only have one cable that works and it doesn't charge."
Normally that's correct except that the USB-C pinout is well designed to not put GND and VBUS near each other so it's pretty difficult to actually short anything. Still it's better to use something non-conductive.
I cleaned my phone usb connector like this last week, after the charging cable wouldn't go in, because something was lodged in there. Just used a pin I found on the wall at work to scrape it out. No problem ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Then make this thing standard for everyone, whatever, just ensure there is one standard. This of course requires cooperation from the industry.
P.s. I'm not actually advocating for making this standard, USB C has too much momentum and I don't think any Linux based device I use knows this other connector.
I just realised I rarely plug a cable into my phone at all these days. Genuinely I think the last time I did was in a hire car that only had cable CarPlay. At my desk I got a wireless charger as well as my bed side. Data is over the cloud now etc
Serious question how long until they drop the port full stop? Like what if they achieve serious wireless charging speeds
And actually does anyone know if that’s allowed with these new regulations? Like what if the iPhone 16 they drop it entirely???
> And actually does anyone know if that’s allowed with these new regulations? Like what if the iPhone 16 they drop it entirely???
Yes the wording of the law is:
> In so far as they are capable of being recharged by means of wired charging, the categories or classes of radio equipment referred to in point 1 of this Part shall: [ Legalese way of saying USB-C charging ]
So if a device has no power ports it's fine
Wireless charging was considered for standardization in the early stages of the law (preparation, it never made it into a draft iirc) but the landscape was still too much in flux for a similar regulation to make sense, they'll revisit it in 2026
I think there are still some potential obstacles like diagnostic devices (how to diagnose phone that doesn't boot without a cable?) and pricing - adding magsafe by default would probably raise costs
> how to diagnose phone that doesn't boot without a cable
Small, non-charging port? (Not Lightning. Smaller.) Or just a sealed device that needs non-contact diagnostics. If the EU pushes back, they can make one that’s used serviceable but floods. Maybe that’s a valid marker niche.
How do you handle situation when you want to use your phone while charging it? Then you need to hold it together with charging pad which must not move otherwise your charging speed will drop significantly, which is synonymous to have it connected to the charger, but with much finicky "connector"
I usually charge phones wirelessly, and since I built the charger into my desk it's easy to pick up the phone, do what I want to do, and put it back down again. There's no friction at all, so unless you want extended use there's no issue.
It kinda sounds like this is an argument between being disciplined and undisciplined.
The solution is just to remember to put your phone back on your wireless charger and it will be fully charged at all times. Maybe there's some truth to it, but not everyone can remember to put their phone down the same place at all times.
I'm saying that requirement is no longer relevant because of a shift in how I use the device. It still does have a wired charging port though. Why not both?
iPhone has magnets on the back that hold the charger in the correct position. I rarely used wireless charging before that because of how terrible it was… now I rarely plug my phone in.
MagSafe (the wireless charging variety) was invented for this very reason. Magnets hold the charger in place, and can be small enough (not just MagSafe, but all Qi coils) that its not an issue to charge and use at the same time.
My smartphone charges while I am asleep. I can't see a good reason to charge a phone during the day unless you are using gps navigation all day. That is the only usagr that drain battery a lot. But in this case that is usually because you are driving so the phone can be plugged easily.
I'm 100% convinced this is why Apple basically gave their Magsafe charging scheme to the Qi consortium. Magsafe and the next Qi standard which uses magnets are intercompatible.
> People queue for hours, a tragic waste of festival time.
Back when I went to such things nobody carried around cellphones and didn’t have any less of an experience.
We even had plans like “if anyone gets separated we’ll all meet up at the beer tent” because nobody wants to get left a couple hours from home because they didn’t pay attention to where the car was parked.
The idea that people would go to a festival and feel that their experience couldn't be complete without a smartphone or that, if they did feel that way, they wouldn't have made really sure that they had made backup plans for if their phone did run out of juice boggles my mind. People make themselves ridiculously dependent on devices that can run out of power, break, or get lost/stolen.
There's this new feature on some phones that might catch on. They have cameras. Now granted those cameras aren't great, they can only take 20MP photos in low light and record 4K video, but some people are using them as their main camera! It's pretty crazy.
Some people that go to festivals or concerts take pictures so I guess for them a bad camera is better than no camera.
It's still ridiculous to stand in a long line to charge your phone so you can take crappy photos or video instead of actually enjoying the festival. And smartphones are pretty crappy for concert-type photography.
(People can obviously do whatever they want. I simply find that someone degrading their experience so they can take photos of some festival that probably has zillions of higher quality stills and footage online hard to understand.)
Wireless data transfer isn’t tenable for people taking hi-res photos or videos with their phones. According to Apple a one-minute 10-bit ProRes video is approximately 1.7GB in 1080p and approximately 6GB in 4K.
If Apple ever revives AirPower then I could see them removing the charging port on lower tier models but Pros would definitely need it.
Apple is not adding USB-C to iPhone, they will drop the port completely. If you follow any interview with Apple execs they very specifically say “We will comply with the law”, not “we will add USB-C”. The law says that if there is a port it must be USB-C but it doesn’t mandate the existence of one.
Either Apple is following the letter of the law or it isn't. I don't know what a "warning" from EU Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton is supposed to mean.
Either the law says USB-C charging is required but doesn't say anything about charging speeds, or it does say something about charging speeds.
In any case, Apple has a lot of lawyers and presumably they're following the law as written. I would assume the EU Industry Commissioner isn't able to make up new law by himself on the fly.
Not sure about this particular one, but in general, this sort of warning is along the lines of "If you continue expending effort in subverting the spirit of the law, we shall tighten the regulations to such an extent that it will hurt you".
The world and their dog knew what the goal of the regulations were: if the goal is not met because "Apple has a lot of lawyers and presumably they're following the law as written." you can expect the law to be rewritten in a way that is punitive to Apple.
It's the responsibility of legislators and regulators to be clear and precise -- to mean what they say and say what they mean. To "punish" a company for following a law, because of something the law doesn't actually say, is not what rule of law means, and would be a shameful thing. No company should have to intuit or guess what the government "really" meant, over and above what the law actually says.
The EU can go ahead and revise the law, giving companies time to adapt again. That's fine -- that's how it's supposed to work. But some kind of "warning" to "do something we didn't say in the law" is just plain wrong.
All laws have corner cases that are not covered. All laws.
If laws were to cover every imaginable situation, they would be huge. Some already are... you have a whole bureaucracy working to understand them.
That's why you often hear about the "spirit of the law" where humans know pretty well what the legislator is trying to accomplish, even though it's not fully codified in subsequent rules.
This is simply not true. Laws can be written exceptionally clearly, and very often are.
And the "spirit of the law" is a fallacy, which your sentence exposes when you write:
> "the legislator is trying to accomplish"
Because yes, there is absolutely intent with a single legislator. But there is no such thing as intent or spirit for a legislature (or committee). A legislature can pass a law, say 51 to 49, where every one of the 51 majority legislators has a different intent for passing it. And this isn't even the exception, it's the norm -- laws are hashed out in subcommittees as inelegant compromises because each legislator wants a different thing out of it.
Legislation that gets passed has no "intent" and no, humans don't know "pretty well" what was trying to be accomplished, because it's a compromise between competing wings/individuals of a party or coalition, and the only "intent" that they could decide on was what got written in the law, and nothing else.
Again, the "spirit of the law" is a fallacy. It's an illusion people would like to believe, but it doesn't exist.
> TBH, I don't think that you know how the law works better than judges and magistrates do.
TBH, I don't think you do either, but I also know that kind of argument isn't useful here on HN.
> You know what a loophole is, right?
Yes, it's a layman's term that has no real legal meaning, and exists only in the eye of the beholder. What one person calls a tax loophole, another person recognizes as policy that a subset of legislators ensured existed in a bill.
It seems like a pretty gross oversight to not specify charging speeds if the government truly cares about it to the point they plan to take legal action against companies who fail to correctly read the minds of legislators.
Clarifying what the spirit of the law isn't "childish". Law isn't software. Judges always take the spirit of the law into account when making decisions, and precedence is as important as the actual written text. This is true in both the US and the EU.
> Study 4 illustrated the importance of breaking the spirit above and beyond the letter, as individuals can incur culpability when breaking the spirit of the law even without breaking the letter
Apple is getting advance notice that they can either voluntarily comply or they might be required to comply in the future. Would you rather be surprised?
Implementing a USB C cable, that works better on apple specific chargers, without giving that functionality to competitors, is bad faith, and against the purpose of the law.
If they end up pulling back on the plan to do this, then the warning worked.
Indeed, it is, reacting to legislation, by trying to circumvent it. Say making "Apple Certified USB-C" connectors / cables which do nothing other than force consumers to pay $50~ for a cable which costs under $1 to make.
Then FUDding the community about _dangerous unauthorized cables_ from CHYNA!!!. Yeah it's childish, unethical and anti-consumer.
So ya, know, Apple's SOP for quite a number of years.
Probably, yes. But that will take another 5 to 10 years, so nothing to fear about. It took the EU 9 years from "advocating for a common charger" [1] until they regulated it. There's enough reason to believe that it'll take them a couple of years to adjust the law.
Apple tries to find loopholes so that it still sells its own cables/chargers under the new law, by artificially restricting non apple-certified cables to how fast the can charge or transfer data. The "spirit of the law" was that you should be able to reuse cables instead of having to buy new ones for each new device. But if a company restricts features to its own cables (without any reason for example that a normal usb3 cable should not tranfer usb3 speeds) then they force customers to buy extra cables from them for their new devices. Which is what contradicts "the spirit of the law".
I am not a legal person but I can imagine several ways that this apple's practice can be made to fail. Also I do not see how anybody (apart from apple) would want this or find it reasonable to do.
I guess you don't understand how laws are working in the complex modern society. Laws are defined in human languages which has a inherent incompleteness and ambiguity, is vulnerable to drafting errors and bound to a certain amount of complexity budget. Also our society is a fast moving target and regulation is always a follower here, lawmakers are giving discretion to the administration and judiciary for how to interpret the law to give them some speed to follow up without going through all the painstaking legislation process.
But even if we're bound to this practicality, it's always about the spirit of the law. We have a principle called "statutory interpretation" which is dedicated to this problem, and administrations/judiciaries are often required to follow the law's original intent. Otherwise, administration and/or judicial branch can perform ad-hoc interpretation of legislation in favor of themselves and this defeats the whole purpose of trias politica.
Apple is not immune to this principle and EU is bound to enforce the original intent of the law. This is also why the supreme courts are one of the most important political entity in virtually every modern countries since they have the final and unobjectionable authority on interpretation of laws by setting judicial precedents. Unless you're going to challenge the whole field of Jurisprudence, it might be better try to understand why they're asking this to Apple and Apple takes it seriously.
The warning is "don't fool around", just provide usb-c without any conditions, don't make "better" and worse cables just because one has to pay the funny MFI.
If your legal system relies on reading the minds of lawmakers to infer their intent then your legal system is effectively arbitrary since those lawmakers can claim they intended anything.
Welcome to the EU, a legal system where nobody effectively elects anything and any major decisions are made without any democratic element whatsoever.
Their attempt to ratify their behavior went so badly (in France and the Netherlands where actual popular votes were collected for an "EU constitution") that they just renamed the thing and did what they want anyway.
It looks good for unelected political bureaus to take strong stances on popular things.
My guess is that Apple wants to restrict USB-c bales to certfied cables (which is not unreasonable given the number of shitty connectors out there), and limit thunderbolt/usb-4 to high end phones.
I was going to upgrade my iPhone when the 14 came out, but when I found out about this I decided I could wait another year
It's insulting that I can charge my MacBook and iPad with a USB-C cable, but still have to carry an extra cable just for my phone (and meanwhile my partner with an Android phone doesn't). I'm so excited to be done with all that
I wouldn't go as far as saying its "insulting", but agree that needing lightning for only my phone, magic keyboard, trackpad, and airpods, while everything else is using USB-C, is frustrating.
> do you think Apple intended to stick with Lightning forever?
What?? Of course they did. Why do you think they are even considering USBC? Apple has zero incentive to use a common cable format; I'm sure they rake in money with their proprietary apple-only connectors.
Look at magsafe. Changed it twice so everyone had to get a whole new set of chargers. Sure, they changed it to C now, but I'm guessing that's just because that's the direction the laptop market was going. Apple has no reason to switch their phones to C unless a government entity forces them to.
> Look at magsafe. Changed it twice so everyone had to get a whole new set of chargers.
You can still use USB-C for charging macbooks that have the new Magsafe, just like you could with any macbooks since their introduction of USB-C.
Not sure what you were trying to say about everyone suddenly needing to get a new set of chargers either. I have two different M1 macbooks in my household (one from my workplace, one personal), charging both primarily using Magsafe, and have spent exactly zero dollars on "a whole new set of chargers". The magsafe charging cable that came in the box with the device seems very sturdy and has shown zero signs of issues in the past almost-2 years. Never felt compelled to purchase another magsafe cable either. And the new Magsafe cable has USB-C on the other end, so I can use it with any charging brick, and it will work just as well as with the Apple ones (provided the brick can output enough charging power to deliver the full charging speed).
Not sure what you were trying to say about everyone suddenly needing to get a new set of chargers either.
They are talking about the original MagSafe (2006) and MagSafe 2 (2012). These versions of MagSafe had incompatible connectors and the cable couldn't be detached from the adapter like you can do with MagSafe 3. So, if you bought an additional MagSafe adapter, it was useless with a MagSafe 2 MacBook.
When apple switched to lightning way back there was a huge outrage over “forced obsolescence” and “cash grab” making people buy new cables and other devices, as there was a huge number of docks and other devices in the wild
since the switch to lightning there is an even larger number of devices and docks all designed around lightning and very few of their customers wanted or asked for usb-c
It’s no surprise that for iPhones, with that large eco system they just didn’t change, while for iPads and macs they did because there just isn’t the same amount of accessories and usb a <> usb c is easy. You can’t use lightning dock devices with usd c at all. It’s far from as simple as “use a new cable” when the device is designed to fit over the base of the iPhone and plug in.
Otherwise they would have incentive to use usb c already as it’s been on iPads and many of their other devices for years and why keep around a separate set of product skus and parts just for iPhone?
So they simply waited to be forced to do it so now their customers will get mad at the eu and not them
since the switch to lightning there is an even larger number of devices and docks all designed around lightning and very few of their customers wanted or asked for usb-c
Data? I live in an Apple bubble (friends, family, myself included) and most of them wished that the iPhone used USB-C, everything else uses USB-C (iPad included).
The silliest time was (and lasted pretty long) when if you bought a new MacBook and a new iPhone, you couldn't actually charge/connect the iPhone to the MacBook. I mean, this was even derided in Mac podcasts, etc.
and most people i know in my apple bubble just don't really care and a number of them have lightning devices/docks and are not looking forward having to find/pay for replacements.
not gonna argue it isn't silly, it is, just that there is over a decade of lightning devices out there that will now become e-waste and good chance apple was trying to avoid taking the heat for forcing the change onto users. Now they get to blame the EU.
There's rumours Apple made a 10-year commitment to lightning, which wouldn't be at all unusual - especially giving all the moaning when they switched from 30-pin to lightning.
I find it hard to believe that cables are a core part of their business. It just gets thrown out every chance it gets. They put usb-c on their laptops, everyone said it was to sell dongles. They didn't put usb-c on the phones, everyone said it was to sell dongles.
All reminds me of people saying what a huge mistake it was that the original imac didn't have a serial port or a floppy drive.
It’s not rumours. The introduction for the lightning port said it was a standard for the next ten years during the keynote.
I don’t think they necessarily meant it that literally, but this year will be year 11. So if a switch happens this year, it’ll be exactly fulfilling that public commitment
When they switched from magsafe 1 to magsafe 2 there were affordable adapters that allowed original magsafe to be used with newer computers.
Apple still sells the adapter (and the original magsafe) despite being more than a decade since they sold original computers. If anything, this shows that apple very much doesn't want you to stop using your old charging blocks and computers.
Any current iPhone will work with a charging cable from 2012, which is very much not true for any other phone brand.
I don't know why apple resisted micro-usb, but I am glad they did. Its a bad standard. It has a lower power capability, and the number of insertion cycle and abuse it can take is WAY lower.
Apple want to stick to lightning forever? And they have no reason to switch unless a government entity forced them? Ha.
Apples own customers complain quite loudly about the inconvenience about USB-C and Lightning, dongles etc. The inability to charge their phone with the same cable as their MacBook or iPads... they are providing a very un-Apple experience.
They have an enormous customer base, using a legacy connector (which predates USB-C), to switch over as seamlessly as possible (in their own sweet time)
I assumed they took their sweet time and waited for a Goverment to force them so that large customer base will be angry at the eu for having to buy new cables and throw out their old lightning socks and devices instead of apple
The last time they changed their connector (to lightning) they invalidated a lot of third party accessories designed around the old connector. Not simple stuff, like cables, but docks galore; many in expensive long-term purchases like luxury cars and stereo equipment. It stressed a lot of partnerships that define Apple's luxury brand status.
I remember there used to be a huge number of these speakers where you would sit the phone or ipod on the connector/stand. And all of those got obsoleted by the switch to lightning, but I don't think I've seen a single design like that since the 30 pin connector was dropped. It's all bluetooth now. And with the more even split between iphones and android these days, no hardware maker would put a fixed lightning stand on a device now.
I think between Bluetooth for data and Qi for power delivery, many consumer use-cases have been able to avoid the same trap as last time. But there's still a fair amount of devices in the point of sale space that dock directly to the lightning port. You'll see them if you look for them at the farmers market. So Apple isn't fully out of this bind yet.
I agree that switching creates waste, not switching creates other waste. If they wanted to minimize waste, they should have released lighting and usb-c iphones years ago and slowly phased out the lighting. Maybe even just update lightning to support USBC speeds. But alas we are stuck with this local optimum when there was a better global optimum that we missed for profit.
If they wanted to minimize waste they would have contributed to developing USB-C, which would have been in the pipeline when they were working on Lightning. Or failing that, making Lightning an open standard that other gadget makers could adopt. But that doesn't make as much money as vendor lock-in.
Apple is the only one who should be concerned about its 'luxury' brand status, we users have completely different priorities then tax-evading mega corporations milking its users base with high margins.
And Apple a luxury in 2023, really? Competition phones are more expensive and loaded with better hardware, some look significantly better (cough notch cough), Apple also has budget phones... I don't think you understand the term luxury if you include current Apple into it. Louis Vuitton is an example of luxury brand. Apple is alternative to Android or Windows for laptops, thats it.
Apple can easily afford this. The real reasons for their foot-dragging are their need to differentiate their products, and their need (driven by their organisational culture) to feel that they are in control.
But I've always struggled to believe that revenue from licencing or direct sales of Lightning connectors is that big a deal to Apple. I think their insistence on using their own connector is more about product differentiation and lock-in than about revenue and performance.
What accessory makers? The only thing lightning is used for these days is charging. I can’t imagine that charging cables is a huge money spinner for apple.
It is not the charging cables, but the actual chargers itself. They are eye watering expensive if you buy them from Apple directly.
Amazon and eBay are flooded with fakes that can be life threateningly dangerous. I can see why some people prefer to buy from Apple rather than figuring out what brands are actually not going to burn your house down.
Good point re dangerous fakes, but I wonder how persuasive it is in practice. Ive occasionally seen teardowns of fire-risk power blocks on hn, but (genuine question, because idk) is that a mainstream concern?
I bought a 100W Apple MacBook charger from Amazon. After using it for a few hours, it has a burnt smell. I can't be the only one that experienced this.
I don't think this is the main reason. How many millions in licensing fee profit are they really earning? It seems like a drop in the bucket comparative to their total profit. And if that's the reason, why does the iPad have USB-C?
The bad press was because it was a proprietary-connector-against-a-newer-proprietary-connector.
Had Apple changed for USB-C at the time, or USB mini, it would have made the same positive press as when the Macbook Pro got back to normal (ie not “Here’s a single port for everything, go buy an Apple dongle if you want to plug a screen”).
The USB-C spec wasn't finalised until the following year and only fully standardised in 2016. The USC-C port, which Apple contributed to considerably first appeared in 2015. Micro USB, which superseded Mini USB, was and remains to be complete and utter shite. Lightning was actually well received by the tech press of the time for being significantly better than Micro USB. The "bad press" was users on this site, among others, whining about their other 30-pin gadgets.
Apple supposedly has the superior technology of the elite people, as opposed to the unwashed masses who use Android. So it's embarrassing for them to adopt pleb technology.
At least this thing should be clear. Apple's motto has always been "Think different". They were selling personal computers but wanted them to be different from PCs. In order to do that, they would introduce many changes that were presented as superior. And in fact, many (if not most) were actually excellent. Some, such as removal of ports, gluing parts together and making devices hard to repair, were plain user-hostile. In this case, it's mostly about the money though.
Removing ports is ironic as, other than headphone jacks from phones, USB type A being dropped from MacBooks (iMacs and Minis have always had USB Type A) in favour of USB-C is the port HN loves to moan about, and here we are, arguing for USB-C on an Apple device. The money, as others point out is a rounding error.
> USB type A being dropped from MacBooks (iMacs and Minis have always had USB Type A) in favour of USB-C is the port HN loves to moan about.
The switch to USB C wasn't the primary issue. The main complaint was that the laptop only had two ports: a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a single USB C for everything else. The previous iteration had 6.
People were angry that they were being forced to buy a hub if they fell into the ultra niche use case of wanting to charge while using any kind of peripheral at all.
Thinking about it, most USB hubs came with USB-A ports. I wonder if we'd have seen USB-A die off more rapidly if Apple had included a sensible number of ports on the Macbook.
What you linked is the MacBook, not the MacBook Air. The MacBook Air has never had one USB-C port. The one-port MacBook was unique, relevant to a specific niche, and never the only laptop option from Apple.
On what? This article is pure speculation, and Apple has been slowly moving more and more of their ecosystem to USB-C over time anyway. It sounds like good for the consumer that they don't have to throw out all of their existing cables at once.
.... and as far as I can tell USB-C is a shitshow of an ecosystem anyway. This entire article could just be saying that Apple devices could charge "slower" on random USB-C cables and only guarantee fast charging on Apple-branded cables....
... which sounds like Apple being anticompetitive if you know nothing about the state of the USB-C ecosystem.
If Apple just sticks to the specification to the letter they achieve exactly what they want and what HackerNews hates, only proper power supplies work and cheap inferior crap charges slowly. They can just put a logo on cables and chargers that work to the specification instead of cutting corners left and right in the race to the bottom. And there is no way for the EU to appear credible and restrict this.
> Europe actually has some teeth. Playing dumb when Europe tells you "try me" is a sure way to be banned out of the common market.
It all remains to be seen, some EU Joe random hotshot issuing warnings is no more than that, warnings. If any action is to come from the EU side, it’ll be after years and years of legal wrangling and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Apples lawyers end up outsmarting some pompous EU councilman.
Ah, yes, Thierry Breton, current European Commissioner for Internal Market who pushed for the Digital Markets Acts (that has Apple currently yielding and tucking its tail between its legs with 0 years of legal wrangling, allowing external app stores but just for Europe because it clearly doesn't care about its US customers) is a Pompous Councilman Joe Random Hotshot that gets outsmarted by Apple's US lawyers.
At the end of the day, if Apple needs to have a slightly modified design to accommodate EU regulations, that's a drop in the bucket. And if it's slightly inferior in some way, that's between EU citizens and their governments.
Apple has a single production line. If they drop Lightning for the EU, they drop Lightning for the whole world. Their entire margin strategy is based on having as few SKUs as possible. In the same way that GDPR made every single major US tech player comply and offer more or less the same tools for the rest of the world.
Of course Apple has more SKUs than they need to have. Different product generations, sizes, storage options, colors, etc. Adding a different connector on some subset of models for some number of countries is perfectly doable.
It's probably moot because Apple seems to be moving to USB-C over all their product lines anyway. But if the EU were to mandate something that Apple felt was a materially inferior choice, I'd fully expect them to comply where they had to and implement a different option everywhere else.
GDPR is simply a case of, if a company doesn't have a compelling reason for not following GDPR where possible, it's just easier to follow mostly uniform rules worldwide.
GDPR is actually an excellent example, all tough talk with strict rules, yet basically nobody follows the rules and nothing happens. The government itself runs websites that say ‘you can’t visit this site unless you agree to our use of cookies!’
This whole thing is so silly. It also drastically reduces my confidence that I keep reading about "chargers". Nobody needs a separate charger. All that's needed is a cable that has a lightning tip. It doesn't even have to be a dedicated cable, it can be one with interchangeable tips or a separate adapter. If anyone is really concerned about wasteful production of chargers then ban selling chargers and maybe even cables bundled with devices. I know I have way more actual chargers than I need because they constantly come with new devices, not just phones. What's won by me now getting additional, superfluous USB-C cables instead of additional, superfluous lightning cables?
In the 90s everyone in Europe was upset about the EU regulating bananas curvature. That regulating had been requested by the banana industry as a requirement for a shared market. So it somewhat (I'd still have preferred the market to figure this out itself) made sense. This "Lightning charger" stuff is the true bananas curvature.
What does Apple have a monopoly on? None of my cables or chargers were made by Apple. My chargers have USB-C plugs over which Apple has no control. As my main point above was, lightning has nothing to do with chargers. Yet these articles keep complaining about chargers.
"You have to use my designated charge port on your own device with your own adapter and change your own designs for that if you want to sell your device. We don't care if it's a step backwards in terms of design and internal space where every cubic millimeter is utilized."
Not to defend Apple or anything but EU is being the mafia here.
The early 2000s were a mess with company-specific cables and USB was forced upon them and made things much simpler, Apple is just the last holdout. Forcing 3rd-party manufacturers to buy chips from them for their devices to work with Apple phones feels like the real protection racket to me.
The parent has a point, the regulation is forcing a slightly smaller battery, slightly less durable connector, much more expensive repairs when the port stem breaks, etc.
For devices that doesn't need the extra capabilities.
People keep repeating this but how frequently do USB C ports actually break?
Anecdotally, I had horrendous issues with mini USB but I've never had a micro USB or USB C port break. I'm not particularly gentle with them either, I've had the female end come out of the cable boot/snap off and the cable stop working due to strain on the boot.
I don't know anyone who has experienced this personally and I can't recall seeing any anecdotes of it actually occurring in the HN threads where it's brought up.
> People keep repeating this but how frequently do USB C ports actually break?
Even if the real rate was only 1 in a thousand devices, that's still a serious burden for the unlucky few. Whereas for lightning connectors, it's trivial to dislodge.
In that case there's even less of an argument for USB-C ports since it's real world failure rate is much higher . Partly due to the increased complexity, partly due to the physical design, partly due to less stringent quality control, etc...
If you assess failure rate based off whether it can reliably meet advertised claims year-after-year, such that a large degradation would count as failure, then I would dare say real world failure rate are dozens or hundreds of times higher than Lightning ports.
Your first paragraph didn't have "dare say". And you can't just add that as a disclaimer to any factual statement to make you immune to needing evidence. If you made that guess based on how much you like the ports, then you're wasting everyone's time. But again, you said "real world failure rate is much higher" as a flat-out fact.
The previous comment did not mention any numerical figure in the first paragraph, only that rate would be much higher due to the aforementioned reasons. I left it intentionally ambiguous by not specifying a number for a reason.
The rest of your comment is not worth a substantive reply considering almost any passing reader can see through the attempt to stop the conversation with a dismissal.
Maybe because eu want to optimize for charging speed, data transfer and universality of the port? Standards exist for a reason and this reason usually doesn't allign with all wishes of the companies
Why does Apple even care? They don't add chargers with their phones anyway.
And overcharging for a regular usb-c charger with a Apple logo on it seems to be quite in their wheelhouse.
We’re still just a few of years past USB-C cables that were physically destroying hardware. It’s annoying, but I appreciate the effort to protect their reputation against shoddy products.
Apple can defend itself, but that being said, I think the hype here is absurd:
> which had led many – including us – to speculate that these Apple-produced chargers would enable faster charging speeds on the iPhone 15 than third-party chargers from other manufacturers.
I believe the hysteria comes from a no-technical blogger not understanding the difference between the USB-C e-marker chip and MFI. Apple has nothing to gain by not using generic USB Power Delivery on phones as they do for all their other devices.*
Whether the will pursue MFI for other standard devices (keyboards, whatnot) is indeed unclear, but past precedent (the mac, mainly, but also ipads, as well as their history with bluetooth devices) suggests it's unlikely. In fact network effects argue against it. Apple would rather sell a phone than a low margin accessory.
So sure, such a thing is technically possible, but from a business perspective rather unlikely.
Also I will buy an iphone 15 if it has USB C and will wait another year if not.
* The 2016 "Macbook" used a nonstandard power profile but PD was updated shortly after that and subsequent Apple hardware has been strictly compliant. In fact going back to the iMac, the original mass market USB device, Apple's USB implementations have been very strictly compliant with that one notable exception.
I don't understand the rationale. Does the EU not have a free market where consumers can choose what they pay for? If lightning connector is an important enough issue for someone they can choose not to buy an iPhone. There are n number of alternatives available in the market, unlike the software ecosystem situation.
> Having lots of alternatives is not always beneficial for society as a whole.
A European sentiment if I've ever heard one.
I'm pleased that Brussels has cracked the case of what the Greater Good is, and what sacrifices we must all (mandatorily) make in pursuit of it. I'll let Plato know, I'm sure he'll be thrilled.
I'm all for standards bodies. But government should not force anybody to follow a particular one. It's not like apple is advertising USB C and not delivering it.
If lightning is so inferior to USB C, consumers will vote with their money and iPhones will either die out or apple will start offering it with USB C. The fact is that it hardly matters. This is a non issue for most users.
But due to some bureaucrats who have sold zero dollars worth of high tech products, Apple (a trillion dollar company who knows a thing or two about business and technology) has to modify their offering.
Users pay not just for the port but for other things too, the fact that port is bad doesn't mean people will not buy a phone it just means port is bad and it is bad for environment to use it instead of an universal usbc. If Apple want to keep it, it can include both ports for eu market but let's be serious, they understand lightning is inferior and people will just demand typec when given the chance
It is also not possible for consumers to signal that they would prefer a Google Pixel with a Lightning port instead of USB C. Doesn't mean government should force Google to offer their phone with Lightning port. It is never possible to signal exactly what you want, down to the minutest details. The signal is always for the overall product as it exists. And that works fine. If people really cared about USB C they would stop buying phones without it.
Lol, lightning is proprietary so can't be used by other companies.
If people really cared about USB C they would stop buying phones without it - that's false, there are a lot of people that care about usbc but they buy because of other reasons like cameras and default walled garden for less trouble
This is definitely not good news for iPhone users. The thing with lightning is that it is fucking robust. USB-C may not be as bad as the micro-USB but it is still more fragile than lightning.
People should be able to choose, if you love One Connector To Rule’em all just get and Android phone.
My personal experience is just the opposite; I have a number of children (more than the average number of kids), and I replace lightning cables more frequently than USB-C cables. And I do buy both Apple lightning cables and 3rd party ones. In my experience the cable case between the cable and the metallic connector tends to crack and degrade faster than USB-C equivalents. And the USB-C cables tend to be cheaper too.
> USB-C may not be as bad as the micro-USB but it is still more fragile than lightning
Is it though? Wouldn't we be hearing endless noise about how fragile android ports are if it was really that much worse? I've never heard any complaints about the USBC port from any android users in the news or anecdotally, even though most major phones are C now
Maybe to put you mind a little bit at ease anecdotally, I never had a USB-c plug or socket fail on me even with intense (ab)use. The same is true for my immediate family
It probably happens though.
I had cheap-o cables break but this is hardly the fault of usb-c
It is. The springs which hold the cable in are in the plug, whereas they are in the socket for lighting. These springs are effectively consumable components.
I think the outrage about this is a little overstated. Most people buying a $1000+ phone already have a wall brick of some sort. As well as a number of other devices to plug USB into.
If you want the convenience of another brick or wireless charging, the option is there.
As self-serving as it is for Apple, it is keeping more chargers out of landfills, and reducing the cost of shipping that extra weight.
It is true, and as someone who owns several boxes of cables that have literally never been used, and has sent several more to e-waste, I wish it was the norm.
Apple many many dongles. Adapters to iphones, cable adapters to macbooks, cable adapters to 3.5 inch headphone jack, to hdmi. Too many Apples dongles exception. My dongle collection is larger than yours.
Lightning form factor have a lot of disadvantage.
It already has problem with the exposed pins, USBC has wayyyyy more pins, which need to be tinier, and would easily be damaged.
Remember that apple contributed to the USB-C format, and prefer it for all their other products.
In USB-C, all the pins are protected by the outer shell.
In what way? Every single lighting cable I've had since the switch was done years ago is unusable after a few months. The same pin, 4th from the left, wears out after a very short time. This has happened across owning multiple phones and iPads. I've lost count of the number of cables I've bought from either Apple or a 3rd party.
I see the exact same damage on other people's cables frequently. I'm honestly surprised there hasn't been a class action lawsuit against Apple about this.
Terrifying to give government this much control over tech.
If Apple wants to build a premium experience that is better than USB-C then what? They can’t?
We essentially gave W3C control over web accessibly and they can’t even release a new set of WCAG standards. Stalled and seems to be dead in committee.
Keep in mind the EU doesn’t even have a standard power outlet. This is just the EU being petty and bullying an American company.
Government is not the place for tech requirements.
Apple can include both usbc and that superior port and let people choose))) truth is usbc is already superior, it has been for years and I don't really understand frp what you'll need in a phone a port that should do more than 240w of energy transfer and ~40gbs of data transfer. And at last, the eu law can be adapted if industry agrees to a new port...
This law basically targets Apple for not using type c, but it doesn't say it directly. All brands, including apple invested in type c and they got a good port but didn't use it. People will continue innovation just like before because law allows revising the standard so that all brands just like before will will choose the next standard. But imo there is no need for another standard for phones. I don't know if there is a phone that uses all potential of current usbc (240w and 40gbs) and it's not like port can't handle more...
Under the new law, if Apple, or anyone else, wanted to develop a new port what would they have to do?
1) Create the new port.
2) Get the government to sign off on it.
3) Get the market to adopt it.
You see the problem though...
2 and 3 are both reliant on each other.
So if Apple comes up with a great new port, why would anyone shift? For that matter, why would Apple even try to come up with one, knowing there's a huge uphill climb to even be able to use it themselves?
Historically Apple (or anyone else) would just have to come up with a port... use it on all their products, and sooner or later others would catch on.
Who knows what the future holds... but I know 20 years from now phones will still be using USB-C thanks to this law. And that concerns me.
My main objection is just I don't like the USB-C port.
Like, will this ruling apply to laptops? So we can't have MagSafe? Or we have to have both? Does Apple have to ship with USB-C and then you'll have to buy MagSafe ports? That sucks.
The USB-C port has the stem on the device. Which means, if the stem -- the most breakable part of the port -- breaks, you're buying a new device instead of just a new plug. That's what I fundamentally hate about USB-C.
And it's thicker than a Lightning port. There's not a huge difference, but what if I want a slimmer phone again? Too bad, so sad... the government doesn't want you to have sleek and sexy.
Except, can Apple ditch ports all together and just use wireless charging... or is it mandated to have a USB-C plug?
Apple is only going to make one version of their phone... and I just don't like Europeans being able to dictate what gets sold in America.
Apple (and others) bow to Chinese (and others) censorship... I hate that too.
This all just feels so petty... "Hooray, we stuck the Americans with a different phone port, isn't Europe so wonderful!" Just feels like a weird place to flex.
All of this feels like someone is upset at Apple for not paying enough in taxes so they are trying to get a bit of revenge.
You build what you want but when billions of people use a technology our governments should most definitely get involved. With scale comes responsibility.
Say Samsung releases a new TV that has a HDMI 2.1 Port that support crisp 4K HDR, but only if you use a Samsung certified cable. If you use a third party HMDI 2.1 cable your resolution drops to SD DESPITE the HMDI 2.1 Standard supporting 4K HDR.
Quite frankly I've never had issues with a charger being too slow. My fairphone with some random 3rd party charger isnfull in half an hour.
From a durability standpoint your battery should last longer if you charge it slower, so unless your life is totally nomadic and you only got 10 minutes to charge your phone inbetween changing places I don't see any real damage been done here.
The advantage of being able to ask a non-apple friend for a cable you forgot or broke outweighs any alleged slower charging speeds by magnitudes.
From experience I see that USB-C charger that was included with Pixel charges my SE 2021 via Lightning just as fast as original Apple charger, so why would they change anything (I mean the charging speed when switch over to USB-C)?
This is for faster speeds supported by newer/future phones. The SE 2021 (and iPhones in general) aren't that fast when compared to some alternatives that charge much larger batteries in 10-30 minutes. My phone (not Apple) goes up to 60W, for example.
The speculation is that Apple will only allow their chargers or chargers they approve (and get paid for it) to charge future iPhones faster. This is the EU telling them not to do it. USB-PD is a standard (already used by Apple on laptops) and can do up to 240W. No need for proprietary chargers.
Yes, really. I still have a box full of old transformers kicking around from the bad old days. Now about half of my stuff is USB-C powered, and in another 5 years when I finally ditch the last of my old stuff I won't need a bunch of 5, 9, 12, and 15 volt power connectors (some AC, some DC) with 0.5, 0.8, 1, 1.5, 2, and 3 amp capabilities, in three different barrel connector sizes and two polarities. And of course Apple's connectors and HP and Lenovo's custom laptop connectors.
Similarly, finding the right replacement DC adapter for electronics is challenging. I have had to do this a few times, to avoid travel adapters bundled with equipment.
Really? So you mean I can take my Apple lightning cable, plug one end into a charger and the other end into my Android phone? Or my laptop? Or my TV box?
Because no, you can't. And that's the whole problem.
GP specifically said the chargers had standard USB ports - and they do. Either A (old) or C (new). You're talking about the cable which is a completely different thing (obvs.)
It probably is hard to remember the time when Apple wasn't the only company with its own proprietary connector because it has been already well over a decade since the EU first issued its ultimatum for the industry to fall in line behind one standard or get a law slapped into their face. Apple has been the only remaining holdout for almost just as long and basically single-handedly forced the EU to come through with its threat and write a law to force compliance.
Even within the apple ecosystem those things are annoying and a waste of space. I can charge my laptop you can charge an iPad from USBC but phones and AirPods need lightning when the port is basically the same size. So I have to carry an extra cable everywhere.
Ridiculous. I’ll take throwing them all in a landfill if I never have to use or see one again.
Thank the gods. I have exactly three of these things and keeping track of them is a pita, and expensive to replace. USB-C cables ... I have an entire bin of them.
That's the point, you need an additional cable. I charge most of my stuff with my laptop cable: laptop, Smartphone, Ebook reader, portable speaker. Only my headphones are still in MicroUSB.
As the laptop cable doesn't have an outgoing USB A/C port, I would have to carry an additional cable and charger if I had an iPhone.
USB-C could have used the lightening but we can thank Apple for that.
USB should have never existed, it was a scam by Intel (and Microsoft) to put the PC at the center of everything. In a non-dumb world, we would be using Firewire over something like a lightening connector. Jobs was too greedy with Firewire for it to be successful.
You know what Apple should do? iPhones should charge only with Apple-certified electrons, conducted via Apple-certified copper atoms. Then check mate EU - that'll teach them.
Conversely, if Apple did this they might give the European product the “bare minimum” standard and continue to innovate and build proprietary solutions for their non-European products.
The markets Apple cares most about right now are China and India.
I am one of them. Heck, I have even worked for a wireless charging startup for years :)
Even though I own all sort of wireless charging gadgets, somehow prefer the definite result of connecting a cable compared to putting my phone on a surface and moving it a lil bit to make sure it work and is in/supports fast charging mode. I have of course cables all around me.
FWIW, I’m not a huge fan of current wireless charging because of how inefficient the tech is. So much energy is wasted bridging the space between the coils.
The evidence? The heat generated by the coils, which you can easily feel, especially with the higher wattage chargers.
To me, that waste matters, since it’s something so easily eliminated with very little effort.
You should try MagSafe. I haven’t felt my phone feel hot once since I changed my charging from a pad to a MagSafe charger. They are also much more efficient, since not much heat is being generated.
If you were somewhere in the woods, your would prefer to not waste the power from you solar energy source on heating the surroundings with EM radiation, so you would use a cable instead of a wireless charging. This is why the cable charging is here to stay and is not going anywhere.
99% of my charging is overnight with the magnetic wireless charger and I love it. But it's slow. If you need to recharge more quickly, wired is significantly faster.
For me it’s the opposite, it ashames me to be an EU citizen. The problem with the EU is that it forces this kind of stuff on everyone instead of letting countries compete for the best policies. There is little/no feedback control hence it will drift down the usual decline of increasingly authoritarian systems. It‘s a shame because of the opportunity costs.
I wouldn't agree, we are all living in a system where monopolies are trying to benefit easiest ways, and diverse population tries to eliminate useless gatekeeping by as minimum regulation as possible. The complexity of this "minimum regulation" task always evolves, and not that many countries succeed ever.
So in my opinion, EU as a joint effort of _countries_ you mentioned, forced to break this useless monopoly gatekeeping, making competition tougher for monopolist. This is good, but it is very rare occasion when it's really that easy solution like this. And yeah it could be patternized in a wrong way obviously... but the idea itself is for good. It it the reason why standards exist, it makes coordination cheaper, competition tougher, and users more productive.
Do you mean the plug in the wall for adapters? Assuming so but please correct me if I’m wrong. :)
Not the hill I’m going to die on, but doesn’t the lack of change kind of prove the point? Is what we have today the absolute best thing we could have? There’s probably room for innovation here. It’s a balance right? Not changing is good but also… it can’t get any better. With consumer electronic devices we’d still be using DVI ports and the red/yellow/white audio video cables had this legislation come into existence only a few years back. Important to remember that.
That being said I think Apple should support USB-C across all devices because it’s just damn good. I was irritated they added the HDMI port back actually. Hopefully they’ll remove it in the future again and just keep USB-C everything.
From what I understand Thunderbolt is actually a pretty good implantation it’s just proprietary for Apple. That’s fine. I also understand Apple’s desire to maintain a minimum level of quality for USB-C cables being plugged into the iPhone. I’m not sure why that’s controversial.
in the old days, the government ensured that the physically strong people would not get the best deals because they could force you to give up your product.
While on the one hand the EU as a collective has more power than member states, it's a stark contrast to the US for example where companies and people move around to states whose laws suit them. I for one am all for apple's hardware, so if California banned lightning port for example I can happily avoid them and they do ban and regulate a lot of things yet they are the richest and most populous state even with people preferring other states for nicer laws. "Everybody gets a place and united we will prosper" should be the motto of any union of states.
You must be young & not remember the huge mess that charging was in the early 2000s. Every single brand had a proprietary charging port/connector - same with their data connectors. These days it’s bliss in comparison. They more often than not were also hard wired into the electrical plug, making matters even worse (and power bricks weren’t solid state, they were cooper transformers, which were heavy!).
Usually I like reading the HN comment section as it is one of the few places (I know of) where people communicate in a respectful manner. Unfortunately, conjecturing about someones IQ in this manner because his view differs, makes me reconsider this.
never understood the anti-regulatory vitriol expressed by normal people (that is people who would not directly benefit from the absence of regulation but actually have much to lose), especially in the US (but UK's Brexit ideology used the regulatory overreach accusation against the EU to "good" effect too - the "curved banana" absurdity).
from the food we eat, the medicine we take, the cars we drive, the planes we fly, the banks with bank with, and, dare I say, the digital technology we have, the quality of our experience relies 100% on there being strong, non-captured, informed, hands-on regulation that tries on an ongoing basis to correct market failures (for which there is a mountain of damning historical experience)
remove regulation and energy companies will put poison in your car tank and they will destroy the atmosphere, banks will fall apart and your life savings will evaporate, planes will be flown with minimal tests and collapse and you will be inside, techs will pilfer and sell your behavioral profile to the highest bidder
self-regulation is a tool that works in certain circumstances but definitely cannot be relied upon across the board. especially not in oligopolistic conditions where better alternatives will struggle to receive traction. especially not on the face of our economies having ignored entirely the environmental damage of throwaway electronic devices and plastic pollution
what is the risk of veering to the opposite side, actual regulatory overreach, that is somehow gratuitous and does not simply try to correct some market failure? At worst it may delay things here and there. Taking a step back and looking at the outcomes of "the move fast and break things" ideology, that might not be a bad thing at all
Meh. Android has had sideloading from the start. It's been the common term for not using the blessed app stores for a while, even when it's been allowed since the beginning.
Most people do not have "their own code". Instead it is your code you want me and my grandmother to load and I simply do not want to, unless you go through Apple's hurdles to check and verify it.
I don't want to jump out of a plane therefore I want to outlaw skydiving.
Actually I don't have to outlaw things I don't like for myself. I will simply not go skydiving and other people are wellcome to take the risk for themselves.
No one is forcing you to load anything you don't want to. You don't need to force your decision onto everyone. There is a difference between "I don't want to load your code" and "I don't want anyone to have the ability to load your code".
If you want to jump out of the plane, please pick a provider that serves skydivers. Do not try to open the door of a regular plane from a normal airline. Moreover, please do not try to make it illegal to have airlines that don't allow opening the door during mid-flight. It makes flying more dangerous for all of us, especially those who don't happen to have a parachute around.
No one is forcing you to stop loading whatever you want on your phone. Just pick a phone manufacturer that allows that. There is a difference between "I want to load anything on my phone" and "I want to load anything on any phone I choose, even from a manufacturer that specifically caters to people who are quite reluctant to load your code unchecked on their phones".
The question is more: Why the fuck do you care if Apple allows sideloading or not. It is a feature you do not have to use and (if Apple implements sideloading) you probably would need to explicitly activate. Just leave the option off, but instead you are here saying the option should not exist for anyone. Those that are reluctant to use it can just ignore it.
WHY?
I should be able to load anything on any phone THAT I OWN. Even if the manufacturer does not want me to. I bought the Phone. I didn't Rent it. I didn't borrow it. IT IS MY PHONE. Why should the manufacturer dictate what I am allowed to do with the phone?
"My Liberty ends where yours starts." is a great Quote in your bio. Is it just there as decoration or do you believe what it means?
So you want the ideological argument then? Well let's see if we can find the various freedom's borders here.
You deserve the freedom to do whatever you want with you device, of course. Jailbreak it if you want. Or throw it away and get another on the free market.
Apple is a private company. They deserve the freedom to create and market a device with the tradeoffs, features and limitations they see fit. Locked down, if they can manage to. Because they are not selling just a device. They are actually selling access to a bunch of services, a platform, a walled garden if you want, for which the device is the entry point, the interface.
And, finally, I deserve the freedom of choice. To choose between open platforms and closed, safe ones, to have both options on the market.
Like when looking for a home: you can buy in the middle of nowhere (and do what you want), rent (and have very limited rights) or buy in a gated community and have certain rights but not unlimited freedom. Because this is true Liberty: when others can freely choose to do things we don't agree with. Like under Capitalism: you can have communist Coops, but under communism you can't have private companies...
But then for those of us not in the EU, Facebook et al suddenly have access to a plethora of data they didn’t have before via side loading thanks to a European law.
No need to worry. EU laws concerning iOS only apply to products sold within the EU. Apple is within their rights to keep their operating system locked down outside the EU, and all recent reports indicate that this is exactly what they'll do. So unless your country decides to pass similar legislation, you're free to enjoy Apple's restrictions.
And so your concern is because of... the EU, and not your own politicians for failing to regulate a completely out of control corporation running psychological experiments on users without their consent ?
Since this will be required by the DMA as mentioned in another comment, the more accurate phrasing would be "How about Apple simply not selling their phones in the EU (if they don't like it)?"
Just like nobody's forcing a consumer to buy an iPhone if they don't like it, nobody's forcing Apple to do business in the EU.
God, sometimes I really wish they would do just that. Just a week ago, Germany launched a public transport ticket that can only be acquired via an app. Imagine the outrage if suddenly every iOS owner could not use that service (paid with tax money of course) that entirely depends on US software services because the companies decided the EU bullying is just enough for now (just like Google did with China).
If the EU wants to "boss around" like they do in this headline, maybe it should ensure having actual EU businesses capable of competing with US ones. But more regulation will surely do it, I’m sure, this time.
The ticket you are talking about can be purchased via website. [0]
Apart from that, I'm not sure I see your point. If Apple left the EU market, their stock would tank, and Google would be delighted to pick up the market share.
Your framing is interesting, by the way. When Apple puts restrictions on its users, that's corporate freedom. When the democratic legislative process of the EU results in restrictions on Apple, that's bullying.
Enacting laws is not bullying. Enacting laws and then issueing "warnings" about an undefined "spirit of the law" that was intended to have been followed, that's bullying. Either there is a clear law or there isn't, if your law allows behavior that you don't want, don't blame the player, blame your law and change it.
Stop with the FUD. I know you have a big imagination but the reality is that I can side load apps on Android, and all the big companies that push me t install their apps are using the official store and I never see random websites showing fake links to banking apps.
Guess what apps I have to side load, the apps the Stores do not allow, like Huawei app for my solar panels(iOS users will have to use the website since no side loading for them).
Please other Android users, can you help to fight this FUD? why did you side load apps? Do you see fake links to fake banking of FB apps? Did some big website pushed you to side load their app instead of an app from the store ?
Android Play store doesn't have the same user protections as iOS Appstore. There is no reason to force sideload on Android because you can already spy on everything the user does with your Playstore apps (why would you even expect anything else from Google? The whole thing is set up for spying). That's not the case on iOS. You're comparing incomparable.
Yeah these suggestions often come from a place of “this is what I want” instead fully think it through. Those 4 steps and 5 warnings you need click through? Please! I don’t want to manage my family’s apple devices collection when things go wrong.
It sounds exciting, but it doesn't sound great for business. No surprise there is no new company in the DAX, CAC40.. etc in edging towards half a century now.
There is a trade off in terms of the economic condition and that can be seen in European salaries and the brain drain which reinforces it. It isn't all good for the longer term, but if a majority of people like it, be careful what you wish for.
I've just bought some new iDevices _now_, in order that they come with Lightning ports, rather than the anticipated USB C on the next model.
Specifically because the Lightning port seems the more robust (and easily cleaned) of the two, for a device which will spend a significant chunk of the next 3-5 years in pockets, picking up lint and other dirt.
Relative charging and data transfer speeds seem less of an issue than the practical issues.
I've less concern about USB-C on laptops, tablets, etc. Simply because their operating environment will be less challenging.
The EU can do some amazing things, however there are also many problems. The recent https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/eu-cra-secure-coding-solut... seems particularly dangerous.
Also don't read about the Pfizer vaccine deal with the EU/ von der Leyen. You might loose your trust/ happiness very quickly.
Of course, the EU's handling of the Ukraine/ Russia crisis is particularly bad as well, the war could have been over by now. I mean, many Ukrainian people are dying in vain.
Good chance for apple to try to repeat dieselgate: only charge fast while tested. Circumventing EU regulations is clearly a business opportunity, while all small competitors suffer from them. Only bad luck, that they are an US company and thus nobody is willing to look away. Sincerely, I am really skeptical about all those EU regulations with such a clear enforcement deficit. I really wish the commission luck on this one.
Honestly I don't see how a dieselgate-like situation may be possible. Automakers could bypass the law because no one measures their own car's emissions. In this case, instead, people would take 30 seconds to realize their third-party cable doesn't work with their iPhone because of Apple.
Also because in case of the Diesel gate, the constructors literally did the law since it was design by consortium and constructors lobbies were involve.
I hope the EU got vaccinated against this kind of practices.
If not, they should also look to what the FAA+boeing certified by consortium did with the 737 MAX and then get vaccinated definitively.
Discussing this topic on HN is utterly pointless. Most of the tech bros here are libertarians and are happy to have companies fuck over consumers because they shouldn't be bound by government regulations.
I would basically never assume that the EU actually understand the technical parts of these regulations. On its face it sounds pro-consumer, but USB-C is hardly a unified experience and I am almost sympathetic with Apple here from a user experience perspective.
> The EU effort to standardize phone connectors led to nearly every phone manufacturer adopt micro usb and then usb c.
So, in other words, the EU forced one standard, which it is now abandoning (generating piles of micro-usb e-waste), and is now doing it again. And this is Apples' fault for not moving to USB-C in... 2012.
Didn't Apple use USB-A wall chargers with the 30-pin for phones at a time when everyone else was on proprietary power bricks?
> So, in other words, the EU forced one standard, which it is now abandoning (generating piles of micro-usb e-waste),
This is hyperbole. Especially because a common retort on these articles is “surely this standardisation kills innovation”.
A standard was adopted, preventing lots of e-waste. However, the old standard is now past its useful life, so a revised standard is being universally adopted.
This is the best of both worlds: a standard reduces the amount of duplicate adapters manufactured. However, it doesn't hold back progress and innovation when needs genuinely change.
If USB-C is mandated, there will never be a newer standard to replace it, because no company will invest any time or money into developing it as it would not be legal to ship it until it’s blessed by the government and it won’t be blessed until it’s got a critical mass which it can never have!
If the rest of the world mandated the Micro-USB standard at the same time as the EU previously, we would never even have USB-C! No one would have bothered to invent it.
USB-C doesn't have to stay mandated. Once every single device and charger is using USB-C, they can let the law expire and the market will keep it a de-facto standard because no one is going to buy a phone that doesn't have USB-C unless it has a lot of advantages. Notice how micro-USB is no longer mandated in the EU?
Also USB-C isn't mandated the only port on the device. Add multiple charging ports. Plenty of laptops do that, even a few phones. It'll make the transition easier for people too because they can continue to use their USB-C chargers if they decide the new technology isn't a necessity. Just like how plenty of commenter here want to keep using Lightning cables.
> If USB-C is mandated, there will never be a newer standard to replace it,
The law has a reevaluation period of five years. Basically lawmakers and industry representatives will convene every five years to see if a new connector should be mandated. We already know that this works, because the entire industry excluding Apple had been doing it from the day the EU first told everyone to clean up their mess "or else".
I have a single cable that can handle up to 100W of charging power and a single anker charger with usb-c port. I can charge my phone, headphones, laptops(macbook included), powerbanks, I can transfer data and power between my devices just by connecting them(want to charge a phone with another? Easy peasy, want to transfer data across devices? Easy peasy). And all this with a single usbc cable, so tell me again how this is not a unified experience compared to the need to bring with me 2/3 cables to charge macbook/ipad and iphone/airpods?
To be clear, I am pro USB-C, but I do get the arguments from the other side.
If I have a lightning cable and a device with a lightning port, I can plug it in and not really think much about it.
If I have a device with a USB-C port and a USB-C cable, I have no idea whether I can charge at full speed or even charge at all.
As an example, I plug my Xbox controller into my PC via USB-C. It keeps it fully charged. Recently I tried to plug in my USB-C headset into the same cable and it didn’t charge at all. In fact my headset died shortly after I unplugged it (after “charging” it all night), which was a bit of a pain. Turns out it can charge with my laptop charger or my iPad charger but not the Xbox cable plugged into my PC.
Maybe this isn’t a totally fair comparison, but it’s my personal experience.
Lightning "just works" only because it's all made and validated by Apple. If you want guaranteed compatibility, just keep buying Apple-branded Type C cables and adapters like you did for Lightning.
The only difference now is that you also have the option of using other cables and adapters if you want/need to, as well as use your Apple charging stuff for charging other things.
Yeah, I totally agree. The only annoyance I see is that you have to experiment with what cables and power adapters through trial and error to find what works with particular devices. I mentioned in a different reply in this thread that there ought to be some kind of consumer-friendly labeling on these things, so that you can see at a glance what will work with what.
You don't have to. You can. As the previous comment mentioned, nothing stops you from buying all the accessories and cables from Apple at a premium like you used to with lightning.
Funnily enough, this is why the only USB-C chargers and cables I carry around are my Apple ones - because they've been the only ones that I've been able to reliably trust across all my other devices (including USB-C Apple devices).
In almost every instance of stuff like that it is caused by the manufacturer not reading the specifications and implementing it improperly. Usually the cause is them trying to save literally $0.001 by leaving out a component they think is "optional".
The specification is very clear with regards to chargers: a charger with more watts is always better than one with fewer watts. For any pair of chargers, if charger A provides X watt and charger B provides Y watt, if Y > X every device which can be charged by A can also be charged by B. This means a laptop charger will always also charge your smartphone - although the opposite might not be true due to the laptop having a minimum power requirement.
That's really weird, but I remember in the past there were some older usb-a ports that did not send enough power to charge some stuff, perhaps your headset requires a higher current than the controller or something.
Here I can charge my laptop (although slowly) via the usb-c on my PC. All other devices work fine too.
What kind of piece-of-shit cheapest junk cables do you guys buy? Is it another 0.99$ Amazon/aliexpress cable that you expect handles 130W charging while transmitting 10GB/s or similar?
I have cca 10 different usbc devices, and use all their provided cables to charge all other accessories. All works as expected, charges fast, transfers fast. The key is to not cheapen out and buy the cheapest crap. Just like with anything else in life.
For low-speed (USB 2.0) devices, there are exactly three cables. One supports up to 60W, one supports up to 100W, and one supports up to 100W.
Considering all the devices you listed need less than 60W, they should charge with all cables. If they do not, the manufacturer gave you a broken cable which does not follow the USB-C specification. Blame the manufacturer, not USB-C.
The fact there are different cables is what makes USB-C stupid.
Do you think a mum and dad at home know the difference?
My dad had a USB-C cable for his android tablet. When I got him an iPad he tried using the same cable. It wouldn’t change. That makes the whole point of USB-C pointless
Defending the stupidness of USB-C cables just makes you a fanboy.
> The fact there are different cables is what makes USB-C stupid.
If you pretend you only need 60 watts, there is only one kind of cable.
> My dad had a USB-C cable for his android tablet. When I got him an iPad he tried using the same cable. It wouldn’t change. That makes the whole point of USB-C pointless
That wasn't because of multiple kinds of cable. That was defective equipment. They're not the same problem.
100% is the specs fault. It tries to solve all of life’s problems. But only creates more. There should be 1 spec for a cable. Period. It should be universal.
You mean like how there are different cables for HDMI, DisplayPort, or even a regular power cord?
The biggest problem is that manufacturers don't follow the spec. You are supposed to physically label the cable with its capabilities, but literally nobody bothers to do so.
Cos once you plug your tv you’re totally gonna be like oh now let’s use that hdmi/display port on this other tv in the other room. Now let’s use it on the monitor. Back to the other tv.
With the same Xbox cable but with a proper charger, does it work?
Most of the time, you avoid problems of "PD device hierarchy" by using a proper charger (i.e. a device that only has the functionality to charge other devices).
> Most of the time, you avoid problems of "PD device hierarchy" by using a proper charger (i.e. a device that only has the functionality to charge other devices).
The problem is with the "most", which means you can't count on it.
I have usb-c headphones that can be charged with my hp usb-c laptop charger (which is a "proper charger", I guess, since it only does charging) or from a regular computer usb port. They don't pretend to have any high-powered charge mode (manual says 3 hour charge time and "usb charging").
My usb-c ecig won't charge from that. It will only charge from either my pc's usb-a port or random "low power" usb phone charger.
I haven't tested it with any of the fancier high-powered adapters, since I don't own any. But, clearly, usb-c charging ports are not that universal.
Sure, as a technically inclined user, I can understand that.
It actually is a Chinese brand, but not some one-off brand bought off Ali Express. It's a device bought from a reputable store in France with a name that I've seen around for several years (Vaporesso). Sure, that fact, in and of itself, is not enough to guarantee that corners haven't been cut and that the product is actually up to spec.
But, as a random consumer, how am I to know that it's "a pretend USB-C"? It looks exactly the same as my headphones, comes with the exact same-looking cable. There are no markings on it. The usb-c ports on my laptop have a bolt icon next to them, but its usb-c charger doesn't have any marking. They also don't say it shouldn't be used with anything other than the laptop it came with, and actually is able to charge my headphones and my mom's usb-c phone.
Even though I've kinda followed the talks about PD, negotiation, etc. its still not clear to me why this particular combination doesn't work. I was under the impression that, lacking any negotiation, ports should default to the basic 5V 500mA. So my fat laptop charger should be able to at least trickle-charge the e-cig.
Because USB-C does not have a defined "upstream" and "downstream" side of the cable, a user could connect two chargers together. This is obviously a bad idea.
To prevent this, a USB-C charger is only allowed to provide power on the cable once it senses a downstream device on the other side. A legacy USB-A to USB-C cable always applies power, though, as this does not provide any danger.
Some low-quality brands think they are smart and leave out the two $0.001 resistors needed for the device to advertise itself. This means it will only work with a USB-A to USB-C cable, and not a real USB-C charger.
Using the Xbox controller cable with an actual charger does work. The confusion came with how the PC delivers power to the controller but not the headset.
It’s ultimately not a big deal, and it’s surely something I can learn to intuit. But I think lots of consumers (I think about my poor mother) would benefit from a clearer labeling scheme on the various devices, ports, chargers, or cables.
The general problem with USB-C is that the connectors support multiple different protocols, cables are allowed to not be of sufficient quality for all use-cases (the worst example is probably high-bitrate cases like cables for computer monitors) including high power charging. Similarly, the devices on either end needn’t support all the potential protocols/uses. Furthermore, many USB-C devices that are sold are low quality and can damage devices that are plugged into them by failing to follow the specification (eg delivering too much power). So, if you’re a consumer and you have two devices with USB-C ports, and a cable with USB-C on both ends, connecting the two together might either work fine, work with poor performance (without telling you this), not work, or damage your device. And there isn’t really a good way to tell this will happen.
Lightning isn’t that much better though. You can get lightning to USB-C cables so you can plug into various bad devices and have other USB-C problems, though you likely won’t try to plug into a monitor for example.
There’s maybe an argument to be made about the ports too. I think it would be harder to clean dust/fluff out of a USB-C port and maybe they could be more fragile too because of the spike in the middle of the port.
It still seems to me like Apple probably also like that they have a lot more control over lightning. And they already have USB-C on iPads and computers so they clearly don’t think it is totally terrible. But there are a lot more iPhones in the world than other Apple devices and I can imagine eg Apple having to spend a load of money on customer support, etc, due to the USB-C issues, or getting blamed when things go wrong because of the cable or device on the other end.
I think it would be better if the possibility of connecting two devices with a cable implied that they would work together, but I’m not sure how that could be done without either more ports or more expensive cables/charging bricks. And I don’t know why a USB-like organisation would have more success at ensuring things follow the standards than USB currently have.
"Furthermore, many USB-C devices that are sold are low quality and can damage devices that are plugged into them by failing to follow the specification (eg delivering too much power)."
The simple solution as done elsewwhere across many technical endeavors is to mandate standards, that's why the ISO exists.
For example, if I plug a 220/240 Volt appliance into a power wall socket that's rated at either 220 or 240V then it should work properly—one doesn't expect say 400V out of said socket.
That countries mandate a given voltage ± a specified tolerance that's well defined is specifically to avoid malfunctions/equipment damage.
A manufacturer that goes against mandated standards should suffer the consequences.
If other industries have no problem with mandated standards then why should the IT/computer industry be excepted or any different?
USB is standardised and yet here we are. It seems to me that somehow those standards aren’t sufficiently well mandated and I don’t really know how to improve the situation. Maybe there is some incentive for the people selling the low quality devices to move to higher quality devices over time (e.g. you get kicked off Amazon less) but that feels pretty weak to me (if better devices are more expensive, you won’t get any sales). Possibly figuring out how to punish Amazon for their third-party sellers selling faulty or non-compliant devices would help but it seems like something that would be pretty difficult to me.
Many standards owe their origins to some development that few used initially. Again using power as an example, that's how we arrived at the common 110/220V voltage standards we see in use around the world.
Due to common or widespread usage, a facility outgrows its origins and or its patents expire. Thus its original developer is no longer in charge—or can no longer fully manage its ongoing development, which is the current situation with USB (remember it's happened thousands of times before). Governments, though their standards bodies, then step in to protect consumers, etc. by ensuring standards are maintained (weights & measures are a classic case).
We are now seeing the first instances of this intervention process with USB. Unfortunately, the association responsible for USB has not kept up with the times (this usually happens because members cannot agree and the lowest common denominator becomes the released standard).
To make matters worse, USB got off to a bad start, it was a dog of a 'standard' from the outset, for starters it was ridiculously slow, 12mbps if I recall, which was about a fifth the speed it ought to have been given the then state of hardware performance. I recall being at the trade show when it was released and laughing at how slow this 'toy' was, we all joked about it. The trouble is that as this ill-conceived standard started from such a low base that it's never caught up, every release has always been too slow. Moreover, the mechanical aspect of the standard has always been inadequate, USB plugs and sockets are mechanically flimsy and slipshod and of inadequate design.
Unfortunately, as USB has become the widespread standard and seeing that industry has not managed its development well, it's little wonder government has stepped in. What we're now seeing here is just another instance of a well worn pattern.
Edit: just to be clear, if the standard had been managed well then Apple would not be able to offer Apple-specific enhancements as they would not comply with the specification. If the standard falls under a government authority (which is often an ISO), then adhering to the standard is mandatory. The advantage of this is that it puts all manufacturers on a level playing field. If this were the situation here then it would be unlawful for Apple to offer nonstandard USB enhancements.
Ehh, I personally thought USB-C was a huge mistake and was glad Apple brought back MagSafe on the new MBPs. The cable is higher quality than USB-C, the charge rate is faster, it’s less likely to knock the computer off a table if someone trips on it, and so on. The whole “we must force everything to be usb-c” obsession is so weird and it’s not always the best standard for every use case.
In theory, yes. The specification mandates that all USB-C cables must have 2.0 wires, but in practice some cheap brands have invented "charge-only" cables which lack them.
First of all: the EU definitely had good intentions when regulating the charger mess. The amount of incompatible chargers rotting in drawers and (possibly) landfills could definitely be reduced over time by agreeing on a common physical and electrical interface.
However — limiting technical progress is not a good idea and we see that with the plethor of different power modes existing within USB-C.
Possibly politicians only saw the physical plug but never understood the depth behind it.
And that’s where we reach the limits. What if a company (Apple) comes up with a more efficient but also more elaborate way to quick charge their equipment? How would you handle a situation where non-compliant chargers could even harm this equipment?
USB-C already is way too complex for the average Shenzen cookie cutter factory to implement it correctly.
How would you protect your customers from such a situation?
While it may superficially look evasive I am willing to pick Apple‘s side here.
> limiting technical progress is not a good idea and we see that with the plethor of different power modes existing within USB-C.
Who is limiting technical progress? The laws don't state that only USB-C can ever be used; they state that chargers must all be compatible. Want to improve it? Contribute to USB, or come up with an entirely new standard that everyone can agree to.
> What if a company (Apple) comes up with a more efficient but also more elaborate way to quick charge their equipment?
Then they contribute to the next USB standardization, same as everyone else.
> How would you handle a situation where non-compliant chargers could even harm this equipment?
Same way it's currently done: Through consumer protection laws. USB standards are called standards for a reason.
> USB-C already is way too complex for the average Shenzen cookie cutter factory to implement it correctly.
And yet people are happily using USB-C to power all kinds of devices.
> How would you protect your customers from such a situation?
If Apple is limited by USB-C then why do all their other current devices - where the EU never forced anything - use primarily (sometimes exclusively) USB-C?
It's not just a question of total power - smartphones have limited space and thermal budget for internal power conversion compared to laptops, which means that the fastest charging option often moves some of the work of converting to the correct voltage to the charger. (Also, I don't think 240W USB PD has really been adopted by anyone currently, and that's a spicy amount of current given the general quality of USB C cables.)
It depends. USB-C supports PPS, which allows the charged device to request a specific voltage, so conversion is no longer needed.
The specification does mandate that the device must be able to fall back to a static voltage if the charger does not support PPS, though. But in practice a device could totally require PPS for fast charging, and only do trickle charging with a non-PPS charger.
> But in practice a device could totally require PPS for fast charging, and only do trickle charging with a non-PPS charger.
Not sure we have the same terms. Trickle charging is 0.02-0.05C charging to see if the charger can get the battery safely from being overdischarged to say 3V where it can start normal CC charging phase.
That would probably piss off a lot of users and the EU if not even normal charging was supported by a device connected to any USB charger, because that's back to requiring a specific charger for each device, where not even basic things that all users expect work anymore with all conforming chargers.
It's universal enough for all power consumption up to 240W, which includes what you need to charge a smartphone.
For huge appliances, you need a different connector, larger conductors in the cables, etc... it really will never scale the whole spectrum because of physics laws. Else, everything melts and burns.
But for charge speed, the only parameters really are voltage and maximum current. Both are plenty enough (for a smartphone battery) in the PD standard.
When this all started, I had the same argument of hindering technical progress. But then I realised that all companies have to do is support usb c, it's fair game if they want to add another plug alongside it.
If apple want that new standard that's fine, but they shouldn't be allowed to use it as a USP -- everyone else should be able to implement it, with no licensing.
They can include that port near usbc port, or they can propose that port to be the new usb standard, but do you need more than 240W charging and 40gbps data transfer in a phone? Or to be more precise, how many phones are using full usbc capacity?
I recently bought an Apple TV. It's a great device, but comes with a remote that's USB-C charged. That's fine except that it doesn't come with a USB-C cable, nor does the device have a USB port that could be used for charging the remote. So I ended up having to buy a third party USB charger and cable (I just don't have that much USB-C stuff laying around). That pissed me off and I wasn't shy about, politely, letting the staff in the Apple Store know it - to be fair, they agreed with me it was ridiculous. I can't overstate how much I dislike it when I buy a consumer device and everything I need to operate said device isn't included in the box.
With that being said, the EU can fuck right off with this USB-C insistence. I've been using iPhones for 13 years now personally, and for 6 years with work. I have lightning cables coming out of my ears (a mixture of first and third party). Charging devices up with a lightning cable is incredibly convenient, and especially since I have USB connectors in many of the power sockets around my house. All of that is rendered useless because of the EU's loathsome meddling.
(I am generally an EU fan, but live in the UK which of course is no longer part of the EU. I can't say I'm at all happy about that but what I'm even less happy about is that even though we could potentially go a different route here, and a better route for people already in the Apple ecosystem who have the necessary accessories, Apple will no doubt consider it easier to supply EU compliant iPhones in the UK, for which I can't really blame them, but I'll gladly shake my fist at Brussels over it.)
> With that being said, the EU can fuck right off with this USB-C insistence. I've been using iPhones for 13 years now personally, and for 6 years with work. I have lightning cables coming out of my ears (a mixture of first and third party). Charging devices up with a lightning cable is incredibly convenient, and especially since I have USB connectors in many of the power sockets around my house. All of that is rendered useless because of the EU's loathsome meddling.
I'm glad at least someone is forcing a notoriously hostile company like Apple to play ball. Like you, I too have many cables all over my home and office. Charging my devices with any of them is incredibly convenient, especially since I never have to check if it's the right cable or not.
All of that is rendered useless when my girlfriend needs to charge her phone though, because the manufacturer decided it was worth it to price gouge its customers over fucking chargers of all things.
And this is the situation without any Apple phones involved. Both our phones support USB-C. But her phone is old enough and from a scummy manufacturer that hadn't been forced to stick to the standard when selling that phone.
It's not EU's loathsome meddling, it's Apple's loathsome insistince on using a proprietary cable for years and years to make an extra buck that has your knickers in a twist now.
> Charging devices up with a lightning cable is incredibly convenient, and especially since I have USB connectors in many of the power sockets around my house. All of that is rendered useless because of the EU's loathsome meddling.
How is all of that rendered useless? You have the USB connectors in your power sockets already, so all that's left to do is plug a USB-A to USB-C cable in.
You’re aware USB-A to USB-C cables exist right? None of your wall sockets are rendered obsolete, although admittedly you’ll need a few new cables/adapters.
GP's USB wall sockets will be obsolete in short order, not because of Apple, but because the USB Power Delivery standards are still rapidly evolving. The latest version can even power high energy devices like workstation laptops and displays.
But unless they bought cutting edge tech after 2021, chances are whatever got put in the wall sockets is low-power USB-A and destined for obsolescence in a handful of years.
I don’t think it is destined for obsolescence. They were presumably installed to charge phones and other low power devices, which they will continue to do.
The majority of people in the world (EU included) have a different phone than iPhone.
Also, bit unrelated to bring up the UK (or your UK-situation) with all of this, the submission is about a EU regulation. But you seem to already get that. However:
> Apple will no doubt consider it easier to supply EU compliant iPhones in the UK, for which I can't really blame them, but I'll gladly shake my fist at Brussels over it.
Aren't Apple the ones you should bitch about instead? EU forces Apple to act within EU regulation in the EU-zone, and Apple might just follow EU regulation in the UK because it's easier, and then you blame the EU?
But we can't stay on Lightning just because it's convenient, otherwise we'd still be on Apple's 30-pin connector. Even Apple seem to think USB-C is better and was one of the first to move to USB-C with the Macbook. iPad Pros have been USB-C for years, with the regular iPad finally getting USB-C recently. Should we have a law instead of force Apple to keep using Lightning to fix your Apple TV remote anecdote?
I think Apple not providing all the parts needed to charge the iPhone is more surprising. Reduced waste is great but at the same time it is a way to myddy the total cost of buying a gadget. Apple cables are quite expensive and break in use.
What comes to apple tv remote, I have never charged mine and it’s been running over a year. I’m pretty happy I didn’t receive yet another usb-c with mine.
> I've been using iPhones for 13 years now personally, and for 6 years with work. I have lightning cables coming out of my ears (a mixture of first and third party)
I had loads of pre-lightning connectors. I've still got two clock ratios with those connectors on. Apple change to lightning created tons of e-waste then.
Anyone from the GB wanting a USB-C iPhone could just pop across to Ireland (including Northern Ireland - it being in the UK but following EU SM rules), buy one, and take it in to GB.
Unfortunately I fear even asking this question probably angers some, but I think it's an interesting question because unlike other things in history we're seeing such rapid iteration. Maybe the laws in the EU have accounted for this - it just seems like a short term good thing that could be not so great in a few years down the road... thoughts?