
Common charger for all mobile phones on the way in Europe - zapshu
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/content/20131219IPR31414/html/Common-charger-for-all-mobile-phones-on-the-way
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danbmil99
The question to ask is this: if this law were already in place, would Apple
(or any manufacturer) ever innovate something like Lightning or the magnetic
mac chargers, given that they then also have to support the common standard,
putting them at a significant cost disadvantage?

This kind of regulation, while arguably well-meaning, always seems to end up
distorting market forces and discouraging innovation.

~~~
yaakov34
I tend to agree, given my small-l libertarian tendencies and my preference for
letting people do whatever they want unless it hurts others. On the other
hand, there are already scads of standards (including ones that essentially
say you-must-do-it-exactly-like-this) for consumer products. And it's hard to
see why it's a very big imposition to standardize the DC power supplies, if
the AC power supplies are standardized. The EU has shown that they are not
inflexible with these standards, as they let the micro-USB standard expire and
let people comply by shipping adapters. The interoperability might be worth
it; we don't miss having 10 AC outlet types in our house for different brands
of appliances.

~~~
malandrew
At the end of the day it's all about interfaces and we should, as much as
possible, decouple the interfaces from the house and from the appliances.

What I would love to see insofar as wall outlets is an adjustment of the
current standard wall box and outlet+plate so that you could quickly replace
the entire wall place in one go very quickly. With that innovation I would
love to see the same on the appliance end where it is trivial to replace the
entire code on an appliance. This already exists with IEC320, but if would be
nice if everything used IEC320.

Then every 5-10 years the industry innovates to dramatically improve one end
and then 5-10 years later works to dramatically improve the other end. This
would give a very reasonabe 10-20 years between completely replacing all the
appliances (or using adapters or switching neither), and 10-20 years between
replacing all the wall plates. You wouldn't even necessarily have to upgrade
every 10-20. If an appliance is working fine on an old appliance to cord
standard or a cord to wall standard, you can leave things alone.

It was this interface approach that allowed Apple to have one dock connector
for the longest time but many different shaped devices, since all that had to
be done is replace the plastic dock insert [0].

This approach wouldn't work for cellphones and laptops, but should work
swimmingly for 120v mains since space isn't at a premium except in the
appliance.

[0]
[http://km.support.apple.com/library/APPLE/APPLECARE_ALLGEOS/...](http://km.support.apple.com/library/APPLE/APPLECARE_ALLGEOS/HT1380/HT1380_02
---002-en.png)

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bencoder
I don't understand this. It's pretty much standardised on micro-usb anyway.
Any enforcement of this is just going to be a pain as better technologies
arise (USB type C).

~~~
nolok
It is standardized because in 2009 the EU told them to either sign an
agreement to do it, or have a law to force them [1]

They signed, but most refused to extend beyond 2012 (partly because they saw
apple not really playing game), so here come the law. As long as I can keep a
single cable to charge everything, I'm happy.

> The Common EPS Memorandum of Understanding expired at the end of 2012. The
> European Commission reported that all of the MoU signatories, "have met
> their obligations under the MoU," but that most of the signatories declined
> an EC request to extend the MoU beyond 2012

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_External_Power_Supply](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_External_Power_Supply)

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coob
Ugh no thanks. Lightning is orders of magnitude superior to other current
solutions (except cost). If it came to the point where this was actually
enforced, I bet Apple would just pay the fines it receives and just continues
to use Lightning.

~~~
SwellJoe
USB 3.0 is not an order of magnitude inferior to Lightning. As I understand
it, the primary reason Lightning was chosen over micro USB was simply that the
iPad needs more power than micro USB is specified to provide. That kind of
thing can be resolved in the two years we have before this has to go into
effect.

I'm _always_ on the side of standard connections. Which is one of several
reasons I never choose Apple products. Having it imposed by law feels vaguely
wrong, but Apple's behavior (on this front, and several others) _also_ feels
vaguely wrong to me.

~~~
fleitz
I'm usually for standards however in the case of apple, it's basically it's
own standard and in the case of MagSafe far superior.

~~~
dingaling
Magnetic power connectors are clever, but were standard on rice cookers for a
couple of decades before Apple adopted them. Not really 'theirs'.

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mcintyre1994
It's not exactly clear but I assume this means they'll have to provide some
sort of converter to Micro USB or whatever? It's a great idea to have a common
connector, but Apple aren't going to use the same as everyone else and
everyone else seems to be compatible now anyway. It looks like the end result
might just be iOS stuff costs a bit more and governments get some more tax
money from a ridiculously marked up converter.

~~~
w0utert
Maybe I'm the one who's missing something here, but why is everyone so
obsessed with the Lightning connector Apple uses? As far as I understand it,
the proposed legislation is about universal _chargers_ , not universal
_cables_ , and isn't intended to promote interoperability between phones from
different manufacturers, but to limit the environmental impact of replacing
the charger every time you switch phones.

Last time I checked you can plug the USB side of the Lightning connector to
any USB charger and vice versa, I'm pretty sure you can use the Apple charger
to charge anything that also charges from a USB port. Seems to me that Apple
would already be in compliance...

~~~
simbolit
sorry to disappoint you, but "charger" in this context means power supply PLUS
cable.

~~~
w0utert
That doesn't make sense, since it would mean manufacturers would not be able
to provide any kind of connector on their devices that provides more than just
USB and charging, which I cannot imagine to be true.

If an adapter that goes from [whatever port is on the device] to micro-USB
would be enough to be compliant with the proposed legislation, Apple is
already in compliance, because not only do they sell such an adapter already,
the charger end of their Lightning cable also has a standard USB connector
(which means it effectively is a Lightning-to-USB adapter itself).

I know the EU already talked about standard chargers for mobile phones even
before the iPhone existed, because back then every phone used to have a non-
standard charger plus attached, non-removable cable. The whole idea behind the
legislation was that the charger got useless the moment you lost or replaced
your phone, so lots of them ended up on landfills. Mandating a common charger
would allow selling phones without a charger, and re-using old chargers with
different phones.

Unless you can quote the exact bits of the proposed rules that say 'any mobile
device will have a micro-USB port' (or whatever port would be considered even
more 'standard'), I'm going to assume everyone is just getting all worked up
about nothing again, because "OMG iPhone does not have micro-USB, make them
add it!".

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Houshalter
Standardization seems like a good idea but I'm not sure if I'm ok with the
government forcing a single standard. Maybe another idea would be to tax non-
compliant chargers, so they could still be legal, but have an incentive to
comply to the standard. Or remove patents on chargers so there isn't any
incentive to force consumers to buy your brand of charger, you might as well
just comply with the standard. Or allow permits for non-compliant chargers if
they can give a good justification for doing it.

~~~
przemelek
Yeah, so maybe governments should stop setting rules about right- and left-
hand traffic? Private sector will be so much better on establishing non
government standards... For example Trucks (for British people Lorries) will
user right-handed traffic rules, and normal cars will user left-hand traffic
rules. Market will decide what is better....

As we can see market standard for charges was "every company has its own
standards, and charge customers more", after UE and China decided ruled at
created regulations for charges it was short time and every (except one)
producers started to support microUSB/minuUSB as standard. Strange, don't you
think? ;-)

~~~
Houshalter
This is a ridiculous argument. Traffic rules can lead to death and it's
literally not possible for there to be multiple standards. Having a different
charger for your device is not dangerous nor impossible.

Additionally, I said in my comment that maybe the government should regulate
it, I just proposed alternatives that would allow for some reasonable
exceptions.

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deletes
I have almost immediately remembered this:
[http://xkcd.com/927/](http://xkcd.com/927/)

~~~
norswap
If they are smart, they'll mandate micro-usb, which is the closest thing to a
standard that we currently have.

~~~
elithrar
Don't forget micro USB 3.0.

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legierski
I've been under the impression that this is already the reality (minus
iPhones)

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msvan
I don't understand this. Are they going to force Apple to use the same charger
as everyone else? Is that even possible? The article is unclear.

~~~
sjtgraham
The USB type C connector is currently under development (slim form factor and
reversible), Apple should just make the effort to ensure it's compatible with
the Lightning connector, e.g. license the design. Problem solved.

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cmelbye
Maybe they'll force manufacturers to use that hideous new USB 3.0 Micro-B
standard. Personally, I'd much rather use a great connector designed by
someone at Apple (such as Lightning, MagSafe, etc.) than one chosen by a
bureaucrat.

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knodi
Wow, I love it

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stefan_kendall
All of the usable phones already use lightning. I don't see the issue.

