A lot of people saying "USB-C cables aren't even compatible with each other!" (Nintendo switch etc.) Guess what: that's exactly the problem this regulation is intended to solve. Fake USB-C cables like Nintendo's that have the right shape but do not adhere to spec should gradually disappear along with lightning cables. The regulation actually says that cables can no longer be bundled with the devices themselves, so Nintendo would stop sending you that fake cable with your switch, and you would just buy a real one to work with all your devices.
Other people saying "what about innovation!?" That's fine. Let's say the USB consortium releases USB-D with input from Apple, Google, and many other stakeholders. The EU can set another deadline for newly released devices to adhere to the new version instead of the old one. The transition will involve a period of time where older devices are still on C and newer ones on D, which is totally compatible with the regulation and is necessary with or without regulation. It's ludicrous to think companies won't be able to "iterate": you would be crazy to go to market with any cable technology that isn't already very mature. Apple spent years designing lighting chargers because they knew that once they were released they'd be around for a long time (and they have been!)
I don't see why "What about innovation?" is taken seriously as an argument anyway. USB-C is more than adequate, we could coast with it for the next hundred years. Nobody is kept up at night by the lack of innovation in AC power plugs, the standards countries have settled on today, while not all equivalent, are all generally satisfactory in practice. Problem solved; stop fixing that which ain't broke and move on to other matters.
Yeah yeah, "640k should be enough for everybody". There comes a point where that is actually true.
> I don't see why "What about innovation?" is taken seriously as an argument anyway.
because the USB-IF historically has struggled to reach enough consensus from its stakeholders to allow innovation to take place. The entire reason that lightning exists in the first place is because USB-IF couldn't agree on a replacement for micro-B (which everyone agreed clearly needed improvement!) and one of the members just had to shrug and go do it themselves. Once one of the members had gone there and proven the concept, it lit a fire under the asses of the rest of the consortium.
Same for why thunderbolt exists as a standard and not as USB 4 in the first place... not enough consensus to go there as an official standard rather than an extension. It took what, 10 years after Thunderbolt was standardized before we finally pulled ourselves out of the fecal lagoon of USB 3.x standards?
And then you layer in the dysfunction from the members that are primarily interested in creating consumer confusion with the USB 3.0, USB3.1 Type-1, USB 3.1 Type-2, USB 3.2 Type-1, USB 3.2 Type-2, USB 3.2 Type-2x2 nonsense so that they can deceptively and maliciously sell yesterday's hardware with tomorrow's standard on the box... many of the members of USB-IF are interested in actively stalling progress if it means they save 30 cents on their BOM.
This is not an organization with consumer interests at heart. They are a bad choice to be the legal guardian (more like, conservator) of all innovation.
On top of that, I feel like USB-C is deliberately engineered to sell more ICs. Which wouldn't be that huge of an issue except as a result, all relevant ICs are sold out (or unsuitable).
CC/PD use a custom transmission standard so you can't implement it without a PHY, which basically means at least one dedicated IC.
A compliant USB-C source will not provide more than 5V/3A without PD negotiation period, and is only guaranteed to provide default USB power. So if you can potentially draw more, you need to check whether it's allowed.
>Gates himself has strenuously denied making the comment. In a newspaper column that he wrote in the mid-1990s, Gates responded to a student's question about the quote: "I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time." Later in the column, he added, "I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again."
Lightning cables don't last. They are a complete disaster. And that's not even considering how a little bit of dust can prevent your device from charging at all, and lightning ports are a complete dust magnet.
But the best argument against "what about lightning?" is the fact that Apple themselves don't use it on their higher powered devices like macs, and use USB-C instead.
Haven’t had any terrible experiences with lightning cables. I have several cables that are from 2016/2018 that I use regularly. But then again none of my type c cables go bad either… I think it would have been safer to say “from my experience <xyz>” instead of presenting your opinion as if it were more than just an opinion. I see how friends and family members treat their cables, tugging on the phone to disconnect instead of removing the cable by hand. Or placing the charger in a way that the cable is bent up against a piece of furniture. Regarding the lightning port, it’s actually quite easy to clean, compared to ports like usb-c (I’m guessing you know why that would be). Also using lightning on a Mac doesn’t make sense and that’s probably why they don’t do it.
I was never sure if it was dust causing my phone to refuse to charge or Apple's gatekeeping "official" cables. There used to be jailbreak tweaks that would allow unauthorized cables to suddenly start working fine, but the best I could do in iOS 14 was get a cable to maintain the battery (without charging it). Perhaps Apple is shooting their own standard in the foot simply by enforcing their certification program.
That said, you're absolutely right that its limit is reached already with phones. Some old cables have two pins (presumably VDD) that are discolored from use. Would not want lightning for charging a laptop.
All these arguments are the same I use… against USB-C.
I had 2 Google Pixels before with USB-C and both died because dust would accumulate around the center thingy and it was impossible to clean. The center thingy actually became loose on my second Pixel and the connector wouldn’t hold in place anymore.
I have since switched to an iPhone and I think the lightning connector stays remarkably clean. It’s also easier to clean because it doesn’t have the center piece of USB-C connectors.
All these arguments have nothing to do with the new legislation. Should there be laws to enforce “better” options? Then phones should have mil-spec round connectors. I insist I don’t understand what problem is the law supposed to solve.
This has absolutely zero to do with the plug design of Lightning. There are crap cables for USB-A, USB-C, USB Micro, 3.5" audio, and any other standard you want to find that don't last.
> And that's not even considering how a little bit of dust can prevent your device from charging at all, and lightning ports are a complete dust magnet.
By what magic do you believe that lightning ports collect pocket lint that USB-C is immune to?
> But the best argument against "what about lightning?" is the fact that Apple themselves don't use it on their higher powered devices like macs, and use USB-C instead.
Nobody is making this point. They're saying the sheer existence of the Lightning plug lit a fire under the USB-IF to finish and greenlight USB-C. If Apple hadn't started producing Lightning devices, it's entirely possible we'd still be dealing with USB Micro.
That said, I'll happily die on the hill that the Lightning plug design is almost unilaterally superior to the USB-C plug design.
Lightning only ever managed to coast by because of its slim form-factor and because Apple mandated its use. It's capable of USB2.0 at most (480Mbps), whereas USB-C can do 20Gbps today and 40Gbps when using Thunderbolt.
MagSafe on phones is a total joke, and MagSafe on laptops exists _alongside_ USB-C charging.
the lightning connector itself is capable of USB 3.0 speeds, apple just keeps the iphone line (or the cables?) at usb 2.0 spec. The ipad pro can reach full speed.
I'll add to the chorus saying lightning is terrible. I have a mix of devices using lightning and USB-C. I have had zero issues with USB-C, in fact I still charge my phone every night with the USB-C cable that came with my Pixel 1. I've never had to replace a single one, so much so that I have a nest of spare, unused, USB-C cables in a drawer. Meanwhile, lightning cables are a continuous roulette of failure - I would guess I've purchased at least a dozen replacement lightning cables over that same time period.
"thinner" is not a universally superior quality. It also means "more likely to get bent or broken" which implies "more likely to need replacing" which is one of the direct aims of this legislation.
I have literally never seen or heard of a Lightning plug or port "getting bent or broken". However I have heard of the hidden-male-inside-of-female port of on-device USB-C ports breaking at which point your device is trash.
I assume that's mostly complaints about the cable insulation rather than the connector.
Lightning connectors do have the advantage you can safely stick a toothpick in them to remove lint, I don't know if lint building up inside the socket is a problem specific to lightning though.
I used both Lightning and USB-C cables, I had two Lightning cables dying from oxidation (not misuse in water or anything, normal use) and not a single USB-C problem so far.
Calling Lightning superior is blatant Apple fanboyism.
Lightning isn't as fast as USB 3.0 (which USB C cables should support), and can't supply as much power as USB-PD (which, again, works over USB C cables)
So in the 15 years since micro-USB was developed, that is just one vendor which has been able to produce something better, and it happens to be the most valuable corporation in the world with access to economics of scale that no other manufacturer could compete with. Are you saying that's a valid justification that allowing manufacturers the freedom to innovate on charging ports is more important than interoperability?
Yes, exactly: the tiny amount of genuine innovation that exists in this particular area is not worth giving up interoperability and regressing back to the pre-micro-USB world of mostly terrible, rarely innovative proprietary connectors from every different vendor.
> their wreckless legislators could have actual impact.
I think the positive impact of the currently existing micro-USB legislation is clear if you look back at the status quo before it existed. This new legislation simply improves upon it.
Lightning is a decent cable technology from a form factor position, but it has several technology drawbacks. First each lightning device (including cables) have to pay a nontrivial royalty to apple bringing up the minimum cost of accessories. Secondly the standard is limited to relatively low power and data rates.
Notice also that nothing prevents apple from additionally shipping MagSafe on their laptops, the device just needs to be usable with a type-C charger.
I don't think they can. The legislation explicitly mandates usb-c as the device port. Sure, Apple can engineer their own proprietary-to-usbc adapter and ship it with their phones, but they will no longer be allowed to use a non-usbc port on the phone itself.
Device-side connector: the included devices would have to be equipped with a USB-C receptacle on the device side (as described in the European standard EN IEC 62680-1-3:2021) and, in cases of charging power lower than 60 watts, be rechargeable with cables that complied with the same standard
Then on page 8, the latest expansion of scope:
Included devices: a larger range of small and medium-sized devices with power delivery up to 100 watts would be included under the scope of the directive, including e-readers, low-powered laptops, keyboards, mice, earbuds, screens, printers, portable navigations, smartwatches, personal care devices and electronic toys
Note the personal care devices: looks like this is going to include electronic toothbrushes and electric razors.
That's a good overview of the features of UK plugs, but a terrible one for establishing the supposed superiority of the UK design.
Much of what he describes is e.g. a feature of Schuko plugs/sockets.
The main distinguishing feature of the UK design is a technical workaround for a problem that no longer exists (WWII copper shortage requiring the embedded fuse).
I like US plugs. Sure, it's easier to shock yourself with them, but you usually only do that once (because it feels bad, not because it's often fatal).
I like them because they're small. I have a nifty little 3-port USB-A/C power supply where the plug folds flush. Europlug would have trouble doing that, and it's outright impossible with Schuko and UK plugs.
To be totally fair, it's not like a phone manufacturer is going to put 2 different ports on their device, so this is essentially regulating data as well as power. But also to be fair, USB-C cables that support thunderbolt 3 are a couple orders of magnitude faster (throughput) than Apple's lightning cables (40 Gbps vs ~480 Mbps), and if Apple could possibly support such speeds without releasing a new backwards-incompatible cable, they would have done so long ago.
If Apple ever wanted to support faster than 40 Gbps, they would have to do so in concert with the rest of the tech industry and release it as an open standard. I'd like to hear somebody try to argue this is a bad thing.
> But also to be fair, USB-C cables that support thunderbolt 3 are a couple orders of magnitude faster (throughput) than Apple's lightning cables (40 Gbps vs ~480 Mbps)
however, extremely few devices ship capable of these data rates, and many USB-C cables ship only supporting 480 mbps data transfer.
> ... Apple could possibly support such speeds without releasing a new backwards-incompatible cable, they would have done so long ago.
Lightning supports USB 3 (superspeed 5gbps) speeds. The lightning USB 3 camera adapter supports it for compatible devices. They did indeed figure this out long ago. They didn't do it because most people don't use lightning cables for data or even understand they _could_ use lightning cables for data.
> If Apple ever wanted to support faster than 40 Gbps, they would have to do so in concert with the rest of the tech industry and release it as an open standard. I'd like to hear somebody try to argue this is a bad thing.
Apple contributed to both thunderbolt iterations and to USB4. They were first adopters of both, as well as shipping the first USB-C laptop. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here.
Contrarily, if they were able to pass that standard quickly, it would stand to reason that they could also pass a USB-C standard quickly.
USB-C becoming standardized for phones will not slow the advancement of USB specs, and if the physical form factor becomes a constraint somehow, they will devise a better one and will standardize it likewise, even if consumer model phones can't ship with them from day 0.
A great example of this is EV charging connectors. The Tesla spec was superior until recently, but because the EU has mandated CCS, as communication/payment has been implemented within the standard, European cars find themselves with a universal plug and a universal charging network that can be unilaterally improved.
Meanwhile in the US we now have 2 charging networks on 2 standards, and no real path to unification.
The Tesla spec still is superior. Europeans just don't get its benefits anymore. The CCS mandate was mostly protectionism and I strongly doubt it would have happened if Tesla were headquartered in Germany.
There are currently three different fast charging standards, Tesla’s, CCS, and Chademo, and a vast need for improvements in charging infrastructure. If you don’t have a common standard, you end up with a fragmented network that caps everyone’s utility. Imagine if ICE cars could only get gas from certain types of stations, it’s madness.
Are you saying that there already was a large, established CCS production base in Europe at the time the standard was introduced? Otherwise, what were they protecting?
Tesla was not dominating. It was just moving early and had momentum because of that. I do not see evidence that the tesla charger is superior or CCS inferior.
MagSafe-style charging connectors are an innovation that, IMO, justifies breaking compatibility. I dislike this forced standardization on USB-C because USB-3/USB-C is a user-hostile nightmare standard.
Having lived in a country (Thailand) where both Euro and US plugs work just fine as long as you mind your voltage, I have become quite annoyed at that lack of innovation.
In Thailand I became quite annoyed by the lack of grounding. If your sockets where actually modern enough to have ground, it is rarely connected to anything at all, or sometimes just screwed to the wall. Rare to find a ground spike in a dwelling. Common to get zapped by your shower's electric water heater.
My place in Bangkok is a nice modern luxury building... at least it was luxury when they built it 17 years ago, now it's falling apart a bit but the amenities are awesome. The electric is probably grounded straight into the Chao Phraya river. :-)
It's not the plugs, it's the devices (or more commonly now, the power adapters) that work with 120, 240, or however many volts.
Nowadays many (most?) things take both voltages or, AFAICT -- I'm no electrician! -- anything reasonably close.
So in Thailand, for the most part, you can just plug in your MacBook or whatever and you don't need an adapter for the plug itself. Of course, if you're wrong about the voltage, things might go bad.
And as the other reply noted, this convenience doesn't make it safer, quite the opposite. But I just generally have realized there's a lot of innovation that could be done in plugs and sockets, but isn't being done.
As someone else commented above, the UK plugs are really interesting... but in my opinion maddeningly, unnecessarily big.
Not sure how a technologist could think that USB-C is the best that we could do. It could be smaller, easier to attach in the dark, easier to attach with one hand, etc. etc.
The government is not good at technology. They should step out of the way and let the consumer decide.
Well, there are some serious drawbacks to USB-C. For one, it's not IP rated, which means you cannot use it to charge anything in a bathroom or a kitchen. That's a shame because there are a lot of appliances like electric toothbrushes that would also benefit from a single plug.
The innovation was primarily financial innovation in taking money unnecessarily from your customers, except for a very few cases. Lightning was a good cable in the early days, but but then became a financial windfall for apple of course.
I think this is a stupid thing. Repurposing a commonly used connector for other things to reuse cheap connectors and cables is something that is usually done in the electronic industry (e.g. my oscilloscope use an HDMI socket for the logic analyzer input, you have plenty of lines and the connector is cheap and good). It's not uncommon to design a board and use type-C only for power (5V input, without the circuitry to handle power delivery, so you must connect a suitable power supply) or for other things (TTL serial data).
> Fake USB-C cables like Nintendo's that have the right shape but do not adhere to spec should gradually disappear along with lightning cables
Which spec? There are a multitude of them! What we do, adhere all to the best spec and to only feed 5V power to a device (that could be done with 2 wires) require the same cable used to connect a thunderbolt device at 40Gb/s? Of course not, since the first one costs a couple of dollars, the second one tens of dollars, the first one can be as long as voltage drop permits it to be, the second one needs to be maximum 1 meter, the first one needs no shielding at all, the second one needs to be heavily shielded, that not only increases cost but makes it bulkier. And again, does a data cable that is used for thunderbolt connection (assuming that the thunderbolt device is externally powered) be designed to carry the full 5A of the spec? 5A is a lot of current, it will require bigger conductors, but for a data cable it doesn't make sense!
Type-C is a standard that makes to me not a lot of sense: they wanted to create the one connector that fits all, while in the past they designed different connector, one for each device, not because they wanted you to buy more cables but to avoid confusion in customers, if the cable fits it works I used to say back in the day, the VGA connector was physically different from a serial port, the PS2 connector was not the same as a parallel port, even if they could have done everything with one port they didn't.
The lowest spec for cables requires 5 wires (CC, 2 * USB 2.0, GND, PWR) and a rating of 3A. CC pins are required for USB-C, if they're left out most devices won't charge over it [1]. 3A is (in my opinion) a reasonable choice, since pre-USB-C devices took up to 2.1A and backwards compatibility is important. USB 2.0 data lanes aren't required for charging per-se, but the older charging protocols preceding USB-C did signalling of the allowed current over the USB 2.0 data lines (otherwise, only 100 mA is allowed).
If you want to build a board, compatible with all USB-IF certified chargers and cables and all USB-PD power supplies, that only takes 5 V, the circuitry is two resistors. BOM is always important and stuff, but two resistors is as cheap as it gets. If you just throw it on a board and don't even bother to do a 2 minute google search, I'd take that as an indicator of the effort behind the rest of the board.
If it's obvious that it's not a "real" usb-c connector, deviations are reasonable IMHO (for example, a high speed scope connector or a port labelled "debug" on measurement equipment), but for power it's a bad idea. Some products use a "USB-C" power supply putting out 12V all the time (frying other devices connected to it) or save on the 2 resistors, leading to a lot of user confusion when devices will only work with USB-A to USB-C cables.
To the latter point: Doubt it. HDMI has tried to include Ethernet (with optional data wires), which luckily was a huge failure (almost no one implemented it). DisplayPort was trying to become USB-C before USB became USB-C. Ethernet now often doubles as a power supply. SD card slots could serve as an additional periphery slot in PDAs with SDIO. The only port common on a modern laptop that didn't (at least try) to include some completely other feature is probably the 3.5mm headphone socket (probably since there is no standard committee and even agreeing on how the 4 pin extension should work was a huge mess).
[1] The CC line is needed to determine which device is a power sink & power source. Otherwise, users might connect two 5V power supplies together and create a short (between probably 5.2V & 4.8V)
> Of course not, since the first one costs a couple of dollars, the second one tens of dollars,
Of course yes.
If the industry was stupid enough to put all of this behind a single plug, then single cable it is. Because pretty much every consumer who has more than one USB3/C cable is dead tired of "oh. This combo doesn't work, let me root for the other cables"
In order to talk to my friends, family, and coworkers I need to have the following apps installed and running: Slack, Teams, Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp, Google Chat/Hangouts/Allo/Whatever, FB Messenger, Discord, Twitter, etc.
It'd take a pretty strong argument to convince me that this is so much more productive and allows for more innovation than the old days when the spec for things like Email, HTTP, IRC, XMPP allowed for a plethora of different tools unrelated to the company sponsoring the tech and people figured out how to make money USING the interoperable tech instead of OWNING the tech.
I actually love the choice and the separation. And when an innovation good enough appears on a platform, it is quickly copied on the others (reactions…)
I'm willing to bet that your friends and family wouldn't be happy if the European Union would mandate using IRC everywhere. Heck, why not go further and stick to the good old ntalk [1].
I used XMPP around 2003 when it was still called Jabber. I can't say there's something major wrong with it (only XML verbosity comes to my head), it's just the idea of making it mandatory. By the way how come some EU officials use Zoom? [1] Where are those good open standards?
Funny you should mention Zoom, which just like Whatsapp is pretty much a half-baked proprietary XMPP implementation. Now if we had proper interop regulations mandating interoperability between commercial entities (no need to apply that to hobby/research projects), we could talk between all these networks.
Sure it would take a few months of serious dedication for these chat vendors to write specifications for the protocol spaghetti they came up with, but the benefits would be tremendous.
So why is "nobody" using XMPP protocol? The problem is not exactly with the specifications (although there's still a little margin for interpretation here and there, they keep evolving for the better) but rather with the implementations. Since a protocol is not tied to a single implementation, it requires additional resources to develop user-friendly clients. This fact is used by an argument by some people (see also: m0xie's The Ecosystem is moving) to justify centralizing all communications and protocol development. This argument was amply debunked by Daniel Gultsche (who maintains an Android XMPP client) and Drew Devault (who maintains an (unfederated-so-far) forge):
There's also a lot to say about the Matrix/Element approach, which has some good and bad sides. I'm happy to elaborate if that's of interest to someone.
If you want to have provider choice for customers and interoperability between messaging apps, I don't think there is another way than making standards mandatory.
Why do you think WhatsApp reached a billion dollar evaluation? Not because users have the freedom to move to a different provider and still be able to talk to all their friends...
The only other possibility is that users start rejecting providers who do not comply with internet standards (and I don't see that happening, even here on Hacker News).
Making something mandatory will definitely push things forward because what else are the providers going to do? Though I still have doubts about real progress being made. EU can't can even add VP9 and AV1 to the list of codecs used for Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB).
Instead maybe the government should start eating its own dog food and use an open standard for both internal and external use.
The bridges are not horrible. But they aren’t super reliable. I have seen them go down for a few days once, generally be a bit slow, forward messages out of order, etc.
The free matrix.org server is also overloaded. The paid server is much faster.
Internet standards have consistently failed to innovate. Email and IRC have failed to progress along with proprietary platforms. Features like end to end encryption require user effort and plugins which never took off.
Having 5 IM apps installed is much preferable to me than 1 worse app. Not sure the situation for XMPP but I have been told its highly fragmented with extensions that not all clients support. If I'm talking with someone, I want a high level of assurance that their client is pretty much the same as mine and that all features work and look roughly the same on both sides.
> Internet standards have consistently failed to innovate.
Internet standards do not innovate. People that adopt standards and built interesting things with them do.
For example, Google originally wrote the Jingle XMPP extension. Sadly, it seems like there are no real economic incentives for interoperabilty in the IM space (quite the opposite if you already have a lot of users on your platform), so we don't see a lot of investment going into the adoption of internet standards from big players anymore.
PC and x86 took us pretty far... And that was mostly carried on interoperability... I doubt we would have gotten to technology being as ubiquitous as it is without it.
Funny enough, France's failed internet, the Minitel would probably be the solution pushed today by the EU.
The Internet won on the free market, through its own merits. No politician intervention necessary. Even if plenty tried to capture the glory (information superhighway…)
Do you have any credible sources to base that claim on, other than "let's paint the government as idiots"? Did you know that TCP/IP was based on that other "failed" french network, Cyclades?
I'm all in favour the EU doing what it's doing, but x86 is actually a good example to not enforce this standard. Imagine that the EU enforced x86 as well, what would've happened to ARM ?
When in history has interoperability not been a catalyst for innovation? Look at everything people do in browsers now. Or if that's not to your taste, perhaps the era of BASIC is a better example. Not all standards are good, but a decent standard is better, or at least much more practically useful, than a lot of better but incompatible proprietary equivalents.
Of course it doesn't have to be mandated, and in the past usually wasn’t, but hell, it’s hard to see many good reasons to not standardize on USB-C. It’s got plenty of pins, it’s already mass-manufactured, and outside of only a single product Apple sells, there’s not much competition aside from legacy stuff that can’t handle a lot of today’s data, form factor and power delivery needs.
Different conditions beget different types of innovation. Interoperable systems evolved things (paradigms, models, languages…) that competing ones couldn't, and the opposite is also true. The world needs both, and probably everything in-between.
OK. We like competition. But the “almost” part is a little bit underplayed here. It doesn’t “almost always” breed innovation. Sometimes it breeds 50 different horribly positioned walled gardens. The consumer loses, the lack of interoperability becomes a tragedy of the commons, and our landfills are full of garbage nobody needs. Case in point: Home automation. I challenge you to scroll through the full list of things you can integrate with Google Home and try to justify why there needs to be this many different proprietary ways to interconnect devices. Home automation is not a new market, either: the X10 standard has been around since 1975.
This same kind of madness, of course, totally already exists elsewhere. I’m sorry but, out of the hundreds of thousands of different power connectors, most of them aren’t even very well thought out to begin with, less “innovative.” It turns out that delivering power to a device isn’t that interesting, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get it horribly wrong. For every MagSafe that has at least some redeeming qualities, there’s about 500 DELL power bricks out there. And for something that is effectively delivering small amounts of low voltage DC power, in fact often one of about 2 or 3 different voltages, it’s sad that you have to scour the earth for chargers that match the pinout of your device.
But wait a minute. We’re not even talking about laptops, but essentially just mobile phones and cameras. So where’s the innovative competitor to USB-C that we’re all so worried about getting stomped on by the EU? Even Apple has adopted USB-C for almost everything except iPhone. micro USB hardly exists on new phones, even the budget phones are switching to USB-C.
The market doesn’t just automatically do the right thing. Apple is simply too powerful for market forces alone to compel them to use a “standard” charger, and actually, the friction of changing something that works probably makes it resistant against that, but just because that’s the case does not mean it is the right way to go for consumers or the world in general, in the long term. And once enough people are tired of that non-sense, they turn to regulation. And I’m sure regulation like this is annoying—what does the EU know about connectivity and mobile phone design—but it’s probably relieving to Apple, because it roughly solves the problem of having to reconcile it: they either do it, or they are in violation of the law. Problem solved!
And no innovation was harmed, because plugging phones in is not that interesting.
P.S.: Interoperability absolutely breeds innovation, and it does not mean no competition, it builds a framework for competition. Standards do obviously limit what you can do, but in exchange they open many doors that would otherwise be closed. Please tell me you don’t think the “innovation” from having 30 competing hypertext formats would’ve been the ideal path to “innovation” for the world wide web.
Hardware innovation relies on competition. Interoperability can be useful for iteration but true hardware innovation would seem to require being different from the status quo, no?
Commodification spurs innovation at a level above the commodity. I love Linux but its ubiquity is partly to blame for why I am not using a capability based OS on my personal devices.
The whole history of sciences builds a case for interoperability, not against. See also the railway sizes problem (eg. in Australia), the electric/lighting socket standardization, doorlocks...
Were it not for standards and regulations you would have to buy different locks, lightbulbs, and charger adapters depending on the company which built your apartment. It's already annoying enough that these specifications change from one country to another, but it would be a complete nightmare if there were no interoperability regulations at all.
Also, more specifically about computing: the Internet being an open standard brought many advantages for innovation, compared to centralized networks such as MSN or AOL. As for hardware, i don't know about you but i'm pretty happy i can change my CPU/RAM/HDD with any socket-compatible product and i'm not tied to a single vendor... in fact i'm pretty angry when i find a machine where some parts are non-standard and cannot be easily replaced.
To be clear, i'm not saying there's no value in deviating from the standards for innovation. I'm just saying 99% of usecases are better addressed with standard solutions than with halfbaked proprietary "solutions".
AOL used SMTP and NFS and TCP/IP and many many other open protocol interop things. It wasn't great at sharing back, I am afraid, but it wouldn't have been able to be what it was without the internet protocols and many other open things (network socket programming, DLPI, heck sendmail, SSL, HTTP compression). AOL is a prime example of how a solid infrastructure enables new businesses (but those businesses might not stick with the partner that brought them).
Yours doesn't hold for hardware either. MacBooks are comparable and competitive to PC laptops, but it's only your opinion that they are superior.
Having used a few different models of MacBook over the last decade for work, and owning a few different models of Thinkpads over the same timeframe, I'd take the Thinkpad any day of the week. From the annoyingly either hot or cold all-metal case to the floating ground problem triggering shocks when using the fold-out wall connector, MacBooks are inferior in my book. But that is also only my opinion.
“The regulation actually says that cables can no longer be bundled with the devices themselves”
I don’t think anyone’s mentioned that. Oh my god, tech social media is going to melt down when that kicks in if the reaction to chargers being excluded is any indication (not to mention a repeat of the shift from 30-pin to Lightning in Apple’s case, except now without a cable).
I have had usb cables from usb rechargeable bike lights that leaked into my ever growing bundle of cables. So I'm never quite sure which USB cable will work with what. I'd never knowingly buy these crap cables.
As far as a I know, in the history of smartphones - which I'd say starts in 2007 with the launch of the iPhone - there have only really been 4 (or maybe 5) connectors used on widely sold phones:
1. Apple 30pin "iPod" connector
2. Apple Lightning connector
3. Mini USB (I don't think this ever appeared on anything but blackberries and cheapo flip phones?)
4. Micro USB
5. USB-C
So, while I agree that cable changes are annoying, and I support standardization efforts, "a new one every other year" is just not how it's ever been. 5 connectors in 15 years. The 30pin connector reigned from 2007 to 2012, and on the android side, micro USB was dominant until around 2015-2016 when USB-C started showing up on phones. Realistically, it's been a new connector every ~7 years.
Except that the current USB-C situation is a mess, and this regulation plans to solve this.
I got a pretty expensive HP monitor for work from my company that connects via USB-C (and can charge my Mac). IT has sworn me to not loose its USB-C cable because for some unknown reasons it refuses to work with other cables, it costs >$100 and is constantly out of stock.
It's kind of sad to me that Apple doesn't make Lightning an open standard.
In all my years, I haven't had a single Lightning connector fail on me. The solid metal where the contacts reside is just too robust to wear out or get damaged (unless you somehow step on it the right way or let it corrode).
USB-C connectors, on the other hand, seems to loosen after a rather small number mates and de-mates, leading people to use preemptive workarounds such as magnetic connectors.
I connect disconnect the same USB-C connector minimum 8 times a day for 4 years now. I have yet to have any issue with it. USB micro B connectors that got the same treatment repeatedly failed.
The USB C jacks I have seen on PCBs so far seem all to look pretty solid to me, although I am convinced you can also get cheap ones that will just happily fail if you just tried. Getting cheap Lightning connectors will be a lot harder, for obvious reasons.
So if we do the comparison between Apple and something else, let's not fall into the old trap of comparing an 1000€ ios device to an 100€ android device and declaring android to be unusable.
> In all my years, I haven't had a single Lightning connector fail on me. The solid metal where the contacts reside is just too robust to wear out or get damaged (unless you somehow step on it the right way or let it corrode).
I'm on my second phone where the Lightning connector barely works anymore. 'Thankfully' this one support Qi so I can charge wireless, but if I want to do a wired backup or upgrade I have to jiggle the cable like mad to get any kind of connection.
If you haven't, you might want to try carefully "cleaning out" the lightning port with a toothpick or other small tool. I've seen multiple iPhones collect enough lint and dust in the lightning port over the years to make the connection still work sometimes but be unreliable until you clean it out
I just had a Lighting port fail on me (partial thankfully - there's one single cable in my house that still works to charge the thing) - but it's a 2014 device, a good 7-8 years old.
I've had a Lightning port fail on my original SE last year. Replaced it with the part taken from a donor SE. That was a bit scarier job than replacing the battery, but still doable.
I’ve had two iPhones serviced (replaced) due to lightning port failure. I also had few cables replaced due to them getting the surface on the contact pins literally burned by the micro-fires caused by the high-current and the fibre residue of the fabric.
So, yours is just as anecdotal as mine. Would actually have to see some numbers comparing Lightning vs USB-C failure rate (on some premium Android smartphones), which we are unlikely to.
I had never had a single cord fray on me except every single Apple supplied white cord for years, until suddenly I no longer had that problem. Don't know what changed but glad it did
Interesting. The only lighting cable that has failed me so far is the usbC to lightning cable that came with my 13 Pro. All other cables are still in use. Including some cheap ones that get abused being jostled in my backpack.
Definitely, those Apple-supplied cables suck hard. Adding little tension relief springs[0] to the ends can protect them if you don't want to buy another (or more robust) cable and create more e-waste. You can find the springs in clicky pens.
The Apple supplied cables seem to be quite environmentally friendly already since they literally rot at the ends. Not only lightning but also the MagSafe ones. The Lightning connector itself mechanically is the best connector I've ever encountered, though. Pure satisfaction when plugging it in, even after 5 years or so
I assume that the reason for not making Lightning an open standard is that the thing on the technical level is really tightly coupled to iOS. On electrical level it is mostly an “two-lane” HS USB. USB-Lightning cable is basically wires, but other kinds of Lightning peripherals use weird protocols that are highly XNU/Darwin/iOS specific, mostly because that was the simpler implementation (looking at how things like AirPlay/CarPlay works show that Apple does not intentionally produce proprietary interfaces, but they use open standards as long as there are open standards and just invent the simplest thing when there is no applicable standard).
In the three years my spouse has had an Apple device, I've had two first-party cables fray and wear out at the connector, the lightning port get fouled up with lint and require cleaning, and I think three third-party cables stop working at all with no obvious damage.
In the same time, I've only had two usb-c cables fail on me, both third-party.
I did have three other usb-c cables destroyed by careless children breaking the usb-a side off at the charger (all three plugged into a knee-height automotive charger in the back seat area), but that's less of a failure of the cable and more a testament to that plucky Anker auto charger that's still going fine.
> Let's say the USB consortium releases USB-D with input from Apple, Google, and many other stakeholders [...]
If you have to make such an argument, you've already lost.
Innovation, particularly disruptive and / or breakthrough innovation, does not happen by committee, no matter how many times over history people tried deluding themselves into thinking that it does.
It's very strange to read this comment on article about USB, which has been developed by committee from the beginning. To me it seems quite innovative, and arguably disruptive to have a single standard for all these things. Maybe USB doesn't clear your personal bar, but then why worry about this at all?
I can't be sure, but my interpretation of the parent's comment is that the USB-IF would never have thought to work on USB-C at all until Lightning's release two years earlier. The whole forehead-slapping moment of cables that didn't need to be flipped was a pretty big divergence from the USB-A, -B, mini B, micro B, etc. that has prevailed previously. The kernel of the argument being, Apple's "innovation" by rejecting the status quo is what allowed for the (eventual) development of the USB-C standard.
This is actually fairly common in Apple-land, now that I look:
- ADB (1986) to PS2 (1987) to USB-A (1996) for HID
- Firewire (1995) to USB 2.0 (2000) to Firewire 800 (2002) to USB 3.0 (2008) for data transfer
- VGA (1987) to ADC (1998) to DVI (1999) for video
A lot of the connectors they proposed are now lost to the mists of time, but I can at least understand the argument that some of these changes were plausibly driven by Apple's rejection of the then-standard in favor of some new benefit (faster speeds, better UX), which lasted only until a new standard was developed to incorporate that benefit, and the process repeats again.
> my interpretation of the parent's comment is that the USB-IF would never have thought to work on USB-C at all until Lightning's release two years earlier
it's actually worse than that, there was extensive discussion of what to do next since micro-B was still obviously flawed, they just couldn't reach a consensus to take any action even after years of debate.
the thing to remember is that USB-IF isn't a benevolent organization of technology companies working together to set a direction for the future - many of them are primarily interested in reducing their own costs, which is why we got the "USB 3.x Gen 2x2 Wave 2: USB Harder" crap. Many of the players at USB-IF are specifically interested in stalling progress as long as it saves them 30 cents on their BOM.
> The whole forehead-slapping moment of cables that didn't need to be flipped was a pretty big divergence from the USB-A, -B, mini B, micro B, etc. that has prevailed previously.
It's weird; cable orientation was (and still is) a big problem with USB-A, but not because having to deal with orientation is a problem that needs to be solved. Orientation is not a problem, at all, with USB-B, mini-B, or micro-B. The own goal in USB-A was delivering a connnector that is sensitive to orientation at the same time that it's visually symmetrical. There was no need to make the connector insensitive to orientation. It would have made at least as much sense to make the asymmetry visible, the way every other connector does.
From time to time Intel's marketing tries to sell the idea that USB was invented by this one Intel engineer. Somewhat obviously that is not true.
On the other hand if you compare USB 1.0 to 1.1 it is quite obvious that real implementation experience and throwing out artifacts of the design by committee was quite important for the success.
I was going to disagree as I used to know one the standards people at Intel quite well (who always regretted that USB was orientation specific)--and I didn't remember anything like that. But you're right. Intel was pushing Ajay Bhatt was one of the people Intel highlighted as a face behind Intel's technology. (Although the campaign wasn't specific to USB.) https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2009/05/intel_ad_campaig...
> On the other hand if you compare USB 1.0 to 1.1 it is quite obvious that real implementation experience and throwing out artifacts of the design by committee was quite important for the success.
This sounds like it has some interesting history there; do you have any recommended sources to read about the transition between USB 1.0 and 1.1?
Especially since I know that several people at Digital Equipment Corporation had to do the signal integrity analysis for Intel for the original USB standard.
Ah what lovely place our technological lives would be without standards, that are done by committees... No standardised wireless technologies like Bluetooth, WiFi, 1G, 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G... Each and every provider and technology manufacturer running their own incompatible networks... Hey, maybe throw away IP and TCP too... Let each site run on their own proprietary protocol...
ETSI (which is the parent organization of 3GPP) is technically an independent non-profit NGO, but in reality it is part of EU bureaucracy and was chartered by EC.
Maybe we could’ve put all that regulatory effort and politician time into resolving not even climate change, but just EU's dependence on cheap Russian fossil fuels.
It can be disproved within reason. The only new thing a magic new cable would bring to the table is more power, which is not practical to have.
The big innovation I'd love to have? Having only ONE charger for all my devices, forever. That absolutely destroys any "innovation" Apple or whoever can bring to the table.
The directive is designed to make things easier for customers and the environment, not OEMs per se (even though there will be benefits for a number of companies).
it's always interesting to me that people ignore the ecological impact of cables. If you break four cables over the life of the phone from plugging/unplugging, and that results in 2 or 3 additional Amazon Prime trips to deliver your cables, how does that compare in terms of environmental impact to wasting 5 additional watts for the 1 hour a day you charge your phone?
(and don't tell me everybody uses Amazon Prime day shipping... people just order new cables when they break. And sure, you can have one common pool of all your cables... sort of! except for the part where cable X or charger X doesn't fast-charge device Y, so you actually need several pools of chargers and cables...)
I personally never had a charging cable break in ~12 years, owning multiple mobile devices in parallel, so in my experience that isn’t a relevant consideration. That aside, I’m more concerned with the accelerated decrease in battery life that I experienced first-hand with MagSafe charging. I stopped using it because of that.
I guess I did say plugging/unplugging, but certain types of cables are very prone to kinking. I've broken a number of cables if they get a loop and then you set something heavy on them, or if you lay on them in bed, etc. In the car I go through a 3.5mm cable and a usb cable every couple years as well, for largely the same reasons - they get tugged or bumped or something set on them and they break. It's especially likely with the crappy cheap cables that most people buy - I've had a lot better luck since switching to mostly braided cables, I think the sheath gives it a bit more strength.
Failures due to "user error" are still failures that induce cable replacement, and a cable that you interact with less (because it's running to a fixed wireless charger stand/pad) is less likely to have user error failure modes like that. Wireless connection or wireless charging (built into the car, f.ex) removes these modes entirely - you can't break an aux cable that doesn't exist.
You can't just assume "nobody ever breaks a cable" as being a realistic proposition when looking at the lifecycle of these products - I'm not sure I believe you in the first place that you've never broken a cable in 12 years but that's certainly not realistic for the population as a whole.
One of the companies can continue to do research into new cable technologies, and when they've found something that is amazing they can present it to the committee for approval as the new standard. The committee is not there to innovate, it is there to ensure that everyone is using the same thing, which is a benefit to (most) consumers.
Proprietary connectors are about as far from innovation as you can possibly get, unless you count patent moats and corporate grift as part of innovating.
They happen between walled gardens, them they sponsor a comitee to turn into a standard. The only difference between current and standard based is a bunch of extra burocracy where your competitor will try to fit their custom walled garden extension that is hard to implement to give them an edge.
Not OP. But a breakthrough innovation in charging could be a new battery-technology holding charge for much longer but required different charging specifications offered by USB-C. Such a breakthrough would hopefully get enough attention from EU to get the law updated. Or they might want the devices to still have USB-C? Who knows who's in charge then.
Also missing from this discussion is the fact that even if the law is only about charging it will define he go-to data-connection for smaller devices for a long time, where an additional port will be dimensionally challenging, more costly to add as well as difficult to make water-resistant.
I am sympathetic for reducing e-waste, but I'm unsure where this will lead us. Crypto-mining is also bad for the environment but might hold unknown positive possibilities if explored properly (maybe reduce bureaucracy, avoid monopolies) that could be extinguished by a premature ban.
I am already paying some of the highest taxes on consumer products compared to other countries in the world, I would rather pay even more for a charger, phone etc., remember an adapter when out and about and keep the freedom of choosing which technologies to support.
*Also just wanted to add that even if OP mentioned the committee, I'm unsure how much you can compare that to EU making laws enforceable in 27 countries.
who needs breakthrough innovation for a charger? It's like the C++ programming language, I just want it to work everywhere. Programming languages have been designed by committee just fine.
>What would you say if EU demanded us to stop programming in Python, Rust, bash and mandate that only C++ must used?
I support the idea that regulatory bodies like the EU create stronger software standards in safety critical applications in particular so that software 'engineering' actually starts to deserve that label so I have no problem with a good faith version of that take.
What do you mean with "go back 5 years"? You're aware that things were already standardized on USB Micro-B in 2009? This is just an update to the existing situation, with one slight but important difference: while under the previous MoU Apple was still allowed to buck the trend, this new legislation will force Apple to fall in line. For the rest of the industry, nothing will change.
In 2009, the Commission facilitated a voluntary memorandum of understanding (MoU), signed by major producers, that aimed to guarantee interoperability between chargers and mobile phones on the EU market. The MoU resulted in a significant reduction of available charger types and a convergence to USB Micro-B connectors on the device side: while there were more than 30 proprietary chargers on the EU market in 2009, by 2012 (a year after the MoU started to apply), nine in ten new devices supported the USB Micro-B connection.
> Innovation, particularly disruptive and / or breakthrough innovation, does not happen by committee, no matter how many times over history people tried deluding themselves into thinking that it does.
You have no evidence to back this up. There's been throughout history many innovative standards that have gone through committee work, including a ton of network protocols.
> Other people saying "what about innovation!?" That's fine. Let's say the USB consortium releases USB-D with input from Apple, Google, and many other stakeholders. The EU can set another deadline for newly released devices to adhere to the new version instead of the old one. The transition will involve a period of time where older devices are still on C and newer ones on D, which is totally compatible with the regulation and is necessary with or without regulation.
If your idea of "innovation" is moving from one version of a spec to another version of the same spec requiring multiple trillion dollar companies and the EU setting a timeline, then your usage of the word is much narrower than mine.
Many advances that I consider truly innovative have often come from outsiders without the backing of the largest companies in the world and succeeded from the bottom up.
1. Cables have radically different capabilities - they may charge at 60W, 100W or 240W ; they may be limited to 480 mbps transmission rates or go all the way up to 40 gbps transmission. Up until now, the market has not regulated such that you can tell the difference when you grab a random cable, or necessarily tell the difference at time of purchase
2. Devices like the Nintendo Switch and Raspberry Pi shipped with broken implementations. For instance, the RPi would not work with cables that _supported_ over 60W charging rates.
I was one of the Nintendo switch commenters in this thread - the problem I have is standardising on the connector without enforcing the underlying standards. This doesn't fix the charging problem or the cable problem, it just means that the all devices fit together, even if they don't actually deliver what they're supposed to.
But now you have people complaining that their device doesn't work, charges slowly, transfers slowly because they are using a crappy cable they got from Amazon. Especially for devices that require quite high end cables.
> and you would just buy a real one to work with all your devices.
Except that could kill your Nintendo switch, and it's not like Nintendo is going to change how their hardware works on something that's already been released to the masses.
Just imagine if this had been done in the 90s, we’d be stuck on VGA cables for all video and wouldn’t have hi-def TV. Strict regulation causes ossification.
So, having this kind of directive doesn't block special products, nor has any specific impact on the field evolving healthily. If anything, without this kind of regulation we'd probably still have 95 different charging cable standards.
Apple didn't quite got an approved exception, the previous agreement on micro-USB was essentially a non-binding agreement between the industry and the EU. With the heavy implication that if it's not adhered to, then the EU will make it a regulation or directive.
Apple adhered by letter by making chargers USB and the phone not have USB, contrary to what the agreement wanted to achieve in spirit.
The EU approving this directive is simply the logical end conclusion of apple (and some small fish) not playing ball when asked to.
The regulation does not require devices to only support USB-C, just that they at least support USB-C for charging. They can always have multiple ports. If the 40Gbps offered by USB-C is really not enough for you, then your device is probably big enough that multiple ports does not mess up your device's form factor.
Also, the regulation does not require devices to support USB-C forever, just that all devices support the same open charging standard. That standard can and will evolve over time; maybe not as fast as it would if not regulated, but it's pretty contrived to think it would actually stifle innovation.
No it's not fine, this is just another coercion and consolidation of power where it shouldn't belong. Independent entities cannot innovate on their own because now there's a central apparatus that decides what should be innovated and how, with all the inherent political power struggles of big players, good luck.
EU should be there to set goals, not to dictate implementation.
In essence, they seem to believe that wired charging is mature enough for standardisation but further technologies can be implemented through "Radio Equipment Directive". In the same time, it appears that the wireless charging is unaffected because the tech is new and fast changing, therefore the manufacturers can include whatever wireless charging they see fit.
It really boils down to "No funny cables, why don't you try wireless charging of your liking if USB-C doesn't cut it for you?".
It already has. Tesla's connector is nicer (you can call that subjective but it isn't) and the supercharging network in the US is deploying the clunky standard sort of connector as well.
If EU legislation were universal, that would preclude any future where the superior connector is licensed and takes over from the crappy designed-by-committee alternative, because Tesla would be forced to stop manufacturing it.
Legislators deciding who gets to be VHS and who has to be Betamax is bad, actually.
EU is a densely populated place where having multiple charging networks of incomparable plugs will be horrible.
When you are not happy with decisions the governments make, it usually means that you should be involved in the process of making the decisions.
Europeans don't trust that the industry will always come up with the best solutions for the user, Americans usually don't trust the government doing something well unless it's the military. Let's agree to disagree.
I like that the car plugs are the same everywhere in EU and want it to stay that way and enjoy the Tesla plugs on a trip to USA.
Let's say I invent a better connector tomorrow. Nobody other than me really knows if it's better or not. The only way for me to convince people is to get it out there in the market so people can try it.
How does that work by voting or any other democratic activity?
Others will be unconvinced that it's really better, for the same reason people are skeptical of startup ideas until they become mainstream. So nobody will want to update the standard. So I couldn't release it in the market to prove that it's better, because that would be "lock-in". And the idea would die.
If you're designing such a connector, I'm sure you'll have the car manufacturers on board immediately. After all, your connector is better. Not only a tiny bit better, it's much better.
The EU will obviously be happy to include your better connector, provided that old cars can use it too via an adapter and new cars can use old connectors via an adapter. Then they can without issue transition to the new connector without wasting everyone's time and money.
The committe that handles the Radio Equipment Directive has been fairly reasonable in their reaction time to newer technology coming out. It's not the full blown comission or council, after all.
No, I do not believe that a multi trillion dollar company would spend billions of dollars making a major change to their devices, without having any idea of if it will be better or not.
Whatever internal research that these companies made, to make them want to change their multi billion dollar market like this, they can go public with it first.
Being densely-populated makes it easier to have a range of different plugs, since there will be a range of alternatives, and you'll be able to find the right one for you nearby.
Consider the opposite of a sparsely-populated region, where the next charging point may be 50 miles away. In that case, having a random hodge-podge of competing connectors could have actual consequences.
In practice though, there is not much of an effect either way. All parties have an interest in interoperability: car owners would have adapter to hand if this was a common problem, and charging stations would make themselves available to as many paying customers as possible.
When you have 24 official languages in 27 countries with no physical borders it doesn't end up having an even distribution of plugs but clusters of different types. There are no large wastelands of cheap land where every network can have a station, it's usually one station on each side of the road every 50km on the highways. In cities, a lot of things are retrofitted into medieval city structure so there's not much free space for all your charging needs.
As a result, this will create artificial limits on where people can travel. EU is that much into standardisation because we want to remove these artificial limits created through the thousands years of history.
You don't need to be. "We can't do anything about anything because the system is run by the billionaires and unless you are one, you have no power" narrative is not only false but also harmful.
Please pardon my inadvertent US-centrism! If you live in a country with a functioning democracy, of course it would make sense to participate. Here in the US, average citizens have little to no influence on policy:
This isn't the case in the US, either. How much influence do you think one person in the US, one of hundreds of millions of people, should normally have? Your power to influence policy is obviously going to dilute the further up the chain of government you go. You could involve yourself in local politics where the population of people is much smaller (and consequentially, your influence is much larger), or you could try to become a representative yourself.
National politics in the US is certainly perverse, though it's probably just your US-centrism at work again if you think it's exceptional in this regard.
I was paraphrasing Gilens and Page, from the linked research article. In their words, they found that "economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence".
If there has been subsequent research which contradicts their findings, I would be happy to read it.
> Please pardon my inadvertent US-centrism! If you live in a country with a functioning democracy, of course it would make sense to participate.
This implies that you think that the reason the person believes that they should participate in government is because they don't live in the US and as such, have a functioning democracy and can have an impact on policy. I am asserting that people can have an effect on policy, just that you are more likely to have an effect when you are dealing with local government. This doesn't require a research paper to figure out; There are approximately 334 million Americans. The "average citizen" in this case would have almost no influence whatsoever on policy even in a "functioning democracy" and this is how it is designed. However, if you narrow that down to your state, there is a much lower population and the policies implemented will have a more direct impact on you. If you go even further and look at it from a county, township, or city level, you, by the virtue of their being a small fraction of the people potentially involved in governance, have a much larger effect on policy. The issue is that it seems that people don't want to affect how their town is governed, they want to make mass impact with big changes in policies at a national level.
Special interest groups and economic elites affecting national policy isn't a unique trait to the United States and they are not a valid reason to encourage people against participating in government. You are teaching helplessness which just perpetuates the issue.
This reading of their study is well known to be false; what actually happens is that most of the population agrees on almost all policies, more often than they should, and that's the reason why they're in winning coalitions.
Since the US is education-polarized, rich people are also more left wing than average, as are people who donate to political campaigns, and the more they donate the more left wing they are. (This is called "being Shor pilled".)
Random anecdote: I once got stuck at a friends place in Denmark with my Tesla, because the mobile connector wouldn't work. Turns out despite the voltage and socket being the same, the grounding can vary between countries and the connector wouldn't let me charge (this was back in 2016, I'm not sure if newer mobile connectors are better in that regard)
Is that because some places have 230V and neutral, while others have -115V and +115V (yes like in the US but in Europe)?
There's a single neighborhood in Rome where that happens and car chargers don't work. The "solution" is to request a three-phase 400V connection: the utility company can't deny it and it must be 220V to neutral.
I would like to live in the alternative reality were all AC is three-phase AC; probably it would be uselessly more expensive for normal domestic stuff but it would be quite cooler.
I can imagine that car charging is still too new and fast-moving to enforce a single standard, unlike phone charging, where it's just ridiculous to have 3 separate standards.
On the other hand, you're absolutely right that it doesn't help anyone if your car is incompatible with half of the chargers out there. Are adapter cables an option, perhaps?
I presume you're talking about the J1772/CCS1 adapter that comes for free with every Tesla. This adapter is occasionally handy but it does not allow fast ("super") DC charging. It's strictly a Level 2 AC adapter, which means it takes a few hours to charge your car fully.
The CCS adapter that allows you to supercharge a Tesla at non-Tesla DC superchargers is not (yet) available in the US [0]. Tesla does make them and you can buy them in South Korea, but not in the US.
[0] Except for a dodgy Chinese gizmo which I won't link to because it's reputed not to work reliably.
There is no combined J1772/CCS1 adapter. There are separate passive J1772 and CCS1 adapters, though. The J1772 adapter is obviously really small and easy to use.
I was referring to the CCS adapter that is currently available in South Korea. Its a little heavier, but its also fairly easy to use (well, as easy as CCS usually is). It has become really easy to import them too, thanks to Harumio and other importers. The speeds are 150+kw, and close to 200kw on the newer Model S/X[1]. I expect that official availability will happen sometime this year, but if it doesn't, then presumably a third party will make a suitable passive adapter. Its a ridiculously simple device.
[1] I know officially S/X isn't even supported, but it has been demonstrated to work. Higher speeds are because of the newer 450V battery pack.
Some adapters are more problematic than others. For example if the charger and the vehicle both expect the other side to initiate the charging process and withhold power until some voltage is detected then the adapter may need its own independent power supply to jump-start the charging process. Locks are another problem—some combinations would require the adapter to provide powered locking mechanisms for both sides. None of this makes an adapter impossible, but it could be too expensive or unwieldy to be a practical solution.
That's definitely true. I've used the Tesla chademo adapter and it was a beast. Its heavy, awkward, and the latching mechanism is difficult to fully engage.
The Tesla passive solution to the locking mechanism on their CCS1 passive adapter is as brilliant as it is simple. Just a little springloaded bar that locks the cable onto the adapter if and only if the adapter is inserted into the car. Then the car uses its regular adapter. This works well with CCS1 locking.
The other end of the spectrum are things like the setec adapter or the evhub adapter. Both of those don't have vehicle side locking with CCS1, which is a violation and a potential hazard.
I am "European", whatever that word means, and I definitely don't trust the government to do something well. It happens sometimes that some governments in some countries do some specific thing well. That's definitely not a general rule.
Industry already converged on charging cables though, just Apple is left and they've been moving away from lightning for some time... this legislation is a waste of time.
It's not anyone's business what kind of phone I buy. If chargers pollute so much, just tax them and be done with it.
I'll add to kukx's reason the fact that I can't access some websites anymore because who wants to spend time with bureaucracy so that the website is 100% compliant with GDPR?
Agree 100%. The cookie law is the most visible failure of these regulations. I feel like they should pay me from their own pockets each time I have to click the cookie banner. And by their own pockets I mean the money they got from other sources than taxpayers money. Of course someone will argue that the intentions were good. Often they are! But it does not make it much better.
Most people are more bothered by the annoyance then some nebulous, intangible “tracking“ that will likely never have a visible effect on their lives.
Outside of high tech places like HackerNews, mention the tracking and you’ll get a shrug, mention the cookie banners and you’ll get a “yeah I hate that crap“
How is this different from the American FAA dictating that all aeroplane toilets have to have ashtrays whist at the same time banning smoking on flights[1]?
Should Europeans start hoping the US economy fails so that then FAA has less influence?[3]
Really I don't think this is something that really matters in the grand scheme of things. USB-C is a good enough standard and I don't see Apple coming out with some great new alternative.
From my perspective I have loads of broken Lightning cables but no broken USB-C ones. Also if something is going to break I'd rather the springs be in the cheap cable than the expensive phone socket as with Lightning.
1. Now you might think it's for people who break the smoking rule to have somewhere to put out their fags[2] but the "innovative" solution to that would be the sink.
2. You know that I know you know that's slang for cigarette, so stick to the point at hand please. :P
3. Just in case that's not blindingly obvious, the answer is NO, that would be terrible for everyone involved including both Europeans and Americans.
Imagine different gasoline plugs...that would be stupid, isnt't it? Or different fuel formula for different car models or different AC sockets in the same house...
Also I'm not sure why you hold Asia so dear. You may soon get some centrally planned standards from China in the EV market and not only(i.e online services such tiktok)
I agree with you, but noting that fuel may not be the best example as you have both completely different fuels (like diesel) and different types of normal gas (premium)
Still though, having the same “regular” gas at every single gas station is an underrated benefit!
I was unable to find any record of legislation forcing standardization of gas pump form factors. Also, in my experience different pumps operate at different rates. I think the fact that pumps tend to be quite similar is a result of their mechanical nature, where less precision is required.
> (f) Every retailer and wholesale purchaser-consumer shall equip all gasoline pumps from which gasoline is dispensed into motor vehicles with a nozzle spout that meets all the following specifications:
> (1) The outside diameter of the terminal end shall not be greater than 0.840 inches (2.134 centimeters).
> (2) The terminal end shall have a straight section of at least 2.5 inches (6.34 centimeters).
Fantastic, that’s exactly what I was looking for, thank you! I thought maybe there would be an earlier law, this one is about 100 years after the advent of cars. I suppose we’re close to thirty years past what could reasonably be considered the advent of cell phones, so maybe legislation about now is reasonable.
Would you happier if you were affected by European corporate actions instead?
We live in a global economy, you are constantly affected by things happening thousand of miles away (e.g. Ukraine invasion bumped the price of gas across the world). Not sure why you're conflating that with the fact that these actions are "centrally-planned".
We all affect each other, a lot of American things have become de facto stands. Anyway, be careful what you wish because it might become real and you might find out that Asia is not the libertarian utopia.
> EU is a densely populated place where having multiple charging networks of incomparable plugs will be horrible.
In the short term, yes. In the long term however competition between these different standards will cause consolidation and overall technology improvement. The next step will be regulating wireless charging so that all devices have to use/do the same thing, rinse-wash-repeat.
> Europeans don't trust that the industry will always come up with the best solutions for the user, Americans usually don't trust the government doing something well unless it's the military. Let's agree to disagree.
A better way to think about this is that both "groups" can learn from one another. For example you could say that Europeans should be suspicious about USB-C manufacturers and advocates effectively being granted a monopoly in the name of convenience. Americans should better trust that certainly in the case of infrastructure it makes sense to have a single standard "plug" for electric vehicles because we really need as many people driving them as possible in the most convenient way.
Anyone can produce USB-C chargers. That's not a monopoly. This will effectively enable competition on the charging market, since the big players can't bind their products to their own proprietary chargers anymore.
Have you ever felt the Apple/Microsoft charger to be lacking in some way? Breaking easily, too long cords, too short, wrong color, too expensive? Congratulations now you can make and sell those better chargers. Before, this was not possible.
Yes but all you’re really doing is encouraging everyone to stay locked in to a USB-C market. This isn’t enabling competition in the charging market, it’s eliminating or hamstringing competing markets. You won’t create a new charging apparatus because you’re legally required to use USB-C.
"What if we created a charging cable that did X,Y,Z?"
"That would be cool but we have to use USB-C"
> Have you ever felt the Apple/Microsoft charger to be lacking in some way? Breaking easily, too long cords, too short, wrong color, too expensive?
No not really. In fact I’ve found most third-party products to be godawful. Good luck not buying something fraudulent on Amazon.com. But also, I’m not really sure what you are talking about. Companies sell charging equipment and cords now anyway.
Everything has trade-offs. I’m skeptical of the necessity of this regulation, especially given that the only holdout that anyone cares about is Apple and they’ve been adopting USB-C in all of their products over time. One benefit though will be manufacturers won’t include charging cables with new devices anymore. So that will further reduce waste. Wouldn’t be surprised to see lobbying behind the scenes from companies such as Apple to implement regulations like this so they can save money. I kind of like this as an investor because now you can save money by not including a cable (or maybe you still do and it’s just some cheap one for now) and then you go and up sell wireless chargers instead.
We can copy the US if the cable freedom gives birth to superior cables on the long run. EU stuff is't written on stone, it changes as it needs to.
I guess In Europe we kind of like the idea of being able to overthrow the people in power if they screw us too much. It's much more socially acceptable to burn cars and occupy streets and decapitate politicians than shooting CEO's when you are really not happy with the way things work. It feels like you have control over the stuff going on in your country.
You’re really ignoring the amount of inertia that a deployed fleet of cars creates. You can’t just change standards with the snap of a finger once there are 10M cars in the field with it, once that happens, you’re stuck with that standard for probably decades, as the downsides of changing it become much more acute than the potential upsides.
If the US comes up with the superior cables, EU will simply allow it be optional and the industry will retrofit as needed.
Europe is very old, we are used to have old stuff laying around. Old building that definitely don't meet the modern requirements are everywhere. Besides, the states with Cable Freedom will also have all the obsolate cables when the industry finally comes up with the perfect cable.
> Europe is very old, we are used to have old stuff laying around.
So what's the problem with allowing lightning to exist, since as a standard it predated USB-C (and in fact was the impetus for the creation of the latter)? If we allow neighborhoods to keep their old power connectors without retrofit... why not allow lightning to continue to exist?
There's a difference between allowing old installations to continue existing and allowing mass manufacture of the old standard indefinitely. This legislation isn't going to touch anyone's old phones.
All aside, it’s pretending ‘we’ as civilians have any kind of influence in what the EU does. In reality it’s just an opaque process ran by politicians where 99% of the electorate has no idea whatsoever how they got there or even what party they belong to.
> In the long term however competition between these different standards will cause consolidation and overall technology improvement.
If you think that’s a superior solution, then the regulation should actually support it: require that all EV charging connectors have a free published specification, disallow patents on them, and require that interoperability be permitted without cost or other penalty. (e.g. anyone should be able to implement both ends of the Tesla supercharging protocol such that Tesla’s chargers would charge a competing car at the same prices that they charge Tesla’s; similarly, a competing charger should be able to charge a Tesla.)
I'm not opposed to this and personally think it's all up for discussion/debate and it should be discussed and debated. I'm excited to see what develops in this space.
One nitpick would be:
> e.g. anyone should be able to implement both ends of the Tesla supercharging protocol such that Tesla’s chargers would charge a competing car at the same prices that they charge Tesla’s; similarly, a competing chargers should be able to charge a Tesla.
I think this sounds good, but one of the details here is ensuring that other manufacturers are able to actually build the products correctly so a supercharger doesn't light a car on fire or something due to faulty equipment. Who is at fault? How is it prevented? What are the legal agreements? Etc.
On the pricing side though I'd have to strongly disagree. Tesla (or whoever) builds the infrastructure so they should be able to charge what they want. It's about the plug and interoperability of that standard, not infringing on the business model which I think goes too far. If they charge too much money, people won't use them and competitors will continue to emerge (I see new charging stations in Meijer parking lots being put next to Tesla infrastructure). There's no reason in my view to mandate pricing here and I think it would set back EV adoption to do so.
I was set to be all libertarian about this, but your suggestion is probably more level headed.
There should be some common ground. Regulations that encourage innovation (perhaps even with timed financial incentives) while also ensuring that the best ideas are eventually freely adoptable across the board.
Seems like, as with most issues, people take one extreme or the other, when a common sense middle ground could be found with proper planning and forethought.
Disallowing patents is the libertarian solution, though it would be up to the customers to demand published specifications and official support for interoperability.
The original intention of patent system was to encourage open publication of inventions. It even still works that way for some verticals. The issue is that it also produced a system that it is profitable to game and thus there are patent attorneys who get by by writing the patent in as vague terms as is possible to pass by patent reviewers, and in these kind of adversarial situations it is quite obvious that the private sector will win over the government bureaucrats.
> The original intention of patent system was to encourage open publication of inventions.
That is how it was sold to the public. Unfortunately the system was never designed with the proper structure and incentives to ensure that patents were only granted when doing so actually resulted in the publication of accurate details about useful inventions which would not have become known to the public anyway well before the patent period expired.
In practice, if you think you can keep something a trade secret for more than 20 years without it being independently reinvented you'll do that and not file for a patent. Patents are thus useful only in those cases where a patent is expected to be worse for the public than a trade secret, as they inhibit independent reinvention and reverse engineering for the duration of the patent.
On the other hand, companies building wholly proprietary infrastructure is just pure e-waste on the back of the citizens of those countries that ALSO limits innovation.
Imagine a world where Ford cars use a different gas nozzle from a GM product in the US. The average person would have to pick and choose stations and if one were to go out of business, the lesser standard would encounter mass disposal and retrofit, all on the backs of consumers. The intent with these products is generally not innovation...it is lock in and licensing fees. The EU law in case here has a committee that reviews the standard yearly and accepts proposals.
Diesel pump nozzles actually have multiple standards - there's one about the same size as a gas nozzle that's used for diesel cars and pickups, and a bigger one that's used for trucks and buses.
We should also mandate the reduction of open source projects, after all there are too many competing standards. We don’t want code to be wasted now do we? Let’s start by banning the use of Tensorflow
> Tesla's connector is nicer (you can call that subjective but it isn't)
I like the Tesla connector in the US, but in Europe, I'd argue that CCS2 is objectively superior. They need 3-phase power support and the Tesla connector doesn't support that. They also use a different CCS connector from the US. The CCS2 connector uses a latching mechanism that is similar to the proprietary Tesla one. Its simple and very reliable.
The US CCS1 system uses a dual latching mechanism. The cable and the car each have moving parts that are somewhat complicated. The cable side latch is a common failure point. It makes sense, given the desire to retain backward compatiblity with J1772 L1/L2 chargers, but I don't really think that was worth the tradeoff, tbh.
I would say that the IEC 62196-2 used by Tesla in Europe is the most sane EV charging connector design there is. It is standard (albeit in the fast charge mode it is apparently only used by Tesla), the connector is not ridiculously large and the whole mechanical design is derived from industrial power connector that can be used to power entire typical European household.
Sure, the Tesla connector is smaller, and a little sleeker. But from a functionality perspective, the plug types are basically identical. Both allow AC standard charging and DC fast charging. Electric cables aren't that complicated.
Compared to CCS, Tesla made a ton of smart decisions with their charging setup:
- All Teslas have their charging ports at the rear left side. This means that charging cables can be very short. Longer cables would cause tangles, cost more, and be harder to cool.
- Tesla's protocol has built-in payment. You plug in and charge. With CCS it varies. Sometimes you use a credit card. Sometimes you download a mobile app and sign up for some account. Sometimes the planets align and CCS's plug-and-charge works.
- The CCS plug is much bigger. If you look at the connector sizes[1] or adapters[2], the CSS plug is comically huge. Tesla had to redesign the tail lights on the Model S/X to fit CCS Combo 2 ports.
- Every exposed contact is a potential failure point, and CCS exposes more contacts than Tesla's charging port.
- CCS has two different plug dimensions which are used in different regions, so a European CCS vehicle brought to North America will need an adapter (and vice-versa).
- If your vehicle only supports AC charging, you cannot charge with CCS Combo plugs. They won't fit. Since some Teslas were made before the CCS Combo standard took off, older Model S/X's used a CCS Type 2 port. So now every Supercharger in Europe has two plugs: CCS Type 2 & Combo 2.[3]
Several of your points don't have anything to do with CSS and are simply costs of having multiple competing brands on the markets who need to use the same infrastructure (real estate is a very limited resource in many areas).
- Older X/S were never that numerous and shouldn't hold up the vast majority of the population. First movers disadvantage if you like.
- Moving vehicles across the Atlantic is also a tiny tiny use case and already difficult as is.
Yeah. The rollout of domestic wiring standards was pre-EU, and dealing with the entrenched incompatible standardisation gets in the way of the EU goal of a single market in goods and services. They really don't want more arbitrary standards that vary nationally.
Of course, that's not quite the same as the laptop charger question where the fragmentation is between companies and less entrenched. But still.
No, EU uses a single plug, it is called "Type C" (no, not USB-C).
What you might find in some poorer regions in EU is old plugs that were there pre-EU, or prestandardization.
I can say that, because Brexit happened, I have no clue what those were thinking when designing their own gigantic plug.
This is just not true. Denmark and Italy use their own plugs; Ireland, Malta, and Cyprus use the British plug; and the heart of the EU is divided between French-style and Schuko plugs. (Switzerland, though outside the EU, also uses its own plugs.)
As I understand it, EU moves to standardise plugs failed in the 90s.
> But Italy has the "normal" (schuko or French) plug. The old one (three holes in line) are in older houses mostly.
That's a bit of an oversimplification. I was in Italy on Thursday and also early in May. My very modern hotel rooms mostly had Italian three-hole sockets, with a single token 'standard' euro socket provided at the table, that nevertheless didn't always accept my (French-style) laptop cable because the prongs were too thick.
Also, flashy modern hotels aside, I'd say most houses in Italy are "older houses". The three-hole socket is definitely extremely common in Italy in my experience. In fact, there's two incompatible three-hole Italian sockets - a larger one for most appliances, and a smaller one for lights.
No. Type C is limited to 2.5 A ungrounded appliances. For regular (16 A, grounded) sockets, half of EU use type E and other half type F. Fortunately, there is CEE 7/7 plug, which is compatible with both type E and type F sockets.
They're all a part of the NEMA standard. The different plugs denote different capacities of the circuit and the requirements of the load. That way you can't accidentally plug a 30A device in a 15A circuit or you can't plug a 120V device into a 240V plug. If the wiring to your stove top is only 30A but you bought a 50A stove, you shouldn't be able to plug it in and just hope the circuit breaker trips before the wires melt to let you know you did it wrong.
Its not like there's a plug for Samsung TVs, a different plug for Sonos sound bars, a different plug for a Sony alarm clock, a different plug for a Singer sewing machine, etc. They're all going to be a NEMA 5-15 plug since all of these things are ~120V and use less than 15A.
This is the case I try to make to friends and relatives (non-EV owners) who insist that a common plug is a prerequisite to EV ownership.
Standardizing against Tesla at any earlier point would have been a gift on a silver platter for legacy auto by slowing EV adoption, and it's Tesla's freedom to innovate that is why we're even having this discussion instead of theoretical questions about what EVs might be like in the future.
I usually tell them to let Tesla solve the remaining edge cases (semis, trailer hauling, and charge speeds comparable to ICE fill-ups) before we start regulating. Setting things in stone now would be like standardizing on DSL as the only last-mile broadband in 2004. We don't want to do that.
That's just impossible. Filling a 100 kWh "tank" in one minute requires 6 MW of power, plus all the power that goes into heat. The only solution would be replacing batteries on the fly but Tesla discontinued it.
Moving stuff is inherently faster than chemical reactions (unless you're talking about explosions).
The problem is not just the time to charge a single car but the capacity in cars/hour.
First, if a car takes five times longer to charge, you need a lot more space to cover the needs for peak days. This may not be a problem on highways (or in the US) but space in Europe is much more limited.
Second, a smallish 6-pump filling station serves 150-200 cars per hour. An equivalent charging station would need 12-15 MW which means working at 40 kV.
Dealing with peak days is easy for filling stations, you just request gasoline trucks more frequently. For charging stations you need to build infrastructure that might hardly exist in more rural places, it's the same as sneakernet vs broadband.
It's hard to calculate how many charging stations will be needed. Most EV owners plug their cars in at home and wake up every day with a full charge. They only use charging stations for road trips. Also charging stations can be installed in far more places than gas stations. There are no hazardous fumes or massive fire risks. They don't require nearly as much maintenance or staff. For these reasons it's common to see charging stations in parking garages, in front of hotels, or even next to the beach[1].
The problem is the peak demand on the road trips, such as everybody doing hundreds of km on the same days to go on vacation. Using the car for your summer holidays is quite more common in Europe than in the US for example.
> If EU legislation were universal, that would preclude any future where...
Your crystal ball seems broken. You could have said the exact same thing about micro-usb for phone chargers, yet somehow we ended up in the present.
Hint: Your supposed critical flaw is incredibly obvious. So either everyone but you is an idiot or just maybe the people making laws have thought of that too...
I would rather have a shared and slightly less optimal cable, than a unique and "nicer" cable. USB-C is the perfect example, you can argue that lightning cable is actually nicer, but being able to charge all my different devices with a single cable is far nicer.
If every company thought like Tesla/Apple, we'd quickly go down a very untenable road.
> Legislators deciding who gets to be VHS and who has to be Betamax is bad, actually.
They didn't make the decision. It's more like legislators observing that Betamax is failing and deciding that it's in everyone's best interests to tell Sony that they have to adopt VHS instead of creating confusion in the marketplace.
> Tesla's connector is nicer
Tesla's system only goes up to 400 volts. CCS goes up to 800 volts. The higher voltage supports faster charging.
(This is similar to Betamax's critical flaw. The smaller, more elegant Betamax tape compared to the clunky VHS tape meant that VHS could record 6 hours on a tape when Betamax was limited to about 3.5 hours on a tape. It also meant that feature length films were often recorded at slower tape speeds, thus meaning that prerecorded VHS tapes were often a better quality than the Betamax version.)
CCS spec limits are actually 1000V and 500A. Electrify America uses 350A units, hence the 350 kW chargers (1000V x 350A). Lucid battery packs are 924V to maximize CCS capability.
DC Fast charging has to match pack voltage, so with 400ish volt pack voltage Tesla gets big charging speed by providing extreme amperage. CCS is limited to 500A, so the best way to provide really fast charging is higher pack voltages.
Higher voltage does have some benefits around heat and losses, but also has downsides like cost of electronics and installations over 600V generally require special electrical licensing.
It's hard to deny the tesla connector is a lot nicer to work with (especially V3 with thin, liquid cooled cables), but I still wish my model 3 sr+ had CCS like euro cars. I'd love to be able to have more charging options.
I'm not sure that Tesla's connector is a limiting element there. The Tesla system can also go to higher amperages than CCS, which is an advantage. For example, the F150 Lightning charging rate is hampered by its 400 volt CCS system. It can't do more than 200kw. That's creating a lot of the pressure to move to 800 volt.
Tesla doesn't have a similar limitation and can do 250-300kw on the existing 400-450V cars.
It's more like legislators observing that Betamax is failing and deciding that it's in everyone's best interests to tell Sony that they have to adopt VHS instead of creating confusion in the marketplace.
Or like 1996 when Apple was failing and everyone should have been forced to standardize on Windows.
>> I's absolutely true that Tesla's EV connector is better than CCS, and it's a pity that Tesla lost that battle.
Currently working at a company that makes CCS chargers. Can confirm the standard is an absolute shit show, the cables are heavy, and the plugs are a giant pain in the ass. But hey, it's the standard so that's what we make. Oh, and why TF do we have a PowerLine Communication chip to talk to the vehicle over (non-power) signal wires? A few CAN messages would have done the job. One of the stupidest communication standards ever.
Tesla's connector uses CAN over signal wires, and it uses the same power pins for both AC and DC which makes the connector light and sleek. If you think VHS is worse than Betamax, CCS is more worse than Tesla's connector.
Different countries already have many different rules for autos. That's why it's difficult to be a world-wide auto manufacturer: you have to comply with so many different rules from different countries. That's just the cost of doing business and has been for decades.
If Apple believes USB-C is really that bad (which I don't think they do) - then they have the option of creating a handset only for sale in Europe or they can remove all charging ports and go wireless charging. I bet they go with USB-C charging and wireless charging.
>It already has. Tesla's connector is nicer (you can call that subjective but it isn't) and the supercharging network in the US is deploying the clunky standard sort of connector as well.
you know what's even nicer? Being able to charge your car at any charging station and not just the ones built by your manufacturer.
Imagine if you could only fill up your gas tank at specific gas stations that support your tank opening.
>Legislators deciding who gets to be VHS and who has to be Betamax is bad, actually
Interesting example. Betamax was technologically superior, but lost out due to marginally higher costs. What makes you think Tesla's connector wouldn't suffer the same fate?
It makes sense for cars to have a standard connector so that they may be charged without any problem at any public charging station. After all, there is a standard fuel nozzle for ICE vehicles.
On the other hand, this requirement to have an USB-C connector is pretty useless to downright counter-productive as it will indeed prevent innovation. It's just political hand-waving.
I second this. I'm frequently using the volkswagen ID.3 and there is no way to unplug it unless you unlock it from charging station with the card you find it in the car (at least in Berlin).
The locking feature is misguided. There should absolutely be a mechanical interlock to prevent unplugging under load. But no key should be required to unplug a home charger, and no key should be needed to plug in a charger once the charge port is open. As I see it, the only security goals should be:
1. At a public charger, one should have to authenticate to _either_ the car or the charger to interrupt an active charging session.
2. When using a portable charger of the sort that is owned by the car’s owner, one should not be able to unplug the charger and thus steal it if one cannot authenticate to the car.
And that’s it. You should be able to unplug someone else from a public charger that can reach multiple parking spaces once it finishes charging.
The CCS2 standard used in Europe and most of the world locks the cable similarly to Tesla.
The CCS1 standard locks the cable using a little flap that folds down on top of the CCS1 latch to hold it in place. Its every bit as clumsy as it sounds, but it does mean there is a locked cable.
In the USA all modern electric cars also use the normal standard, except for Tesla. There were a few early offshoots and Tesla had good reason to come up with their own connector initially (no other plug could transfer that much power!) but these days everything has been pretty much consolidated.
For charging your car at Tesla chargers that haven't been upgraded to the standard yet there are adaptors available from Tesla plugs to standard fast charging plugs.
Older cars may need their weird custom connections but everything else has been pretty much been standardised. I don't know how much the EU decision has affected this, but it's not an EU exclusive feat.
There's this thing called Brussels effect where manufacturers pick to default to EU requirements instead of having different supply chains unless they absolutely have to.
EU don't like the idea of manufacturers locking down their users through different standards. EU is a densely populated place with limited natural resources and free space, therefore cables piling up or 10 different types of charging stations are problems that EU cannot afford. EU trash being shipped to poorer countries is already a serious problem for example.
Good to hear that in the US only Tesla was the outlier and the industry acted responsibly but unless regulated you can't guarantee that it will be like that or stay like that.
Businesses love to lock down their users, Tesla chargers are a major selling point for Tesla and from EU perspective having multiple charging networks that cannot be made interoperable without a substantial modifications is a no-no.
I don't really get this trash argument even though I hear it over and over. I throw away a higher volume of stuff in one or two average days than all the wall warts and phone cables I've ever owned probably add up to. I've been on smart phones since Blackberry, and I don't think all of the chargers and cables I've used over the two decades combined add up to a single trash can full.
> I throw away a higher volume of stuff in one or two average days than all the wall warts and phone cables I've ever owned probably add up to.
I would think ‘mass’ is a better metric to use than ‘volume’. Also, it’s not only the waste, but also the work needed to make it, and I would guess that’s a lot harder for electric chargers than for, say, the plastic bags that take up the bulk of the volume of trash.
Also, “Others are worse” isn’t a strong argument. Some of the large contributors to trash may not be completely unavoidable (example: plastic packaging). Because of that, it’s not possible to significantly reduce the amount of waste by making a few cuts on the largest contributors of trash. You have to do it by making lots of small cuts. This is one of them, and also a relatively easy gain.
I would think volume is a better metric because landfills don't really much care about mass.
If you wanted to save trash you'd probably go after packaging. Ban disposable water bottles (or something less drastic like taxing them extra) and there's 50 lifetimes of wall warts per person per annum.
This just isn't really an enviromental problem. Or if it is, it's so far down the scale as to be pointless to prioritize over almost anything. It's really about competition.
> I would think volume is a better metric because landfills don't really much care about mass.
Most EU countries have actually outlawed landfills in favor of waste-to-energy systems. [1] Of course waste-to-energy only works for stuff like plastics, not for electronics which you'd rather want to disassemble carefully to recover the precious metals.
> If you wanted to save trash you'd probably go after packaging.
Which the EU does too. There is legislation underway (or possibly already passed) to outlaw many types of single-use plastic items. Everyone switching from plastic straws to paper straws may actually be another case of Brussels effect.
> it's so far down the scale as to be pointless to prioritize over almost anything
The thing is, from experience we know that these legislations take so long to enact and enforce that you cannot just start with the biggest items, wait for it to be done, and then move to the next biggest item. You need to tackle many possible avenues for waste reduction at once.
True, and tbh, the adapters don't have to be particularly clunky. The CCS1 -> Tesla connector adapter is generally pretty elegant. Its not as nice as the Tesla connector itself, of course.
Sadly, the US standard (CCS1) was heavily influenced by a desire for backward compatibility with J1772. Its not a great standard in itself.
> Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is what happens if better solutions are found. Will EU block innovation?
The EU has no problem with updating to improved standards. First there was USB-Mini-B, then USB-Micro-B, now USB-C. I would expect some different connector to replace it in a about a decade and 100% wireless in two decades roughly.
Mini-B (2000) had serious reliability problems, and would often damage the device rather than the cable. Micro-B (2007) was a pretty smart & necessary response. USB-C (2014) elegantly encompassed the additional high-speed data-connectivity that the hideous huge SuperSpeed USB Micro-B (2008) tacked on, & added significant future-proofing/adaptability (alt-modes).
I have a hard time imagining much advantage beyond USB-C. It's pretty mechanically fit & reliable, it has huge bandwidth (I think DisplayPort alt-modes can do 80Gbps?), it can transmit 240W in Extended Power Range variants. Someday perhaps. But I also think this might be here to stay for a long long time.
I would bet the industry will invent something to replace it anyway, even if there's no good reason for the change. Or maybe there will be some fundamental leap making 80 Gbps as irrelevant as 9600 bps are today.
Side note, there's some really really cheap fiber optic DisplayPort cables out there. They work, they're whatever length you want, mine were ~$0.60/foot. My monitors are 4k60 & 2k170; all resolutions run great. I feel like we're not too far off from fiber maybe happening for real.
USB-C only came to light because of the out of standard Intel's lightning cable. Same thing for x86 vs arm, you can't really block one in favour of the other.
Innovation is overrated. And standardising is not blocking.
What we need more urgently than innovation is to stop creating so much waste, extracting so much stuff from the earth, and in general reduce consumption. Standardisation accomplishes at least some of that.
> Innovation is overrated. And standardising is not blocking.
Hard disagree? Both lightning and USB C were massive improvements in durability compared to Micro USB - I'd argue lightning is still better in that regard, because there's no thin piece inside the phone that can break (did phone repair, and 99% of the time a "broken" iphone port was just stuck lint).
USB C is not universally better then then Micro, namely it has a much larger footprint both on the connector side and the PCB.
> Will EU block innovation?
So my question is - if there's a new USB standard connector that's smaller, or is inside-out for better durability - is it now prevented from being used?
Granted this isn't the fault of the connector, but USB-C is certainly a mess. My Nintendo Switch uses USB-C charging, but I can't use my MacBook charger for it. There are different cables, ratings, etc. "make everything USB-C" is asking for confusion. As much as I hate having a different cable for every device, at least when I pick up a (Apple-branded) lightning cable, I know it will work correctly for my iPhone.
Isn't the switch a notorious outlier and oddball with respect to its usb-c implementation though? I think it's more just that Nintendo screwed up one product than the standard is bad.
It's certainly the most popular example of poor implementation. But one could argue that USB-C isn't even implemented and they just used the connector/form factor for their cable. I recall the RPI4 also having issues early on with power over USB-C.
But that's precisely my problem with this - if we're forcing every device to merely adopt a USB-C port, that does nothing to ensure they're actually using USB-C specifications or interoperable. Game System X and Phone Y may only work with USB-C cables/chargers X and Y, which satisfy the requirement without fixing the compatibility problem.
> …if we're forcing every device to merely adopt a USB-C port, that does nothing to ensure they're actually using USB-C specifications or interoperable.
You certainly need more than just the physical port. IMHO the minimum reasonable requirement would be that the device must charge at near the maximum supported rate (minimum of the device's, cable's, and charger's advertised rates) with any combination of compliant charger & cable. There wouldn't be much point in mandating the use of USB-C ports otherwise.
> My Nintendo Switch uses USB-C charging, but I can't use my MacBook charger for it.
Then I guess you got one from the first hardware revision. I have a 2018 Switch (second hardware revision as far as I understand), and I have in the past charged it successfully with Apple chargers and Lenovo chargers.
I really like what USB-C has done for peripherals and non-iphone devices, but I agree with you.
I'd be fine with a new USB-D that fixed all these issues. USB-C is just mostly better than the other alternatives for Android and charging laptops. Its far from perfect.
I've read that USB-C is a durability improvement over micro USB. This surprised me because I've never had the USB port on a phone fail on me until I got a USB-C phone.
How about non-removable batteries and unrepairable phones? Many phones would be still ok, but the non-removable (cheaply) battery means that they get replaced prematurely, because the cost of replacement is overlapping the price of a low/mid tear phones. Back in the day, you pulled the back cover off, put a new batter in, and the phone was as good as new. Same with other types of repair, especially the kinds where manufacturer just replaces the whole assembly just because of one small part malfunctioning.
It will probably last for very long consider 24 wire of type c is a lot compares to 4 of 3.5mm jack. And it can actually be repurposed by changing the protocol (software) ?
Probably until someday that 24 physical wire isn't enough for a phone. (but the iPhone don't even use the usb3 yet, why did it even need these bandwidth?)
This is a flawed comparison because the use cases for the former examples are very limited in comparison to USB C which is arguably evolving rapidly still.
You could imagine if we had formed such a standard around USB A in the 90s and how it might have blocked the already high friction establishment of USB C and thunderbolt 3 standards.
USB C currently seems more mature than USB A, so I can see where things ar ea bit subjective here, but it's not really possible to see where unrestricted development would have put us.
I think I would have been more comfortable with simply banning lightning and micro USB than restricting to only USB C.
This regulation is about charging - so power, not data / thunderbolt. And when it comes to charging USB C can delvier 100W, which is enough for any small gadget, phone, etc.
The 3.5mm jack is not that good in my opinion. It fails too quickly. Less than a year for a portable device that bumps around in your pocket and reconnect a couple times a day. Now I still prefer it in many situations to bluetooth with its latency and packet drop issues, but I do think that a better jack could be made and is worth making.
As for suggestions for improvements: it should not be able to spin, because spinning wears it down. Second, maybe some kind of latch to lock it into place.
in so far as they are
capable of being recharged via wired charging, shall:
so you can have all the funny cables you want, as long as you provide the USB-C plug
If there is no wired charging, there is no problem of funny cables.
but companies are free to experiment all the kinds of wired charging they want, it's just more convenient to have a standard and they'll comply happily I guess, now that they are forced by the law and can stop competing on stupid stuff like charging cables.
There is a huge question of what exactly “are capable of being recharged via wired charging” means. Does the hidden Lightning connector on Apple Watch that most consumers don't even know is there count?
That is good because I think as late as three years ago there was still at least one "laptop" (possibly more, only one I have heard of) which were heavy desktop replacement that required two power bricks during some gaming.
What if Apple finally comes out with wired mag safe for the iPhone? Does they count as wireless? Or would it be illegal in Europe because a wire was still involved even if the connection was magnetic?
Since they've been using Lightning for about 10 years now, I'd say there's other things that are inhibiting their innovation. I suspect it has more to do with third-party accessory manufacturers. Unless you're suggesting that connector innovation requires at least a 10 year iteration cycle?
Yeah, people generally don’t want to have to throw out all that stuff after a short period of time, and after a long period, they’ve got even more money invested in that setup, so if it’s not broken… there’s just not really much of a compelling benefit to change types from the perspective of most normal people, and there are concrete downsides in the form of money sunk into it.
Anyway, I like USB-C more, I have to carry them anyway, so it’d eliminate one cable when I travel. We’re as close as I’ve ever seen to having the one cable to rule them all, which is pretty cool.
USBC can be made to be "MagSafe". When Apple only sold laptops with USB-C ports there were a bunch of MagSafe knockoffs sold for laptops. Although most of the time they would break eventually but it's not impossible. If it just was a special cord as long as you could use a regular USBC cord it seems like it would be compliant but IANAL.
Those solutions aren’t very good, so I doubt Apple would go that route.
Frankly, I’m expecting the lightning port to be replaced with a purely inductive/magnetic solution eventually, there probably will not even be a receptacle for it, just a wireless contact to the phone from the wire like how the Apple Watch can only charged.
I’m guessing in that case, they would be exempt from providing a usb-c port since the phones would be technically purely wireless by that point. At that point, other vendors will follow and the EU will mandate Qi as the standard wireless charging solution since the USB-C mandate will be obsolete.
I'd guess that they'd be required to implement both. If there's a USB-C charging option, I don't think the EU would prevent an additional magsafe charging. They havent banned wireless charging, for example. This is to insure an essential minimum compatibility (I hope/as I see it).
It would be nice if we could limit new standards to once every 5-10 years. At which time people can submit new ideas for standardization approval and then the best one gets picked and everyone is required to switch. Backwards compatibility would probably score a lot of points.
Speaking of cars and standardization, I'm still waiting for the European Union to put the steering wheel on the left side of the car and while we're at it, make it mandatory to drive on the right side of the road.
Is your point that since there exist a standard which occurred without government intervention, then the government should never intervene to create any standards?
Standards are a good thing but I’m not sure that we have reached this point where USB-C is functionally the best. If we could completely eliminate on all other types of connectors on not just phones but computers then I would say it’s time to standardize. Unfortunately on my computer if I want a 4K resolution and frame rate that is way 300 hz then is it even possible that can be done over a USB-C connector? Hopefully some expert can chime in but display port or hdmi 2.1+ or multiple of those cables is what is used typically, and if USB-c worked perfectly why isn’t that already replacing every single port on a computer? Phones will eventually be as fast or faster than the current computers, so why implement a limitation when it feels like phones are still at the baby steps in phone evolution? That is just data transfer and I’m no expert but I’m not certain either than charging has reached it’s final form either. Am I wrong, is the USB-c connector capable of infinite data transfer rate as long as your cable is good enough?
> Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is what happens if better solutions are found. Will EU block innovation?
Usb typec wire from 65A(non e-marked wire) to 240A(the latest standardized e-marked wire) uses literally the same plug.
Typec is the header but not the protocol. Even China phone vendor's proprietary high speed charging protocol use typec wire. And Intel's tb4 wire also use a type c wire. (the bandwidth of tb4 is definitely overkill for every phone ever made on the world for now)
Force use of typec header and baseline charging protocol prevent innovation is just bs consider this didn't even prevent apple from making a MFA e-marked typec cable.(Or they don't want this to pass because they actually want to do this again?)
> the bandwidth of tb4 is definitely overkill for every phone ever made on the world for now
That depends on what you're doing with it. It would not be very strange to power a VR headset with a phone, which could easily get into that bandwidth range.
I'm considering TBT3/4 for our VR headset's tethered mode. It's a bit of a pain to implement, but the data rate is worth it.
For reference, we need 2-4 lanes of DP HBR3 (depending on compression) + PCIe Gen3x4 for the camera passthrough. TBT3/4 could do it over a single cable.
Feeds into the nightmare that is implementing that entire ecosystem though...
The tech for wireless charging is not really that new and isn't really changing a large amount. My Nokia 920 uses the same charging standard as the latest iPhones. iPhones can charge on the old charger I have, the 920 can charge on an iPhone charger. That phone came out a decade ago.
The constitution gives US congress the right to set standards for weights and measures, which unless you use a very strict reading says they can set charging standards. I wish they would. Tesla (and Nissan) as early movers 10 years ago can be forgiven for not adopting a standard charger, but now they need to update to the standard. (IIRC both are planning on it)
If by “strict reading” you mean “any reading at all”, I would agree.
I’m not sure how the legal power to say “the unit of mass called the ‘gram’ shall be defined as the mass of a cube of pure water, one centimeter on each side” allows you to say “anybody that manufactures a phone must include the following physical and logical features.” If you go off that definition, you’re basically ceding pretty much unlimited power to the government.
For cars, we have public metering devices that measure units of stuff and charge money. This makes it fall into the category of metering devices used in trade. And we do regulate those almost universally. You can’t just put a different shape nozzle on a gas pump, for instance.
Standardization of metering devices used in commerce is directly in the purview of Weights and Measures regulation.
For example, NIST Weights and Measures division regulates the nozzle on the dispenser used for gasoline in the US.
> Each retail dispensing device from which fuel products are sold shall be equipped with a nozzle spout having a diameter that conforms with the latest version of SAE J285, “Dispenser Nozzle Spouts for Liquid Fuel Intended for Use with Spark-Ignition and Compression Ignition Engines.”
Ensuring accurate metering in the context of commerce is within the scope of "To … fix the Standard of Weights and Measures". The specific form of the nozzle clearly is not, but they might justify it on the basis of some other enumerated power—the interstate commerce clause is frequently (ab)used for this sort of thing. Nothing technically requires every regulation produced by the NIST Weights and Measures division to be grounded exclusively in the Weights and Measures clause, though one could be forgiven for making that assumption.
As dpratt remarked earlier[0], any interpretation which would deem nozzle size—or the specific form of an electrical connector—to be covered by the Weights and Measures clause of the Constitution would effectively cede unlimited power to the federal government. What couldn't they regulate under such broad rules?
I'm not saying that the regulatory power in this case is derived solely from the weights and measures clause, I'm countering golemotron's suggestion that it's a wholly unrelated topic. It's a topic so closely relevant to weights and measures that the regulatory division that currently regulates them bears that title.
It's an overreach. "A pound is 16 ounces" is not the same as "cakes shall only be 5 ounces," i.e., a standard of measure does not extend to regulation of what is measured and what measures are permitted. An originalist court could fix this.
These are very fundamental consumer protection regulations that have been solidly cemented in western civilization for many centuries now.
>not extend to regulation of [...] what measures are permitted.
That was exactly the point of that clause. The colonies all had their own system of measurement and it was a mess trying to do business. Now, congress did very little about it, but the founders intentionally reserved the right for them to fix that problem.
The problem with your formulation is that there is no limiting principle. Perversely, the government could rule that a pregnant person is a metering device for gestation and establish standards.
Society claiming this is wrong and being correct is exactly balanced by society claiming whales aren't fish and being incorrect.
(Whales are fish because they're descendants of fish and are more closely related to salmon than sharks are. The same goes for you. You're also a fish.)
It's just really not clear to me that regulators need to be mandating product design.
I have no expectation, for example, that these same regulators will stay on top of this and revise it when USB-C stops being the preferred or best choice.
Twenty years ago, we really DID have a snarl of competing and proprietary phone ports. It was a mess -- Blackberry chargers didn't work with Palm; most WinMo devices had their own ports; etc. It was ugly.
Now, pretty much everything is either USB or Lightning. This is good! What problem is the EU solving here?
This always gets bought up, and it's always wrong.
> I have no expectation, for example, that these same regulators will stay on top of this and revise it when USB-C stops being the preferred or best choice.
They didn't write the law as "you must use USB-C" They wrote the law as "The industry experts need to pick A standard for charging, and all manufacturers should respect that choice"
They are welcome to change it going forward, they just have to agree and consolidate.
This is not correct so far as I can tell -- the amendment to directive 2014/53/EU [1] says
> Hand-held mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones, headsets, handheld videogame consoles and portable speakers, in so far as they are capable of being recharged via wired charging, shall:
> (a) be equipped with the USB Type-C receptacle, as described in the standard EN IEC 62680-1-3:2021 ‘Universal serial bus interfaces for data and power - Part 1-3: Common components - USB Type-C TM Cable and Connector Specification’, which should remain accessible and operational at all times;
To switch to a new charger type would require legislative action, not just industry experts changing their mind. That said, I actually strongly prefer this approach to allowing an industry self-regulating group to make these decision.
This is the truth of the matter. Apple has been dragging their feet on switching away from lightning.
Why? No idea. It's a much slower standard, and puts the wearing parts in the port instead of the cable. USB-C is designed by committee, sure, but the port itself is better than lightning in nearly every consumer metric there is.
USB-C is perfectly fine, and I'm happy to switch, but let's not go overboard. Lightning is still arguably better than USB-C.
USB-C exists because Apple was in the process of creating Lightning. Also, in my experience, you seem to have the fragility point backward: the nub on lightning cables may break, but the port is fine, while the reverse is true for USB-C, where the fragile bit is in the port.
Isn't USBC more fragile because of the middle piece that lives in the port? Lightning has always felt sturdier to me, though not enough to warrant carrying different types of cables..
The middle piece is thin and does look fragile, but you can't put any real side load on it. The outer wall of the connector takes that force before you can put any real force on the middle. Unless you're jamming a flathead screwdriver or something in it.
Beyond that, the springloaded contacts are on the cable end with type-c, with lightning it's inside the phone. I don't think it's a particularly common failure mode, but having less moving parts in the expensive bit is generally a good idea.
Apple has repeatedly said their phones are so thin that they don't have room for a USB-C port. This of course is total bullshit because many phones as thin or thinner than iPhones have USB-C ports.
Yep. Apple came out with their own connector because USB Mini (where everyone else wanted to go) sucked. We got a robust, flippable connector. All in all, using only two kinds of connectors over 14 years (so far) seems far better than the industry average (proprietary, mini, micro, C)
"Any technological developments in wired charging can be reflected in a timely adjustment of technical requirements/ specific standards under the Radio Equipment Directive. This would ensure that the technology used is not outdated."
"At the same time, the implementation of any new standards in further revisions of Radio Equipment Directive would need to be developed in a harmonised manner, respecting the objectives of full interoperability. Industry is therefore expected to continue the work already undertaken on the standardised interface, led by the USB-IF organisation, in view of developing new interoperable, open and non-controversial solutions."
I don't see how this is relevant -- this is a statement of principle. The fact remains that to update the standard, the "timely adjustment" would be made by the legislative body. Don't let the passive voice fool you here; this is not some dynamic industry-led process, it's just a non-binding commitment to update the regulations if the technology advances.
Interesting, I may be out of date then. Previously all the RED proposals called for a common charger, but did not directly specify the charger required.
It seems like wireless charging still falls into that category (they require some form of interoperability by 2026, but do not state the exact form).
> With respect to radio equipment capable of being recharged via means other than wired charging, the Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 44 in order to amend Annex Ia in the light of technical progress, and to ensure the minimum common interoperability between radio equipment and their charging devices, by:
(a) introducing, modifying, adding or removing categories or classes of radio equipment;
(b) introducing, modifying, adding or removing technical specifications, including references and descriptions, in relation to charging interface(s) and charging communication protocol(s), for each category or class of radio equipment concerned.’;
So the commission can adopt new standards trough a much lighter executive process. It does not require new legislation to update the standard.
It's still not clear that having this be regulated is better.
We don't have a port problem. We used to have one, but it went away. It sure LOOKS like Apple will, eventually, transition away from Lightning on its own anyway.
So why have regulators weigh in here at all? What's the point? What value is added?
Light bulb sockets are actually a great example for the downsides of standardization, because they’re super suboptimal for LED bulbs, and are a large part of the reason for the transformers on many of the new bulbs burning out way before their rated lifetime. A better LED socket would provide better heatsinking/dissipation opportunities.
MR16 is a 12V DC standard so it does not need a transformer, in theory it's much better for LEDs, and yet we hardly ever see it used even in new builds.
Every time I rented a place with MR16, like 1/3 of all sockets in the ceiling were dead, the power supply was inside the false ceiling and it was not possible to fix without making a hole. Needless to say lardlord need much motivating to fix anything.
Also, it;s not illegal to install random non-standard bulbs -> my last apartmentblock was built with some special, great, proprietary and patented LED-spesific socket. Guess what happened? 15 years on, the lamps started failing, and the manufacturere dropped production of anything for that socket!
Now they need to replace like a thousands light fittings across the entire block, there is no way to get replacements. Some of them are in awkward places and will require a special vehicle to reach.
Yeah, there’s a ton of inertia, with the standard socket so well entrenched. That’s pretty crazy about the proprietary socket. Seems like the big industry players should get a voluntary standards group together and make a big push.
If this standardization happened in 1999, would we now all be walking around with the original [large] USB-B or DC barrel jacks on our phones? (Those were the standardized connectors of the day.)
Do we believe given the track record of a new connector being introduced more frequently than once every 5 years just within the USB standardization process, that we've somehow reached the end of that road in practical terms? If we've reached the end of the road, by all means we could standardize and say "you have to use the pinnacle of USB connector type".
It has been working quite well in many electronic devices for decades...
I don't see the usefulness of discussing things that have not happened.
Is USB-C bad?
That's the question you should be interested in.
“The best is the enemy of the good.”
Saying that choices should never be made because we don't know what the future brings, is the same of saying that there's no point in living, because we are all going to die.
Of course they did not settle on USB-B in 1999 because there weren't billions of devices using it and it was relatively new technology.
Not all that many companies are doing work for cable standards to begin with, and personally - as a consumer - I very much welcome the standardization on usb-c.
The companies that are doing work on communication standards aren't normally selling the kind of devices covered here to consumers. It's more business to business and military applications. Further, charging in particular is a different beast than communication in general - you're not doing anything other than sending current down the line to fill a battery. there's only so many ways to do that, and I think it makes sense to consolidate them.
Finally - the requirement only states that the device must include a usb-c port for charging. It makes no limitations on manufacturers including additional ports. So even if a direct to consumer device wanted to include a new port - they absolutely could, they just still have to allow filling the battery from usb-c.
I hate to be snarky on HN, but are we from the same planet?
In the vast majority of devices you accept what the manufacture gives you or you are out of luck, especially when everything these days is protected by some kind of intellectual property.
This excuse is old and tired and tends to ignore that large manufactures purposefully make the customer experience worse for higher profits.
Or instead of that, people could use their legal and democratic rights to enforce a standardization.
If you don't like it, feel free to vote for something different. But apparently the people in the EU disagree with you, and believe that the world would be better off if they enforced a standard.
> Do you really need the government to make your choices for you?
A user does not have a choice to use USB-C with certain devices right now. That is why there is a law, that now allows users to choose that.
If Apple doesn't like it, then I guess they can of their own free choice, choose to leave the EU.
They do not own the EU. They can take the deal, follow the law, or shut down in the EU. Thats their choice to sell to that market.
A user is free to use a device with USB-C right now. A user is also not free to buy an iPhone that runs Android. Should the government also force all phones to support Android?
I’m also not free to buy an iPhone with pink polka dots. Should the EU force companies to make that? I want all cars to support CarPlay. Shouid that be legislated?
The “people” didn’t vote for this. The same lawmakers who thought that an 11 chapter 99 section law would solve privacy issues and all it did was force users to deal with cookie pop ups.
Yet one company made a 15 line rules change about tracking (Apple) and the entire ad industry had to do more to clean up their act and have admitted in their quarterly reports that it is impacting their business.
> A user is free to use a device with USB-C right now
No they cannot use it with certain devices. Which is what the legislation is for. Then they will have that ability with all devices in the EU.
Apple is also free to make devices doing whatever they want, and sell them in a different country.
> Should the EU force companies to make that?
Apple isn't forced to make anything. They can simply of their own choosing, leave that market. It is their choice to sell to that market, and they can feel free to leave if they don't like the official representatives of the EU using their official power to legislate.
All these arguments about choice are ignoring that it is the choice of the EU to control its own market, and it is Apple's choice to sell there. They are free to leave if they don't like the laws that the lawmakers create.
> I want all cars to support CarPlay. Should that be legislated?
If you can get enough support among lawmakers, feel free to talk about the benefits and cons of your proposal.
Well the biggest reason is because there are a much larger amount of people and law makers who would prefer simply stopping at cord compatibility, and cord compatibility is much easier to implement, and much less disruptive, than more extreme and absurd examples.
Society does not have to do the most extreme thing possible, in every situation.
Instead, society can pick and choose. We can look for easy wins, and do the things that are easy to implement and not do the things that are harder to implement.
In fact, apple is already planning on adding USB C to the next iPhone, if the rumors are true. So it sounds like even they agree that cord compatibility is at least possible for them to do with a reasonable effort.
So they help prevent e waste by preventing people from throwing away cords instead of helping people not to have to throw away phones.
Government at its best.
Next they are going to mandate pop up warnings every time I turn on my phone like the cookie banners.
I doubt people are complaining more about cord compatibility than having to replace an entire functioning phone because it no longer receives even security updates. Let alone operating system updates.
You forget that everything now being USB or Lightning is in part due to the EU attempting to harmonize the market on USB before today. All the larger market leaders signed an agreement to move to USB, which Apple understood as "USB at the charger" apparently.
But the EU pushing this for the past decades is responsible for almost everything being interoperable.
That would be believable except Apple has been fighting the EU for years now over not implementing USB at all. Sure the charger has USB, but the phones they've release the last decade don't have a USB port themselves. Even when the industry leaders signed their agreements, Apple had to be the butt. I don't see how them shipping USB chargers with proprietary adapters at some point helps their case here. Apple didn't standardize anything at all here.
It's not a new thing. Car design has been dictated by regulations for decades and while I'm sure it has definitely stopped some novel designs from getting out there, I think we can be mostly thankful that we don't live in a sea of heterogeneous (let alone hazardous) designs. Cars can still look cool, but not to the point of being a detriment.
USB-C is a pretty lax standard (for good and bad) and at the end of the day, the ultimate reason regulators have to come into play is that the industry didn't deal with this issue internally.
Being that my modern car drives nearly 10 thousand miles before each oil change, gets at least 4x the gas mileage, easily drives over 200k miles before major maintenance, and won't turn me into hamburger if I get in a crash, I will argue its well worth it.
You need to distinguish design trends from what the regulation enforced.
The most obvious examples that come to mind:
- Small cars aren't that small anymore to stop them from being blatant death traps.
- A lot of the edges have been smoothed and curved to make impact with pedestrians less deadly (also killed pop-up lights and hood ornaments, which is kinda funny considering the Mercedes Benz hood ornament was sometimes jokingly described as a sight to aim for pedestrians)
- Thick A pillars due to crash tests regulations
While I can blame these for killing out novel or even trademark features of some vehicles lineups, I don't think alone they made everyone homogenize their design, it's just what the industry eventually converged on by themselves.
Look at phones, there's no regulation on what a phone should look like, yet today phones are just a fancy screen, nothing like the incredible variety that Nokia alone sported back in the late 90s/early 2000s.
Cars within a particular period mostly have the same overall design just like today. There will always be exceptions of course, however take a look at some models from 1966 (Ad heavy site, sorry)
> compare cars from 40s-70s to what came after, its a different world
Yeah. we understood that they not only pollute the environment and it's stupid to build cars the size of a starship, but also by 1973 the World (except the US) understood that oil is not for granted and fuel efficiency should be a thing.
Also safety while we are at it, doesn't sound so bad...
A 1964 Ford Galaxie 500 had a wheelbase of 119" and was 210" long.
A 2021 Mustang Mach E has a wheelbase of 107" and is 188.5" long.
Which one is humongous?
Even if you looked at the original 1964 Mustang, its not that much smaller than the Mach E which is a 5-door crossover. The '64 had a wheelbase of 108" and an overall length of 181.6", just 7 inches shorter for a coupe.
Older American cars were often land yachts. The old family sedan of the 1960s are often larger than crossovers of today, they just don't sit as high.
who cares what your car looks like. owning one is a hassle and a money sink and i resent that i've lived in 5 cities who have de-prioritized mass transit.
cars look boring is like saying it's a bummer cancer isn't cool.
"I have no expectation, for example, that these same regulators will stay on top of this and revise it when USB-C stops being the preferred or best choice."
Why?
Everything is usb or lightning because people complained, and everyone but apple listened to people.
If USB-C is no longer the best thing, rather than complain to 10 companies, and hope they all agree, they will complain to regulators, and hope they agree.
What precisely is the difference you see?
The regulators are at least accountable in some sense to the people, the companies are not.
People will always complain about a change, but Lightning was materially better than the Dock Connector in a whole bunch of ways so I think folks got won over pretty quickly.
It's faster, it handles power better, it's more durable, and it's symmetrical. Hell, that last one alone probably won over a bunch of folks.
They aren't designing anything, they mandate an overall requirement - "You must all use the same charge port".
This is no different than any other customer - they are just representing the overall customers who would otherwise not have enough power or voice to achieve what they want.
Also - if you don't want your industry regulated, maybe don't make a mess of it?
Regulators rarely pay attention to things that are working super-well.
No, actually, you wouldn't. As has been explained many times in this thread, that isn't how this kind of regulation works. I do understand that doesn't fit your narrative though.
Rather than making lots of unfounded assertions about what "will" happen, as you keep doing, I would encourage you to actually read the details first.
You release the product with both ports. And then you tell the EU that you'd like your port to be approved as valid alternative. You'll probably have to explain why your connector is better as well as show that consumers won't suffer the cable problem due to the new port (ie, people won't have to buy adapters or chargers just for your device). Then the EU is probably happy to add your port to the directive (which as the directive explains, is a very lightweight process, it doesn't require relegislating anything), possibly even give other vendors a timeline to switch to it if USB-C is to be deprecated. Of course, you're likely going to have to license patents are low prices or risk the EU getting angry over exploitation of the market. Possibly even hand out patents for free and only charge a minor fee for the connector trademarks (like current USB).
Wow that’s a lot better solution. How long would that have taken Apple to change to lightning instead of using the 30 pin connector? What would they have used for the original iPod if they had to wait on the government to approve a connector?
If this same type of law had been in effect with computers back in the 90s Apple would have had to include PS/2 and ISA and add more ports.
That's the point though, there is no more 30 pin connector. And if there is a change, the government ensures consumers won't be wasting money because their old 30-pin chargers are now paperweights or their old phone has no more chargers available.
Also I don't see how this connects to PS2 or ISA, since back then such regulation wasn't in huge demand yet. The charger issue however is a demand and it seems to be backed by the general population. Having one charger for all devices is a big plus for everyone involved.
And if you somehow develop a new charger port that is much much better, then yes, it should have to go through the process of being approved, so that we don't start hopping into new charging ports every 10 years. That would make the entire regulation worthless. And yes that might mean your port has to be interoperable or you need to have both ports (USB AB is an example, which fit both A and B plugs, for micro and mini variants) or easily allow an adapter you can leave plugged into the phone (in-plug adapter).
We're much further into the development into computers and the future of USB-C is less uncertain as PS/2 and ISA. USB-C is a good-enough compromise that can most likely handle the next 30 years of computer needs. The market isn't as quickly evolving in that direction anymore, IMO.
The 30 pin adapter was better than all of the alternatives at the time. It took Apple 8 months to go from idea to shipping product. How much longer would it have taken if they had to wait for the government?
You really think consumers care more about replacing ten dollar cords for their phones than having to replace their phones because Android manufactures don’t provide support for their phones more than a year?
30 years ago, my computer had SCSI (which was a cross platform standard), ADB, and Nubus ports - all better than the industry standard. That would have never happened with government mandating standards. I used my own free will and voted with my dollars to choose to be incompatible- just like Apple users today.
Well, no you don't have to vote with your dollars, you can vote for free. Which I think is the better solution, especially for people who have no choice for voting with their dollars, ie poor people.
And the phone comes with one. They also might have to rebuy their apps. Should all phones now be forced to run the same apps?
Even decade+ old cars support the old iPod protocol for music (still supported by iPhones). Should the government force all phones to support the iPod protocol for the sake of “the poor people so they don’t have to buy new cars”?
It would also be inconvenient for former iPhone users who have AirPrint printers. Should we force all phone makers to support AirPrint? It’s based on an open source protocol.
Is there currently an issue with phones not working with cars?
There is an issue with a huge amount of waste and spent money relating to chargers, especially disadvantaging poor people. If everyone is on USB-C that stops being a problem. All chargers work with your device and all devices work with your charger. I fail to see how escalating the problem into extremes addresses the advantages of the EU decision...
I don't see how that's worse. If you make such a good connector that it should replace all currently used charger ports, there should be a requirement to allow users to give them the time to switch. To not cause untold costs to poor people who can't afford to switch. Interim solutions provide value to society. And laptops aren't bigger phones.
The device is going to come with at least one cord.
How many people can afford at minimum a $429 phone who can’t afford a couple of extra cables?
“poor people aren’t buying iPhones”. But they are buying Androids that are not being supported by their manufactures with even security updates shortly after they buy them.
Cheap Androids not being supported by manufacturers is a separated issue, I fail to see how that applies here. Atleast the cheap phones have a unified charger so poor people don't have to keep buying chargers for them.
Why do people suddenly need to buy a phone for 300$? Almost all current phones support USB C and within 10 years it's will be all of them. No need to buy a phone for a charger.
And if USB-C turns out to be bad, which I don't think'll happen for quite some time, the EU can make sure that legislation ensures poor people won't have to buy a new phone or a new charger until they want to.
Too many get caught up in the "USB-C" connector, and forget about the modes and power delivery. That said, AFAICT the May 2022 revision states (pg 6):
"the devices should incorporate the USB Power Delivery (USB PD) standard (as described in the European standard EN IEC 62680-1-2:2021) and ensure that any additional charging protocols allow for full USB PD functionality (new annex Ia, part I)."
Then the referenced: "EN IEC 62680-1-2:2021" standard specifies
"To facilitate optimum charging, the specification defines two mechanisms a USB Charger can advertise for the Device to use:
1. A list of fixed voltages each with a maximum current.
2. A list of programmable voltage ranges each with a maximum current (PPS). The Device requests a voltage (in 20 mV increments) that is within the advertised range and a maximum current."
But those regs get over my head quickly, so someone else may have better luck interpreting them.
This brings up an issue that Carl Malamud at public.resource.org has been fighting. The EU directive references a standard that costs $300 if you want a copy. You shouldn't have to pay to know your laws.
If the EU is going to reference a standard owned by somebody else, they should purchase a license that allows them to publicly post the entire standard (AFAIK, they haven't done that). Or they could pass laws that say any standards referenced by law lose their copyright status. This would be a type of eminent domain for intellectual property.
Sure, but better now than in 5 or 10 years when there's more lightning cables out in the wild. Otherwise should we still be using lightning in 100 years?
I'm not sure they are clear what they are solving. The statement says:
"European consumers were frustrated long with multiple chargers piling up with every new device"
This was solved by companies no longer providing chargers with new devices. When you buy a new phone, you use your existing charger, only buying a new one when you actually need it.
If you buy a new iPhone, you get a cable that plugs into a USB-C charger.
If USB-C is mandated on the phone end:
* I'll spend the next 20 years realising I have the wrong white phone charging cable with me
* I still won't trust random USB-C cables
* I still won't trust random USB-C chargers
But - let's just do it. Maybe in 40 years it'll have seemed worth it.
> I'll spend the next 20 years realising I have the wrong white phone charging cable with me
> I still won't trust random USB-C cables
> I still won't trust random USB-C chargers
My answer to all three of these is the same: Why? My phone charges with every crappy USB cable and charger. Heck, my laptop will trickle charge [!] off a crappy cable on a crappy airline USB-C port.
There's one place where I'm very careful about USB-C: keeping the specific USB-C cables with my laptop with the chargers themselves, just in case I need the Thunderbolt capability. The TB monitor I bought has a specific cable that stays attached to it.
From looking on AliExpress the last few weeks, TB 100W cables appear to be getting commoditized. It's likely this worry I have about keeping laptop C cables straight won't be a big issue for much longer.
[!] Amusingly, my laptop won't actually charge off the _standard_ A/C plugs on most airplanes because the 100W charger blows a soft fuse that requires unplugging and replugging the A/C adapter!
> [!] Amusingly, my laptop won't actually charge off the _standard_ A/C plugs on most airplanes because the 100W charger blows a soft fuse that requires unplugging and replugging the A/C adapter!
To be fair, 100 W may not seem like a lot when you're used to plugging in to the national power grid, but it's a lot to ask for a non-essential system supplied by an off-grid generator shared by hundreds of passengers. And 100 W is the maximum allowance for In-Seat Power Support Systems according to the FAA, before any conversion losses in your power adapter; the actual amount available to you may be much less.
Oh yeah, that's totally fair. With a standard USB-C DC plug, however, the charger could negotiate a lower current and even provide power fairness across all seats to support the entire plane's load.
My point was really that even the most entrenched "standards" are all just leaky abstractions.
I’ll have the wrong cable with me because I’m just bad at having the right stuff with me anyway. Adding to my confusion is fine though. I’ll just buy particular colours or cable or put tags of them or something.
I don’t trust random cables to plug into my phone because I’m paranoid about getting hacked. I access some systems with sensitive data via my phone and I don’t want to be the route of compromise.
I don’t trust random chargers not to set my house on fire while I sleep, or - worse - fail to charge properly and I don’t have enough charge left to run the crossword app on my phone.
They already do, in many ways. Specifically, they already mandate the type of power plug that electrical appliances must be sold with.
I don't know where I stand on this ruling philosophically, but I'm looking forward to having accessories all use USB-C instead of having some for Apple and some for everyone else.
What does work together mean in this case, it’s not like we’re talking Ethernet where these devices are communicating to each other. Like I can’t use an android charger? Lightning to usb-c cables are pretty much standard. It seems like in the short term anyways this increases e-waste as all my old Lightning chargers become deprecated.
The other day a coworker's iphone battery was nearly empty. He did not have his charger with me. I offered that he could use mine, an usbc charger that has worked for my past 3 phones and also works with my laptop.
He couldn't use it.
Of course, not being an iphone user, I did not have an adapter. Neither did he, considering he forgot his charger.
The iphone and the usbc charger did not work together.
This story would make more sense if you mentioned that he did not have a lightning cable with him. My iPhone X is currently plugged into a USB-C charger, no problem, but it's using a USB-C -> Lightning cable.
I can just plug a usb-c dock and use my android phone with a keyboard and mouse if I wanted to. I could plug two android phones together with usb-c and transfer files from one to another.
Apple's phones are quite locked down, and I think a big reason why is that proprietary lightning connector. When you have a usb port for charging, there is no excuse for not implementing the full standard software-side.
Are they also going to insist that Android manufactures support their phones for more than six months with operating system updates? Worrying about cables causing e-waste is instead of phones, is even more evidence of the technical ineptness of legislators.
I don’t speak German. But the best summary I found doesn’t say that manufacturers have to support cell phones for 7 years with operating system or security updates like Apple has been doing.
I changed the link, it displayed in English for me. The relevant quote is: “objective requirements […] are met only if the consumer is […] provided with updates for the usual period of the product's use and service life. The update obligation may regularly exceed the applicable warranty period.”
The courts will have to decide what “the usual period of the product's use and service life” means exactly, but certainly longer than the six months you originally mentioned.
That's a bit over the top, don't you think? When Apple created the Lightning connector, the accepted alternative was micro-USB. And micro-USB is terrible, awful, no-good, crap. Many millions of people are happy Lightning existed to bridge the time before the rest of the world could design a slightly better small USB connector. Which, of course, might still not be as durable as Lightning, but it's good enough.
Like I said, regulators stepping in is an overstep for the reason you're stating. It's a free market, they built a better mouse trap.
But at this point, USBC is the better mousetrap, they're now just using their market dominance to force a worse mouse trap on everyone to keep milking lucrative patent fees outside of what an efficient market would allow.
So again, fuck em.
Side note, this is why I really hate IP law (or at least the over the top term lengths of it). If they didn't have a monopoly on lightening connectors this wouldn't be a problem and the market would resolve this "problem" on it's own.
You don't get to act like they're just behaving like a free market participant should when they're actively exploiting a different market regulation.
I wonder what the fix here is. Would it be choosing a patent term length that optimises for spurring innovation?
Too short and you make it not worth while. Too long and things stagnate like this. Why does society put up with such suboptimal market parameters?
USB-C is, in fact, NOT at all the "better mousetrap" in terms of an iPhone connector. It has no significant advantages for Apple users who already are using Lightning.
You seem to be leaving out all the ways in which it's better for Apple's customers to have, and to keep, Lightning, so, let's review so you can argue in good faith and from an informed perspective next time:
1) Lightning is significantly more compact than the USB-C port, enabling a more durable case in the vulnerable area surrounding the port
2) Lightning is more durable as well
3) Lightning even FEELS better to plug in and to use
4) Lightning has superior ability to be waterproofed
5) Billions of Lightning cables and accessories have already been manufactured and are in use and it'd be nice to not replace them all until that's actually necessary
Apple could have at least attempted to standardize his port, but they did not because they charged money when a third pary uses their proprietary ports. So stop crying for poor Apple, they have paid PR people to defend them with better arguments anyway.
How often does the world willingly standardize on something invented by a single company? Even if they had released it into public domain, USB-C was going to happen anyway.
The chance is larger the Zero, we can't even think of standardizing something if is proprietary and we have to pay some corporation outside our jurisdiction a lot of money. So Apple did not even try, as usual they tried to milk things as long as possible exactly how they done it with dating apps in some EU countries.
All the time. For example, Garmin created the ANT+ protocol for wirelessly communicating sensor data, such as with bicycle electronics. ANT+ is the standard because Garmin actively promoted it as an open standard and encouraged competitors to adopt it.
Are you telling me there has been other "USB" cables before? No, USB-C came down from the heavens in the dawn of time and evil Apple has been using their evil proprietary lighting all this time, just out of spite to anger Android fanboys.
I said monopolistic not monopoly. To say apple is a monopoly would be incorrect. To describe their behavior with service, repair, the app store, and lightening cable fees as anything other than monopolistic would be intellectually dishonest.
The debate over Lightning, of course, has nothing to do with repairability. As an aside, you might want to take a few minutes to look up what "monopolistic" means.
> Now, pretty much everything is either USB or Lightning. This is good! What problem is the EU solving here?
It makes charging more user friendly.
e.g. just an hour ago my wife asked if she can charge her iPhone with the charger that I use for my laptop and Pixel 4. I had to say "no" - and that's the case even when Apple has USB-C in their laptops, why the odd iPhone (and airpods)?
It is quite pleasing to be able to charge laptop and mobile (and wireless headphones or ebooks) with the same charger.
This isn't about solving an existing problem. As you pointed out, pretty much everyone standardized around micro-usb almost a decade ago. That's mostly because Apple launched the iPhone with a proprietary but standard connector (the original iPod connector). So while all other phone makers had a special adapter and cable for every model, you could plug an iPhone on anything that worked with an iPod. Even the original firewire cable from 2003 would work with it.
What this is about is getting reelected and justifying to voters the usefulness of paying huge amounts of taxes to fund an EU-wide parliament. So they manufactured an (easy) problem to "fix". And it's going to be extremely popular since they'll be attacking and regulating "evil foreign tech giants".
The EU threatening manufacturers with regulation unless they settled on a format led to the end of different chargers for every phone model. It definitely had a direct impact on my life. Getting rid of different cables as well will make me very happy.
"The EU" is not a singular entity. The tiny little parts of the EU doing most of the work on this combined with the tiny amount of time spent by larger parts of the EU seems well worth it to me.
The EU = the EU Commission. Aren't there much bigger issues impacting consumers such as right to repair, planned obsolescence, clean energy etc.? The law will not take effect until 2024, and in the meantime the industry has largely moved toward USB-C / wireless charging.
The EU Commission is still not a singular entity. The commissioners are not the ones doing the underlying work on these things, and so many things happens in parallel.
This was part of the EU Commission's 2020 work programme as one small sub-point among well over a hundred under one of the 43 main goals, as a secondary priority after a long list of climate and economic changes.
You're of course free to disagree with their prioritisation, but this has hardly been a major part of the Commissions work.
> The law will not take effect until 2024, and in the meantime the industry has largely moved toward USB-C / wireless charging.
Even with respect to mobile phones this excludes a certain notable holdout that accounts for a large proportion of the market, and which have kept resisting the EU push for over a decade, and a number of smaller holdouts still sticking with micro-USB.
But you'll note this extends way past phones, including to laptops where there's still a mess of different chargers.
With respect to wireless charging, it makes little difference as long as long as most people still have cables as backup (indeed I've yet to see someone use wireless charging; I'm sure a few more uses it at home, but I for one have zero devices capable of wireless charging; it will not reduce waste anytime soon)
I know for my own use, unnecessary cables and chargers still account for a large proportion of my electric waste because of the frequency of replacement, so for my part I welcome this.
Eh, Apple was moving devices over to USB-C already, they didn't need to be forced. The reason they've held out on the iPhone is because users will complain about new cables ;-). Either way they're going to get criticized.
Apple gets credit for creating Lightning to begin with while we waited for something better than micro-USB to come along. I'm glad for USB-C, but damn, it sure took a while.
Let's be honest here, the only reason why they "held out" is the MFi program and the sweet sweet money they receive for it. I'm happy to see EU put a stop to this practice.
Unless you have numbers to back it up, their MFi revenue is peanuts compared to the metric shitload of money they make directly from their customers blowing a grand or more on a phone. I guarantee they prioritize customer satisfaction way, way above MFi revenue.
Plus Apple Watches have always been only charged via conductive, so it’s likely phones could have gone that way too within a short space of time if the lack of a data cable was deemed acceptable.
Even devices that charge with a cable do not need USB-C if they are too small to physically fit a USB-C port. Though at that point they wont fit a Lightning port either but instead some weird exposed charging pins or wireless charging.
I routinely charge my iPhone on a wireless charger. When I'm in a hurry, I plug it in. I don't want that option taken away, wireless is nowhere near fast enough yet.
I’ve also found wireless charging to be inconsistent at best, especially with a case. Half the time I come back and I didn’t place my phone in exactly the right place. Maybe it’s the quality of my chargers, but until I can buy a random charger on Amazon and assume it to be as reliable as an equivalent cable, I don’t think we can give up the cables.(fwiw my current charger is name brand)
This is why the last couple of generations of iPhones have supported "magsafe" charging, so the magnets line things up every time. Amazon has plenty of "magsafe" chargers for iPhones.
To be clear, wireless charging with "magsafe" is still slower than using a cable.
They will "periodically" check if there are better standards. The USB-C will only be fully introduced by 2027. I think it's probable that at least as soon as they're fully introduced we need a new standard.
It's bleak either way. If we don't regulate enough, companies will eat us alive, and if we overregulate, then the government will do the same. We're better off with some kind of balance between these two, and mandating the charging port like this worked out well so far in my opinion, and so, I welcome the upgrade too.
Are standardised wall sockets planned economy?
Charging ports for cars?
This has been a push for more than a decade now and the reason everyone aside from apple converges because of the brussels effect.
From my perspective it has been great.
The alternative isn't just plain competitive designs. It's also anticompetitive practices.
The problem with USB-C is that you can't just pick up a device cable and power brick and expect them to work together. As an example, my Apple 96W USB-C charger doesn't charge my nintendo switch. The cable that came with my phone doesn't charge said fully Mac when used with the 96w charger. There is no indication of incompatibility between these devices until you realise they don't work. This is going back to the dc jack era where you end up with these [0] guys with various tips and dials that all meet the USB-C "standard" for a connector but don't work.
The issue with the Nintendo Switch is that Nintendo designed their own faulty USB-C charging implementation rather than merely using the reference design. It's not a failure of the spec, it's a failure to adhere to the spec.
And how am I supposed to know that when looking at a device that has a USB-C port for charging, and the instructions on the charger [0] say "Nintendo Switch can be charged by plugging the AC adapter into the console's USB Type-C connector."
> New Annex (Part I): It requires that mobiles phones and the similar radio devices, if they are capable to be recharged via wired charging, are equipped with the USB Type-C receptacle and, if they also require charging at voltages higher than 5 volts or currents higher than 3 amperes or powers higher than 15 watts , incorporate the USB Power Delivery charging communication protocol.
Nintendo will have to get its crap together and properly support Power Delivery, the burden is not on you.
Nintendo always does something that's JUST slightly off with their consoles that make them annoying as hell to use.
With the switch it's the screwed up USB-C implementation and the fact that you can't use bluetooth headphones (it has BT support, but only for the controllers)
With the DS, the wifi only supported WEP, not WPA, even though WPA2 had been released by the time the DS came out
The Switch was updated to support BT headphones, with the caveat that you can only have 2 BT controllers simultaneously connected with the headphones, and the controllers can’t be switched while headphones are in.
The reason for the limitation is bandwidth and latency.
Multiple devices on one Bluetooth controller have to timeslice in 4 millisecond (iirc) chunks. Audio devices in a high quality mode consume a substantial amount of the overall bandwidth. It also doesn't matter if your packet consumes the full size of a chunk of not, all of them are equally sized. You'd have to do two audio chunks and one controller chunk * 2 controllers to maintain a 60 Hz sample rate on the controllers.
By trying, returning the device (ouch for the shop), and then complaining to your local enforcer of Radio Equipment Directive (ouch for the manufacturer).
The only comment I could see in the article on that topic is this:
> the EU simply said that "consumers will be provided with clear information on the charging characteristics of new devices, making it easier for them to see whether their existing chargers are compatible.
Which is super disappointing, as the person who wrote TFA clearly didn't read anything other than the press release. The actual supporting documentation is here [0] and says:
> on the packaging or a label, manufacturers would have to
provide information on specifications relating to charging capabilities, in line with annex Ia (amended Article 10(8) RED). This includes a description of the wired chargers' power requirements (the text displayed should read: 'The minimum power delivered by charger shall be equal or higher than [xx] watts') and specifications on charging capabilities ('USB PD fast charging' and an indication of any other supported charging protocols).
Which is still not great - this doesn't cover cables for example, and it doesn't guarantee that it will be printed on the device. Here [1] are apples chargers in the UK - unless they're side by side it's impossible to tell which one of those chargers is which, and even at that unless you know for sure one of the devices is X, its' really quite difficult to tell.
It's worse than that, just because a charger can support 60W doesn't mean it supports every standard combination of volts and amps below that level and just because a device can charge at 60W doesn't mean it uses the same combination of volts and amps your charger supports. I have a 100W charger than can't "fast charge" my phone (USB-C on both ends) because they only overlap capabilities on lower wattages.
It looks like Nintendo would have to fix that in order to comply with the regulations. The bare minimum, if I read it correctly, is to label the port and charger making it clear what their limitations are.
I have a launch-model Switch, and it still has trouble charging even on latest firmware. It's very possible that this is one of the "Mariko" fixes; Nintendo silently released a refresh of the Nintendo Switch before the OLED model was announced, dubbed the Mariko models. These had a number of changes, including but not limited to:
- New, more secure boot sequence
- Updated Nvidia Tegra board
- ~20% better battery life
- Reinforced chassis design
It seems likely that they took the opportunity with Mariko to redesign their charging ICs to be more tolerant. I heartily recommend looking up some of the more subtle differences between the models too, it's really interesting to see how Nintendo updated a mass-market product without anyone really noticing.
Just to make this thread a bit more aggravating, I have two pre-Mariko switches — at least they both have the Nvidia Tegra vulnerability, anyway — and I have yet to see either fail to charge on random USB-C cables and chargers.
As another poster mentioned, however, they will only dock with the OEM charger.
Seems like whatever is happening with the OG switch USB-C implementation it’s not straightforward.
When docking, the Switch specifically wants 15V/2.6A [1]. Any less and it won't dock. There are some third-party vendors which have somehow circumvented this requirement, though [2].
Creating a spec that people don’t want, can’t, or can’t afford to adhere is a failure.
I don’t recall ever seeing prior USB devices fail at adherence.
The problem is that USB C is a massive spec with a lot of things that aren’t always needed in it (display, pd, high data speeds etc). You can either design your product to implement a lot more things (eg Macs) or skimp out and cause confusion (Switch). By breaking the standard, people effectively have to buy your charger or cables to know it’ll work. If I have to either buy a high end product or buy cables and chargers only from the original brand, we aren’t really any better off with this.
>I don’t recall ever seeing prior USB devices fail at adherence.
Really? You've never seen a power only micro-usb cable (missing 2 bus lines)? I have dozens from all types of devices that use USB as a charging only connector.
This has been a problem with every USB iteration (hard to have the U in USB if you aren't able to handle a wide variety of applications), but I vastly prefer it to the early 00s when you might have 5 different cables to each "specialty" application.
Or maybe Nintendo just decided that they didn't care. I really don't see how any technical specification could be expected to physically prevent everyone in the world from deliberately implementing it partially or incorrectly. I don't doubt that USB-C might be technically complicated and confusing compared to alternatives and predecessors, but I find it very difficult to believe that Nintendo engineering gave it their best shot and simply couldn't manage to do it correctly.
> I find it very difficult to believe that Nintendo engineering gave it their best shot and simply couldn't manage to do it correctly.
I'm sure that's not it. I'm sure it was
"Hey product manager. We can launch in 6 weeks if this port accepts power and connects to a dock, or 36 weeks if we need to conform to standards in section 17, subsection 5 part 41.2B of standard 1120 on European code B7"
"what does <standards> get us"
"Nothing, we don't need those features. Also it'll add $25 to the bill of materials"
"ignore it then, we want to launch sooner and increase our margin."
Perhaps so, but how is that something you can blame the spec for? Any remotely non-trivial spec will be easier to implement partially than to implement completely.
Maybe the spec should be more “trivial”. I like USB C over something like micro usb but micro usb is easy enough to use as a power source in my high school electronics class but i don’t think usb c would be.
Maybe apple had it right originally to have “thunderbolt” as a super powerful all-in-one cable (except add power) and we needed a simple “reversible micro usb” for everything else.
Sure we are, if they don't conform to the spec then they can't get a CE mark; which then means it can't be sold in the EU and the device misses out on a 350~400M person market.
It may not be fully compliant to the spec but it does always charge in my experience. It will charge eventually from most any usb-c charger, including Apple's. But, a docked switch requires 15V and not all chargers will provide it, or maybe they just don't provide it to the off-spec switch. Similar story with the HDMI output of the dock. It took a bit of research to buy a charger and HDMI adapter that work with both my switch and macbook, but it was possible and it's nice for travel.
It's even funnier that. Even your charger have 15v. The dock something failed the handshake and require you to unplug and plug again to trigger the 15v. I think the switch is just not spec compliant. That shouldn't happen on a device that implement the spec properly.
It's still not a great spec if it's so complex that you can screw it up. I understand the complexity for data, but for power I wish it was as simple as power & ground wires and that's it.
Compare that with USB-A where even cheap Chinese cables from the lowest bidder usually work (work well enough at least - you might get voltage drop but it will still charge if you leave it on long enough) because the spec is so simple that even the worst manufacturers manage to do a good enough job, and it's something you can trivially DIY if you need to.
Now compare that with USB-C. So many moving parts that can go wrong and so much corners that can be cut by unscrupulous manufacturers. Not to mention that even the most expensive devices (Apple) don't give you any visibility on what type of cable/charger/etc you have even though that information is technically available to the device (that's how it negotiates power delivery) which is extremely confusing even to tech-savvy people.
>It's still not a great spec if it's so complex that you can screw it up.
People and companies can screw thing up royally regardless of spec complexity when there's no review/oversight involved. That's not a valid argument.
If you want to force and check adherence to a spec you need to involve certification authorities (TÜV, SGS, UL, etc.) but then widget prices would increase dramatically.
Edit: to address the child comments below: who gets to be the judge of the complexity of the spec? If Nintendo fucked it up but some EE students can get it right through side projects on github, does that make the spec complex or does that make Nintendo incompetent (lacks a HW review/qualification process)?
The spec could be as simple as "white wire goes to positive terminal, black wire goes to negative terminal" and there's still the chance of an implementation fuckup in the design pipeline, especially in large projects/companies with distributed siloed teams like Nintendo due to poor internal communication, if there is no proper internal review/qualification process in the design loop.
Edit 2: I looked at the USB-C charging specs and they're easy enough to understand for any graduate EE and for any company who's had some basic experience with USB as a whole, let alone 100 year old multi-billion HW conglomerates like Nintendo.
IMHO, Nintendo's USB-C charging fuckup is 100% on them. I wish people would stop needlessly defending them here.
Edit 3: Also, what if Nintendo intentionally chose not to follow the spec in order to force the users to use and buy only original parts from them? Either way, incompetence or malice, you really can't blame the spec here.
Just pick a couple of those USB-C docks on the market and check how many are actually working for you. I used over 10 different USB-C docks from different vendors. It doesn't matter which vendor, they all have various issues. They might be perfectly fine for some machines but lots lots of troubles for some other machines which are also perfectly fine with some of the other docks. I have never seen something worse than that.
>Just pick a couple of those USB-C docks on the market and check how many are actually working for you.
1) How is it the spec's fault that random OEMs go to extreme cost cutting measures in order to price dump themselves to the bottom by not following the spec? Of course they won't work properly.
But again, for the 100th time, that's not the specs fault that manufacturers actively choose to ignore it.
If a driver chooses to knowingly run a red light, is it automatically the fault of the spec (the highway code) ?
2) You're moving the goalposts. We are talking about USB-C charging spec here that's super easy to follow, and Nintendo didn't, not USB-C docs with display-port and other fluff. So this dock example doesn't apply to Nintendos' refusal to follow the charging spec.
Well, if a spec has no validation procedure, compatibility enforcement or certification, what’s even the point? If the switch isn’t actually working as intended they shouldn’t be allowed to call it usb-c. There should be some minimum mandatory requirements. I haven’t studied these spec, but if there exists a min spec to qualify to call yourself USB and the switch case isn’t covered, OR, there’s no minimum spec, it IS the spec’s fault.
>Well, if a spec has no validation procedure, compatibility enforcement or certification, what’s even the point?
What is the point of anything then? Most pieces of tech we take for granted are an unregulated bundle of specs that more or less work together with one another most of the time well enough to be valued at several trillions and be in every household.
If you want to regulate and certify every USB-C cable in your household then increase prices would stop the adoption of any such tech and you would then complain about the costs and over-regulation.
The EU is already regulating USB-C into place. How much more regulation do you want?
Let's not let 'perfect' be the enemy of 'good'. Remember 20 years ago when every phone and electronic widget in your house came with its own proprietary cable and proprietary interface and included CD with proprietary Windows-only software to work? Yeah! Lost the original cable/dock with the proprietary 20-pin connector? Good luck with that mate.
Yes, USB-C still has teething problems due to manufacturers cutting costs and fighting tooth and nail against standardization so they can keep their walled garden rent seeking models of the past (remember Sony shoving their proprietary Memory-Stick everywhere despite SD cards having won?), but despite these issues, we've never had it so good in terms of cross-compatibility as we have it today and this push for USB-C everything is a step in the right direction.
The USB consortium seemingly refuses to do anything that would hamper adoption, even if it's bad for consumers. They could make a list of icons that products can put on if they support. So a cable that supports 15W charging would indicate it with a little icon on the product or packaging. Then mandate a testing procedure, where failure to follow it or lying about the results is trademark infringement.
Some vendors now let the USB-IF compliance test most products (Amazon Basics, Apple), but no consumer cares. Even amongst the ones which do certify their product, no one uses the logo.
Looks this isn’t that complicated, what people want is the ability to know that I all conforming USB-C cables are identical and can be interchanged freely. I don’t give two shits about the devices at the ends not being able to negotiate or different power bricks charging faster or slower.
Power and ground wires alone don't cut it sadly when you're dealing with much higher wattages. There needs to be a level of negotiation between the host and the charger to decide on a specific power (current & voltage) that both can support.
In USB-A this was accomplished through a hodge-podge of different resistances applied across data lines, not officially part of the standard but just done by manufacturers. USB-C is a huge improvement on this.
I do agree however that the cable-labelling situation is awful. Maybe some kinda tier system could help. Every charger, cable and device could have a class. The charging rate is the lowest of the three. E.g. a "Class 5 cable will charge up to 200 watts and has a pink end". If you pair that with a Class 2 charger (say, 50 watts) and a class 3 laptop (100 watts) you'll be limited to charging your laptop at 50 watts.
USB-C is infamous for being complex like that, but I think the charging part is basically fine? People talk about the Nintendo Switch often, but I have never heard any _other_ example of something where the charging didn't work, so I think maybe it's a rare exception.
(This is distinct from the "fast charging" mode(s?), which does seem to have compatibility problems. But in that case, the failure mode is that device charges slowly, which is probably not a big issue for the kind of small phones/gadgets that the EU regulation targets. The previous standard was micro-USB, which can't do fast-charging anyway.)
> I understand the complexity for data, but for power I wish it was as simple as power & ground wires and that's it.
The minimum requirements are that you have to support the USB 2.0 protocol:
> While BC1.2 is still supported over USB Type-C because it depends on the USB2.0 lane, a significantly simplified and higher power current capability mechanism is also implemented. This simplified approach involves resistor pull-down/ pull-up relationships. These pull-down/pull-up resistors are connected to the CC wire and the upstream facing port (UFP) must monitor the voltage on the CC1 and CC2 pins in order to detect the current sourcing capability of the down- stream facing port (DFP) it is connected to. This is a substantial improvement over the complicated handshake mech- anisms involved with USB BC1.2.
> The basic USB Type-C current capabilities are Default USB (500mA for USB2.0 and 900mA for USB3.0), 1.5A@5V, and 3A@5V.
I wanted to get a trimmer with USB-C. Unfortunately, all that I found would not allow c-to-c charging. Only charging from A. The 'A' basically allows a 'hot wire' type charge to go through for power. C-only charging requires negotiation. There's no way to tell up front that the charging is limited like this and manufacturers don't want to highlight it.
You can build your own cable by buying a "USB-C trigger" (as they're called on eBay), it's a board with a USB-C port and a power delivery controller chip that's preconfigured for the specified voltage.
Do you have any reason to believe that they "screwed up" due to a spec being complex, over much more likely explanations like.. they simply didn't want to follow the spec?
My point is that I don't like USB-C because it tries to do everything and manufacturer must implement that "everything" properly which adds cost & frustration.
Compare USB-C power delivery and the 12-pin cable & connector with USB-A's 4 pins and a resistor on the data lines to communicate allowed current draw, or even a barrel jack with the standard 19V ~3A PSU and no negotiation at all. Which one is the easiest to build (hint: one is easy enough to DIY) and which one is more reliable?
It's obviously the failure of the spec. Why cables with different capabilities have to look exactly the same? Put the looking aside, I wondering if anyone can tell what's the exact differences between different specs? USB standards are already a mass, USB-C just made things 10 times if not 100 times worse.
Not sure about Nintendo, but my macbook charger is charging perfectly fine my (Android) smartphone, and I don't even take my Android charger when traveling (charging at decent pace but unfortunately not in "very fast" mode). Either way, this is quite ironic in regard to the so-called Apple ecosystem and iPhone users still having to carry their own charger in 2022
Well, no, doesn't apple make 1/3 of their money on cables and dongles? that's like the whole point. It's not some sticky customer issue that they just can't work out, it's clearly a straight profit decision and the customer comes last in that matrix.
Honestly I think we need different ports. My laptop can already draw more power than the charger that came with it can provide, it's insulting for it to pretend it is charging when I plug a 5w a to c charger into it.
Enforcing USB pd as a standard would be another acceptable one.
> There is no indication of incompatibility between these devices
That's not quite correct. The Nintendo Switch and the Switch Dock works with some Macbook chargers, and all you need to do is read the small print on the devices.
The Macbook chargers list the supported voltages & currents on the outside (in very small light grey text, but it is there), and the Switch has the supported voltages and required currents printed on the back. It's confusing because the Switch Dock needs a different voltage & current than just the Switch itself, but if you read the fine print on the devices you can see if they are compatible.
"not as fast as it can go" is selling it short. I have an old 5w usb charger that I found in my drawer and plugged an A to C charger from it into my 2016 MacBook Pro, and it "worked" by some definition of worked - the laptop thinks it's charging, however it's 19x below what the charger that came with the device outputs, so it's clearly not fit for purpose.
Then at least one isn't USB-C? Or the spec isn't good enough?
The regulation (I hope) is about actually adhering to USB-C, not merely shipping with USB-C connectors. And the bar to pass should be to be able to use a large stack of USB-C chargers and work.
I have the same issue with my Wahoo Elemnt Bolt v2. It has USB-C charger, but doesn't work with Apple's USB-C cable or my M1 30W brick. I need to use the cable that came with the Bolt (amusing is USB-A -> USB-C).
It's a mess. Using a lower wattage charger (apple or other brand) won't charge a Macbook. If the battery is flat, it won't do anything to it, no sound, no light, macbook looking dead. But if the Macbook is booted up, the same charger can provide enough power to keep it charged forever.
>you can't just pick up a device cable and power brick and expect them to work together
I never understood this sentiment. That would be even more true if USB-C wasn't the standard so I don't really understand the complaint. Obviously "same shape" isn't an indicator that it will "just work" for USB-C, so why would we expect that to be the case for anything else with modern complexity?
It would be nice if fits == works but that's just not a world we live in, USB-C or not.
Because USB has always been, "if it fits, it works (possibly with a driver)". Maybe not explicitly, but it was widely understood to be that. USB-C, OTOH, with all its modes and whatnot, make it so I can't tell what my device supports, and a driver installer won't fix it.
Basically, things that require extra ICs are now being shoved into "one connector for all" thing with no way of telling them apart.
No, that was already not the case with USB 3 devices not working when plugged in a USB 1 slot.
Not made easy when some computer or hub have both USB 3 and USB 1 port on the same machine and you must remember the color code.
I recall that one time when I tried to configure the bios of a computer and the keyboard wouldn't work in the bios because it was connected to the "wrong" usb port that was not powered in that stage of the boot
USB charging usually works unless you care about max watts. Apple chargers would be different based on the brick. Lots of barrel chargers were not compatible.
There's no cable that has lightning on both ends; the 5V configuration has USB-A on the power supply side. My point is just that that lightning connector isn't limited to 5V.
USB-A has been with us for over 20 years. It's only disappearing because of USB-C, and USB-C seems to have room to grow. I wouldn't be surprised if it will still be the most popular connector in 2035, and not just because "legislation stops innovation".
Making sure there are no weird exceptions to a very good port is reasonable and good.
It does stop innovation in things like lightning and MagSafe. And it doesn’t fix the multiple charger issue either, because so many manufacturers don’t adhere to the USB-C standard that any combination of charger + cable + device has an unreasonably non-zero chance of not working or even damaging the device.
So in the end we still have to have multiple chargers, but now we can roll the dice on which one works with or damages which device because they all use the same connector.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'unreasonably non-zero', but I've been sharing chargers between Macbook, XPS 13 and Thinkpad with no concern, + a charger from amazon.
Some charger are less powerful than others, so charge is not always as quick, but in real life it does not matter : it's still charging fast enough in any combination, and for the last year the only reason I have multiple chargers is to have one at home and one at work, but any laptop works well on all chargers.
By the way, it’s been talked on HN a lot when USB c comes up, it you shouldn’t use those magnetic cables. The “magnetic disconnect” motion can cause arcing and static electricity that can theoretically damage the thing they’re plugged into. Especially if you leave the exposed pins on the device as you use it unplugged.
There's communication between the device and the power brick. When the communication stops the power stops being delivered. Not sure how Apple is doing that these days with the MagSafe USB-C they have introduced on their laptops since you can plug the other end into any and all USB-C capable chargers.
I don't think an adapter is the kind of innovation HN users are looking for.
I've fried at least one USB-C device, a high-end wireless headset, seemingly by connecting it to a name-brand USB-C charger that had some kind of incompatibility with the headset.
Plus, even among Apple chargers, some USB-C chargers will support fast charging, and some won't, regardless of their rated wattage. Plus some will and will not support fast charging via a wireless charger (either a MagSafe wireless charger or an Apple Watch charger). There are a lot of charging incompatibilities in the current state of USB-C, even among devices from a single manufacturer.
I have seen it in some forums as well, but do you have any explanation links about why that may be ?
I have trouble finding relevant information that is not some random dude on a forum speaking very confidently one way or another without much data to back it up, and I don't see why that would cause any harm other than charging more slowly, eventually to the point of discharging if you consume a lot of power (which is a pretty tolerable downside).
> that any combination of charger + cable + device has an unreasonably non-zero chance of not working
These issues have evaporated for me in the past couple of years. The only devices that I have in use that are still finicky are Nintendo Switch, and it's my understanding that newer models have fixed these problems, too.
My only complaints are that I wish my MBP would draw 10W from non-PD USB, instead of 5W (not really a USB-C problem), and my kids' laptops that have USB-C ports but don't support USB-PD and only charge from coaxial power adapters.
Apple can keep selling laptops with MagSafe because they are also capable of charging via the USB-C ports. Same with phones, they can add whatever wireless charging technology they want, it's the wired charging port that is required to be USB-C.
> So in the end we still have to have multiple chargers, but now we can roll the dice on which one works with or damages which device because they all use the same connector.
Doesn't really matter. Just charge with any charger that's USB-C compatible. If it breaks the machine just RMA it. It didn't adhere to the spec so file a complain to the EU commission in charge of these charging standards as well.
Wait what was the point again? Ohh E-Waste reduction.
I have an old Blackberry charger that has the cord attached, and I'm pretty sure I also have some old Samsung charger that's the same. But they're clearly quite rare.
This almost certainly prompts a USB-C iPhone followed by a portless one. (I don’t think they’re thin enough yet for USB-C to be structurally compromising.) In the box will either be no charger or a wireless charger with a USB-C port, thereby technically meeting the requirement.
Your chargers are USB-A, and you can make them usable with an A-to-C cable.
There are no chargers with micro-USB output port (USB never specified such thing). Micro-USB has been designed to make cables essentially disposable (and not meant to be hardwired into any device), because the more robust side of the connector is in the device's port, and the fragile side is in the cable.
> Micro-USB has been designed to make cables essentially disposable [..], because the more robust side of the connector is in the device's port, and the fragile side is in the cable.
In my experience, this wasn't true. I had both a tablet and a phone that had the charging port fail. If I didn't apply a constant sideways force on the cable, it wouldn't charge. Tried other cables to make sure it wasn't a bad cable, but still had the same problem.
> There are no chargers with micro-USB output port (USB never specified such thing
I have several chargers with a brick and a permanently attached micro-USB cable that came with devices. One from Samsung; a couple from Grandcentral; a few for Raspberry Pis.
I wouldn't stand on the hill of this is obsolete tech, there should be more devices built with power efficiency from the ground up as well as less focus on the USBC charges your phone faster. This is more about usbc will charge every device you have in a few years so no reaching for custom chargers. Usbc->X cables however are another matter nothing is stopping HP making a custom usbc->HP port for their laptops for instance
Great until you have some "sales rep" in a supermarket dealing with a Karen who's device won't charge fast enough off a 10W USBC charger that fundamentally isn't the same as a 60W one.
Yeah, but now there are the bonus points for a "fastish" USB-A charger (QC something, that puts out ~20W) which won't do anything to a laptop that requires "PD", even though the 20W would be enough to at least slowly charge the battery while off.
Legacy fast charging was always a mess of competing proprietary standards. A charger adhering to one standard (e.g. Samsung AFC or Oppo VOOC) wouldn't fast charge a phone using a different standard (e.g. Qualcomm QC or Apple 2.4A).
Kind of is new when all of the specs rely on cable capability and not all manufacturers label different cables differently. The spec for what it is, is a mess, but it's a nice, nay, highly desirable form factor.
I see a lot of negativity and nitpicking in the comments, and I for one welcome the idea. Wired charging is a mature technology, USB-C is extensible enough, and most manufacturers have already adopted it as a de facto standard. Only Apple seems to be reluctant, and only on their cellphones and perhaps some of their headphones.
The whole discussion reminds me a bit of the similar move the EU did back in 2009: Introduce a (voluntary) common external power supply (Micro-USB).
Now, I feel the same arguments are brought in again.
1) Hinders innovation
2) Lock on a single technology
3) Creates trash by soon obsolete "deprecated" connector types
My bet: 2024 (!) onwards, nearly nobody will be affected by the "downsides".
Alternative history: EU actually makes micro-B mandatory back in 2009, and as a result USB-C never gained traction because all phones were forced by law to use micro-B.
The regulation as written specifically accounts for advancements in standards and includes options to switch to a new mandatory port over a period of years. It also specifically mentions USB-IF as an organization to work with for such future standards.
Safe to say we would probably have standardized on USB-C even sooner had they passed this law for micro-B in 2009.
I want to like this, but I charge my iPhone with a cable that has lightning on one end and USB-C on the other, and I know from extensive direct experience that the lightning end is the better physical design.
Supporting this is tantamount to believing that there will never need to be a USB-D that improves upon USB-C, and I just can’t believe that.
My 6 year-old iPhone that I plug and unplug a bunch of times a day still keeps the plugs in very snuggly. They basically don't move. And I've pulled on the connector many, many times, by stepping on the cord and pulling the phone up.
Contrast this with my 2 month-old laptop in which the usb-c cables move around, even though it spends 90% on the time plugged in.
---
Edit: I did have connection issues at one point, but it was due to pocket lint that had accumulated inside the port. It was easily removable with a toothpick, and the connector went back to working like new.
Any technological developments in wired charging can be reflected in a timely adjustment of technical requirements/ specific standards under the Radio Equipment Directive. This would ensure that the technology used is not outdated.
At the same time, the implementation of any new standards in further revisions of Radio Equipment Directive would need to be developed in a harmonised manner, respecting the objectives of full interoperability. Industry is therefore expected to continue the work already undertaken on the standardised interface, led by the USB-IF organisation, in view of developing new interoperable, open and non-controversial solutions.
If there's a better standard in the future the law can be changed, they didn't put this in the constitution.
I've never had a phone with USB-C to compare, but I've had rotten luck with Lightning. I always get that one power pin that blackens and makes the cable unreliable.
Yeah, me too. Or even though the cable is supposed to be reversible and yet my phone will only charge if the cable is inserted one way, but not the other. I've had that happen a lot too!
I'm just glad USB-C has come along so we didn't do something foolish like standardize on Micro USB - I hate those ports! I recently bought two brand-new BT speakers and guess how they're charged? Micro USB! Grrrrrrr!!!
> If there's a better standard in the future the law can be changed, they didn't put this in the constitution.
Who will build the spec and research and then lobby Europe to change the law when no device uses it? The marketing of saying “this new spec is better… throw out EVERYTHING” won’t happen.
What will happen is that the hot mess of a market that is the Asian market will grow and change and develop… and throw out cables. And it’ll get better over time while the availability in Europe stagnates.
PS you can clean the blackened pin so it works again.
>Who will build the spec and research and then lobby Europe to change the law when no device uses it? The marketing of saying “this new spec is better… throw out EVERYTHING” won’t happen.
Except that's basically what happened with USB-C. Micro-B was the standard for the EU, USB-C was developed and got approved, and now it's replacing micro-b as the standard.
USB-C was developed partly because lightning should how much better a reversible multipurpose cable could be. The argument is that without the ability for one player to innovate with a new port we not have the same quality of USB-C port we have now.
The only way I see there being a need to evolve from USB-C is if we see some major developments in optical (cost/size)
The EU seems perfectly willing to adopt new standards if you look at what has been happening in mobile standards (e.g. despite 3G being standardized we got 4G, despite 4G being standardized we got 5G)
3G/4G/5G isn't a good example. Standards evolve, but the issue many people have is that this isn't a standard, but a mandate to use said standard. So people are concerned that the USB Consortium will come up with a USB-D, but new devices won't be able to use it until the EU updates their law.
The previous standard was Micro-USB (that's why you still see it on dashcams, standalone GPSes, drawing tablets and other devices) and yet, USB-C came to exist.
> I know from extensive direct experience that the lightning end is the better physical design.
What's so great about it? USB-C is just as easy to plug in and these cables usually last longer. The only difference for me is that Lightning eventually ends up with black pins and I have to buy another cable.
Also, is it really worth the few technical advantages if the alternative is a good-enough plug that works with absolutely everything?
What's interesting is that nearly all of my recent electronics purchases have used USB-C.
Headphones, thermal printer, neck-cooler, rechargable screwdriver - all USB-C.
What's weird are the few things which don't. Amazon Alexa use a barrel charger. Brand new HP printer has the old square style USB plug. Pulse Oximeter user micro-USB.
So C is certainly getting there. Appearing in cheap and expensive products. And, I'm happy to say, works well. Just needs a few laggards to update!
>> What's interesting is that nearly all of my recent electronics purchases have used USB-C.
I've started noticing this recently. It's taken longer than I thought but the only devices remaining I have that I need to search for cables for are my iPhone/Apple Watch/old iPod. Everything else, including laptops, I usually have a USB-C charger already plugged in and ready to go no matter what room I'm in.
It makes sense that there should be a standard for this, just like we do (although it varies by country) for our plugs.
I usually try to buy devices with detachable IEC 60320[1] mains cable. So when I move to a different country I only need to change the cables and not the devices.
The "old square style USB plug" is USB-B. It's the counterpart of USB-A, the ubiquitous microUSB-B connector is meant to be a tiny version of it (there's also miniUSB-B, which now is mostly dead, and mini and micro A, which no one ever used).
USB-C for laptop power ports seems to be incredibly flaky. :-( Let me share my ongoing horror story (excuse the verbosity):
I've got a barely 3-months old Lenovo X1 Carbon (Gen-9) work laptop. A week ago I noticed the battery draining while the power cord is plugged in! Nothing worked: reset via the pinhole at the back, trying out different chargers, BIOS update, charging while the OS (Linux) is shut down, "to eliminate 'rogue' applications". The battery just doesn't charge.
We've got premium support, so a Lenovo technician came two days later and replaced the motherboard. Great! The root cause: USB-C power port got short-circuited somehow. "This is a common problem with USB-C for power ports; I go around replacing 2 motherboards a week," the technician said.
Now, the laptop's new motherboard worked fine for a week ... and I woke up this morning to notice the laptop's battery not charging at all (yes, again!), while the power cord is plugged in. I call up Lenovo, and the support guy confirms: "the power port seems to be short-circuited again, this time let's replace both the motherboard and also the power adapter". FFS, tomorrow morning I have long-distance travel, and I'm left with this bloody brick. Speak of timing.
I want to think this is just plain bad luck, but the Lenovo support forums are full of similar problems, and two other colleagues independently confirmed the same issue. The Lenovo technician blamed this on USB-C. I wish they retained the more robust rectangular power port; but they're phasing them out to comply with EU regulation.
It seems that USB-C for _Lenovo_ laptop power ports seems to be incredibly flaky. I have 2 year-old HP Spectre x360 and a new Framework and I've had no problems with charging either of them from a number of different USB-C cables, wall adapters, and even a power delivery monitor (Dell U2520D).
My wife's Lenovo ultrabook (although an AMD one) has USB-C charging and we haven't noticed any problem for about 4 years now. Her phone phone is also USB-C. No visible problems there, too.
I thought so too, that this may be Lenovo-specific. But the Lenovo technician claimed: "this is not Lenovo-specific, it happens with other laptops too". I just naively took his word. Good to know that it works reliably with other vendors.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem with laptop USB-C chargers. It may happen with other laptops but it’s hard to estimate how big of a problem it is.
To me, the ideal solution is something that Apple had for ages, and now them and Microsoft both have. Magsafe. Use a nice, robust, safe laptop charger for most of your workdays, when things are routine and you have control over the environment. Then, if you're going to travel, and need to be ultralight, you carry your GaN compact, high-power travel power adapter with USB-C so you have one charger and one cable for all the things. I don't see why we have to give up magsafe for USB-C when we can have both.
> "this time let's replace both the motherboard and also the power adapter" [...]
> I want to think this is just plain bad luck, but the Lenovo support forums are full of similar problems, and two other colleagues independently confirmed the same issue
Oh no, I have to confirm this too. Had the same issue with my X1 Carbon Gen-9.
They replaced the motherboard (and hopefully the power adapter). At least so far it's
still working after a few months since repair.
> and I'm left with this bloody brick
Did you know you can charge (or at least power) the laptop via the other usb port, next to the power port? I was afraid to try that out by myself but their support asked me if I can do so and it worked.
I would not blame entire global USB-C standard for issues of one manufacturer.
Ie I have company HP laptop with USB-C charging, something aluminium 'elite', tiny and quite powerful for my needs (not in same room as me now). It works like charm, and since its not mine I treat it relatively very badly (no concern for any kind of protection, travelling on vacations full of sand like right now, its laying on the floor so kids play with it, bang on it, I sometimes roll with chair over it etc).
since its a solid 65w charger it charges my laptop, my phone, wife's phone, our powerbank, our headlamps, my vaporizer, both our wireless buds, gopro, camera, and probably some other stuff. The only stuff it doesnt works on... micro-usb.
Its really magical, the simplifying life a bit when usual (annoying) trend is of growing complexity. For once, thank you EU.
> Did you know you can charge the laptop via the other usb port, next to the power port?
I knew, but would you believe: with the new motherboard, even that other USB-C port is bricked, it doesn't charge the battery either. :-( Speak of one-two punch.
Thanks for confirming the original issue. I've been a Lenovo user for 13 years, mostly trouble-free, but this nuisance is incredibly untimely. I've already put in a request for a new replacement laptop when I'm back in 3-ish weeks.
I have the same problem after a year or so with my Xiaomi Redmi Note phones (7 and 10). In the end it is sometimes easier to charge with a USB-A to USB-C cable, because USB-PD signalling easily breaks if the connector is worn out. I do not understand why we need more than 2 lines to charge.
I also have a Lenovo X395 laptop this one has the problem that the USB-C socket is not deep enough to snap in. I am hoping it will die before the end of warranty. Because if not, it will die a week after.
At least we can keep the chargers as all our devices will die early because we cannot charge them anymore
Yep. If there's no port protection IC (and even then it might not catch it), if you unplug the USB-C connector you can potentially get 20V+ on the data lines. Goodbye data lines.
2024? There's still plenty of time for them to remove the port altogether and go with just MagSafe/Qi. Which they control, and they still can get fees from.
Trust me when I say that Apple will NEVER submit to this legislation, they will find every sort of obscure or arcane tricks to comply with it without actually doing it. It would set a precedent that legislating can change Apple's behaviour, which they clearly do not want to give. If they show the EU Parliament it's pointless to go after them, maybe they will not try to dismantle their monopoly on the App Store, which is clearly the next thing they will go after this.
They already use USB-C in the iPad line. What I imagine as the most likely outcome is keeping USB-C as an option for charging (as it already is - you don't need to use MagSafe for charging any supported) and offering USB-C and/or wireless-only charging on phones. Being wireless-only on phones makes a lot of sense for ruggedness - a completely sealed iPhone could be easily used underwater.
In Europe, and this is well known, companies must comply with the intent of the law, especially on something related to customers and compatibility. This is very very different from the US legal system, which can be tricked “ad nauseam”.
Apple may well do what they please but there will be fines, and even prohibition of sales. Because the EU “knows” that it can be done without much burden and “sees” it as a benefit for the citizens. I agree in this case on both things.
This is a nice fantasy and all, but how did that whole "In Europe [...] companies must comply with the intent of the law" work out for GDPR?
As far as I am aware, all the big tech companies that were used as the primary reason for creating GDPR are still doing the exact same things (that people were upset about) they were doing back then (just in a legally compliant™ way now according to "the intent of the law").
Not trying to take a dig at GDPR with this, it definitely made some tech companies to make some small concessions, like being able to export your data easier. But it would be difficult to argue that companies comply with GDPR according to the intent of the law, and not according to the letter of the law instead.
I mean, "in EU, law interpretation tends to follow the intent of the law when it comes to hardware, but it tends to follow the letter of the law when it comes to software" feels like an extremely strange and unrealistic statement. Both software and hardware are tightly related areas (i.e., tech), and I cannot imagine why the baseline of the law interpretation would be radically opposite.
If it's going down to a pettiness war, I don't think the legislators will give up that easily.
Apple reacting in a petty way not only shows that the legislators were right on the money (while adapting shows they were forced, whether for good or bad) but gives them even more reason to push the buttons further.
Digital Markets Act is definitely getting more fuel and attention after Apple's petty response to ACM's complaints in the Netherlands. [1]
I think GP's point is that you almost never win when you go against regulators head-on. Ultimately, they're the ones who have the guns (i.e control imports, exports, and enforcement). Now that it got to this point, Apple will yield if it wants to continue profiting off those markets.
I do agree that legislating technology this way is a big mistake on EU's part. This is basically South Korea's ActiveX law all over again, and like South Korea, the EU will eventually be left behind.
Apple and Google won when EU countries tried the centralized covid control tracing, and they both went "you're not going to get this". Some countries were furious, yelled they're going to force Apple, that the EU is going to force Apple, yadda yadda.
Nothing prevailed. Apple and Google dictated the API and the EU countries submitted, because they did not have time to enforce their will.
It is not Apple's, Google's, or America's fault that the EU has become so little innovative, rather hostile towards software developers and entrepreneurs, that they have no power in the digital world. And for the EU it is easier to blame american companies, instead of admitting failure and working towards creating an more enterprise-friendly hub in Europe.
I mean, as others have noted, why isn't the EU regulating the other side of the connector? Why are there 3+ power plugs in the EU? Shouldn't this be regulated first, if the EU's argument of reducing electronic waste be considered? No, those aren't created by american companies.
I'm sick of the EU, its constant attempts to circumvent privacy (such as the current legislation of ending end to end encryption for chats), while obviously lacking in the democracy department (why is the comission not elected?).
- We already have reliable rumors that next-next iPhone (not this Sept, but next) will have USB-C port.
- Qi is not a standard they control like Lightning either way.
- Portless phone would be very unpopular (no fast charging), USB-C would be very popular. Apple would not choose to be unpopular just to watch the world hate them.
Apple dropped the headphone port, despite wireless headphones still not being as good as wired (IMHO). This shows that they are perfectly willing to do that which is unpopular.
> - Portless phone would be very unpopular (no fast charging), USB-C would be very popular. Apple would not choose to be unpopular just to watch the world hate them.
The same Apple which removed headphone jack so they can sell more dongles and wireless headphones?
I can see them making portless phone just out of pure spite (maybe having cheaper version with port and not selling that in EU).
The headphone jack did take up a considerable amount of space and made waterproofing quite a bit harder. It't not like it was not a well-considered tradeoff. Companies don't work based on spite, but based on profit.
The existence of waterproof Samsung phones of the same thickness seems to disprove this line for me; it’s not a coincidence that AirPods were released at the same time. Removing the headphone jack and was at least in part about the upsell to wireless headphones apple also makes.
> I can see them making portless phone just out of pure spite (maybe having cheaper version with port and not selling that in EU).
What kind of mindset is this? Sometimes Apple prefers aesthetics over practicality, but they are not a spiteful company (unless you are Nvidia), particularly when it hurts customers.
Basically what I'm assuming is that Apple will adopt USB-C on the iPhone Pro models (since they need faster file transfer for the huge 4K ProRes video files anyway, and they were happy to adopt USB-C on the iPad "Pro" models early) and drop the ports completely on the non-Pro models.
I wonder if they'll do that with all their "Pro" stuff. Like, would the AirPods be Qi-only or Lightning+Qi-only, with USB-C reserved for AirPods Pro? Or would they go USB-C across the board? Or does Apple imagine a world in which their ideal "Pro" customer, with their iPad Pro, iPhone Pro, MacBook Pro and AirPods Pro, keeps around a Lightning charger for only their earbuds while literally everything else uses USB-C?
IMO, the only clean solution here is to go with USB-C across the board. But I also have no faith that will happen.
They already use USB-C on macs and iPads. The only practical reason for Lightning to survive is existing iPhone accessories. It could have been on the way out even before this. Not sure the fight is worth picking.
> The only practical reason for Lightning to survive is existing iPhone accessories
Do you have any vague idea how much money Apple makes from Lightning accessories? Every single thing that wants to use Lightning has to pay an Apple tax, and go through an incredibly cumbersome and expensive certification process. Letting that slip away from Apple's control means they lose a bit of control on their walled garden.
Meanwhile, MagSafe is also an environment for accessories they can control, and they can use as a way to extort fees from accessory developers. Apple has only one goal in mind - their margins. Everything they do must be seen in function of that. It's clear Apple is going to remove every single port from the iPhone, they only have to find how.
1. Macs have always had standard ports, such as USB-A and FireWire, and Lightning basically is never used in a master configuration anyway, so it would make no sense to put it on a Mac
2. iPads have just a tiny share of the overall market of iDevices, and they only put USB-C on the most expensive models with the selling point that the port could now be used also in a master configuration, and not only as a slave (and it's advertised as such on their website).
1. Not to get too pedantic, I hope, but Macs have certainly not "always" had standard ports -- before USB, mice and keyboards used ADB! In fact, Apple were fairly early adopters of USB, and arguably helped make it a de facto standard for desktop peripherals.
Firewire was also a technical standard but never became widespread; if I recall, it was Apple's attempt to push against the converging industry standards with what they saw as a technically superior solution. But only Apple and Sony ever bet on Firewire in a big way.
If Lightning is never used in a master configuration, how come you can use it to plug headphone into an iPhone? It wouldn't have made "no sense" to put Lightning connectors on Macs (although I definitely agree it wouldn't have been wise and I'm glad they didn't).
MagSafe is another non-standard Mac thing -- which was replaced with USB-C and then came back again, very unusually for Apple.
So, they certainly haven't always have standard ports, and Apple have not always been consistent.
2. You don't need USB-C to have your device act as a host, whatever the marketing material might say. USB On-The-Go has been around for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_On-The-Go The advantage of USB-C is that it gives you access to a wider market of third-party peripherals -- I'd say Apple saw the way the wind was blowing, and decided to sacrifice the control and fat margins you mentioned in favour of a better overall product.
Apple has only one goal in mind - their margins. Everything they do must be seen in function of that. It's clear Apple is going to remove every single port from the iPhone, they only have to find how.
I agree that they love a fat margin, and feel entitled to it, but I don't think that's quite the full story. Maybe I'm buying too much into the reality distortion field, but I think they genuinely believe they make better products due to their unique approach. That involves exercising strict control where they can (walled garden app store, proprietary connectors) and aggressively removing features that 10% of users rely on in order to give what they see as a better experience for the 90% (e.g. removing headphone jack); but sometimes also bending to market forces and embracing standards when they think it benefits users -- sometimes very early indeed. Think of the 2015 MacBook, which launched with just a single USB-C port for everything, when USB-C peripherals hadn't even become very widespread.
The test of all this will be whether iPhones continue using Lightning, or switch to USB-C. I'm very confident that they'll switch, in either the next revision or the one after.
It'll be a painful switch, but Apple is very good at powering through those (ADB to USB, 68K to PowerPC, removing floppy drive, removing CD drive, PowerPC to x86, 30-pin connector to Lightning, removing headphone jack, x86 to ARM). When they make up their mind to switch, they make it happen very quickly.
1.I was referring to new Macs, at least those that came after Steve Jobs came back (~97). Older computers were a nightmare in terms of ports and incompatibility thereof, the standardisation around the PC platform helped a lot and Apple was for a long time the only company going against that paradigm with its own platform. Also I'm not saying that Lightning can't and isn't used in a master configuration, I'm just saying that's not what it is usually meant to do, and it's seldom used as such.
2. I was there when USB OTG on USB A/B was a thing, and it was _horrible_. The combo A/B micro ports were terrible, and it was rare to find the right cables, let alone accessories compatible with your devices. USB-C has been the first connector that made OTG really a thing, before it was just a crappy experience limited to a handful of devices (Samsung Galaxy, for instance)
> aggressively removing features that 10% of users rely on in order to give what they see as a better experience for the 90% (e.g. removing headphone jack)
I call bullshit on this point. That's simply not true. I do not know a single person that liked or benefited from the switch, except Apple shareholders of course. Everyone, myself included, hates the fact you can't use standard headphones with mobile phones anymore, it's arguably a crappy experience that was forced by Apple and the industry with moronic justifications to hide the end goal to cut their costs and push people to buy more expensive Bluetooth headphones. The fact Apple did that just before releasing the AirPods and after buying out Beats speaks volumes about what their true goal was. It's just as hypocritical and fake as their "green" push is, they are trying to paint their corporate greed as something beneficial for the world, which is outright despicable. I'd rather buy my products from a company that's unapologetically honest with their customers than one that tries to gaslight you.
> I do not know a single person that liked or benefited from the switch, except Apple shareholders of course. Everyone, myself included, hates the fact you can't use standard headphones with mobile phones anymore
None of my friends or colleagues care. They use AirPods or wireless headphones on the latest iPhones and are happy with them. Your circles are not representative of the whole population.
I remember using wired earbuds and hating it every time. I don't miss the headphone jack that much. Why would you want to mess with entangled cables when you can just turn your headphones on and have them connect over the air?
Yeah, exactly -- for some people, losing the headphone jack really does suck, but plenty of other people honestly prefer wireless headphones. (I'd like to have the option of a headphone jack, personally, even if it means the device is a teensy bit thicker.)
Apple would argue that they force users to accept these changes because it makes the product better. You can counter that it's purely to make extra money out of peripherals, but if that's all there is to it, why are Apple products popular? Why do competitors (notably Samsung) keep following their lead on this kind of thing? Is it entirely down to their marketing, or could it be that their products actually are better, at least for some people?
Yep, but Apple controls MagSafe, which extends Qi. In a wireless iPhone, you would use whatever magical shenanigan Apple comes up with to seamlessly pair and communicate with MagSafe accessories, all while they get huge fees from accessory sales and certifications. It's a true and tested approach.
What I don't understand from Apple - they have already made the move to USB-C with laptops (ditching the Magsafe - that was way more practical than the USB-C connector), why resisting this much for the iPhone/iPad/etc? I understand that they have additional revenue streams by licensing lighting to accessories manufactures, but still...
> I understand that they have additional revenue streams by licensing lighting to accessories manufactures, but still...
Bingo. It's not the charging, it's the port itself. But the fee and lock-in also apply to data-using accessories.
Wired iPhone headphones aren't compatible with other phones, for example, and if you've purchased (e.g.) an expensive FLIR phone-mounted thermal camera, then you're less likely to jump to the Android/USB-C ecosystem at your next phone upgrade.
I don't think it's fees. Relative to what they earn directly from customers, fees are a pittance. I figure they have exactly two reasons, both plausible, to be reluctant to switch the phone over to USB-C.
The first is size -- lightning is thinner than USB. But other phones have USB-C, so this is probably not that big a hassle.
The second is their customers. For every customer that wants USB-C on their new phone, a dozen more want all their existing accessories and cables to continue to work when they upgrade their phone.
I always enjoy seeing the “Apple doesn’t want to give up the money” takes.
How much money does Apple make from their licensing? Point me to even one estimate that shows me the money that Apple makes on the Lightning port licensing, and what fraction of its overall profit, loss, or even revenue, that the Lightning licensing comprises.
I like the theory that Apple is trying to keep Lightning on their phones until they can make an entirely wireless iPhone happen, but the failure of AirPower [1] was likely a factor in delaying this transition further than planned.
Apple's argument behind keeping the lightning connector is that it offers a superior standard of waterproofing than the USB-C can provide. The iPad and MacBook, to my knowledge, don't make any claims about being waterproof.
(Not to say anything about the veracity of the waterproof argument, just that they make it)
A surprise for me was that lightning is only USB2 and one-sided, so at any moment it is plugged half of the pins is unused. Additionally it has exposed wires, in case of charger failure, USB-C provides a better protection.
The exposed wires make lightning easier to plug into a phone than USB-C: you don’t have to line up the lightning connector with its port as precisely as you do USB-C because the connector is slightly smaller than the port, whereas it is almost flush in USB-C.
Some Lightning devices use both sides to get USB3 speeds. I really have no idea why Apple have left other devices at USB2 performance. It doesn't make an awful lot of sense to me.
Because what's their incentive to do better? Most people only use the port for charging, which has no data speed, and the number of people who sync via wire is lower than ever and declining. USB2 was good enough for a long time, and it's not like it changed.
I expect Apple to do away with the lightning port eventually and just ship MagSafe (the phone kind) chargers with their phones for a completely wireless phone with no holes at all. We aren’t there yet (many people still like wired headphone solutions vs Bluetooth), but maybe in 2-3 years?
At the same time, it is starting to look like USB-C is still not going to be more robust than Lightning connectors. A vast improvement on micro USB, to be sure, but still. Recall that Lightning came out 12 years ago, and the alternative was micro-USB. It's so much better that we can actually debate it relative to USB-C today, which is high praise.
The thinnest smartphones on the market currently are all USB-C phones so that does not really seem to be an issue. These are a good 2mm thinner then the thinnest iPhone ever made.
I completely missed that part. What I don't understand is then why Apple doesn't open source their solution if they think they are superior and they care about the environment. Same with lighting.
The problem is that for security with electricity the bits that provide the electric current should be female terminals (protected) while the ones that receive it male (you can touch them). Apple doesn't follow this and you can easily touch the charged ports of the charged device, which is not a problem since it's very low voltage, but in USB-C connectors that can reach up to 240Watts so that's a no-go.
They didn't move, they added an option to select: USB-C or Magsafe-2 (it is incompatible with original Magsafe BTW), both work fine.
I've actually switched to Macs already when USB-C was introduced (late 2016), so I totally missed the original Magsafe. I recently got a new Macbook Pro 16, which has Magsafe-2. I never used it before and for my use-case I don't see much use for it now either. At least at home and in the office I have external displays, which with single USB-C cable get the signal and charge the Mac. Before it was definitely better than any other laptop charging connector, but advantages USB-C provides overwhelm Magsafe use for me.
Good point. I forgot they still charged over USB-C as well.
I need to work, not infrequently, from the dining table with a laptop plugged into the wall. I have two large boisterous dogs and two not-so-large but still boisterous children. They occasionally tear around the house, and the dogs have snagged a cord and destroyed a laptop by pulling it off the table back in the old pre-magsafe days. Magsafe prevented damage to multiple laptops for me.
While I love the single-cable docking angle of USB-C, I'd give it up for magnets if I needed to. For my thinkpad, I actually have one of those magnetic USB-C cables to use at that table.
To clarify: Magsafe 2 was introduced in 2012. You missed the original Magsafe _and_ Magsafe 2. Old adapters (but not the oldest) will work with the latest Macbooks.
As a user, I liked USB-C. Until I had to implement this ridiculously overcomplicated garbage.
To be spec-conform, you need at least 1 IC. You can theoretically hack a solution together with some resistors, but it's not spec conform. If you need the high-speed lanes, add a mux/redriver to un-flip it.
If you want power delivery (>15W), you need a PD controller and port protection (or a user will fry your data lines when they unplug the connector and put 20V on the data pins). 2 ICs right there, and one of them is basically a microcontroller, so you need to deal with more programming.
If you want alternate mode, you need to implement the entire PD stack and a redriver/mux. That's 2-3 ICs right there that have to work together (so usually a single vendor). And not all of them support alt mode.
Which, ok, fine. I'm not building a cost optimized product, I just want it to work well. Except literally none of the ICs are available. Because USB-C requires ICs for everything, it's all sold out (or total garbage that's not worth designing into a product, or requires vendor support to design the firmware, or or or).
But the two CC line resistors are spec-conform? That's how 5V sinks are supposed to work.
I agree that the whole USB PD stack is way over complicated, I still don't get why the electrical layer and the on-the-wire protocol is so complex. Wouldn't a 3.3 V bidir UART with a CRC at the end do a fine job?
Specifically, the sink has to detect vRd to determine how much current it can actually draw.
E: sorry, to clarify: 2 resistors is fine, but you also need line sensing. So that's at least a few comparators or an ADC or whatever. Or a dedicated IC.
Ah, the good 'ol legacy USB issue (for anything under 1.5A).
The standard provides a way for simple devices (page 218, PSD), to just draw up to 500mA [0]. But TBH, legacy USB charging is such a mess, I'd just always assume 1.5A and hope for the best.
(for USB 3.0 900mA you at least need a USB Device to detect it, I'm not sure if a 3.0 device is needed).
[0]: 500mA in default current and the other options provide more current.
EDIT:
Mmh, you still need to detect above vRa voltage in "AttachWait.SNK", but you can assume default USB Current after that without specifically detecting it. I think no one cares about vRa.
Still better than USB 2.0 (where without being a USB device you could only pull 100mA) or not much different than USB BC for DCPs (detect 200 Ω or smaller resistor between D+ and D-).
Oh well. I just returned 3 USB-C hubs in a row, one almost fried my computer. Since the introduce of USB-C, I have more cables than ever. There are virtually so many types of USB-C cables with different capabilities and all looks almost exactly the same. Some cannot handle charging current of 2A or less. Some might be able to do 3A, some maybe 5A. And some of it is USB 2.0, some are USB 3.x 5Gbps, 10Gbps, 20 Gbps or maybe even 40 Gbps. Some have DP-Alt mode, some don't. It's simply a random combination of any of the previous stuff. I wish I had read the specs and labeled them correctly. Now I have a whole bunch of them and I cannot tell which can do what except very few long thick ones for my monitors.
It's simply a random combination of any of the previous stuff. [...] Now I have a whole bunch of them and I cannot tell which can do what except very few long thick ones for my monitors.
Get a Thunderbolt 4 cable, they can carry Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4, every USB protocol up to and including 4, DP alt-mode, and 100W power delivery. Moreover, most of them are clearly marked. The Apple cables are expensive, but some other good brands (like CalDigit) offer them at reasonable prices.
I just returned 3 USB-C hubs in a row, one almost fried my computer.
Most USB USB-C hubs (USB-C is only the connector) are terrible. Even many premium brands (like Satechi) often use cheap Chinese reference designs that will fry themselves pretty quickly, cause a lot of interference, and have all kinds of annoying limitations (mostly because they use 5 or 10 GBit/s USB 3 standards).
Since I have switched to quality Thunderbolt Docks, I haven't had any issues.
Mostly checking reviews and specs. My wife and I both use a StarTech dock at work and we have two at home. So far no issues with our Macs.
One thing to watch out for (when you are using a Mac) is to avoid Docks with a Realtek NIC. They use a generic USB driver on macOS that adds CPU load and usually only reaches 700-900MBit. Intel I210 NICs are great, they use PCIe over Thunderbolt and have a native driver.
I've tried several through work, so far Dell has been the only ones that just worked with everything. Lenovo was fine for most things, HP didn't even work with the laptop it was designed for.
I think the biggest thing is how much power the dock provides and how much attached devices need.
Everybody who is frenetically celebrating this as the end of the manufacturer-specific power brick, does simply not know that USB-C is not USB-C. There is no single USB-C.
USB-C is a bunch of specifications that may can be combined or may not. USB-C is only the physical connector. USB-C PD (Power delivery) does support many different modes. There are at least 11 different modes with at least 4 of them are optional. I haven't read the latest version of the specification, but I would bet that there are optionally also some implementation-specific options aka manufacturer-specific. All that combined with the many different cable definitions for the different use cases, makes it for the average consumer a nightmare.
No, it doesn't. Almost all my devices (macbook, camera, speaker, phone, headphones...) use usb c pd and I am using the same three cables interchangeably for all of them, no issues.
If Apple choses to intentionally break this compatibility it's a user hostile company.
All passive USB-C cables support PD 2.0 or 3.0, all charging features. The only things a cable needs to need to support PD are:
Vbus wire
Gnd wire
CC wire
Therefore, all USB cables, even the lowest end USB 2.0 cable support USB PD. You don't need an identifier chip to support basic USB PD charging.
Literally it's just the CC wire that goes end to end that enables USB PD charging from one end to the other.
USB PD is supposed to be backward and forward compatible, and a USB 2.0 cable can't actually differentiate itself as a USB PD 2.0 or PD 3.0 cable, since chances are it doesn't actually have an identifier chip. Your basic cable (which the Anker is) should work all the way up to 60W with PPS.
PPS also doesn't matter. A USB 2.0 C-to-C cable is supposed to support PPS.
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In other words as long as you have any proper usb c cable (spec compliant) and a usb c Pd charger with sufficient power output, everything will work.
I've never seen a USB-C cable that didn't charge all my devices with all my chargers. OK, maybe one that came with an HP screen and was clearly labeled as "data only".
I think this will make cables interchangeable in most cases. Fast charging and fast transfers are nice to have but rarely vital.
You haven't brought any of those cheap Chinese cables, haven't you?
I have such cables, which can't be really used for charging as well as for fast data transfer. They are good for my development hardware kits, I have. Because those kits don't have any high power requirements. But I cannot use them to power my notebook.
But they may be very suboptimal. Most likely, they are not Thunderbolt or USB4 capable. Also, there is no guarantee that they can supply higher wattages.
I don't think this matters as much as some on HN think. People look for an iPhone charger, not for a USB4.0 Gen2 40W fast-charging cable and assorted wall plug that will transfer their movie collection in 2 minutes and charge to 100% in 5.
This all seems pretty short sighted. Great in the short term (I want a USB-C iPhone and for everything today to be USB-C) but will surely be a pain going forward - where would USB-C be if this policy had standardised on micro USB earlier? Some will say wireless is the future but I’m not convinced. Maybe the best solution would be to have this policy expire after a certain number of years?
The article already hints at it, but lawmakers are not completely dense and allow for relatively easy amendments by the Commission. From the legislation [1]:
> "With respect to radio equipment capable of being recharged via wired charging, the Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 44 to amend Annex Ia in the light of technical progress, and to ensure the minimum common interoperability between radio equipment and their charging devices, by:
(a) modifying, adding or removing categories or classes of radio equipment;
(b) modifying, adding or removing technical specifications, including references
and descriptions, in relation to the charging receptacle(s) and charging
communication protocol(s), for each category or class of radio equipment
concerned."
That's good but usually a new standard is phased in for one or two models to gain experience with it and then increasing numbers of phones use it. If you require all phones to use it from day one, you lose that. You'd at least need an "experimentation" mechanism where the commission allows manufacturers to build different devices that represent a few percent of their sales.
Phones have been doing USB charging for more than 10 years now. USB-C was designed based on the experience, and is what most phones use already.
Your point isn't wrong, but is is several years out of date: USB-C is already well past the few models to gain experience point and now moving to the late adopter part of the cycle. A phone without USB-C charging is as quaint as a phone with a rotary dial at this point.
Experimentation can still happen by having 2 ports. Might not be practical for phones since they are so small these days but it being on phones wouldn't be necessary for testing a new universal standard. It could be tested on other larger devices.
It wasn't that standardized. Between my house and the office around that time, I had a mix of micro USB, mini USB and barrel ports. And always had the wrong adapter with me, it seemed.
Agree, I still have a gaggle of random USB cables for various devices. Micro USB was common, but far from standardized. And on top of that, it sucks. I keep a bunch of spares around because it's such a fragile connector.
I blame Apple on this (as an iPhone user). If they had adopted USB-C sooner, or if they had invented something much better than USB-C, this regulation would never pass.
Right now, the charging speed of iPhone is way less than Android phone sold in China. Here most phones charge at 50W+, some at 120W, several times faster than iPhone. While the limitation is not because of Lightning, it is hard to maintain a straight face when Apple insists that they use Lightning because of technical advantage.
> where would USB-C be if this policy had standardised on micro USB earlier?
It would be a separate port next to the micro-USB port.
The point is that we don't need a new connector every few years for charging a device. This saves e-waste, since the chargers can stay the same. For data, you might want to have a new connector, though.
I wish EU standardizes a single electric socket for all EU countries. Germany, France, Switzerland and Italy - each has a different socket (although German and French are very similar to each other).
Please don't make me start complaining about the utter sheet stupidity of the Italian electrical plug (type L). It's pure and utter shite.
1. The C plug was fine. It doesn't carry more than 10A, and that is fine because it does not support grounding, so it would be unwise to use it for very powerful appliances, but it's well enough for bed lamps and phone chargers.
2. We Italians are famous for finding half-assed solutions to problems, so instead of developing a decent plug we just shoved a ground prong on the C type plug, so the 10A L connector was born.
3. Given that 10A plugs can only carry AFAIK a maximum of ~1500W, the 16A L connector was created as a chunkier version of the 10A one.
4. Given this whole nonsensical situation, companies catering to the EU single market largely ignore the L connector. Every single device sold in Italy either uses the C type ungrounded connector (Europlug) or the E/F "Schuko"-French combo connector.
5. Italian houses have either 10A plugs WITH 10A WIRING or 16A plugs (usually with combo 10/16A plugs, have I mentioned the two sockets are incompatible despite both being L?). This means that F "Schuko" adapters to L are a common fixture in Italian homes.
6. People buy devices with F plugs, which they then have to plug into their sockets using adapters. Adapters can either adapt to 16A plugs, or, unfortunately, to 10A, which is extremely dangerous given that Schuko is a 16A connector and 10A plugs often do not have the proper wire gauge for that. The fact that no Schuko adapter supports nominally over 1500W doesn't help either.
Long story short: Italian homes are full of high power devices, such as microwave ovens, air friers, hairdryers, kettles, ... plugged in 10A wall sockets through adapters that do not allow more than 1500W of power. It's absolutely stupid and moronic. Yes they get hot. Yes they are a hazard.
The solution would be to mandate everywhere the C/F/L combo socket in new buildings, but given that 16A wires are more expensive and the Italian government has been historically extremely pro-business, it will never happen.
CEE 7/7 plugs will fit into all sockets in the EU, except Italy (where they can be bent slightly to fit), Malta and Ireland. The only issue is grounding, but things like phone chargers wouldn't be grounded anyway.
Oh god please don't. Lots of Italian plugs are 10A only, and you would not get grounding by shoving an E/F combo plug into an L socket. This comes without saying that it would probably wreck the shutters in the plug and the contacts inside.
What do you mean? USB-C is covered by the same trademark licensing scheme (that isn't technically needed if you don't use the USB logo and use your chip's default vendor ID) as USB-A is, a $6000 one-time + $5000/year payment to USB-IF.
I don't think there's any licensing fees for the spec itself no? Only a small fee to the USB-IF non profit every year or 2 years (and there's sublicensers) for the logo and vendor id which shows spec compliance (Which is the same for micro USB I believe so i can't think of any non proprietary connectors customers would go for regardless.)
>This also bans cheap phones like these
I'd assume those new phones get a new iteration or 2 or 3 by that time regardless. It tends to go quite fast in the phone market.
For cars, changes like these are phased in multiple steps. For each car model, companies mass producing cars have to obtain a permit for the model. Then, they are allowed to sell those cars. At which point the individual owners get their cars registered at the government office.
The phasing in happens by first requiring it for permits for new models. The manufacturers can still build and sell older models. A few years later, the rule also applies to all first registration of new cars, to prevent car manufacturers to avoid the new rules by keeping to produce an older model.
IDK if something similar exists for electric household devices. For the famous light bulb ban, they introduced it via import and manufacturing restrictions, so you could still sell the light bulbs, and still can today, but you can't either build new light bulbs or (legally) get light bulbs from outside of the EU into the EU.
You could do the same for phones, just ban the imports at a specified date in the future so that the hardware can be readjusted in time.
Anyways, this only affects one manufacturer (Apple) and they don't have as much of a market share here as in the US.
With your numbers, that'd be 4% relative to the entire market, which is definitely something that Apple and the other phone manufacturers can deal with.
That's a pretty huge leap. Just because a design existed before regulation doesn't mean you can keep making it after the regulation. I would be surprised if Apple was allowed to keep selling non-USB-C phones manufactured in winter 2024 or 2025. They will likely be allowed to sell existing inventory, maybe offer refurbished phones that aren't compliant.
As I read it, the new laws are concerned with the chargers more than the devices being charged - if Apple just includes a lightning to USB-C cable (as they already do for the 12), wouldn’t that be enough to satisfy the legislation?
I keep hearing that this is about waste, primarily chargers, as you point out. I wonder if the best solution is to just include neither a charger nor a cable. At this point I have USB chargers and cables for every situation in my life and any additional cable or charger would just be a waste, no matter if USB-C or -A. Have just the people who still need more chargers or cables buy those (or maybe reverb outlet covers with chargers built-in). Everyone else can safe some money and reduce future garbage.
I kind of understand this from an e-waste angle, but why (as a consumer) do I care if different phones use the same cable? I only have one phone. Even if I get a new phone every year, unless I’m switching back and forth between iPhones and Androids, I’m not having to buy new cables. If I go to a public place, and need to plug my phone in, I can already do that regardless of the connector on the phone end. If a friend is over and they need a phone charger, there’s only two possible needs, and I’ve already filled them. Apple charges license fees on Lightning, but I can already buy a nice third party cable for like $10.
Why is this so important as to require a large scale device maker to redesign their entire product line, and make millions of existing cables obsolete? Genuinely interested in the reasoning behind this, what problems is it solving?
Do you own a tablet and a laptop, by chance? Maybe have 3 other family members, each with some combination of said three devices? That can quickly become a lot of household chargers if they are all different.
But the problem will still be exactly the same, because not all USB-C cables are created equal.
We've basically set in stone a standard that is so varied that the standardization means nothing. And that's before you get into any component actually wearing out and giving you degraded performance on the device or cable.
Practically it's not. We have probably a dozen USB-C devices in our home and many more chargers of varying wattage scattered about, and the only time I've had to think about the cable was for my TB3 dock. In fact, I worry more about cable lengths to minimize clutter.
That hasn't been my experience. I have a bunch of 30w USB-C chargers that charge everything in my house. They are built in to my wall outlets and support (at least) 5v, 9v and 15v. I don't know where you're getting this idea that the standard is "so varied that the standardization means nothing". Those three profiles are enough for me. If I buy a 100W laptop, I may need one more charger, but that's just because I chose not to pay to have 100W available everywhere. It seems reasonable that a tiny phone charger won't work so great on a gaming laptop.
EDIT: Guess I'm not allowed to reply to sagarm? That's annoying. But yeah, it's the Leviton one. I love it. Cleans up so many ugly wall warts.
As others have pointed out, even if all these devices have a USB-C hole on them, the likelihood that you could actually use their charger with another device (especially of a different class) is at best a coin toss.
The devices still have to ship with chargers, you still have to find the “right” charger, but now you can’t tell them apart?
My main thought is just that the problem of different chargers is not one I think requires sweeping regulatory intervention; but I’m not an EU voter. :)
What? I use the same USB-C cable and charger with my android phone, 2020 Macbook Pro, Ipad, SO's android phone of a different brand and way older MBP that's on its last legs.
That's the whole point of USB-C. I don't own a single device that I can't charge with the same 2 cables, to the point where the magnetic cable of the 2020 MBP is stored in its box.
Agreed. I could probably be fairly called an Apple critic on most things, but I don't think Lightning is a problem in need of solving. It was great all phones migrated to USB on the brick, but the other end of the cable is less important as long as there are such a small number.
> unless I’m switching back and forth between iPhones and Androids, I’m not having to buy new cables.
Even if you did. Lightning's been around since 2012. It superseded the Dock connector every iPod and iPhone had since 2003. At this point they are pretty ubiquitous.
> Apple charges license fees on Lightning
This also prevents the mess that is USB-C where vendors don't implement the spec correctly (and brick unsuspecting devices in the process, see Nintendo). Apple can just refuse to license devices from vendors that don't implement the spec correctly.
In a home where almost everyone uses Android (along with laptops, all of which charge over USBC) and just one person uses an iPhone, looking for a Lightning cable just for that one person can be a huge hassle.
I also wonder about this. Every device I've ever bought that needs either a charger or an AC adapter has come with its own power/charging cable. I've never had the desire for them to all have the same connector. I just keep the charger with the device. When I buy a new device, I expect it to come with the cable necessary to power or charge it.
One thing I would love to see here is an end of life for this ruling. I.e. “effective as of 2024, but not enforced after 2030 without renewal”. Market saturation of the standard alone should be enough to get alignment on a single connector, following which it will require significant effort to deviate from it regardless of legislation. I’m still happy with this in the short term - very tired of having to juggle two types of charging cables. I just wish there was a bit of forward thinking involved here.
There's a lot of Apple hate here. It's worth remembering that 1) Apple was the first PC company to standardise on USB-A, and 2) Apple iPhone and iPad chargers have always had USB-A sockets until the recent change to USB-C — the chargers have always used non-proprietary sockets; only the cables were different.
(Some of The early iPod chargers had a Firewire 400 socket.)
I currently own several USB-C devices (Laptop, phone, Remarkable, Switch, portable monitor) and I can't tell you how nice it is to only have to bring a single charger with me when I travel. The biggest thing holding me back from getting an iPhone is breaking this pattern.
> The biggest thing holding me back from getting an iPhone is breaking this pattern.
You wouldn't real this patter with an iPhone: you can still use the same charger, with Lightning <> USB-C cable. In fact, this is the official cable you get these days with new models.
Yeah but thats another item to worry about, carry around, constantly or you are royally screwed. Definitely a drawback for Apple in 2022 if you are like OP or me.
I was deciding between iphone 13 pro max and samsung s22 ultra few months back to have best possible camera that is always in the pocket. For somebody not in their ecosystem Apple connectors are a massive drawback and one of the reasons I decided against iphone.
I'm all for stopping Apple,Sony, or other nasty megacorps from including deliberately 'unique' cables that cost a fortune to replace -- but when the bureaucrats get involved in anything, particularily technology, it frequently ends up being a disaster. This is for a few reasons not the least of which is that the types who are in government are not the types who can make anything useful let alone novel. Even worse the types who influence government are also mostly useless except for their ability to influence government.
And that's why the EU in 2009 got all the companies to agree to make a common charger [1]. However, then the companies didn't so that left the Gov 2 choices: Ignore the idea of a common charger or force a common charger.
Every useful technology has some level of Bureaucratic regulations attached to it. there are very few exceptions and they don't hurt any sort of growth or innovation. Cars, planes, electric outlets, the internet, radio, television, railways, and more are all regulated to some degree. There are as many examples of regulations driving innovation as there are limiting it.
Exactly my thought. That would save many kilotonnes of lightning chargers and cables from being thrown away (and replaced with USB-C ones for no good reason really).
> “Today we have made the common charger a reality in Europe!” said the European Parliament’s rapporteur Alex Agius Saliba in a press statement. “European consumers were frustrated long with multiple chargers piling up with every new device. Now they will be able to use a single charger for all their portable electronics.”
The devices this covers, those rechargeable by a wired cable according to the EU press release, have pretty much all used USB chargers for a long time so I don't see how this addresses the issue of multiple chargers piling up. At most it addresses the issue of multiple USB to X cables piling up, where X is most commonly Lightning.
Unless they also prohibit selling devices with USB chargers I have doubts that this will stop the bundling. Apple has tried to stop including chargers on the theory that nearly everyone already has a bunch lying around, and has drawn a lot of complaints over that, and fines in Brazil where the government regulators have decided that not bundling chargers with every phone is anti-consumer.
Just curious. If there is a seemingly better connector emerged in the future, could vendors experiment it on new devices on their own? Or do they have to first submit a proposal to the regulator and then deploy it to the device after the proposal has been accepted? I am afraid that the latter could harm innovation.
"Any technological developments in wired charging can be reflected in a timely adjustment of technical requirements/ specific standards under the Radio Equipment Directive. This would ensure that the technology used is not outdated.
At the same time, the implementation of any new standards in further revisions of Radio Equipment Directive would need to be developed in a harmonised manner, respecting the objectives of full interoperability. Industry is therefore expected to continue the work already undertaken on the standardised interface, led by the USB-IF organisation, in view of developing new interoperable, open and non-controversial solutions."
Apple is already doing that on MacBooks. They have USB-C connectors for charging (that will be mandated by the EU law in the future) and they have a MagSafe connector (their innovation).
They can do the same for iPhone: one USB-C connector for charging and one innovation connector.
I am still on the fence on this. On one hand this is a good pro consumer move while also being environmentally friendly but this will likely hinder innovation in the field.
If a new way charger standard was found which was a fraction of the cost of USBC and double the speed, the fact that companies would be forced to still use USBC is tough.
I also found this tidbit pretty funny.
> The legislation has been under development for more than a decade, but an agreement on its scope was reached this morning following negotiations between different EU bodies.
> The EU denies this will be the case, and says it will update the legislation as new technology is developed.
> “Don’t think we’re setting something in stone for the next 10 years,” said Breton at the press conference.
I wish USB-C was more robust, or at least had the option of being more robust. I miss not being scared of accidentally stepping on my laptop charge connector and crushing it flat. I'd pay good money for a type-C un-flattener.
Yeah. Type c is worse then micro or mini in this regard but still no where as bad as type A. I can't tell you how many USB cables I have thrown away because office chairs have run over the ends.
The only advantage with type A is that it's large enough you can use a set of flat pliers to straighten it out. Type-C is nearly impossible to do that with.
Is there a halfway-modern port that is more robust? Hell, is it possible to make a port/adapter that you can't destroy by stepping on it?
I've personally destroyed VGA, PS/2, and ADB adapters by stepping on them in the past. (I've since gotten somewhat more careful, and haven't yet destroyed any USB or Lightning adapters the same way.)
How, exactly, do you propose that they design a port that you can't accidentally crush, aside from something dirt-simple like an 8mm headphone jack...?
As an American, it's strange to see people applaud such overreaching regulation that will stifle innovation. This really underscores and makes me appreciate the differing regulatory philosophies between the EU and the US.
As an American, I'm surprised to see so much lip service paid to reducing waste in our country and then describing a universal plug as "overreaching regulation that will stifle innovation."
Want to roll back the styrofoam ban too? Lots of new innovative (and greener) packaging resulted.
(you could have just edited your first reply to include the appeal to authority)
The plug itself its fine, it's the government mandating that it's illegal to use alternatives that's overreaching. I believe people should have the choice to decide and try better alternatives. That's how innovations are made.
> Want to roll back the styrofoam ban too?
That's different because it bans one thing rather than declaring a single material as the only legal one. A better analogy would be if a state passed a law declaring cardboard as the only legal packing material and outlawing everything else. Also, the styrofoam ban is a state law, not a federal law. I don't personally feel strongly about a styrofoam ban, but if your state wants to try that, that's fine with me.
> (you could have just edited your first reply to include the appeal to authority)
I have never, not once, replaced a USB C cable. To charge my phone (S21 Ultra) I still use the fat (high amps) cable that came with my Oneplus 6T!
Besides the fact that I have a drawer full of usb C cables that have come with other products, I have enough to last me into retirement pretty much.
Whereas every single person I've known who's owned an Apple product has replaced their cable multiple times (heatshrink and or cable coming apart from connector) and they used to get charged $50 for the privilege of buying a replacement!
I’d love to see Apple just leave the EU market or only offer a single old phone model with USB-C added. They have enough money to do it. Bullies like the EU should be stood up to.
Huh? Why is EU the bad guy lol?
Every single company except Apple switched to USB-C. Apple is just milking money out of their customers with overpriced Lightning cables.
It's sad to see people defend this predatory behavior.
Creating standards is a fundamental part of what governments do, and have done forever.
We take for granted things like common definitions for weights and measures, imagine if “the market” could just decide it didn’t want to use the metric system anymore and invented whatever system it felt like to weigh things.
Innovation has its place, but some things just need to be reliable and well understood so we can move on in our lives and focus on building on top of what’s already established.
The funny thing is that when this was first proposed by the EU, the connector they proposed was the USB-Mini connector. Imagine if that had been successful.
I do remember a lot of companies had to include little adapters in the EU. So it'd be like lighting to some weird urb. Was this to the USB mini spec or Mico USB? I just ignored them and used the chargers and cables apple provided or my usb-a chargers
I wonder if nowadays it’s really that much of a problem though. Modern cellphone chargers are mostly transformers with an USB 2 socket. So, even if you have an iphone and an usb-c decice, you only need to have two cables with an usb 2 connector and not full two chargers.
The USB-C spec has 24 pins, making it considerably more complex than USB-A connections, which 4 pins. Only 4 of those 24 pins are used for power delivery.
If all you need from the USB-C connection is charging, is OK to implement a 4 pin connection to keep the design simpler and cheaper?
First of all, 8 pins are used for power delivery for just VBUS & GND.
Furthermore, you need the two CC pins or otherwise you won't get any voltage from USB-C chargers. USB 2.0 data pins are needed for backward compatible charging (otherwise a compliant device could only pull 500mA from a USB-A to C cable).
The spec defines such a receptacle connector for USB 2.0-only support (also including the two sideband channels, but that's only 2 out of 16 pins, so probably not noticeably more expensive).
I think you also need the CC pin or you aren't going to have PD fast charging. The pin is required to handshake a higher Voltage and Current outside of standard 5C1A.
And that literally exists. Most charge wire don't have full 24 line. (Unless it is specifically marked as USB3 compatible)
This will finally make me seriously consider moving back to iPhones. I'm simply not willing to give up being able to charge my Android phone, M1 laptop, headphones, vape, shaver, oculus, etc with the same cable. I travel with 1 cable. It's life changing.
I’d have preferred the requirement to be something that can be implemented with no parents or other controls. Invent lightning v2, great, you can use it as soon as the requirements for competitors to implement it are lodged in the appropriate place.
Don't forget random wall warts, random laptop power supplies, etc. All of these random DC power standards have been brutal for creating e-waste. I try to keep my power supplies organized and I have a few boxes full of them with various voltages, currents, etc.
The forcing function of laptops and other hardware needing to work off the common USB-C PD levels will drastically improve the situation. GaN tech is getting cheaper all the time, and the PD chips required to make all of this tech work are super cheap.
Eventually I hope we end up with USB-C-at-the-wall alongside power ports as a standard.
It's good, but also worth mentioning that they're just now proposing to end the subventioned airplane fuel, and in that proposal they still want an exception for private business aircraft. Keep the pressure on your EU MEP.
I'm still waiting for a round USB connector... But either way, that's good... it means that Apple will have to keep a connector on their devices and not go 100% wireless (not that I would ever use one of their devices)
Bureaucrats gonna bureaucrat …
What will happen when a company (outside EU for obvious reasons) introduces clearly superior standard? The EU will wait for its bureaucracy to catch up?
The same was once believed in south Korea with regards to online commerce and ActiveX. Their law left their infrastructure rigid, less secure, and incompatible with the rest of the world when everyone moved on.
> There is no benefit to new standards coming out all the time in this domain.
actually, there are huge potential benefits for both the users and the company that launches them. faster charging, better ports, smarter cables etc etc etc
This is an amazing move by the EU that could benefit the entire world. Something that in the US would have been perceived as “stifling innovation and big government”.
Awesome! I recently put off buying an adapter I lost for one device, and just started using an old USB battery with the correct connector to charge it up outside my home instead, I was THAT annoyed with the fact I need to hurt my back and stress my mind dealing with all these... ports.
This is a positive example of the EU influencing American technology companies.
(I say that as someone considering getting an EU passport though, so I might be biased.)
I don't have an apple phone, but my daughter does, and I've always thought that mechanically at least the Apple connector was better because it had less bits to go wrong.
USB C, like micro USB has that "tongue" piece that has to fit inside the end of the cable which always looks like it could snap off. The Apple connector is just a solid piece that goes in the end of the phone. No fiddly interlock pieces.
In all the discussions I've seen where people complain about USB-C, not once have I read about that tab snapping off, so it does not seem to be a problem in practice.
The reason USB-C has the tab on the device is to have the springs, which are the bits which can go wrong the most, on the cable instead of the device. When they start to become loose, you only have to replace an inexpensive cable, instead of having to replace or repair the device. It also better protects the contacts on both the cable and the device (the contacts on Apple's lightning cable are exposed).
It happened to me once. It was a cheap no-name hub so I don't really blame type c for it. I also haven't heard it happen to anyone else and most of my friends and family have an android.
The socket half of the lightning connector is actually pretty delicate inside: there are little tiny fingers that contact the strips on the plug. It's quite easy to damage those fingers and ruin the port when cleaning it out after exposure to dust or sand.
Mind you my 7 year old broke the USB C connector on his Switch in much the same way. There's only so strong you can make something that small and dense with contacts.
The lightning connection does seem to have interlocking pieces, but the moving parts are in the socket rather than on the plug. The plug has grooves on the side to lock into the sprung clips in the socket.
I don't accept the right of governments to intervene in what I and a seller agree to transact. It's an inalienable right where people care about such things. Definitely not in the EU.
If you have a problem with pollution, then properly cost that pollution on an even basis, instead of picking and choosing deep pockets and other politically palatable targets.
The second amendment has absolutely nothing to do with this. This is the EU and the second amendment is about "bearing arms," not selling electronic equipment.
Also, that isn't my main point, about the (lack of) justice of such action by the EU. I am actually annoyed by incompatible cabling, but understand that the remedy is almost always worse than the disease, so reserve intervention to clear natural rights violations. The EU is an inadequate alternative to Consumer Reports, product reviews, and experience. Also, not everyone has the same values, so the EU is picking priorities for us, which is immoral.
Portless could be a pain for developers, if the only way to deploy/debug is wifi, and the only way to charge is a wireless charger (which may not be able to keep up with the discharge rate of a device being used to test a game/app all day)
They provide a USB-C charger already, and it's not magically faster than good quality third-party chargers. It's top-end, for sure, but not proprietary.
Right, the idea being the EU mandate would reduce sales of their charger, and eliminate sales of their USB-C -> Lightning cable. And how they might respond.
USB-C has been out and stable for years and they haven't so I'm not certain they're going to drop lightning for their phones any time soon. It's been a few generations of iPhone since they went with C on the iPad and I would have expected those to move together or more closely if they were interested in moving to USB-C on their phones.
I really have no idea other than financial reasons why Apple have not already moved over, considering (IIRC) USB-C is ~100x faster than lightning and even supports higher wattage too ?
I would gladly pay extra to get lighting and magsafe connectors on my devices, but I guess that this stupid legislation will force me to use the substandard usb connectors.
USB-C is highly extensible (some would say way too much), I doubt we will need to make a connector that is physically incompatible anytime soon (although I'm sure the standard will be upgraded for more speed/uses)
> I doubt we will need to make a connector that is physically incompatible anytime soon
Didn't USB-C already do that to itself? I suppose that depends on how narrow the definition of "physically incompatible" is. But IIRC you can't buy a perfect do-everything USB-C cable today, because some USB-C use cases are flat out incompatible with others.
At the cost of being shorter and stiffer; a cable which can only use USB 2.0 and 3A charging can be longer and thinner. And there are also buggy devices (like the first hardware revision of the Raspberry Pi 4) which incorrectly short the two configuration pins together and can only work with less capable cables. But other than that, I agree: a passive Thunderbolt 4 cable can be considered a "perfect do-everything USB-C cable".
Lightning is a far superior plug than usb-c (don’t tell me about data transfer, I don’t care, I care about the durability and ease of plugging of the plug itself), I have MANY lightning cables (that I will have to throw away, how is that good for e-waste?), and in a more general sense the law basically forbids evolution. I am livid that they’d do something like that instead of working on actual stuff like forbidding mining which actually actively harms the environment, and depletes primary resources for idiotic reasons.
So Apple should share its proprietary connector (good luck with that) for free (?) and everyone else should adopt it (good luck with that too) because _you_ bought a bunch of cables ? I don't see Samsung and the other big ones investing in a whole new connector for their entire lineup to please Europe, whereas apple already has usb-c devices
They're both equally easy to use, lightning is just slower. Seems like it's just your personal case, I have 0 lightning cables and maybe 5 usb-c, it would be equally a waste to throw them away.
Also, nothing forbids evolution, usb-c evolved a lot already, you just have to make it backward compatible. I haven't bought a usb cable since I got my pixel 3 and everything works just fine
Apple already moved the ipad and macbook to usb-c charging, and have stated the iphone after next would be usb-c anyway. I doubt this changed Apple's plans a bit. In fact, Apple's decision might have been the driver for the EU to move on this.
Anecdotally, while I've had usb-c connectors break off about as often as lightening ones, the lightening cables seem to just stop working sometimes, and I've never had that with even cheap usb-c cables.
Fair enough about your existing cables, but cables would be thrown away if we enforced Lightning, as well (probably a lot more, but I have no numbers on that). I don't really get the arguments of durability and ease of plugging, both cable types seem very easy to plug. As for durability, that seems to depend on cable quality and not on the USB C standard.
As for evolution/innovation, sure, that's a real downside. Seems like a quite small price to pay though because it is just about charging. And if I understand this correctly, you can still innovate and add Super Charge 3000 to your device, it just needs to have USB C charging as well, and you need to be able to opt out of getting yet another charger with your new device.
As for working on actual stuff: They can do both - Regulating mining would be great, but this is also good.
Sadly, they actively refused to work on mining IIRC. I think it’s what’s making me the more mad (and sad) really. They’re willing to work on stuff that don’t matter at best/make thing worse depending on PoV (because in all honesty imposing a specific plug does not matter, the market had _already_ chosen USB-C), but working on stuff that would actually do good, that they won’t.
> that I will have to throw away, how is that good for e-waste?
We are not most people. Most people get yet another lightning cable with every Apple device when they could just use the cables we all already have for other devices. I also have a bunch of lightning cables because each device came with one, but, at least, they stopped coming with power bricks.
> I am livid that they’d do something like that instead of working on actual stuff like forbidding mining
This is not an either/or thing. Other groups are working on doing that without causing supply chain collapses and crashing economies. It's a very complicated and chaotic system with tons of interesting emerging behaviors.
Alright, so before more folks freak out even more at this, there are a number of knee-jerk reactions that could be mitigated by reading up on this a bit before tossing thunderbolts.
The main reasoning for this is to cut down on waste from incompatible chargers. This will bring charging more in line with other standardized products such as AC power cords, twisted pair networking, SD cards, M.2 SSDs, and all of those wonderful things that come from standards that everyone follows.
Can no one continue to sell charging products for stuff that's already out there? Obviously you can continue to support existing stuff. This rule applies to power drawing products, not the chargers (products sold in 2024 must charge from USB-C, but you can continue selling non-USB-C chargers for older stuff already in consumer hands).
Will it stop innovation? Of course not. New innovations can be brought forth in the same way they are with the other standards mentioned above: developed in a harmonised manner, respecting the objectives of full interoperability (in this case led by the USB-IF organisation).
Is USB-C a complicated standard? Yep, but then again most companies manage to produce working and interoperable stuff just fine.
Are there companies that break the standard? Yes of course - there are always bad actors and careless implementations. But consumer laws will prevent them from selling their crap in the European market. This is what standards enforcement is for (the CE marking, for example).
Are HNers going to look for extreme and unlikely cases and anecdata to ride their hobby horses on this? It wouldn't be HN without it!
I think your analogy isn’t right. None of those standards are mandatory. Would M.2 have come out when it did if you needed to change the law to permit it to be used over SATA?
USB-C is already a standard just like all your other examples. This law forbids using other standards.
> New innovations can be brought forth in the same way they are with the other standards mentioned above: developed in a harmonised manner
I think you are confused about how consumer product innovation happens in the real world. You don’t form a committee and convince them that your new product is better. You bring something new to market and if it succeeds, you make money and gain market share; like Apple did when they brought out Lightning. Even if you are building a new standard like M.2, you are still competing with other standards, all of which can be chosen by your customers as they deem appropriate. By definition it is now harder to innovate on charging cables simply because you can’t try something new.
It is perfectly fine to say “I don’t think we need to prioritize innovation in this sector any more; eWaste is more important than innovation”. I wouldn’t even argue with that claim in the short term. But it’s not credible to deny that this will have a negative effect on innovation. That is always the impact of regulation like this. If nothing else, startups are now forbidden from experimenting with this variable.
AC power cord standards ARE mandatory. The other standards don't require enforcement because the industry has already converged on the standards and didn't need a push.
This will be the equivalent power cord standard for DC devices. However, unlike AC power cords, USB-C also transmits data, and will thus require further innovations (much like the innovations in twisted pair networking).
Will there be less innovation? In a small way, yes, because nobody can unilaterally push some new power cable standard by leveraging their market dominance. But then again, market dominance usually results in protectionism instead of openness (lightning cable, memory stick, Beta, etc), so such innovation would have been a dead-end e-waste producer anyway.
What big players CAN do now is influence the newer standards to adopt their (free and open) innovations, like they do with all other standards out there. The great thing about open standards is that the rising tide lifts all boats.
This is an unrealistic view of how current standards are introduced, approved and adopted. Interesting that you mentioned Apple, when they are using their significant market share to push lightning down their customers throats.
The standards mentioned, are approved mostly by consortiums of big enterprises. So in a sense, there’s already a committee that evaluates and passes them. You also find the usual suspects among them i.e. Apple, IBM, HP, Google, etc. there’s no small startup there.
> By definition it is now harder to innovate on charging cables simply because you can’t try something new.
Sure you can, because you have to support the standard but Apple could invent HyperSuperCoolRoundedCornerCharger and put it as an alternative, if it charges hyper super faster then the standard the customers will prefer it and buy the super expensive platinum Apple Genuine DRM protected charger and Apple makes money, customers are happy and if Apple wants to drop the standard USB they can just standardize their cool shit and it will become the new standard.
To be clear, if USB-C charging is mandatory, you cannot have an alternative charging port, unless you want to have multiple ports on your device, which is (I think obviously) absurd. By requiring USB-C, you forbid other port types from being used. So this regulation is forbidding Apple from using their Lightning connector, and also forbidding any other vendor from introducing an alternative. Without revision it presumably also forbids anyone from using USB-D if/when that comes out.
Ironically the mode of experimentation from Apple that you're describing as desirable is the current state of the world, and is the thing that is being forbidden here; this regulation is explicitly targeted at getting Apple to stop using their alternative "HyperSuperCoolRoundedCornerCharger" as you put it, and to change their product to use USB-C.
>But it’s not credible to deny that this will have a negative effect on innovation.
Why? What consumer friendly innovations in charging have we had since USB C came out that this law would have made illegal if it were introduced from the start?
>That is always the impact of regulation like this.
I think it would be fair to say that if we could point to examples of useful innovation in the past that would have been killed by this legislation. But can we?
No more e-waste as well. And, as the regulation moved from micro USB to USB-C, it's clear that innovation is still possible, within regulations. That's also why you can't have jet-engine powered cars on the streets.
They sell 1 TB iPhones that shoot 4K ProRes video. It also has terrible quality when used for video out connecting to a TV for e.g. a presentation. Lightning is wholly inadequate for modern devices.
There's a reason they've transitioned most of the iPads to USB-C.
It's a long term plan for a universal system. The benefit is very clear, just a few days ago a friend asked to charge his iphone at my place, I don't own lightning cables, everybody owns ubs-c cables
It seems like all that's mandated is that a USB-C charger would be compatible. You can still run a proprietary protocol on top of it if you wanted or use a hybrid, proprietary connector as long as a standard USB-C charger would still work.
What innovations are ruled out by mandatory use of the USB-C connector? It supports more power and data than a mobile device is ever really likely to need.
All that's left is the physical form factor and I'm not sure there's a lot of room for improvement there, especially enough to justify the tons of electronic waste.
I try to be devil's advocate with a sci-fi bullshit: a five seconds supercharger with a laser over a fiber optic cable (to keep the beam confined and not to burn stuff.)
Imagine they had made this dumb decision back when Micro USB was the standard. We would have never gotten anything better than Micro USB. Governments shouldn't be in the market of mandating that a specific technical standards must be used as it freezes innovation.
Also purely in terms of usability, the Apple thunderbolt plug is easier to clean and less error prone on insertion as it self-centers.
I think standardization does not harm innovation. With more actors working on the same standard, it can evolve and get better while consumers are able to reuse hardware (here, phone chargers)
> I think standardization does not harm innovation.
Standardization isn't the problem. Enforced standardization is the problem. Standardization is beneficial when done by the industry because it's a collaborative process where everyone works together to create standards that are mutually beneficial. When the government comes in and enforces an already created industry standard it becomes impossible to change or improve it. This has happened in many industries where things are now done "just because" as the law enforced a now very outdated standard.
And no, the government doesn't create standards, they all come from industry originally.
There is little to no incentive to stop tiktok streamers and vapid tech fans throwing out their 6 month old devices and upgrading. But it's a start.
Whilst important, we have done much better to FORCE the industry to provide security support and updates as part of the sale of devices for a minimum of 5 years on all products.
This is one of the biggest insurmountable reasons I see for people who don't even want to, to have to upgrade because of the locked down nature of phones/watches/washing-machines/hoovers/etc...
Although I doubt it'll be the EU project to push through something so bold that will have enough of an impact.
Instead of "enforcement" I would appreciate good "standards". This allows for improvement and reasonable exceptions. I would provide a "customer traffic light" informing about specific features.
More specifically I would shift from implementation (How?) to actual requirements (What?). The implementation is a decision of the manufacturer. Examples:
* User-replaceable batteries # By Screw? Coin? Flip/Notch on outside? Behind Backcover? Whatever.
* Hardware-maintenance-manuals # Explosion Diagrams? Text? Step-by-Step? Whatever.
* Locally user replaceable firm- and software! # By Thumbdrive? SD-Card? USB-Cable? Whatever.
Historic example. Do we want enforce a specific engine type {turbojet, turbofan, turboprop) on planes or a specific noise level? The later! Similar for the EU-Cookie-Directive. They should have stated that tracking of users is forbidden (What) and not how to handle Cookies (How).
I'm probably overlooking an obvious answer, I'm not sure how you define this clearly. Using your noise level example, we know how to measure noise levels. It is straight forward to say your new technology complies with a noise regulation.
How do you do that for a regulation like standardized connectors? Just say you can't use any non-open-standard connectors?
So every upgrading iPhone user in the world needs to discard every single charging device they own, including expensive multi-device chargers like phone+watch. In the short-term this clearly produces _more_ e-waste. I wonder if anyone made an estimate of the break-even time here. One year? Ten? Will everyone be discarding their chargers and switching to wireless before break-even is achieved?
How much money does it cost for the USB-D spec to get approved by the EU if/when that is released? (How much did the USB-C industry groups spend on lobbying to get this done)? This seems like a much less significant concern but I am curious what order of magnitude we are dealing with here.
This legislation would have been great twenty years ago when there were lots of proprietary plugs on phones, but it seems much less substantial of an issue now in my experience.
No reason to toss everything until your current phone is no longer used. And Apple isn't exactly shy about changing their connectors, so such might already be the case for upcoming phones. In any case, I'm pretty sure Apple will go to to full wireless before long.
Other people saying "what about innovation!?" That's fine. Let's say the USB consortium releases USB-D with input from Apple, Google, and many other stakeholders. The EU can set another deadline for newly released devices to adhere to the new version instead of the old one. The transition will involve a period of time where older devices are still on C and newer ones on D, which is totally compatible with the regulation and is necessary with or without regulation. It's ludicrous to think companies won't be able to "iterate": you would be crazy to go to market with any cable technology that isn't already very mature. Apple spent years designing lighting chargers because they knew that once they were released they'd be around for a long time (and they have been!)