As an EU citizen, I am really happy with this decision.
I am an iPhone user, but having an iPhone is not ubiquitous here, almost all of my friends/special other, use an Android phone with USB-C. Most of their laptops, Mac or not, use or allow USB-C for charging.
This as been the case for a few years now, yet, if I go somewhere for more than a full day and forget my lighting cable, my phone will become a useless paperweight while every non-iPhone user is fine in the meantime because of the wide adoption of USB-C.
It is also ironic how Apple markets heavily on how you can take great RAW photos or videos but somehow you have to use lightning USB2 speeds to transfer them.
Lightning is barely smaller than USB-C, and clearly my iPhone thickness will not change if it switches to USB-C.
As for the e-waste generated by "having to throw all of those lightning cables", how is it not e-waste that someone buying an iPhone will have yet another lightning cable that will only be used to charge it. If we want to really be more environmentally friendly, wouldn't it make more sense to have no cable at all with the devices we buy, force the sellers to clearly tell the consumers about it and offer the cable on the side only if needed? With that cable being usb-c, the consumer don't have to think about the cable type, for non-tech savvy people, that would be "the regular charging cable" and that's it.
I would also add that all lightning cables won't suddenly go to the landfill in 2024. Many people will keep their iPhones/AirPods for a while after that date. Many would probably donate their old lightning cables to whoever needs them. In the meantime, we all already have an ever growing landfill in our homes called the cable drawer, and it is also an issue that needs to be addressed.
There's nothing wise or moral about this decision.
Mandating a technology standard, purely for personal preference and convenience reasons -- not for reasons related to safety, or pollution, or security -- especially for things that change as fast as phones, is one of the most short-sighted and naive things any government could do.
There's a long history of Apple using proprietary connectors to achieve performance specifications above what the currently available standardized connectors could provide. Hell, in all likelihood, Apple is likely to ditch a charging connection altogether in favor of wireless charging in the near future. The EU is mandating technological stagnation. They will always be behind the market.
> There's a long history of Apple using proprietary connectors to achieve performance specifications above what the currently available standardized connectors could provide.
Lightning was good when it came out (compared to the various micro-USB options), but it's not held up. Even Apple knows this and they've moved away from it on their iPads.
As others in this thread have mentioned, the "unofficial" regulation that drove most non-apple phones to micro-USB, and then to USB-C did not prevent progress.
The laws are not going to mandate USB-C of a certain revision, etc. The laws simply mandate cooperation in a market that has been mostly cooperative, save for a single participant.
If I'm reading it properly the law does mandate certain USB revisions. For example devices that pull more than 15 watts but less than 100 have to support the 2021 version of IEC 62680-1-2.
Lightning was a design put forth by a company that wasn't Apple during the USB IF's design stage of USB-C. It was rejected because the pins were on the outside, not the inside, and would allow easy damage of both the cable and the connector. It was rejected purely on completely sane technical and mechanical reasons.
Apple shipped it anyways, and all Lightning cables have failed or will fail for exactly the reasons it was rejected. Apple chose the cable because of how easily it fails.
Lightning was never good, and Apple has a long history of fucking customers, period.
> Lightning was a design put forth by a company that wasn't Apple during the USB IF's design stage of USB-C.
Do you have some references for this? I had never heard of Lightning having been developed anywhere but at Apple and specifically for their iDevice line and a check on Wikipedia's Lightning connector page has no references to anything that can substantiate this claim. Either a great example of historical erasure, or you're making this up.
"during" ≠ "as part of", so technically they're as-written right either way, albeit I do suspect they did mean "as part of", so, I'll second that source request
It gets kind of lost in the summary, but only devices that are rechargeable via a wired cable have to be chargable via USB-C. So going fully wireless is perfectly legal. It's also perfectly legal to offer other charging ports in addition to USB-C, though that's less likely to happen in phones.
And while this regulation puts some limitations on innovation in connectors, Thunderbolt shows that there is lots of room to innovate within the USB-C format (in a way that's compatible to normal USB).
I’m not in a hurry, I can charge slowly during the night.
Remember when people said they’d never use an phone that needs to be charged every 2 days? Now we all charge our phones every day. Habbits change with technology.
Personally fast charging changed everything. Plug phone at random occasion (few minutes before leaving home or during short ride) and never have to think of overnight charging. I've mounted magsafe thing on my car dashboard and it was somewhat of disappointment. Sure it's convenient but slower charge was def noticeable.
But the whole point is being able to depend on a cable that just about everyone has. All of your gear has USB-C. Apple just being cocky.
Like this you waste charging cycle. I doubt this "few minutes before leaving home" can charge your phone up to 100%. Every cycle you do not charge from 0% up to 100% can be considered a wasted cycle. And in wasting things we are good ;)
That is not accurate, as far as I understand. The opposite might even be the case.
From what I understand, the battery is damaged most when close to 0% or close to 100%.
So, if a phone could do, say, 1000 full cycles until the battery reaches a certain stage of degradation, and now you used an identical phone, but with shorter cycles only down to 20%, then charge to 80%, you could not only do 1000 of those short cycles, but even 1000/60% = 1667, and still have the battery in a better shape than the one with 1000 full cycles.
I have the MagSafe battery and if your iPhone is hot it won't charge wirelessly at all. It was frustrating to come prepared with a 100% phone and 100% battery pack, and leave an event with a dead phone and 60% still in the battery pack.
Fast charging is bad for the battery. I’d actually be happier if the wireless MagSafe charger was slower, say around 5-8W. I have all the time in the world while asleep, why would I care if it finished charging in 1 hour vs 3 hours?
Well i dunno, it worked tremendously well for USB 2, don’t you think? Might be my age, but I distinctly remember having heaps of different charging cables. Gone, thanks to EU legislation.
You're not completely honest here, though. It was either Type A jack for power supplies without a cable, or Type B micro jack for fixed cables, and the latter very much specifies the port on the device.
Sort of. Standardizing on a USB-A charger did slightly push people to use a USB form plug on the other end - but data transfer is what really killed the proprietary connectors.
The multitude of USB connectors has been pared down - mini USB was withdrawn due to its design flaws, micro USB was obnoxious for 5Gbps data transfer, as was the larger USB-B plug. The convenience and capabilities of USB-C have slowly replaced them both on the device side, as well as the capability to go higher than 5 Gbps.
If anything has slowed adoption of USB-C, I'd point at desktop PCs and the reluctance to put 'real' USB-C ports on them. This is mostly because of what I consider to be a design error on the USB-IF's part - they added backward compatibility, allowing a USB-C dongle to supply a USB-A connector, when they should have supplied forward compatibility instead. This left a lot of bundled cables as well as hardware dongles like wireless mouse adapters stuck on USB-A.
The decision passed today also talks about harmonizing wireless charging in the future, to make sure it's compatible across brands and device types. Presumably that would happen once the technology has matured a bit more.
Move to wireless only is shame since charge is slow, not good for battery health, breaks many compatibility like wired only CarPlay, and not fixing big file (high quality 4K video) transferring issue.
Apple hasn't changed the 'fast-changing' lightning connector since 2012, and USB-A lasted from 1996 to, well, present. USB-C came out in 2014 and is likely going to outlive us both. Connectors simply don't change that fast, and I'm not sure why people think they do.
I think even the EU can regulate on that kind of schedule.
I think with the size of USB-C and Lightning, we are pretty close to the point (if not there already) where structural limitations are not going to let us go much (if any) smaller. No one wants a connector that will break after 10 uses.
USB-C, electrically, has enough headroom that performance should not be an issue for a very, very, very long time. Already you can push more data over a USB-C cable than a phone can meaningfully handle.
The only thing that really comes to mind is we could go to fiber core for crazy data speeds but those are so delicate I don't think the improvement would be worth the hassle unless we have a big improvement there.
I think C could easily adopt a fiber, there's the "tongue" bit in the middle of the socket, and empty space in the middle of the plug, could easily have a fiber run down the middle there.
iPhones don't even ship with a charger anymore and they definitely did not lower their prices when the decision to leave them out. It's a win-win for them – they can claim to be more environmentally conscious etc. while reducing their BOM cost.
Apple and other phone companies don't depend on selling cables and chargers. If they did, they would have been doing a much better job and they'd be more like Anker and Griffin.
One end of the cable changed but I think the point was that the other end, the part that was built into your laptop, didn't.
I still have a stash of USB-B, mini-USB, and micro-USB cables with the USB-A because I've got a printer, a camera, and devices (Kindle, older battery) that use those ports. I have a USB-C -> USB-A hub. In 5-10 years from now, I might have gone all USB-C.
There is, for example the fact that the standard is set by comittee means large players have more say but cannot dictate the market. This allows innovation that doesn't benefit one party.
> purely for personal preference and convenience reasons
Not the reason behind the move
> not for reasons related to safety, or pollution, or security
Those are some of the benefits but not all
> especially for things that change as fast as phones
Connectors are standards, plus phones do not change that often, they get marginally better but most of them have looked largely the same for a decade.
> There's a long history of Apple using proprietary connectors to achieve performance specifications above what the currently available standardized connectors could provide
Previously there was also a long history of interoperability between Apple designs that no longer exists. And before that there was a long history of Apple being a tiny company constantly on the verge of bankruptcy. Long history is a pretty short time nowadays.
> Apple is likely to ditch a charging connection altogether in favor of wireless charging in the near future.
I cannot wait to have the slowest charging phone on the market as a selling point.
> he EU is mandating technological stagnation.
The EU mandating GDPR has increased security protection on data around the globe, and decreased bloatware. A large player like europe setting a standard means that companies follow that legislation to not have 2 products one for Europe and one outside.
> There's a long history of Apple using proprietary connectors to achieve performance specifications above...
Oh please, Apple has barely improved Lightning since its introduction a decade ago (2012!). Yes, back then, it was better than what was available, but the industry has moved on, and Apple has stagnated.
> Hell, in all likelihood, Apple is likely to ditch a charging connection altogether in favor of wireless charging in the near future.
Unlikely. For one thing, wireless charging is still much slower than what you can get with a cable, and for another, users will not tolerate needing to lug around a charging pad (with its own cable), or hope that someone nearby has one. Yes, I know similar things about tolerance were said about the removal of headphone jacks, but I don't think this is quite the same situation.
> The EU is mandating technological stagnation. They will always be behind the market.
I haven't read the text of the law, but I would hope that it's flexible enough to allow for embracing improvements to technology.
But even if that process is slow, I don't think that's a bad thing. Fast-changing technology generally does not really help users (it can, but I think more often it does not). Yes, benefits can be realized over time, but these sorts of changes create confusion and waste if not done well. I really don't care if Apple wants to put a new connector on iPhones, but it takes them 3 years instead of 1 year to do it because of legal/regulatory issues.
> Mandating a technology standard, purely for personal preference and convenience reasons -- not for reasons related to safety, or pollution, or security
Pollution is* a concern here, though I agree that's probably not the primary reason this law was drafted. I'm with you on the general discomfort around regulations targeted toward preference/convenience. But I think it's a little unfair to call it "personal preference". Lighting is inferior to USB-C in almost every way (the only advantage Lightning has is that it's slightly smaller, but not to a degree that really matters). Apple continues to use Lightning out of stubbornness and NIH syndrome, and that hurts consumers overall.
But consider all the places that have two cables. I've seen dual-cable setups in Lyft/Uber vehicles, and at friendly coffee shops and stuff like that (hell, I still see a few places that additionally have micro-USB cables). What a huge waste of material! And yeah, you can buy single cables that have multiple "heads" on them, but I very rarely see those in the wild. If there was actually a good technical reason why we have this split, then sure,
> especially for things that change as fast as phones
I don't think that's really true anymore. Most smartphones are basically the same as they were 5 years ago. Incrementally better camera hardware, incrementally better display technology, more RAM, faster processors, more storage. But I see very little change year to year. Maybe there will be some big new changes coming soon, but I don't see any evidence of that.
> is one of the most short-sighted and naive things any government could do.*
Heh, I think you underestimate government capacity for short-sightedness. This particular thing seems pretty middling and mediocre to me on that scale.
> Unlikely. For one thing, wireless charging is still much slower than what you can get with a cable, and for another, users will not tolerate needing to lug around a charging pad (with its own cable), or hope that someone nearby has one. Yes, I know similar things about tolerance were said about the removal of headphone jacks, but I don't think this is quite the same situation.
But users do accept carrying charging pads. Smartwatches, electric toothbrushes and shaving apparatus have charging pads/cables and no one complains about carrying those when going on a trip.
For the average consumer, the iPhone really doesn't need a port of any kind anymore. What it needs is all day battery life. As Apple doesn't really care about "pro" smartphone users who use external devices like DAC-s or IR cameras they will ditch the port at some point. If they cared about "pro" smartphone users, they would've come out with a USB-C iPhone in 2018 or 2019.
> no one complains about carrying those when going on a trip.
I kinda think "going on a trip" is a minority subset of the times when people bring charging gear with them. Regardless, I personally would find it a huge annoyance to have to carry a charging pad. Right now I just bring my laptop charger, and use it for both my laptop and (Android) phone. I don't want to bring a charging pad in addition.
The devices you list are not used/charged in a moving vehicle, but rather at its destination. A phone is considerably different in this very relevant regard.
> Oh please, Apple has barely improved Lightning since its introduction a decade ago (2012!). Yes, back then, it was better than what was available, but the industry has moved on, and Apple has stagnated.
You mean: in 20 years Apple has had only two connectors, and they worked and work extremely well. Meanwhile the industry "that moved on" invented 6 different incompatible connectors, didn't even specify a charging standard until 2010s (IIRC) and is now busy inventing USB 4 Gen 1x15 revision 16
All the USB data specs are irrelevant for this legislation. All it says is: Use a USB-C connector and support the USB PD charging standard. In fact many cheaper android phones use USB2 since the port is purely for charging.
That's a bit of an unfair argument, since you're mixing various things together that are not connectors (USB 4... etc.).
Bottom line is that the industry has actually been converging on USB-C for some time now. And again, I think it's unfair to compare an industry with tens (hundreds?) of players having trouble agreeing on something, when we're talking about Apple -- a single entity -- obstinately refusing to drop their obsolete, outdated "uniqueness" in this case.
I get why Apple chose to do Lighting instead of microUSB back in 2012 (I have lost track of the high number of microUSB connectors I have broken), but the funny thing is that Lightning didn't really offer any technical benefits beyond the more sturdy form factor at the time. Lighting was USB2 (and more or less still is), and microUSB carried USB2 signals just fine. They went their own way there for pretty dubious reasons. Well, ok, one obvious reason: they wanted to restrict who could build an iPhone/iPad accessory, because using the Lightning connector required licensing it from Apple.
So basically Lightning exists for one physical sturdiness reason (which, alone, probably would not be justification to do something new), and one anti-competitive reason.
Apple should have just stuck with microUSB, and then switched to USB-C once that made sense. But no, that would have reduced their iron grip on what people are allowed to do with their phones.
So, force people to have more stuff and use the less power efficent option. As well as the glued-in non-replaceable batteries that were such a wonderful futuristic idea before.
Thank the flying spaghetti monster that the EU is "behind the market", because the market is consumer-hostile garbage.
Not a fan of metric screw threads? Mandates were needed in some countries to change from imperial to metric because the market can't make such a non-incremental move on its own even if it's good for everyone.
Why? I can definitely see Apple rolling this out to the Pro line first, then the regular iPhones, and then the SE. It could be like the home button, which disappeared on the X and then rolled through the 11s, and the SE will be the last to go.
The benefit will be better water/dust-proofing, and slightly more internal room for battery or whatever else. I have only just started charging wirelessly, but I find it works great for me. I know wired charging is faster, but only a handful of times a year do I care about that.
There's the magsafe wireless charging now though right so you could slap that on and hold the phone maybe? I don't have an iPhone so I'm not aware how thick those pucks are off the top of my head but seems doable.
Those other two use cases of music creation and thumb drives are a tiny market on iPhone I could see Apple abandoning them entirely.
You're right, that is an important caveat! I've not run into an issue, since I mostly charge at night, and rarely is my battery in perilous territory (even though it's the diminutive 13 Mini). On the few occasions where I was using the phone and needed to charge it, I just switched to using my computer, which I usually have with me.
And if I were charging at a Starbucks or something, I could use the phone while charging, just flat on the table.
If we follow this logic, the EU should also mandate which aspects of USB-C PD are required to be supported and enforce that. Otherwise we'll end up with a slew of devices without even the required 5.1k resistors, which can't charge from PD-compliant adapters, but can be charged using a USB-A to USB-C cable.
As an EU citizen, while I do agree that regulation is often required (it did wonders for our roaming charges!), I do not like this development.
> In so far as they are capable of being recharged by means of wired charging at voltages higher than 5 Volts, currents higher than 3 Amperes or powers higher than 15 Watts, the categories or classes of radio equipment referred to in point 1 of this Part shall:
> 3.1. incorporate the USB Power Delivery, as described in the standard EN IEC 62680-1-2:2021 “Universal serial bus interfaces for data and power - Part 1-2: Common components - USB Power Delivery specification”;
> 3.2. ensure that any additional charging protocol allows for the full functionality of the USB Power Delivery referred to in point 3.1., irrespective of the charging device used.
As to devices supplying less than 15 Watts: the 5.1k resistors are already mandatory in the USB-C connector spec.
I'd argue this is actually great. It's extremely unlikely that type-C connectors would charge from anything other than the in-built charging standard (if for no other reason than physical compatibility) but all the extra pins make it extremely flexible. The Lightning pins can just be routed out of the USB-C connector in a compliant way via alt-mode.
Lightning is a better connector for small devices and it's more durable in my experience. USB-C is way better than micro as a connector but you end up with the issue of many kinds of cables that look similar but are not interchangeable. What speed? PD support? Power only? Who knows!
Maybe switching to a less durable connector or no connector is fine given that Qi support has gotten pretty good. Most of the Lightning cables I've purchased are still in circulation, I'd prefer not to replace them.
If the EU really cared about solving a problem they'd ban micro, that connector is really fragile and totally superseded by type C.
I already have three kinds of C to C cables, some that will work with my laptop+monitor and some that won't, then some power-only ones for random accessories. We can no-true-Scotsman all day but so far type C hasn't simplified my life and as far as I can tell it won't in the near future. iPhones switching for me will just mean throwing out a decade of Lightning cables and buying USB-C cables.
They are charge cables that come with random accessories, I think I bought some long ones as well. Also A to C cables. As long as they're only used for low-draw devices it should be safe but requires keeping track.
The vast majority of C to C "charge" cables are USB 2 cables. I don't believe I have ever received or even seen a "charge only" non-captive C to C cable. A to C cables are a lot more common.
Do you have reason to believe that the C to C cables you got/bought don't support USB 2?
It doesn't make sense for a random accessory to come with a charge only C to C cable because USB 2 C to C cables are a dime a dozen. They're almost certainly paying more money to produce a spec violating cable.
They could have data support, I've never actually checked. The wires are pretty thin so I only trust them for charging the lights they came with. I have a bundle of similar looking A to mini or micro B cables of which I know many are charge-only. As long as they're super short I only rely on them being useful for charging.
In that case they almost certainly do have data support.
Keep in mind that power dissipation scales with the square of the current. That means that, as a first order approximation, relative to household 15 amp wiring, a 3 amp cable can be 1/25 of the size. You can get away with really thin wires for that.
The reason why you end up with thick USB C cables is because of either 5 amp support (requiring 2.8x bigger wires) and/or USB 3 support (requiring a bunch of extra higher spec wires). It is quite normal for plain old 3 amp USB 2 USB C cables to be thin.
I'm curious, next time I'm charging devices I'll check. Either way they're still not useful for anything beyond accessory charging, they're short and won't carry the power+signal necessary for my laptop (which, sigh, has two kinds of cables because the one Apple provided with their charger won't do Thunderbolt).
They're not interchangeable, of the C cables I have now some will drive my monitor and some won't, and some don't even carry data. The type C connector is a big step up vs the older micro and A+B connectors, it just doesn't really make using USB simpler or easier to figure out.
The large hole in the lightning female port traps lint, I have to clean it out with a toothpick every couple of weeks. USB-C's gaps are too small for lint to collect.
That's not true, as my phone would be happy to attest. However, I think I cleaned it in the 12-18 month range, when charging stopped working and the cable no longer clicked. There's almost certainly lint back in there, but not enough to necessitate cleaning.
The cable stops working in one orientation, so I'd expect it to be quite noticeable. There's a few posts in that regard, so I suspect it has the same or similar problems.
Certainly doesn't seem in favor of Lightning cables being any more durable.
What just happened is, EU, a political organization enforcing the use of a technology on a company which operates on free market. It's Apples best interest to make technology that the consumers want so that they can sell more units of that. A political organization like EU has no say in this. EU citizens already make this decision for themselves by voting with money and choosing to buy/not buy an iPhone.
Today is one of the dark days of EU. In short sight it's a victory. But in long sight it's a hinderence to progress by enforcing a technology on the market instead of letting the free market decide the technology.
You probably shouldn't have based your argument on this statement, which is generally regarded as a myth. It is a myth in the sense that Apple exists in a free market: it is a near monopoly but is savvy enough not to wade into the area other companies did in the 90's and were penalized.
Second, governments have the right to enforce environmental protection acts to protect the health and safety of its people. Technology companies are subject to this from day one at many levels (e.g., fabs have limits on how much toxic waste they can pump into the air).
The EU is leading the way for cracking down on trillion-dollar companies who choose to treat you as a product rather than a person. I hope the rest of the world follows.
In the market of mobile phones for consumers who actually buy apps. That’s why everyone wants Apple to lose that monopoly. The problem of course is that exactly that monopoly is a large part of the reason why it’s the market for consumers who actually buy apps.
Oh? When did I become able to carry my Apple software, purchases, addresses, backups, pictures, etc. over to Android? When did I become able to buy a phone that functions in the Apple ecosystem that isn't made by Apple?
Oh, right, I can't.
A Pixel and a Galaxy are direct competitors. An iPhone and a Galaxy are not direct competitors because of lock-in effects.
Now, if you are saying that the EU should mandate that I be able to switch my purchases between those ecosystems, that would change. However, even as much of a fan as I am about anti-trust, I believe that would be a bridge too far.
Furthermore, from what we have seen in the past 36 months with respect to supplier consolidation, I would argue that ANY market with less than 5 real competitors should get broken up recursively until that gets fixed. That should apply to phones, food, toilet paper, disinfectants, etc.--everything.
Part of what is allowing all the economic price hikes to stick is that even in markets where there is "competition", there is some single upstream supplier that can't (mostly) or won't (rarely) increase production. This prevents any of the "competitors" from being able to gain significant market share since they can't increase their production since everybody is blocked.
A lot of businesses figured this out through Covid. So, they raised prices. What are you gonna do? Go to a competitor? He can't absorb your order and you'll be at the back of his queue. Good luck.
So because iOS apps can't run on Android phones, Apple is a monopoly and should be forced to use USB-C? I'm very confused by what you're trying to say. If apps not running on other OSes is enough to count as lock-in, then every OS creates lock-in. I've bought many Windows apps over the years, but they don't run on my linux laptop, and vice-versa. Does that mean both linux and windows should be regulated as monopolies? I don't think so. What you call "lock-in" are just software incompatibilities. Or do you think Apple should be forced to write drivers for every Android phone out there, and sell and support their OS on those platforms?
And Apple doesn't run an app store on Android. Does that mean Android is also a monopoly? Heck, Sony doesn't run an app store on the Nintendo Switch. Does that mean Nintendo is a monopoly? We could play a similar game with streaming services. Yes, you can give money to people in different ways and get software that works on different systems. That's how it has always been. Nobody is being deceived or coerced. Well until now, since the EU is coercing everyone to use USB-C.
Apple should be coerced into adopting USB-C on iPhone. Their refusal to do so has been an explicit, repeated failure on Apple's behalf. The iPhone is one of the only remaining Apple products that does not use USB-C, and it's exclusion is entirely unnecessary since USB-C's base-spec was designed by Apple and well-exceeds the capabilities of Lightning.
At the end of the day, it's a serial port. People should stop acting like Apple is being asked to re-engineer the Death Star, and recognize that this is a change so rudimentary that people on YouTube do it for a fun weekend project. It's the textbook definition of a failure, and the EU has every right to hold Apple accountable for the insane things they call 'innovation' in the US.
Apple make billions every quarter and at this point no one can realistically unseat them.
They collect pretty much all the profit in the phone market.
They don’t technically have a monopoly, but they are in an incredibly strong position which is close to being guaranteed for the short and medium term.
Was just trying to explain that although they don't technically have a monopoly in the phone market, they do hold a huge amount of power.
In a basic sense, monopolies were outlawed to try to keep markets fair, but Apple are in such a strong position now that they have pretty much the same level of influence that a company with an actual monopoly would have.
It's not about profit, directly at least. A company making twice the profit while selling half the product of their competitor is not in any violation of anti-monopoly/trust/whatever laws.
> A political organization like EU has no say in this.
This is the short-sighted view. The unguided free market very often makes "decisions" that are detrimental to society as a whole, and it is absolutely necessary for political organisations to correct for this.
Obviously not. If doctors can't take care of their patients within a normal working day, the answer is to have more doctors rather than make the existing ones work unsustainably long hours.
I wasn't suggesting that we do so, I was pointing out the absurdity of saying that not doing something for social benefit is the same as harming Society
You stated categorically that "society and legislators should only forbid harmful action" rather than "compelling helpful action" and then chose a particularly nonsensical example of "compelling helpful action" to prove your point. There are plenty of (much more realistic) examples of "compelling helpful action" which don't lead to "absurd conclusions."
Yes, I chose an extreme and absurd example to illustrate the point. I said as much in the post.
I agree that there are many realistic examples of compelling action. If you provide some I would probably disagree that the government should be doing them.
It seems to me like the EU considers companies making their own proprietary phone charger connectors as “harmful”. So I’m having trouble understanding what you take issue with here.
Plenty of folks in this thread disagree with you, not only the EU legislative branch. You seem to be missing the fact that we have a society here and it demands concessions and compromises to be part of one.
Please don't refer to the "legislative branch" of the EU. The EU doesn't implement separation of powers like most governments do. Laws like this originate with, are passed by and are enforced by the Commission.
There is a so-called Parliament. It's more like the US House of Lords power-wise. It can slow down legislation or tweak it a bit. It can't actually change the law, which means it's not a Parliament.
There is a set of courts. You can appeal to them against the decisions of the Commission after the punishment is enacted. Unlike in normal democratic systems of government, the government doesn't have to prove guilt in a neutral court of law. They assert guilt, fine you a few billion dollars and then if you have enough money left over you can appeal in the courts. Years will pass and if you eventually win, you might get the money back. Of course the Commission might then just fine you again - the rules are vague and being in compliance essentially political. The courts also have a history of activism and 'discovering' new laws in the texts of existing laws.
The EU is structurally and philosophically a Soviet-style system, which makes sense given its origins in the Ventotene Manifesto. Like all such systems it has institutions that use the names as western democratic institutions, but on close inspection the rules are sufficiently different that they aren't effective.
"we have a society here and it demands concessions"
"Society" doesn't care about phone connectors or make demands. Governments do that. Survey the populations in EU countries and their top priorities are nowhere even close to this. They mostly care about the economy, immigration and climate change.
I can't wait for the EU to become a federation. I don't see it happening in my lifetime but who knows what the next crisis will bring. But I digress...
> "Society" doesn't care about phone connectors or make demands. Governments do that. Survey the populations in EU countries and their top priorities are nowhere even close to this. They mostly care about the economy, immigration and climate change.
If you asked me what the top issues in the EU are, my top 3 answers would be:
1. energy policy
2. energy policy
3. idiots at the helm of ECB (how is the new hermes scarf, mrs Lagarde?) who can't comprehend energy policy
but! if you asked me specifically if I want to see phone charging cables standardized by legislation, I'd say yes, why now and not 10 years ago. Call me a Soviet for that, I don't care.
Cool. As soon as Apple relinquishes all monopoly on IP, then we can talk about if governments can interfere here.
These companies hold a craptonne of legal power to force me and you. I'm sorry that I have zero regrets when it comes to just a common standard... Just like I have zero regrets that all power outlets in EU are 220v/50Hz
> Compelling helpful action leads to all kinds of absurd conclusions.
No it doesn't. Besides, "not doing something helpful" vs "doing something hurtful" is often simply a matter of perspective.
> For example, that we should we compel doctors to work more hours because anytime they spend at home is to the detriment of their patients.
To use your own language, this example is completely absurd. Here is your logic applied to forbidding harmful actions: "Setting speed limits on roads leads to all kinds of absurd conclusions, for example that we should forbid people to walk too fast in their homes."
This is a false dichotomy. The government and politicians makes and mandates decisions that are detrimental to society. Often to their own benefit.
And they have no competition. It would be too political to list these. But, I am sure both sides of the political spectrum can come up with innumerable examples.
> The government and politicians makes and mandates decisions that are detrimental to society.
Thats a RELIGIOUS statement. The government and politicans are elected by their people. They take decisions that were mandated by their people. If the people mandate something, that's that.
In Anglosphere, where FPTP system prevents the people's will from being reflected in actual politics may be causing such an environment in which what the politicians do and what the people want have little to do with each other. And it does seem to be so.
But in any country with proportional representation, its as it should be: Its the democratic will of the people that something happens.
"The people" does not need to have 'competition'. The people are, well, the society. Proposing that they need 'competition' or their power to be curbed is reactionary.
Firstly, with your government, you get a vote. But just about competition: the competition is that you can move to a different jurisdiction (i.e. country). And there's a lot more competition there than there is with phone makers or phone OSes.
If a Frenchman doesn't like French laws he can move to Germany and haul all his stuff there (and his pension, etc). But if you don't like the Apple ecosystem anymore, Apple will make it as difficult as possible to move.
The free market isn't the utopia libertarians think it is. You don't get to protest inside Apple, you can't petition for redress of grievances, if Apple terminates your account, you don't get a judge or jury of your Apple peers to rule if it was right or wrong.
> If a Frenchman doesn't like French laws he can move to Germany and haul all his stuff there (and his pension, etc).
A bit offtopic but this is still something I find very lacking in the EU.
For all the good it's brought us, we still have extremely different social security in each country and if you've lived in many EU countries throughout your life it's a complete PITA to reconcile things like pensions. Some countries have state pensions, others only voluntary corp plans.. I have no idea how this will turn out when I retire.
IMO these different systems should at the very least be talking together.
At least between Finland and Sweden it seems to work fine. My mother is from Finland and lives in Sweden now. She got a phonecall from Finland when it was time for her pension. Just confirmed with her and set it up so she gets her pension transfered to her account every month. She had just about forgotten about it since it was 40+ years ago she moved to Sweden.
As is stated below countries with similar systems cooperate easier, Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands are more or less automatic. This is slowly getting better, EU is working on it. Some key words: EESSI with RINA (stands for reference implementation..), and more generally "single digital gateway eu". The pessimist in me says that it will not be done for all countries with in 20 years, unless we give some countries lots of infrastructure for free.
Ah ok I've not seen the benefits of this. I'm from the Netherlands but lived in Ireland and Spain. I don't think they have these setups.
But I think this needs much more priority than the 'one market' benefits for big business they're working on. It's really a mess if you move around in the EU now, it's not at all like in America.
They should fix the voting too: Right now as an expat I can only vote for my home country which has zero bearing on the country I live in :/ And changing nationalities takes 10+ years.
For other stuff like health I don't mind as much (especially as Spain has a much better state health system than the Netherlands' privatised crap :) )
These are the rules for elections in Sweden; one year until you can vote in local elections, five years for national elections. You should always research this when entering a new country for work, applying for citizenship is usually a very rigid process, and it will depend on the time you send in you application. I do not know if these rules are the same all over EU.
About cooperation between countries; At least the gears are turning, even if it is not somethings that is high on the political agenda. The biggest issue is to have a central database that maps one identity in one country to another. We have not even figured out Inter-country Electronic IDs (via EIDAS) yet, there is no way to even do a manual match of identities between countries using eID. That makes it impossible for you to log on and check your pensions if you work in the wrong country.
Respectfully, I would claim it's short-sighted to believe that the individual consumer has any real say in what they want, need or get with respect to offerings by trillion-dollar international conglomerates.
There is no such thing as a free and unregulated market. Well, it exists but we call it the law of the jungle.
This is not to say that any regulation is sensible, but this kind of standardization to avoid vendor lock-in and waste is one of the prime examples of sensible stuff.
> Respectfully, I would claim it's short-sighted to believe that the individual consumer has any real say in what they want, need or get with respect to offerings by trillion-dollar international conglomerates.
Whole heartedly agreed. If I, as a consumer, had my say then my flagship phone would still have a headphone jack, an SD card slot, and a replaceable battery. Yet here we are.
If there weren't such anticompetitive behavior by monopolistic behemoths, one could "have a say" by choosing to buy or produce the product which offers demanded features. These specific customer demands are common and well-known, yet their effectively "not having a say" has indeed occurred, given the fact these options are not made available anywhere in the behemoth-controlled market.
It's not. The EU tried to do it the easy way, where companies would agree amongst themselves. This was finally accomplished in 2009[1] by every one except Apple.
The interesting thing there is, the connector discussed in 2009 was the micro-USB connector. Had the EU forced tech companies in 2009 to use a micro-USB connector, would that mean they would still be on it now, and not using the (far better) USB-C connector?
I think I'm for this decision overall, but otoh I'm really glad that the EU didn't force everyone onto micro-USB back in 2009. If they EU hadn't done this now, I wonder how I would feel about the possibility when 2035 rolls around?
> Had the EU forced tech companies in 2009 to use a micro-USB connector, would that mean they would still be on it now, and not using the (far better) USB-C connector?
> We're also voting with our votes and most of us agree with that the EU is doing here.
Never voted for crap like this or the GDPR. I voted for strong leadership against Russian aggression or not becoming energy dependent of an evil regime, but I guess mandating trivialities is so much easier.
Yes, we don't have a direct democracy (although you can vote for parties advocating it), but it's a lot more than you get with Apple. You don't get a vote on anything. "Voting with your wallet" isn't a vote at all. You can just choose to leave, but Apple makes it every difficult.
"voting with money" or "voting with your wallet" is a complete non-sense. There is no -absolutely no- way for anyone in the industry to attribute a lost sale to a "missing" feature.
I think this also a symptoms on how Americans view the world through means of consumption. Everything HAS TO be consumed one way or another.
Every time somebody says to "vote with your wallet", there is an implicit command to shut up and stop complaining about the product. The argument goes that the only legitimate way to respond to a product you don't like is to "vote with your wallet" (not buy it), implying that voting against the corporation's practices at the ballot box or on a soap box aren't legitimate. "vote with your wallet" is a fundamentally anti-democratic utterance that attempts to de-legitimize dissenters' participation in government and public discussion.
> There is no -absolutely no- way for anyone in the industry to attribute a lost sale to a "missing" feature.
There's a whole idea around it called market research. It goes as far as... surveying people post-purchase to find out what features became the deciding factors. So yes, it is possible, just with very small sampling rate.
It's not math. I've been asked about a purchase while exiting a shop. If they wanted to know why I didn't buy X, they would find out. (or specifically why I bought Y and not X, which covers the missing feature)
I'm happy to give those out for free: I didn't buy oneplus 6t, because it's missing the audio back. <- that wasn't impossible.
Look at it this way. If you enter an Apple Store, see that iPhone doesn't have a audiojack - you leave. There's no record or way of asking you anything.
"Big Box" stores will not question you for the reasons why you bought a Nokia over a OnePlus. Their market research doesn't focus on that. They also don't share customer data with Apple, Nokia or OnePlus.
Neither does Apple have it in their culture to ask, what people want.
How long did it take for Apple to get on contactless payments?
So voting with my wallet not only works, but it is an order of magnitude more powerful than "regular" voting - where I am not even represented on the political spectrum.
Exactly, which means the political system is doing its job. Politics was invented to most efficiently express the desires of the people. If the people want more political control, then it is the job of politics to do so. If they don't, then politics should avoid it.
The only reason this is muddled in America is because the people don't agree on to what degree the politics should control things.
And yes, if power delivery was still a relatively new industry, EU absolutely should have mandated a single universal outlet that's "good enough". But existing designs predate EU by decades and are already so well-entrenched that changing them all to standardize on a single plug is too much effort to justify the gains.
But it ain't so with USB-C. Mobile rechargeable devices are a relatively recent tech, and the market has already largely converged on a single design. At this point, making it into a real standard, with the result that it's guaranteed to work everywhere, is a no-brainer.
Given the state of the world it’s never going to happen but I honestly think that there should be an attempt at standardising plug sockets across the world. It is kind of ridiculous that that there are 15 different types of socket. What is anyone gaining from this madness?
A one-to-one mapping between standard plugs and standard wall power makes a lot of sense. But different standards of wall power should not share a single plug; that's just asking for trouble.
As for global standardization of wall power; maybe in an ideal world. But in reality, it would cost a ton (way more than merely replacing plugs and outlets) and doesn't seem worth it.
While entire countries will keep the imperial system versus the metric system, I'll never believe in global standardisation. Even if it's strictly better, there will always be a cost to changing, and therefore not everyone will agree.
> in any case, power plug type G is by far the safest and best.
That's utter crap. We had this argument multiple times, and somehow people without proof call it "best and safest"... when facts state that it is just not the case.
Not the OP, but the current high inflation is partially caused by Covid-related measures.
The people who were saying early on during the pandemic (me included) that we have to put into balance the number of covid casualties with the longer term economic consequences of imposing harsh and long lockdowns were treated as assasins of our collective grandmas, and worse. If it matters I’m triple vaccinated.
Because surely you were an expert on covid and its consequences early on during the pandemic, and surely you have proven (and published) that the measures taken (given the knowledge at the time where they were taken) were counter-productive in the long run, right?
Didn't need to be an expert to see where all of this was going. Again, there were many calls of "you're locking us down -> very shitty economy going forward -> things will be shitty for everyone in terms of their physical existence, not only for grandma".
If anything, this should have put another big dent in experts' expertise, meaning if they knew what they were getting us into with their decisions (after all, they're experts) and they choose this high inflation route nonetheless.
> Didn't need to be an expert to see where all of this was going.
Sure, there is never a need to be an expert to claim knowing more than them.
Also, I'm not completely convinced that it's exclusively related to the Covid lockdowns in Europe. For instance, many companies were very quick to restart (or were not even stopped) in Europe, but struggle with the IC shortage... which is not coming from Europe, is it?
As far as I can tell it’s mostly related to the increase in the money supply that was generated/caused by the strict Covid measures, I’m talking both about the US, through the Fed policies, and Europe, through the ECB policies.
That increased money supply was at first not really felt because of the decreased money velocity caused by lockdowns and restrictions, but once things started getting back to “normal” in terms of lockdowns and travel restrictions and all that then money velocity got back closer to its pre-covid levels, and coupled with that increased money supply left us in the current situation.
Of course, the increased money supply is not the only explanation, there’s also the war in Ukraine which has put a tremendous pressure on energy prices, plus the supply crisis, but imo it’s still one of the main causes of what we’re going right now.
The amount by which the EU is better than the US in environmental protection is basically a rounding error relative to what’s actually necessary to stop climate change. You might as well say they’re equal.
The solution for climate change would come from technology. Not random politicians virtue signalling and signing useless agreements which doesn't make any meaningful difference.
I'm surprised people still bring up carbon capture tech as a solution.
It happens a lot around here lately but it's just such wishful thinking IMO.
If you have that much carbon-neutral energy, carbon-neutral materials, space, maintenance to really make a dent... And all those things don't displace green resources that could have been used for other necessary things instead... You wouldn't have had any problem to begin with.
See how much shit we get here when we get a few % less natural gas here in
Europe. We're in a huge crisis over just that. That's a promille of what we'd need to capture enough carbon for 0.01 degree cooling.
It's just some distraction from the hard things that are needed to solve it. And a big paycheck for the industry behind it obviously.
It's simpler to think "technology will save us" than "we as a species screwed up and have already destroyed 2/3 of wild life (not talking about the consequences of global warming, that's yet to come), maybe we should change drastically".
The continent that provides companies like ASML and plenty of machinery in general, and is regularly in the news - not just now with the Nobel Price - when it comes to bio-tech?
Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, sure, but there is plenty of IT inside the machines. You are too concentrated on some very hip consumer companies and don't see the vast ocean of important businesses in the middle, that don't have much or any consumer contact.
Where is your evidence? What a horrible contribution to the discussion, both divisive (and without reason, out of nowhere), and of the lowest quality.
I actually went through the trouble and looked for the evidence missing from your post. If anything we need to look at Asia most of all. Also because at least for Germany, where through decades long contacts I witnessed some of it personally, we (Germany) transferred significant know-how to China quite voluntarily, and our big companies still insist on continuing to invest there even when many smaller businesses have become far more cautious. Link: https://www.reuters.com/world/german-dependence-china-growin... (German dependence on China growing "at tremendous pace" - paywalled)
Here's some, mostly opinion pieces so YMMV (I'm missing rigorous data and statistics with explanations of what they
measured, these article are all too "freeform" for my taste):
> Sure. It also explains why EU is lagging horribly behind the US when it comes to technology.
Probably because the EU (government(s)) doesn't sink as much money in to research as the US government. The technology of the US was built on Cold War spending:
I think you would have a very hard time proving this without leveraging monetary policy. Sure some low level components are and companies built on top of that but it doesn’t mean the tech I’m using is supplied by the US government.
Pretty much all the tech I use comes from the private sector
Or maybe every EU tech company approaching success will voluntarily move to US, since that is where the (free) market is and that is where it can become successful.
There are multiple markets and varying degrees of regulating them. But the universal constant is that the less regulated a market is the better for consumers and society.
That's a bold statement and by no means a universal constant. If your rivers are on fire because there is no environmental regulation, then that is not good for society.
Good example! Environmental regulation managed to drive manufacturing out of developed countries making them vulnerable to less scrupulous, unfriendly regimes while merely shifting the environmental impact elsewhere.
The correct solution was, of course, taxing externalities like pollution and CO2. That would've allowed the free market to search for solutions naturally and locally.
That is my main qualm with regulations: they are a brute force imposed solution which solves the perceived problem on the short term while doing damage and 2nd order effects on the long term.
Well the stupid popup is coming from the stupid website. If they stopped collecting data they mostly don't use (let's be honest, most websites probably don't do anything useful with most of the data), then they would not have to show the popup.
> A political organization like EU has no say in this. EU citizens already make this decision for themselves by voting with money and choosing to buy/not buy an iPhone.
I think it's important to point out that most EU countries do not subscribe to the exact same free-market vision that the US does. And the biggest country that did has recently left it.
Most of Europe is totally happy with a much more restricted free market than the US would ever allow. This is not something imposed on us people. It's what the majority wants, aka democracy.
> It's Apples best interest to make technology that the consumers want so that they can sell more units of that.
This is so hilariously wrong. It's in Apple's best interest to do whatever makes them the most money. Sometimes that happens to coincide with what customers want, but it often doesn't, _especially_ in a market with a duopoly with an incredibly high affinity for lock-in.
It's the market standardizing around two platforms. No governmental intervention necessary. Turns out consumers prefer a familiar, predictable platform with plenty of 3rd party offerings. No surprise there. But also no monopolies.
> It's Apples best interest to make technology that the consumers want so that they can sell more units of that.
It's Apple's best interest to do what makes them money, and it often aligns with what customers want.
> A political organization like EU has no say in this.
Standards bodies in the EU have be defining things like this for decades.
> EU citizens already make this decision for themselves by voting with money and choosing to buy/not buy an iPhone.
As an Apple customer I might be voting with my money, but not on the connector specifically -- just on whether the product's collective pros outweigh their cons (and whether it's better than the competitor's, ofc). If I could vote, I would've voted for USB-C a long time ago, but I just get to choose between a set of products with varying compromises. Don't know why you try to make it seem like a democratic choice.
> Today is one of the dark days of EU. In short sight it's a victory. But in long sight it's a hinderence to progress by enforcing a technology on the market instead of letting the free market decide the technology.
If the free market had its say, it'd be choosing profits over the environment, consumer safety and worker rights every time. Or..? Why hasn't the US, with much laxer regulations free-marketed itself to utopia?
>But in long sight it's a hinderence to progress by enforcing a technology on the market instead of letting the free market decide the technology.
No, it's not in any way a hindrance to the market, merely one player who desires rent seeking. What it is doing is enforcing standards on manufacturers instead of the other way around.
It's a phone charging port. It's not that serious. It's better for consumers if we all have the same one for everything, if possible. Unless you can tell me why not?
Imagine this happened a few years ago, and the EU had instead demanded micro-USB. Then we would still be flipping plugs twice, and I wouldn't be able to use my laptop charger to charge my phone. It's not clear to me that USB-C is good enough to be the "final" connector, especially with the mess around USB versions, Thunderbolt, Displayport, etc. Unlike e.g. power sockets, where I am pretty confident that the current design can last another 15 years. (But which is not standard across EU countries!)
I believe the exact wording was that the industry was required to standardize on a connector, which at the time turned out to be micro-usb. Now the industry is shifting to usb-c, which is objectively better.
The current law already includes provisions to switch to a potential superior connector in the future. If the industry comes up with something better, the EU is not going to demand they stick with usb-c forever.
But it didn't, and it may very well be because those people are not as incompetent as betting on making something a standard prematurely. They id it only now.
Be careful with hypotheticals as basis of an argument.
In this case the counterfactual is a stronger argument than you saying "they did it only now" with appeal to authority. Unless there's a well reasoned approach to this policy, we are practically stuck with the current standard until the EU bureaucrats decide everyone needs an upgrade.
I don't really see how this is any worse than the current "do whatever you want regardless of what everyone else is attempting" that manufacturers currently go by.
But as other commenters point out, provisions exist to assist with this.
USB-C only exists because Apple proved to everyone how nice a reversible connector is, and USB caught up years later. Lightning has some other advantages like being thinner and less difficult to break. If Apple caves and moves to USB-C everywhere it’s very unlikely that future innovation in connectors will happen.
To me this is a really good proposal. USB is already the winner here. Apple is making life harder for consumers. To me the real short-sidedness of this is that wired charging might be completely irrelevant by 2024!
> It's Apples best interest to make technology that the consumers want so that they can sell more units of that.
And in the absence of a competitive advantage, you create a captive market. Apple was smart in quietly creating a captive market as they built out their ecosystem because they saw this eventuality. One of the ways they created it was by making the ecosystem both expensive to enter and leave. You're heavily invested in proprietary hardware and all of your digital assets are locked to the ecosystem and cannot be utilized outside it.
The Lightning port was innovative at the time it was introduced but it has been eclipsed in most ways by USB-C. Now it's just a DRM'd lock-in mechanism.
My partner recently switched to an iPhone. I bought a USB-C Charger, and some *certified* Lightning to USB-A cables in various lengths from various manufacturers to enabled the device to be charged all over the home and in the cars. Suddenly after 3 months the iPhone refuses to charge from any of the cables or using the USB-C cable that came with the phone plugged into the USB-C Charger. The cables work however when I use an old iPhone 6 or if I plug the new iPhone into a computer using one of the cables. No errors, no warnings, just nothing; the iPhone just refuses to charge from them.
Apple says the DRM exists to protect users from dodgy or counterfeit cables that might pose a risk to the users. Unsurprisingly [this official Apple cable](https://i.imgur.com/icsPxJx.jpg) will charge the iPhone just fine at full speed.
I for one welcome this regulation though I'm sure Apple will find a way to nerf it.
Can't speak for the person you are commenting to. But I live in the US and there are many industries that are not regulated for the benefit of the consumer. Telecom being a big one. Companies get away with a lot of anti-competitive practices here. Starbucks snuffing out ma and pa stores, eating loses just to become the only game in town.
> Can't speak for the person you are commenting to. But I live in the US and there are many industries that are not regulated for the benefit of the consumer. Telecom being a big one.
That's a poor example, telecoms are heavily regulated for the consumer. That's the reason why different operators are able to place consumer's calls to other operators - that is regulated.
Says who? USB type-XYZ will be even more beneficial to the consumer in 5 years and the EU governing body is going to what... ? update the books with that? Force all consumer electronics companies to switch? Will they be the new guiding light for all things tech deciding what is "good" for the consumer?
This is a bad take and others who might find it convenient for Apple to forced to do this are looking at this too short-sightedly.
> USB type-XYZ will be even more beneficial to the consumer in 5 years and the EU governing body is going to what... ? update the books with that? Force all consumer electronics companies to switch?
Sure! Why not?
More practically, it wouldn't be hard to designate a list of standardized form factors. The average smartphone also has plenty of real estate on its edges to ship multiple connectors (especially now that so many phones are dropping 3.5mm jacks), so if some fancy-shmancy USB-D or USB-J or whatever comes out it wouldn't be the end of the world to ship both until the EU updates its legislation to allow the fancy-shmancy one as an acceptable single port.
As it stands, the EU's decision represents a strict improvement from the consumer's perspective. That's worth celebrating, even before the longer-term kinks have been ironed out.
To say that "because consumer devices are already regulated" is not a defensive position to say that gov't "should regulate this new thing." That is merely an argument for precedent. In my view the gov't should demonstrate that the injury is overwhelming enough to necessitate intervention. This is not. It is a mere inconvenience to have two connector types. The EU should err on the side of conservative intervention so as not to cool innovation or even signal the cooling of innovation. This does not overcome that burden of proof for me.
What is the injury to the consumer they are really solving for? To buy a 3rd party USB-C or Lightning cable is comparable. They both charge your phone. They both allow for USB-A,B,C, MP3 adapters ad-infinitum. Is the injury that someone has to carry, wait..., 2 DIFFERENT CABLES!
Yes. Plus the environmental cost of all those extra cables. And the mental overhead of keeping track of extra cables, or losing them. The time and effort expended when you don't have your cable around and can't use your friend's or co-workers.
There are only three numbers: 0, 1, n. We want one charging cable standard. USB-C is objectively better than lighting - if it wasn’t, MacBooks would have a lighting charging port…
EU is not trying to impose regulation or standardization on highly innovative areas of hardware or chipset design or software design or anything of that matter. They are imposing it for something that has largely been understood and comoditized (electric charging of phones via cable and data transfer using open communication protocol) where there is little room for getting any kind of competitive advantage or differentiation or some significant innovation. Speaking about hindrance of progress is largely far fetched and not based on reality. Things like this are really not blocking any meaningful progress but they indeed are largely abused by enterprises to push proprietary things to consumer so that it can be monetized and consumer locked in the vendor ecosystem.
>It's Apples best interest to make technology that the consumers want so that they can sell more units of that
Consumers wants? More like Apple wants to use one of the few proprietary technologies that they can get away with, so they can sell you cables, whilst fostering an almost cult-like adulation of their company & what they do so that any time Apple's decisions are questioned, legions of people defend them for no reason.
The lightning connector is outmoded. The cables Apple makes are designed to fail, mostly around the heatshrink area. The digital standards that lightning supports are outdated: 0.480Gbps vs 20-40Gbps for USB C/+TB.
> any time Apple's decisions are questioned, legions of people defend them for no reason.
Maybe because your arguments are very one-sided and border on cult-like anti-Apple beliefs, like
> The cables Apple makes are designed to fail
All cables will fail with use eventually, there's no question to that. But suggesting somewhere inside Apple is an evil mastermind that's trying to get me to buy stuff that's deliberately engineered to be bad to get me to buy more is an accusation of which I've yet to see convincing proof.
I respect your decision not to shop Apple, but I really don't like that fact you're spreading false or unverifiable claims.
(n=1, I've had 1 lightning cable break in the last 10 years)
Then what about EU enforcing more energy efficient buildings and home appliances, electric vehicles and more?
EU is not a political organization, it is a political and economical union. If companies are left alone, they will never make a decision that does not benefit themselves. This is why we need EU, to make the decisions that benefit the planet and the people, thus leveling the field, so companies can compete within sane limits.
I don't care about private companies, if they want to operate with people they must follow a standard and so the news is good. All the time these companies do whatever they want like ditching headphone jack, fixed batteries, even if people don't want it. They force the change and we have to comply.
Do you, or any consumer, have perfect information about the phone market? No. Does your phone comply with FCC and EU rules? Yes. Does it contain mercury? No. Are there any taxes or tariffs on them? Probably. All of those and more mean we don’t have a free market.
Corporations exist because we let them, and they play by the rules we decide.
It's hilarious, if you have an iphone, an apple watch and an ipad you need 3! different cables. You can't even get around 2 of them with wireless because the apple watch doesn't support qi charging, so you need 2 different pads for iphone and watch. I will never understand how apple let it come to this...
> A political organization like EU has no say in this. EU citizens already make this decision for themselves by voting with money and choosing to buy/not buy an iPhone.
Surely this goes both ways - if you don’t want to play by the rules you can vote with your business and not sell in to that market?
Oh please - Apple had more than a decade to improve on the lightning cable - you somehow infer that progress will be hindered now because of this ruling? You do realise why standards actually exist?
Political organizations like the FCC already control parts of what an iPhone is and isn't allowed to do. Apple's never been in a position where they can offer exactly what the consumer wants without any political regulation, they've always had to follow some rules.
I don't think this will go down as an important or sector-changing decision. I remember hearing the same thing online about the 2009 common external power supply law and if anything it feels like the consumer is better off.
As others have said much more eloquently than I could, the answer for a happy market probably isn't total unregulated capitalism _or_ full government control, but likely somewhere in the middle. I've been an iPhone user since the 3GS and I'm pleased with this decision.
depending on your definition of "free market", if you're looking for the benefits of a free market, apple's monopolistic behavior is also a source of market failure
This is the problem I have with this choice. USB-C isn't one cable. It's a big variety of poorly-labelled possible cables, complying with a ton of different standards.
USB-C can be just USB2.0 capable, 3.1 Gen1, 3.1 Gen2, Thunderbolt 3 capable, etc. Some cables can carry 3A. Some 5A.
When your 'universal' charging cable doesn't provide fast charging, is it because your charger doesn't provide the right voltages/wattage? Is it a broken USB-PD implementation (eg the Nintendo Switch)? is it that the cable is underspecced (and a lot of USB-C cables on the market don't actually meet the spec)?
I think the intention is good but USB-C carries so much complexity that I don't think this helps consumers as much as everyone is making out.
USB-A had a similar problem (but on a much smaller scale). There also was heterogeneity in build quality. But over time features and quality converged. I think we should expect something similar here.
I didn't have to keep separate sets of visually identical cables for USB-A to do different things - that's already a reality with USB-C -> USB-C cables.
I can tell at a glance if a USB-A cable supports USB3.0 for instance.
> I am an iPhone user, but having an iPhone is not ubiquitous here, almost all of my friends/special other, use an Android phone with USB-C.
yes, this is an interesting statement. and it's true.
basically in the countries that form the European Union Android has a higher market share than iOS. in some big countries like Germany, Spain, France and Italy Android has between 60% to 70% of the market.
but what's more interesting is this:
in the UK, Canada, Australia and the US the iPhone has more market share (and in NZ it's very close).
anecdotally, in the UK pretty much everyone in big cities have iPhones. i very rarely see an Android device.
i do wonder why. it could have to do with cheaper prices for Android and a general lower penetration of technology in those countries, but i think this seems too facile.
I have a feeling the iPhone market penetration, in the named countries (Central EU vs Common Wealth) has a strong correlation with other aspects of the daily life in said markets (for example Facebook use, MSN Messanger --ok, some 10 years ago-- use of cash in daily purchase) At least that is my feeling, which of course can be completely biased. I would find really interesting a study in that.
Not only that Android is cheaper but also the mean income in countries where Android is prevalent is lower than those where iOS is, with exceptions like Germany, France (I'd need to see market share data from these exceptions)
iOS popularity correlates more with the use of English as a first language than mean income: Germany and France are huge "exceptions" for income.
In all likelihood, iPhone popularity is cultural (i.e. popular in the Anglosphere), which has an incestuous media/advertising landscape where Apple is seen as cool/hip.
Going wireless charging only is probably not gonna happen anytime soon. Wireless charging is significantly less efficient than wired. The difference might not matter much if you are using power from the wall*, but if you are charging off a battery bank you want as much efficiency as you can--you don't want to waste power!
*(being less efficient while charging from wall might not matter to you as an individual but consider if everybody was charging with such an inefficient means... that might add up to a lot of waste)
> The difference might not matter much if you are using power from the wall, but if you are charging off a battery bank you want as much efficiency as you can--you don't want to waste power!
Wireless power banks are already a thing, and they're great because you don't have to mess around with cables. For those of you not using iPhones, they support standard Qi charging as well as faster and more efficient MagSafe charging.
I care about wireless charging efficiency as much as I care about plug-in USB charging efficiency, which is not a lot. If wireless charging is half as efficient, it's costing me a couple bucks extra per year.
For wireless power bank, the problem isn't cost but efficiency. Half transferring efficiency compared to wired means that you need double capacity power bank to charge same amount of energy. I want small and wired. Wired is also useful because power bank can be separated so I put it on pocket or bag while I have a phone on my hand.
The main problem I have with USB-C is that it is not a particularly good standard for power delivery. For one, USB-C is not "IP rated" for use in the kitchen or the bathroom, so you still need separate chargers there. Also the USB-C connector supports fast data delivery, which makes it a lot more expensive than a connector that focusses on power only.
A standard that would do just power delivery <100W and works in damp environments, so it could cheap and universal, would have been so much better.
The breaker box is a last line of defence if things have gone wrong. Plugs designed for use in a bathroom will not short out if they get a bit damp, etc.
Agree on the IP rating, that is definitely not ideal - although excusable in practice.
Regarding cost: the fast data is optional. Charging-only usb-c receptables are available for $0.025 / each. To be fair, a micro-b can be found for $0.015 so it is more expensive, but it's not exactly going to bankrupt anyone.
The irony of, e.g., Brazil, passing laws that Apple can't leave the cable and charger out of the box.
Meanwhile, who with a current phone uses a cable to charge any more? Even before MagSafe the wireless is far more convenient, now with MagSafe and a zillion brands of stands that do phone + watch + AirPods all wireless, not to mention even MagSafe for cars that charge and don't drop the phone on bad roads, cables are redundant. And while they won't all do the same top speed, in general the coasters charge both Android and iPhone happily.
But, speaking of docks, that's the real issue -- lightning works beautifully when docking a phone into a stereo or alarm clock or etc, USB-C not so much. Basically, on lightning if the tab breaks you get a new cheap cable, on USB-C if the tab breaks, you need a new dock.
Raises hand. I don't have an iPhone, but I find wireless charging to just be kinda annoying. The only place I use it is in my car, which has a built-in charging pad, with good mechanical design that keeps the phone from moving around (and possibly losing the wireless charging "connection"). Otherwise, everywhere else, I'm always wired when I charge, and I kinda don't care about wireless charging.
> But, speaking of docks, that's the real issue -- lightning works beautifully when docking a phone into a stereo or alarm clock or etc, USB-C not so much.
I mean, there are still docks out there that have the old 30-pin Apple iPod/iPhone/iPad connector (not many; I think I saw one in an old hotel last year, but that's it). If USB-C is the primary connector used, then that's what dock manufacturers will use. And, bonus, manufacturers that actually support more than one connector can eventually drop Lightning as an option, and save on costs.
> Basically, on lightning if the tab breaks you get a new cheap cable, on USB-C if the tab breaks, you need a new dock.
Er, what? If the tab in a dock breaks, you need to get a new dock with either connector. The Lighting connector tab is just as breakable (if not more so, as it's thinner) than a USB-C plug, and if the one in your dock breaks, you're just as out of luck.
> Er, what? If the tab in a dock breaks, you need to get a new dock with either connector.
To be clear: iPhones do not have a tab, so iPhones don't break, the lightning cable does. iPads now have a tab. Hopefully it won't break.
A USB-C standing phone dock effectively has a tab on both dock (to insert into a phone's socket) and in the phone (the tab that sits inside the USB-C socket), so that's 2 tabs for one docking experience.
You're living in a bubble. Cable based charging is still far more common than wireless. There are still people who refuse to use bluetooth headphones. I am not carrying around another device that requires charging
> Cable based charging is still far more common than wireless.
All old things are more common than new things until they're not.
I narrowed the audience to "current" phone, whatever the most recent model is. Folks carrying those tend to be the early adopters and tend to be using the new capabilities.
tbh it's kind of ridiculous that I need a different dongle for my ipad and my iphone. I know that Apples makes money selling dongles, but that's a crap UX.
This whole discussion is only a thing because Apple's tech isn't changing rapidly enough for regulation, the exact opposite of your scenario. Also good luck producing a functioning smartphone that's too thin for the USB-C connector before the EU can react (the new iPhone 14 has exactly 3 times the thickness, so it'll take a while).
The much more realistic reason for a new phone not being released here is the new proposal to enforce 5 years of replacement parts for all phones among other things.
Serious question, why is is it a problem to put a tiny cable in a landfill? The amount they leach is essentially zero. The EU would have done more for the environment by spending $20k cleaning up an extra few car batteries. This is so obviously pandering and protectionism and it's surprising to me people believe the "e-waste" justification.
Seriously, is there an accounting of the environmental damage caused by cell phone cables (not power converters)? Everything I've seen points to the damage being substantially less globally than a single digit number of cars or batteries.
The problem is that it is a lot of tiny cables, and a lot of chargers with them.
Additionally, it also protects the consumer by preventing companies from locking consumers into buying device-specific chargers at greatly inflated prices. It might even become common for devices to come without chargers: why have 10 chargers lying around when all your devices use the same charging connector?
But no, this is not true. The iphone charger is already USB. I use them with my Android phone all the time, and iphone users charge with my pixel charger. Those already interoperate.
I understand the e-waste and consumer protection argument for the charger (power converter), but why the cable?
Up until recently everyone used USB-A on the charger end, with a dozen different competing fast charge protocols. Chargers had the same connector, but they weren't fully interoperable. USB-C is slowly trying to fix this.
I completely agree that the cables aren't a massive deal. But on the other hand, if you are already standardizing chargers, why not do the cables too? Personally, I see no overwhelmingly good reason not to do it.
Because the connectors still suck and there's a ton of room for innovation. Imagine if we were stuck with USB-C forever, that would be bad. It's already worse than lightning as a connector for cell phones.
The default shouldn't be to place arbitrary restrictions unless there's a good reason not to. Governments should restrict behavior when the restriction is justified. It should be the EU government's responsibility to demonstrate that banning lightning cables is good, not the other way around.
> It is also ironic how Apple markets heavily on how you can take great RAW photos or videos but somehow you have to use lightning USB2 speeds to transfer them. Lightning is barely smaller than USB-C, and clearly my iPhone thickness will not change if it switches to USB-C.
There is nothing about a USB-C cable or port that mandates SuperSpeed (err, 5GB or higher) data transfer rates. Most compliant charging cables are still Hi-Speed (480 mbps), and capped at 30W (higher requires an active component in the cable).
Similarly, there is nothing about Lightning that restricts the transfer speed to Hi-Speed. There were iPad Pro models with lightning that supported a USB 3 adapter, which had (I believe) 5 Gbps transfer speed. However, the decision was made to switch the subsequent generations of Pro models to USB-C, leaving that part as a bit of a curiosity.
I suspect because of the sheer volume of lightning cables out there, Apple simply doesn't want to cause confusion by creating 'tiers' of certified cables that have the same set of plugs on the ends and which thus look identical, but which have different properties. If only the USB-IF considered such things.
> If we want to really be more environmentally friendly, wouldn't it make more sense to have no cable at all with the devices we buy, force the sellers to clearly tell the consumers about it and offer the cable on the side only if needed?
One could hope! This should also shrink the packaging down further, having a measurable cost reduction on shipping as well as packaging waste.
I go through a lot of phones, but have relatives who are on a 3-4 year upgrade cycle. Thus, I've been able to find good homes for any excess USB-C to lightning cables (and they've been ecstatic when I've given them powerful multi-port USB-C chargers as gifts as well).
Hopefully we'll see countries continue to change their laws so that you don't need to bundle cables, chargers and/or headsets with purchases. France I believe finally changed their laws requiring a bundled headset, and it went into effect this year.
> I would also add that all lightning cables won't suddenly go to the landfill in 2024. Many people will keep their iPhones/AirPods for a while after that date. Many would probably donate their old lightning cables to whoever needs them
I'd expect the vast majority to be trashed by 2029, along with the majority of USB-A chargers. I've had support issues where family has thought their devices had bad software or failing batteries, but it turns out they had accidentally switched to some cheap, low wattage USB-A charger.
I somewhat expect the wide array of differences between USB-A, USB-C power delivery support, and active vs passive cables will mean that devices may start to give troubleshooting guidance for slow charging. At this point, I would expect quite a few USB-A chargers and cabling to go to the trash.
Tim Cook: (40:20)
Now let’s talk about iPhone. iPhone has forever changed the world. Every single day people rely on iPhone, from their most demanding tasks to capturing the moments of their lives, streaming their favorite TV shows, playing their favorite games, staying up to date with the news of the world and connecting with friends and loved ones.
Tim Cook: (40:42)
This is what drives us to create the best iPhone possible. To create an experience unlike any other, with legendary ease of use, beautiful and durable designs with water resistance and great battery life, with industry leading performance and the world’s most advanced camera systems, and with privacy built in. People love iPhone, and we keep making iPhone better, more powerful, more capable, and even more fun to use. Today, we are thrilled to introduce our next generation of iPhone. Here it is.
Tim Cook: (41:54)
[inaudible 00:41:54]
Tim Cook: (41:55)
This is iPhone {15,16}. To tell you more, here’s Kianne.
Cayenne: (42:24)
Let’s take a closer look at, iPhone {15,16}, starting with design. It has the sleek, flat edge design that people love. It also have a fantastic new charging port, featuring the same USB-C connector as our beloved iPad, developed in a tremendous effort to {fight against climate change and electronic waste,further enhance the connectivity of the iPhone {15,16}}.
I have been seeing comments like this since the news of the EU law. Does nobody use CarPlay? Most CarPlay systems are wired. I don't see Apple going portless any time soon.
Oh good point! But I don't think any new features have ever been released in the Spring — SEs are a different form-factor of existing tech. (I have nothing against them, and my next phone may well be an SE, if the Minis are truly dead).
Self-regulation only works if government regulation is a serious threat in case self-regulation fails. In this case, self-regulation failed, so government regulation stepped in to force industry to do what is right.
All the handwringing about stifling innovation is on its face ridiculous as mandates to use micro-usb didn't stop android phones from adopting the new and better standard as soon as it was viable.
There were no mandates to adopt micro-usb in the EU.
As a sidetone it's astonishing how quickly a lie easily disprovable by publicly accessible information, in this case the EU's own website, can be spread around by people that otherwise seem like credible HN members.
Saying there was no mandate is only technically true. The EU gave an ultimatum to phone companies to make a compatible charger "or else", which led to a "Memorandum of Understanding" [1] deciding on Micro-USB.
Apple didn't follow that Memorandum, the EU got pissed, so now we reached the "or else" part (it took quite some time considering the Memorandum was more than 10 years ago).
Replying to sibling: that 30-pin connector predates the Memorandum. It's exactly such chargers that the EU wanted to regulate at the time. Every company had their own incompatible charger.
Samsung actually had done their own thing - their early tablet lineup also had a 30-pin connector, and of course incompatible with Apple's 30-pin connector.
'Memorandums of Understanding' are not binding within the EU, not even between different departments in Brussels. They are, at best, strongly worded suggestions.
So this is a significant difference.
As a EU mandate implies that organizations can be prosecuted for ignoring it.
The writing has been on the wall for years and years that manufacturers have agree on a standard charging plug. Had micro-usb been the direction we were still heading, that would have become the mandated standard.
This law is by all intents and purposes a law directed at Apple, who is the sole hold-out of the large mobile phone manufacturers regarding proprietary charging connectors.
> Following a mandate from the European Commission, the European Standardisation Bodies CEN-CENELEC and ETSI issued the harmonised standards to be adhered to by data-enabled mobile phones compatible with the new common charger as of 2011. The common charger solution is based in the Micro-USB connector technology
Thank goodness, micro-usb kinda sucked, especially compared to USB-C (which seems quite good).
It is sort of weird that they decided to mandate USB-C rather than creating an ongoing group to keep track of charging and update the rules accordingly (like in the US, where many of our laws create an agency to regulate something rather than having congress pass a new, slightly different law every couple years)
The law states that the European Commission shall monitor market development, market fragmentation, and technological progress, and report on it every few years.
But note that market development is only possible because the EU's reach is limited and it doesn't have any phone makers of its own. Technological progress requires market fragmentation, because progress doesn't turn up on everyone's doorstep simultaneously. So the EU is betting that it can engage in trivial populism like this whilst not losing out on any actual progress, because other parts of the world will 'bail it out' and continue researching such tech. Of course, it just solidifies the situation in which the EU has a pitiful tech sector because why bother introducing new ideas to the market when the EU might at any time randomly ban "fragmentation".
The problem with the US approach is that now we have a bunch of agencies effectively inventing laws without anywhere near the same degree of oversight or public accountability. Sometimes that's a feature rather than a bug, but not always.
There were non-binding agreements. i.e. the EU hoped that the major players would standardize on one connecter, but this did not have the force of law behind it.
The EU created a technical standard (which basically just says, "use USB Micro-B"). Phone manufacturers voluntarily signed a Memorandum of Understanding, stating that they all agreed to abide by the standard.
None of it was binding or involuntary. Which is why Apple never released a micro-B phone and all other manufacturers were able to upgrade to USB-C.
Of course it was binding and involuntary, as the EU is now proving by binding the ones that didn't volunteer. "Do it or else" doesn't make it voluntary because the institution doing the "or else" part is slow.
Maybe you think the original nonbinding agreement had a threat of force behind it, but it had no immediate consequences if manufacturers changed ports. Manufacturers were allowed to upgrade to new ports. And they did. That is how we got the innovation of USB-C.
Manufacturers are no longer able to upgrade to better ports. People saying "this won't stifle innovation because we still got USB-C" have things totally backwards.
It's not "right" as in morally right; it's just slightly more convenient. Mandatory convenience. I personally don't understand people's passion for this cause. I'm ok with dichotomy and nuance in life. I'm learning that having two cables is a huge impediment to some people's lives. So be it.
All the handwringing about stifling innovation is on its face ridiculous as mandates to use micro-usb didn't stop android phones from adopting the new and better standard as soon as it was viable.
I'm not sure I understand your logic here. Android phones were able to quickly move to micro USB because they weren't restricted from doing so by a government regulation.
If there was a government mandate requiring phones to have whatever connector came before micro USB, wouldn't that have prevented the Android phones from changing connectors/choosing the new innovation?
Or was there a location where micro USB was required by law before, and since I don't live there, I wasn't affected by it?
Edit: Strike that last sentence, since I see in other responses that there was, indeed, a location where micro USB was mandated. So my new question is: How does a company change to a new/better connector, if it's required by law to use an old connector?
Edit edit: Looks like other responses show there was no mandate, that's just something that people on HN assume. It was a recommendation, not a law, like it is now.
> How does a company change to a new/better connector, if it's required by law to use an old connector?
EU is pushing for "One charger for all" for a long time. Here is an article from 2011 [1], so this is nothing new. I don't think they enforced it at the time, but the manufacturers (and the EU?) agreed to use Micro USB. Now they are going for USB-C, so they definitely are not in the way of innovation. I think if there is an agreement between manufacturers to support a new standard, it will be adapted.
Phone manufacturers signed a non-binding MoU, agreeing to use Micro USB. This was completely voluntary. That is why they were able to upgrade to USB-C without any issue.
This law is different. It would be illegal to upgrade to a better port. And the barrier to creating, testing, and having adoption for a new port just became way higher than it was before.
> So my new question is: How does a company change to a new/better connector, if it's required by law to use an old connector?
It would be like a nation state deciding to change its standard electric socket, like a country with US sockets switching to EU sockets. Doesn’t sound easy.
> If there was a government mandate requiring phones to have whatever connector came before micro USB, wouldn't that have prevented the Android phones from changing connectors/choosing the new innovation?
Dunno, we have a test case tho: how'd the Micro-B to USB-C transition go in EU markets?
It’s going just fine, from my perspective. Unfortunately I now have three different types of cables (micro-B, USB-C and lightning), and it makes it extra challenging that USB-C is sometimes double ended, sometimes B-to-C. On the other hand, it’s very nice I can charge my new Framework laptop and iPad using the same cable cable and charger.
But it’s going quite quickly, and most of the apple devices I bought recently already have USB-C in one way or another, and the actual problem for me is replacing power banks and chargers so that they support USB-C as well. Most of them assume USB-C == “high power slot”, when I just need a few of them for smaller stuff (AirPods and Apple Watch both came with USB-C cables).
No it was never mandatory only voluntary. There was a threat to make it mandatory but most mobile phone suppliers signed a letter of intent on implementing a common standard (apple included).
This is incorrect. It was a voluntary standard signed on by a non-binding MoU. All Manufacturers were free to "break" the agreement when moving to USB-C. Now they are stuck on USB-C until a new law is written.
EU could have mandated adoption of a certain connector for a certain period of time, rather than for all time.
That way regulation provides the stick to force standardisation, but allows whatever new innovations develop later to have a chance at gaining a foothold. If we find ourselves in this situation again (with a single holdout) we can force the standardisation for a period of time again.
> Reporting: the Commission would be required to report to the Parliament and Council on the application of the directive regarding new charging technologies every three years, starting from three years after the date of entry into force of the directive (article 47(2a) RED). By the same date, it would also be required to report on the impact of the possibility to acquire devices without any charging device and cable (article 3a(1) RED).
This assumes that it is in the government’s interest to dictate the kind of cable used to charge phones, and that making the “wrong” choice is such a bad outcome that industry needs to “self-regulate”.
Perhaps the EU should step in to force industry to do what is right in all cases, not just charging cables:
- ban e2e encryption - pedos and criminals use it
- mandate client-side CSAM scanning on all devices, report directly to local police instead of going through untrustworthy Apple (they can’t even get charging cables right, can we trust them to protect your child?)
- require all new devices to be tamper resistant so you can’t get around EU laws
- require all phones to be the same shape and size so that citizens can re-use screen protectors and cases in perpetuity
- ban purple devices - it offends EU bureaucrats, and obviously the continued existence of purple phones is evidence of the industry’s failure to self-regulate. EU bureaucrats know better than the market and always have.
The interest isn't in dictating the specific kind of cable, but rather in having a single kind that's universal. It's the industry that converged on USB-C by itself, not the EU bureaucrats.
The reason why Apple still uses the Lightning port is because of regulation in the form of patents which give them a 20-year-monopoly on their plug design. Without the previous regulation there would be no need for this new regulation.
What exactly is genuinely innovative about the iPhone connector at this point? It's 10 years old, and the only selling point I can see it having over USB (even when it was new) was the rotational symmetry (which is now also possible with USB C, which is what's being mandated).
No, it doesn't. The technical details are passed as a so called 'delegated act', which defers the power to set the details of acts to the European Commission.[1] They can update this when necessary, and will do so if the USB forum updates to a newer version. I detest all the people who are confidently wrong about these things, it detracts from the interesting steps the EU has taken here.
Assuming you are correct, it still means that any startup that has an idea for an innovation in the phone cable space will first need to worry about how to convince the European Commission to approve it. That's quite a road block for a startup.
> any startup that has an idea for an innovation in the phone cable space
That's a lot of money for a startup to burn on something inconsequential instead of using off-the-shelf stuff for the least important area where you can innovate.
Also, I haven't put a charging cable into my phone since... 2012 or something like that when the Nexus 4 came out. Ever since I tried wireless charging, going back to regularly using a charging cable feels like going back to the stone age.
Two things:
Just to be pedantic for a second - this is actually tautological, because innovation is defined in terms of making changes to established things.
So by the EU establishing a thing, any changes you make to it are ... by definition ... innovation :)
Once they establish a new standard, the thing that they established is no longer innovative, it is the new baseline for the next innovation.
At least, as innovation is actually defined (the colloquial usage is very messy, as you can see in this thread, making it very easy for people to talk past each other).
But let's be practical for a second - what exactly are you looking for?
What is this next physical connector innovation you are worrying you need that won't exist now?
I ask because almost all desire in phone connectors has been the same since the beginning of phone connectors. It is not new. The change in connectors was not driven by change in desire, only around capability. people want them to be reasonably sized, easy to put in/take out, not easily fall out, not break ever, charge the phone fast, and send data from the phone to a thing fast (audio/video/etc are a subset of this).
That's it. That's always been it.
For a long time, tradeoffs had to be made, and you could not achieve all desires at once.
That hasn't been true for a decade.
At this point, all desires are fulfilled.
Over fulfilled in fact - the capability of the connectors have well outstripped the need of phones.
There isn't anything left to do. It's done.
Unless new customer desires come along, and they haven't for decades, there isn't innovation left to be had. The closest you come to difference is "should i make it be held by a magnet or by itself", which, while some are vocal about it, is a very minor preference (again, at least by data).
It's also easy to claim things like "well you don't know what will come along", but as i said, what comes along is driven by customer desire. What is the unfulfilled customer desire that physical phone connectors can innovate to achieve at this point?
Over fulfilled in fact - the capability of the connectors have well outstripped the need of phones.
There isn't anything left to do. It's done. Unless new customer desires come along, and they haven't for decades, there isn't innovation left to be had
Both the connector and port are too large and the tip of the cable protrudes too far. I have an assortment of 90 degree elbows for my growing USB device collection and the myriad of different features each cable has or doesn't have(Hdmi 4k120fps, Quest Link, Thunderbolt, etc) to keep my inputs flush and organized. When connecting to a laptop you're stuck with either dangling dongles or unsightly protrusions.
As someone who actually owns over a dozen or so USB-C devices they're nowhere near as interchangeable as promised and quite frankly they suck and are hardly done improving. The last time UsB ports tried to differentiate themselves was when they started painting them blue but nowadays you have no idea what a given port can and cant do(e.g PD) unless it's explicitly written somewhere.
How is that less confusing than "this is an iphone/airpods/apple keyboard cable and this is an everything else cable" to a consumer? The fact that all new improvements will have to go through some totally unbiased and impartial incorruptible committee is terrifying.
"Both the connector and port are too large and the tip of the cable protrudes too far. "
Well good news - unless something changes in material science or cost of materials dramatically changes, this won't change :)
So you don't have to worry about this.
Recessing the connector does not require a change to the connector, but making them actually smaller would be very hard.
"The fact that all new improvements will have to go through some totally unbiased and impartial incorruptible committee is terrifying."
There are no new improvements coming that require a new connector. There haven't been for a long time. There is no evidence to suggest they are coming anytime soon.
For all the people who keep saying it will have to go to a committee, not a single person has said what the magic improvement they think this will block actually is
(you at least gave an answer, but your answer is not actually possible anytime soon)
I'm not so sure that will be the case. The particular issue with this one is the insistence of using a proprietary connector when a perfectly acceptable standardized connector exists. How quick we are to forget that the reason basically every phone (except one!) no longer uses its own proprietary connector is because of similar legislation.
> What exactly is genuinely innovative about the iPhone connector at this point
The way they fray near the connector. It is truly inovative how one of the worlds most inovative companies has been unable to figure out how to wrap plastic around a wire.
All Apple users I know are joyous because of this, simplification of life long term. Nobody enjoys carrying lightning cable for their phones and USB for everything else
Maybe if Apple would make their lightning an open free standard, this would be now adopted, but since Apple is... well Apple their arrogance met the laws of place not governed by corporations (that much)
"The government will force companies to make a product decision that I happen to like"
This is an extremely bad reason to support this legislation.
The government could legislate any number of product changes, they don't do that, because that's not their role.
Apple has always been a leader in these areas, and this kind of thing will definitely stifle from making the decisions they need to, in addition to the fact their are all sorts of unintended design consequences on these forced choices.
There are really only 2 kinds of charges floating around these days, and several mechanisms for handling both, it's not even a 1/10 on the problems we face.
This is really bad populism, the EU is running up the wrong tree here.
> The government could legislate any number of product changes, they don't do that, because that's not their role.
In many cases they do, because it is their role. They have done so now with charging cables. You can whine about it until you turn blue but the objective fact remains that the EU has now made regulation of charging cables part of their role.
Roles of governments aren't set in stone, they can in response to changing cultural and social norms, corporate practices, economic conditions, etc. The EU is not obliged to neatly confine itself according to your demands.
Both Lightening and USB-C have similar failure mode where a tab can break. It’s not common but trouble when it does. Neither one is clearly more durable than the other though both are definitely more durable than Micro-USB.
With lightning, the paddle is on the cable and can easily be replaced. With USB-C the paddle is on the device and is difficult if not impossible to replace.
Yes, have you ever visited the United States? Their AC wall plugs are extremely bad. They wiggle out all the time and expose hot connectors before falling out. You can literally shock yourself by partially unplugging a wall connector and putting your finger on exposed connectors.
The result of the same sort of regulation in the UK is the opposite; they have excellent plugs and sockets. It doesn't seem that regulated standardization inherently stifles innovation, but you do run the risk of standardizing on the wrong thing.
I think the problem with something like USB-C is that technology is still evolving (while AC power distribution is pretty much settled). Just imagine solid state batteries allowing multi kW charging. USB-C isn't physically able to do this afaik.
They are slightly different but inter-compatible when using only 2-plug (without ground IIRC). Which means basically all non-energy-intense appliances including ie TVs. Heck, even Switzerland is compatible with them all.
Notable exception of course are British, but they are not part of EU as we all know too well.
It makes life so much easier. I can't understand why anybody would ever oppose this, either vested interest or butthurt ego?
To a large extent, the 3-plug version with ground is also compatible.
The CEE 7/7 plug works both in the Schuko Type F socket and the French Type E socket. The former covers 30ish countries, the latter covers 5.
The only countries which do not use either E or F are:
- Denmark, which is the only country to use Type K. It (relatively) recently allowed installing E or F sockets too, so K will probably die out over time.
- Italy, which is the only country to use Type L. It is rapidly switching to L+F hybrids, as most devices sold these days are equipped with CEE 7/7
- Ireland, which uses the British plug. As far as I am aware, no intention to change. Doing so would probably start a civil war.
And outside the EU there are the UK and Switzerland.
Not all are compatible. There are at least two different diameters of pin, not to mention several variations on three pins. I hit this myself this week.
The type G plug is the best design available, by a very long way. If anything, that should be adopted by the EU and indeed the rest of the world.
Fair point. Those different plugs are standardized though so adapters & travel plugs can be made.
I wondered why this has not yet been standardized EU-wide, but of course the cost of doing so would be huge, since those plugs & outlets are built into millions of buildings.
Whereas phones and electronics change much faster and can thus more easily be transitioned, I suppose.
USB C was designed to be the "last" physical connector, the whole point was standardisation. Now that the market has failed to deliver this, government steps in. In this case it's supporting an innovation. More "innovation" in connectors is what we're trying to avoid.
No they didn't, compliance is voluntary, just read the linked wiki page.
I agree with the point that it won't stifle Innovation though. The swift passing of the USB-C mandate has proven to me that the EU can move quickly, so if a new connector comes along they will be able to switch the law reasonably quickly.
If you've followed the EU for a few decades, you'd know they occasionally move quickly, but not often, and the movement is rarely in the best direction.
But, crucially, they were able to effortlessly move to a better connector when one came along. They were not legally forced to stick with Micro-B. Now they are legally stuck with USB-C indefinitely.
I think 4 years is a reasonable time frame. Especially considering they weren't sitting around doing nothing for 4 years, most of it was research and surveys
> Although compliance is voluntary, a majority of the world's largest mobile phone manufacturers agreed to make their applicable mobile phones compatible with Europe's common external power supply specification (EN 62684:2010).
? how did self regulation fail ? There's nothing wrong with the way iPhone charges. This is an unnecessary intervention. There are plenty of bigger, more relevant fish to fry.
> There's nothing wrong with the way iPhone charges.
Well. I'm lugging around one cable which charges all my devices from bike lamps to powerbanks. And there is a totally different cable I'm also lugging around to charge my iphone. Why is that necessary?
Also my iphone charging cable frays all time, while my "everything else charging cable" does not.
I doubt the charging port is the most important factor in choosing a phone for most people.
Similar to how I voted for Biden even though I don't agree with 100% of his policies. It doesn't mean I don't disagree with him often - it's just that I only get one vote, so I have to prioritize. It's perfectly consistent for me to complain and make my opinion known when his administration does things I disagree with.
Agreed. This is the better way to argue that we vote with our dollars. If iPhone had a monopoly (which they absolutely don't) intervention is welcome. There is no reason anyone is forced to use a Lightning cable and still enjoy the fair marketplace.
You get to vote by not purchasing an iPhone and buying an android that has usb-c. You have no divine right to a device running a proprietery Operating System developed by a company with a port of your choice if said company doesn't want to manufacture it as such.
If you want to buy something with a USB-C then buy that. If you want Apple to change then let them know.
"Get the government to make a company make a choice I want" is really naive and glib.
There is no systematic issue here - if this were household wiring, there would be, but this is not that.
Every product has different configurations, different requirements. In particular, with smart phones, the extra thickness of the USBC actually makes it harder to design around - the issues has side effects.
Governments should be regulating where there is a material necessity or safety concern, not otherwise.
In particular - your 'bike lamps and power lamps' have totally different product requirements.
The government could conceivably help an Engineering body to promote a narrower set of clean standards, but this is too much.
Well... I agree with the spirit of the effort, but not the letter of it.
>>> From spring 2026, the obligation will extend to laptops
So this would force Apple to replace MagSafe with USB-C? How is that not killing innovation?
Standardisation should be a goal, but I just feel this particular effort is too specific and brings very little value to consumers. Why don't we standardise payment protocols instead? Or biometric identity verification? Or ID cards even (that the UK is allergic to)? I just feel the spirit of these efforts can be applied so much more successfully elsewhere.
My MacBook can charge with USB-C and MagSafe. If iphones had both a USB-C and a lightning connectors, this law would probably not have been pushed through.
All taht is already standardized btw. The countries do have some leeway in their implementation though, that's whay the EU driving license was quite quickly adopted in some countries, and very slowly in others (mine...).
My MacBook currently has 4 USB-C ports that I can pick to charge from.
My last Macbook had 5? different ports on it, two of which were older USB standards.
Nothing stops apple from ALSO having a proprietary connector, as long as USB-C is still an option to charge.
> Why don't we standardise payment protocols instead? Or biometric identity verification? Or ID cards even (that the UK is allergic to)?
None of these result in hundreds of thousands of tons of plastic and copper or other metals being put in a landfill or dumped in the sea because they were only useful for 3-5 models of a single businesses devices.
Apple is still free to make this e-waste, but now their devices must support charging on USB-C, which they are free to NOT make their own chargers for, as long as it's standard-compliant and supported
It’s also worth noting that the MagSafe cable has USB-C on the other end, so it fits fairly nicely into a world where all your adaptors are USB-C. The old MagSafe cables were permanently attached to the adaptor.
The EU tried very hard, for very many years to signal to the industry "do this yourself so you don't have to legislate it, we don't want to legislate it, you don't want us to legislate it" but Apple (and only Apple) just refused to listen, so here we are.
For micro-USB, they got the industry together in a "memorandum of understanding" to get them to self-implement it without regulation, and it worked great - everyone adopted micro-USB, and then could switch to USB-C, without thinking about legislation with the understanding that the industry would use common standards.
The whole rest of the industry adopted the common standard and are looking at Apple "hey if they can do it why can't we?". If the EU doesn't crack down on Apple now, we're going to end up back again with a Samsung charger, a Sony charger etc.
>The EU tried very hard, for very many years to signal to the industry "do this yourself so you don't have to legislate it, we don't want to legislate it, you don't want us to legislate it" but Apple (and only Apple) just refused to listen, so here we are.
This doesn’t make the approach any less interventionist. “Either do what we want or we’ll pass an official regulation for you to do what we want” isn’t much of a choice.
Tell me, if Apple truly believes their lightning connector is better, what was the better play here? Intentionally make a worse product (from their perspective) or keep making the better user experience for as long as possible?
> if Apple truly believes their lightning connector is better, what was the better play here?
The better play would've been to open up the Lightning connector specification such that other vendors could standardize on it, and then all users of all phones would have been better off.
I don't think Apple believes Lighting is superior. They were heavily involved in the design of USB-C, and that was _after_ Lightning was already in use. They certainly applied learnings from Lightning into it.
I believe the most likely reason they stuck with it this long is contracts with accessory makers. After they switched from 30 pin, there were probably concerns from third parties that they would soon switch again, so to ensure everyone was on board with the transition they probably signed agreements to keep it for a while.
Notice how it's been exactly 10 years since they launched Lightning and now we are getting rumors of next year's iPhone moving to USB-C, before this legislation comes into effect.
Bluetooth Audio and wireless CarPlay are now commonplace, so this is no longer an issue going forward, but wired accessories were a big market in 2012.
> This doesn’t make the approach any less interventionist. “Either do what we want or we’ll pass an official regulation for you to do what we want” isn’t much of a choice.
The jobs of governing bodies is not to give "choice", they are here to make sure people and companies do what they should do, and take action when they don't and it becomes a problem. The UE wanted a universal connector, for a variety of reason, they never wanted to give "choice". However, they also understand that they are not engineers and inventors, and the industry has plenty of these people, so they said "get together and make the best universal connector". And the industry did, first with micro-USB, which was better than most of what was there at the time, then with USB-C, and the EU was happy. Except that one company was a problem, so the EU went back to the industry and said "I said I wanted a universal connector, why isn't the connector universal?", Apple said "Because blah blah blah (fuck you)", and the EU said "OK, we didn't want to do that but it looks like USB-C is good enough for everyone else, so if you want to continue to sell your gadgets in the EU, use USB-C".
My argument was against all the people saying "but this way we're going to be stuck with USB-C until the end of time!". The EU was happy with the market going from micro-USB to USB-C at it's own pace. They didn't want to legislate "use microUSB forever" and they didn't have to.
The EU's preferred way would let the industry continue to innovate freely as long as the market converged on common, open standards. But 30% of the market (=Apple) using a proprietary non-licensable plug was too far away from the idea of market experimentation.
this is an excellent explanation for why this kind of public regulation is necessary. of course they didn't stop buying them. and this is exactly why regulating businesses by consumer behaviour is so so unwise
multiple standards may well be easily avoidable, inconvenient and bad for the environment, but people aren't going to change their behaviour, solely because they like Apple's UX
Maybe this is a feature. When your phone is low on battery, you ask for a charger, and when presented with a normal, plebian charger you get to say "oh, sorry, I need an iphone charger".
If people want to get a practical, compatible phone, they don't get an iphone. iphone only exists as a signal. So while the EU is making a good decision for making iphone's more pratical, they are also misunderstanding what an iphone is imo.
Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me.
I don't see any win besides a minor convenience. A lightning cable weighs almost nothing and it's not a big deal to have one around.
As to lightning port limitations, I question whether usb-c will give average iPhone users any other advantage other than charging their phone. What are people gonna do with it other than charge their phones or transfer files?
Feels like there's nothing to celebrate here. Just the EU using its influence to exert control over things that don't matter at all.
> Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me.
It's not, we're glad SOMEONE is forcing them to take this direction, but it's really sad (and potentially damaging) it had to come to this.
> As to lightning port limitations, I question whether usb-c will give average iPhone users any other advantage other than charging their phone. What are people gonna do with it other than charge their phones or transfer files?
Lightning itself is also used for audio (analog audio dongle) and video. The one benefit USB-C could bring to the table is higher transfer speed since Lightning is stuck on USB2 speeds, USB-C doesn't imply USB 3 but they might as well try.
The Lightning connector has 8 pins: 2 for power, 2 for ID/control, and 4 for 2 differential lanes of anything. Those 2 differential lines are used for all data transfer, and, IIRC, are bidirectional. So, in theory, the Lightning connector could carry USB 3.0's differential RX/TX lanes no problem.
My guess as to why Apple hasn't implemented that is a lack of demand. Syncing/backup is expected to be handled on the device now, and USB 2.0 gives enough bandwidth for the majority of the other cases. And on iPads where more bandwidth might be required (eg. external data storage), they already have USB-C connectors supporting the higher speeds.
It does seem petty. “I just paid for a $1000 phone with a massive markup and you mean I have to pay an extra $12 to get a decent amount of storage?” It’s not like the 99¢ gets you a terabyte; you only get 50 GB. They could just swallow the cost, but they don’t.
Continuous services are taxed and accounted differently from one-time costs.
They hook you in with the $1 option, you see how useful iCloud is and then you'll fork up even more. Then you notice that your whole family can share the subscription and soon you'll be paying $10 for the 2TB option and are an Apple One subscriber.
That's just good business nowadays. All companies _could_ just sell stuff with an one-time fee and provide a service forever, but it's not fiscally responsible in the long run.
That adapter acts like usb host IIRC. So does your computer. Connecting two hosts with a A-to-A cable is not going to do anything good (and might cause harm). This is why A-to-A cables aren't supposed to exist as per usb spec.
Apple wants to do away with all external connectors on that phone. My guess is that they won't have any ports once they get rid of the lightning connector.
Better transfer speed would be a benefit to USB-C. It comes up using an iPhone as a camera when wifi is congested or just not available, e.g. a college campus with device registration required. Dongles for phone to HDMI could work without needing compression as well.
God forbid you'd ever want to transfer to a non-Apple device amirite? Most of the people that I know that use iPhones don't have Macs. And those with Macs don't have iPhones lol.
Comparing a shared RF medium to a fairly guaranteed point to point connection is one of those things that in theory works great, but in practice, not so much...
Apple is part of the USB-IF. They also have pushed USB standards to consumers since the iMac. Hell, Apple participates of every single industrial forum they can benefit from.
Apple has moved on to USB-C for almost every other product they have. They know Lightning is old and insufficient, even for their iPad Air.
The only reason why Apple keeps Lightning around is for phones and some portable accessories, and the revenue from those, and their certifications, is not something they are willing to dismiss. Technically speaking, if you want something as simple as a cable, you have to go through Apple and their MFI program.
So here we are, with Apple holding the keys to every Lightning accessory, and also keeping a degree of control of USB-C.
If anything, the EU is trying to keep Apple honest.
> The only reason why Apple keeps Lightning around is for phones and some portable accessories, and the revenue from those, and their certifications, is not something they are willing to dismiss. Technically speaking, if you want something as simple as a cable, you have to go through Apple and their MFI program.
The other way of viewing this is that by not switching (yet) they haven't created instant e-waste out of every cable and accessory manufactured in the past decade. USB-C didn't exist when they released the lightning cable, and they have clearly been migrating every other product over the past several years.
Seriously, you don't need to invent a conspiracy for every single move Apple makes.
> The other way of viewing this is that by not switching (yet) they haven't created instant e-waste out of every cable and accessory manufactured in the past decade.
Well no time like the present since time is linear and unless they're going to stick with lightning _forever_ then they'll eventually have to create a bunch of e-waste.
> Seriously, you don't need to invent a conspiracy for every single move Apple makes.
How is this a “conspiracy”? It is literally what they are doing with the MFI program.
If anything, the e-waste theory is less credible, as Apple have changed the iPad and MacBook charging ports three or four times in the past 12 years. They have also a long history of preventing third parties from fixing their products, latest of which is software locking of replacement parts.
This is not the reason. The reason is, the last time they changed ports (from 30pin to lightning) it created huge blowback from consumers who had lots of 30pin accessories that were no longer compatible, and even though lightning is FAR better people don’t like switching.
USB-C is not much different than lightning for charging / connecting a phone, so the blowback from consumers will be huge when all their accessories are no longer compatible with the next phone.
> USB-C is not much different than lightning for charging / connecting a phone...
As far as I understand, there are no Lightning cables that support anything over 18W. Data transfer tops at 480Mbps, or roughly USB 2.0 speeds.
These are specs many other companies have surpassed several years ago.
> ... so the blowback from consumers will be huge when all their accessories are no longer compatible with the next phone.
Apple is the same company that went through 4 different charging connectors for their MacBook line, in about 15 years: MagSafe, MagSafe 2, USB-C, and now MagSafe 3. Their iPad line is 12 years old and has gone through 3 different connectors: 30-pin, Lightning, and USB-C.
If the iPhone had an USB-C connector, I could pretty much carry a single cable and charger for my laptop, my tablet, and my phone. So unless there is zero overlap between iPhone users and users of anything else, the point is moot.
Even worse, Apple stopped bundling a charger with their phones over three years ago. Instead, they ship a Lightning to USB-C cable, but they bundle an USB-C charger only for a year after the release of the iPhone X, effectively forcing their customers to buy USB-C hardware anyway.
Sure, you can now carry 1 less cable. That's a win, but it's not some monumental change people try to make it out to be. When I travel I will still carry multiple cables since I need to usually charge more than one device at a time. But now they can be the same cable.
They can be, but in practice you’ll want a cable capable of at least 60 W for the laptop. So now you either have to carry all the same high power cable (more expensive and wasteful) or give up on the benefit of having one type of cable to begin with.
You must not have been here for years that people whined about the MacBook getting rid of MagSafe and how it only had USB-C ports. How quickly we forget. "No blowback" is the completely opposite of the truth. Consumers aren't going to give a shit what some foreign government mandated, they're going to be pissed at Apple that they need to buy all new cables.
> Consumers aren't going to give a shit what some foreign government mandated, they're going to be pissed at Apple that they need to buy all new cables.
For sure, but only if Apple wouldn't provide such cables, which they do.
Currently, cables bundled with iPhones are Lightning to USB-C. It has been like this for several years.
I suspect that the kind of person who would buy a new $1,000+ phone with an USB-C to USB-C cable in the box, and bitch and moan about the $30 worth of Lightning cables about to end in the trash, is the same who vociferously complain on the Internet and then still buy the next years version.
My impression has always been that, at least online, there was quite a bit of criticism to Apple for switching to USB-C so soon. Or was it because now dongles were needed?
Except lightning also still operates at USB 2.0 speeds - so if you don't want to trust Apple with your data in iCloud backups (which as it's not E2EE encrypted is foolhardy, plus you have to pay for a higher tier for any phone with more than 5GB of personal data) it takes an absolute age.
It is very inconvenient and a hassle to have 5 different cables for 5 different devices. It is a waste of space, materials... The economic gains by volume continent wide should not be underestimated.
Do you actually have data on that though? I see that kind of argument get thrown around but it is never substantiated.
How will usbc lead to less waste?
If you wanna make that argument, wouldn’t it be better to force companies to opt you out of getting chargers and cables unless you explicitly ask for them when you make the purchase?
> If you wanna make that argument, wouldn’t it be better to force companies to opt you out of getting chargers and cables unless you explicitly ask for them when you make the purchase?
That is a natural step forward after the cables are unified. Even today, 80% of the electronic devices I'm buying are coming without a charger and this is all due to the fact that the market stabilized to USB charging (mini and now USB-C).
I still remember we used to have drawers full of old phone chargers...
I still have a small sack of those old chargers. Can't put them in the generic waste, nobody would buy them, and I've been too lazy to take them to the electronic waste recycling.
> Unbundling the sale of a charger from the sale of the electronic device
But without a universal charger that doesn't make sense: if I still need a specific charger for a device, I'm going to have to buy that with the device anyways.
Apple already does that with chargers, new iPhones no longer come with charging bricks, just the cables. I'd be fine with not including the cables if the phones were USB-C, but since they're Lightning the likelihood of a new iPhone user already having a cable that will work is very low.
Yes but do cables contribute a significant amount of waste in general, worthy of being specifically regulated? I actually don’t know either way, so it would be nice to see some data.
You've somehow avoided USB-C cables? That's confusing to me since I have an iPhone and other Apple devices. My phone uses lighting but my Beats earbuds, My Macbook Pro, and my iPad pro use USB-C for charging. Plus plenty of other non-Apple devices.
Yes, I suppose if you want to charge your phone in a dozen locations, and you want a separate cable for every location, that will be what you need to do. It doesn't seem like a major hardship to me, having lived through a few connector changes, like the 30-pin to lightning switch, but I suppose it may be more of an issue for others.
It's just back to my point. This change will cause me to throw away a significant amount of cables (some over 5 years old). That's a decent amount of waste.
Really? I consider myself pretty economical, but I throw out much more than a few lightning cables worth of waste in a given week (probably more on any day even). Would they even really be noticeable in your trash can?
I don't know that I had an argument, more of a question of if a couple of cables would even be noticeable as trash.
I'd say my argument is purely logistical - one less cable type would be quite a boon to me personally. I have a few lightning cables that only work with exactly one device that I own - my iPhone 11. I'm quite happy with my phone, and perhaps ironically for Apple, the best way they'd have to get me to replace it would be to make a new one with a USB-C port; it's the feature I'd most like at this point.
I'd also love to see touchid make a return, but I don't see that happening.
This law might have actually encouraged more waste than would have otherwise existed.
Cables (generally) don't go bad in a year or two and can last for quite a few years. Most long-term iPhone users probably have at least a few spare cables throughout their desk, house, car that they've bought over time that they'd now have no substitutes for and would need to replace.
You might have dictated a situation where people now have to throw away a pile of perfectly usable cables/accessories and buy a bunch of new ones. While well intentioned, this law might have otherwise achieved the opposite of what it set out to do.
PS: Whether this law exists or not, I'd have bet on Apple working to go fully wireless soon and this might just accelerate that effort.
> You might have dictated a situation where people now have to throw away a pile of perfectly usable cables/accessories and buy a bunch of new ones.
I mean, or Apple could do the one thing they've done absolutely tons of recently (so it wouldn't be a surprising or unheard of move from them) and sell a dongle for lightning -> USB-C?
Now you don't have to do any of what you just said would be a guarantee.
It's OK to make decisions with long-term beneficial impacts that may come with short-term negatives. I'd also wager the majority of iPhone users have USB-C cables already.
Why would they? I can guarantee my parents don't. I guess I got one last year when I got an Xbox controller to connect to the PC, but I don't want to use that one for my phone, it stays with the controller.
I guess if I'm going to replace my phone I should do it soon while I can still use my existing cables with the new one.
Most iPhone users are going to buy new iPhones though, eventually. And when they do the lightning cables they already have are going to be useless and they'll have to replace every single cable they own.
This literally just created a mountain of e-waste. We turned a hypothetical "what about when they switch" into a forced reality.
Um... What portion of your budget are you going to have to spend to buy a couple USB-C cables? Like if you really need, I can probably send you one or two because otherwise I'd just throw them away.
I mean, I’m an iPhone user and have plenty of USB-C cables. And charging cables rarely last that long anyway, so I don’t think this is going to be a big deal.
I don't think I've had any decent lightning cable wear out. The super thin and cheap ones have, but I haven't had any from Apple or Anker wear out yet.
...now, whether that's because it's that good of a connector or because we humans wipe ourselves out before we get around to inventing something better is another question altogether.
The plug will be universal with usb-c, but not the cable specs, I read someone of someone that have a usb-c-jack dongle that came with the phone and worked, then when it broke he bought a new one but it didn't work, the dongle itself was not using a standard, also I read a lot that fast charging is kinda property with each manufacturer, so a cable that can fast charge one device might not be able to fast charge another, and the blame is on USB itself, it's like HDMI, everything is optional, so you can't be sure if you bought the correct usb-c cable.
At least with lightning you know what you are buying, and maybe the overpriced cables that Apple sells will work better than the most cheap ones, which brand give you the warranties for the cable specs? does belkin and co sell also cables?
Imagine a World where your appliances just work in some sockets and not in others. Where the tires of your car can just be bought from one supplier because it was limited by the car manufacturer. Your toaster just accepts some kind of bread. Your pencil can't be sharpned except with one specific equipament. Your mechanical pencil can use just one kind of pencil lead because it has some specific size.
And now imagine a step further, where all cars, mechanical pencils, toasters, wall sockets... everything is disposable because some small detail or component has just one supplier.
Imagine how much you'll spend to have things, and how much you'll have to throw away when any small thing of it gets broken.
and literally none of that has happened with no mandates. What a dumb argument. Now the government (that creates no value) now gets credit for "preventing" fictional "horrors" like proprietary bread? statists guna state. seems like some of europe just looooves being told what to do like children
> What are people gonna do with it other than charge their phones or transfer files?
It would at least save me from carrying one power brick + usb cable. Steam Deck (USB C), Switch (USB C), MacBook Pro (USB C) and iPhone is the only odd one out. This does make a significant difference to what I can take with me on holiday.
It seems many are confused about what the iPhone Pro comes with today - a usb-c to lightning cable. So right now you only need to carry a single power brick and 2 cables. So after this law you can carry a single cable. A big win...I guess.
That's just you, of course. For hundreds of millions of others, this cuts the other way: over a decade's worth of Lightning accessories and cables and docks are out there.
Which is why the EU is just being dumb, here. They think they are accomplishing some amazing user-friendly enviro-friendly feat, but all they are really doing is making a lot of Lightning gear out there less useful.
And all this to switch to a port that is substantially larger, clunkier, and has no real advantages for iPhone users. Which is why Apple hasn't bothered changing up til now. That, plus Apple actually values what its customers REALLY need and what REALLY ACTUALLY benefits them.
How much time has to pass before the one-time cost of deprecating lightning is overtaken by the ongoing savings of having a single standard? Also consider that lightning would surely have eventually been deprecated one day even without this initiative.
How did lightning ever provide "ongoing savings"? It was simply an update of the 30-pin connector, it wasn't created to improve reusability or applicability to other kinds of devices.
Also, I don't really appreciate the snark. It's just a connector.
No on both counts. No, Lightning was not "simply an update" of the 30-pin connector; it was a creation of something entirely new, from scratch. And no, you don't have any idea about the motivations (or lack thereof) about why it was created, so let's just discard that.
The factual record, of course, shows us quite clearly that Apple did indeed design something that was highly "applicable to other kinds of devices", devices which Apple then went on to apply Lightning to. :) And of course we can also see quite clearly from the last ten years that Lightning has had a massive impact on the reusability of various chargers, docks, and cables. Why? Because Apple stuck with it for ten years and used it in all kinds of stuff.
As far as I'm aware, lightning was never used for any host device product line or use case that wasn't previously served by the 30 pin connector. So it clearly wasn't created with an intent to allow a broader range of devices to share it (or else they simply failed at achieving that). It covered the same use cases across the same product lines as the thing it replaced with no expansion upon that. Therefore there was never any "ongoing savings" by bringing together a greater range of use cases compared to the alternative.
Ignoring the fact that USB-C to Lightning cables exist, how in the world does a little power brick and cable make a "significant difference" to what you can take with you?
Can you tell me which standard does work with the switch? I have a few usb-c cables but only a few can charge it, while I can charge my iPad with every cable that I own, it a bit sad that ubs-c is a lie, I'd hope that at least a few things were not optional with usb-c standard, and also that it didn't have too much optional stuff that makes harder and harder to buy a cable, it the same with HDMI, that's why display port feels superior IMHO, less optional features.
The Switch USB-C connector is notorious for being non-complaint to the spec, making charging it finicky. However I did not encounter as much trouble as you, 9 out off 11 chargers I try work. This problem is unique to the Switch however.
No, but the parent’s point is still valid - many people own more than one lightning cable and/or lightning-enabled accessory (charging docks, stereos, etc) and as soon as you own an iPhone with USB-C, they’ll immediately become either useless or require yet another adapter.
This already happened once when the iPhone switched from the iPod connector to Lightning, and people revolted for this exact reason.
> This already happened once when the iPhone switched from the iPod connector to Lightning, and people revolted for this exact reason.
That was before USB-C existed (and micro-USB didn't have the same sort of accessory ecosystem that the 30-pin connector had). In this day and age, those same charging docks and stereos and such typically already support USB-C (because that's what most modern phones use, and it's kind of silly in this day and age to run two separate manufacturing lines for two separate SKUs instead of simply supporting both connectors in the same device), so if anything this would be the opposite of a reason to revolt.
Micro-USB was similarly enforced by law (but adapters were permitted with that regulation, thus allowing Apple to continue using proprietary ports) and that legislation had a clear and obvious positive impact for smartphone users. Don't you recall the days when every single manufacturer had a terrible proprietary connector? I think that enforcement was one of the best examples of a regulatory win in the technology sector in recent times. This is simply an attempt to strengthen that regulation and update it to a modern standard.
You missed their point. The EU "locked" devices into micro B but somehow they still managed to switch to USB-C when it became viable. How could they have switched if they were as "locked in" as you think?
I mean the simple fact that every phone manufacturer bar Apple moved to Micro-B indicates that the mandate works, and the fact that they then migrated to USB-C indicates that it doesn't lock manufacturers in forever.
In addition, Apple is known for making loads of dongles, so it wouldn't be remotely weird for them to sell/ship a lightning -> USB-C dongle. So the argument about mandating e-waste doesn't really hold up either.
So you have:
- It works
- It doesn't lock manufacturers in forever
- It doesn't mandate e-waste
Any other reasons you want to give? So far those are the only three I've seen and none of them hold water.
As someone else pointed out, the micro-b thing in the EU was a recommendation and not a mandate so the terms are a bit different here.
I would be happy to have Apple move to Type C, but I do question if an actual mandate (and not a recommendation) could prevent future USB connector adoption in the EU market.
You are broadly right about the last one not being a legal mandate.
It was basically a case of the EU saying "you need to choose one charging port that you all use, we _will_ create a mandate if you don't".
Importantly, the EU has already gone through a shift in charging standards, so they already understand how this stuff advances and have prepared for it in their own legislation (the EU tends to make laws with details on how those laws will be changed in the future etc. since they are at core still a large trade bloc). You can find a Q&A they gave here:
The Commission's proposal aims at providing consumers with an open and interoperable solution and, at the same time, enabling technological innovation. The proposal encourages innovation for wired and wireless technology charging.
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.
In addition, larger technological developments are expected in the area of wireless charging, which is still a developing technology with a low level of market fragmentation. In order to allow innovation in this field, the proposal does not set specific technical requirements for wireless charging. Therefore, manufacturers remain free to include any wireless charging solution in their products alongside the wired charging via the USB-C port.
To summarize, they'll work with the USB-IF (made up of a whole bunch of companies, including Apple) when the USB-IF makes a new standard in order to ensure that new connection innovations will be propagated to new devices. What they won't allow is a company like Apple having an "innovation" then diverging from how everyone expects devices to charge.
Interestingly they've also said that there's a set of standardized fast-charging capabilities that need to be clearly labelled on products that require/support them. So if you buy a tablet it'll have a label on the box saying "can charge at up to 50w" or whatever, and a charger would say "can charge at up to 50w", so you know it'll charge at full speed. That's a little better than the previous "it supports fast charging" umbrella.
> When would this mandate be changed? After the rest of the world has already moved on to Type D?
The EU has already passed multiple recommendations previously about mobile phone port standardization. They were all passed in a reasonable amount of time. Moreover, this mandate was also passed in a reasonable amount of time.
Therefore, I have reason to believe that future mandates regarding mobile phone port charging will also be passed in a reasonable amount of time.
> Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me.
I'm sorry that we need a law to instil some common sense into some managers' thick skulls. But I'm happy that EU is showing that in, a sane democracy, no huge corporation can force its will on the people.
Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me.
Having unified, standard cables and power bricks means more reuse, which reduces waste and cost. It means someone switching from Android to iPhone or vice versa doesn't need to replicate all their cabling. It means users can buy a third party cable without paying Apple for a licence or a patent. These are all good things.
A minor inconvenience multiplied by the number of smartphones (7.33 billion) is not a minor problem.
It's not that it's a problem on the individual level, it's that we're roughly doubling the number of cables needed and halving their utilization at the same time. Yes I know android is more popular, but the issue is the two different cables needed.
iPhones don't have USB 3+ because the Lightning connector only has one differential pair for data. If iPhones had a connector with more pairs (USB-C), I doubt it would cost much of anything to add a USB 4 block to the SoC (which they already have on many Apple Silicon SoCs) and wire it up to the connector. Sure, there's more to it, but it's not rocket science.
This isn't an important reason. There's no technical reason that Lightning could not have been updated to support higher speeds, and there's also nothing in this legislation that forces USB-C to magically use a high data rate.
> I don't see any win besides a minor convenience. A lightning cable weighs almost nothing and it's not a big deal to have one around.
The standardization is good for a lot of purposes:
- cutting down on the number of cables and especially chargers. Seriously, it's amazing to have one single Anker 65W power supply and a single cable on vacation and it can charge everything - tablet, work phone, laptop, power bank, drones, Nintendo Switch. I 'member the dark times where each of these devices had their own cable and for some even own charger.
- car and in-flight entertainment systems can now be relatively secure that USB-C is here to stay and be used for connectivity, which means less effort for this kind of appliance
- if a cable gets lost or damaged, spare cables are cheap and plentiful, and they will also be available in a few years of time
- devices can now be shipped without a charger and cable, which reduces package size and weight (and thus shipping efficiency, as more packages fit into a single container) and as almost everyone has chargers and cables, there is no need to produce as many chargers and cables before, which reduces resource consumption and eventually waste
- when devices break down, chargers still can live on. Even a plain old 5W USB charger is enough to charge an e-cigarette.
- interoperability between devices gets increased. No more micro-USB-to-micro-USB or whatever rare cables to interface, say, a DSLR camera with a phone to transfer photos, a plain USB-C cable is sufficient.
> Feels like there's nothing to celebrate here. Just the EU using its influence to exert control over things that don't matter at all.
Well... Apple refused for years to implement USB-C on the iPhone on their own, while the rest of the market converged first on micro-USB and nowadays on USB-C. The regulation was only established to force the hands of the largest player, which didn't like USB-C because it would destroy its lucrative MFi licensing - basically, rent seeking by preventing competition with a closed solution instead of an open standard.
If there is one thing that drives EU legislation ideas, it is the convergence towards open and common, market-wide standards. This reduces the barriers to entry for small players and leads to more innovation as a result. Additionally, since the 500M citizens of the EU are a market bloc that no manufacturer can afford to ignore and for most things except automotive it isn't worth to set up different supply chains, our legislation can improve the lives of everyone on this planet - just take the RoHS directive, which led to lead solder being phased out worldwide and less lead ending up in the environment.
> If there is one thing that drives EU legislation ideas, it is the convergence towards open and common, market-wide standards. This reduces the barriers to entry for small players and leads to more innovation as a result.
Too many people don't understand that trade agreements are about common standards and accountability.
There is a lot of noise about EU regulations made by people who are stuck in 18th century mindsets about trade and who fancy themselves as "free traders".
> Too many people don't understand that trade agreements are about common standards and accountability.
Unfortunately, trade agreements can also end up being abused to enable price dumping. Yes, consumers may enjoy lower prices for goods, but if the cost is domestic industry being completely devastated or human rights being violated at large scale (e.g. children being enslaved in questionably legal mining operations or factories), is it worth it?
Most trade agreements at the time have almost no "equal standards" clause for manufacturing. Stuff like toxic materials (e.g. RoHS) is regulated, but lower work standards - minimum wages, child labor prevention, slavery prevention, fire codes (e.g. the horrible fires that regularly happen in Bangladesh [1]), disposal of waste, CO2 emissions - are not.
The result of that non-regulation is that nations like China, India or Vietnam flood European and US markets with goods that are only cheap (compared to domestic products) because the environment and the workers get exploited. We outsource our dirty industry.
I think if you're going to accuse Apple of rent seeking here you also pretty much have to accuse anyone who develops their own standard or plugin or similar of rent seeking as well.
When will the EU ban HDMI connections to monitors or force Apple to remove them from MacBooks? Why are dSLR cameras allowed to continue to use micro USB and SD cards when they could just use USB-C so we don't have to buy dongles and adapters?
The argument that Apple only provides one physical port (they also provide Magsafe and allow other wireless charging options) isn't sufficient with respect to your discussion point about market-wide standards. This really looks to me like the EU is just saying "we don't like lightning chargers and since nobody is going to defend it except Apple we'll ban it" while they also let plenty of other "standards" run amok in the market.
FWIW I much prefer USB-C and I want my next iPhone to include it (along with any other devices), but I really struggle with the logic of the decision to force it here.
> When will the EU ban HDMI connections to monitors or force Apple to remove them from MacBooks?
HDMI is a somewhat-open-ish, widespread standard and for what it's worth Apple MacBook models haven't carried HDMI ports for ages now.
> Why are dSLR cameras allowed to continue to use micro USB and SD cards when they could just use USB-C so we don't have to buy dongles and adapters?
Again, the market seems to converge towards USB-C already (almost all the models on [1] and other buying guides have USB-C), and for memory cards towards SD cards and CFexpress (on the pro segment). Both of these are somewhat-open-ish again.
The EU usually only steps in when the free market is either stuck somewhere along the road and needs a push towards a specific standard (=> USB-C), profit incentives need to be overruled (=> RoHS / leaded solder) or the free market suffers from oligopolies that need to be broken up for actual competition or the creation of an actual single market (=> EU-wide mobile roaming).
> The argument that Apple only provides one physical port (they also provide Magsafe and allow other wireless charging options) isn't sufficient with respect to your discussion point about market-wide standards.
Apple can provide a MagSafe port on MacBooks or a Lightning port on iDevices if they want. All Apple has to do is to support the mandated USB-C port as well!
> Why are dSLR cameras allowed to continue to use micro USB
Because DSLRs are dead. If you look at the new mirrorless cameras, they're either doing USB-C charging, or take batteries charged from a device that uses USB-C.
Why aren’t TV’s mandated to use USB-C? Why do I still need to connect via HDMI? Why does my TV remote still use double-A batteries instead of USB-C charging?
The cameras are just a random example.
As soon as you look at the EU’s decision (which is one I like the effects of) you can see that this was just a very arbitrary ruling.
> - cutting down on the number of cables and especially chargers. Seriously, it's amazing to have one single Anker 65W power supply and a single cable on vacation and it can charge everything - tablet, work phone, laptop, power bank, drones, Nintendo Switch. I 'member the dark times where each of these devices had their own cable and for some even own charger.
I have this now, except with 1 extra cable (which happens to charge my iPhone and AirPods).
> - if a cable gets lost or damaged, spare cables are cheap and plentiful, and they will also be available in a few years of time
Walk into any store or gas station today and you'll find all sorts of cable solutions for lightning. I was looking for a cable on vacation last year and had a harder time finding a usb-c to usb-c power cable. Everywhere had lightning though.
> - when devices break down, chargers still can live on.
Again, all my chargers have been usb-c for awhile.
Apple was clearly headed towards usb-c anyway, so I doubt this law changes much in their plans. But, a lot of the benefits were already there. Apple will need to include a lightning to usb-c dongle for a period of time as accessories shift over.
> Apple was clearly headed towards usb-c anyway, so I doubt this law changes much in their plans.
Highly doubt it. In any case, the aim of the EU was to create a standard or at least force the industry into coming up with one - and had Apple been allowed to keep their proprietary connector, the competition would be completely correct in claiming "why should we keep using the standard while Apple can get away with MFi licensing income?".
So, in order to actually keep the standard a standard, Apple now has to be openly forced. I doubt this regulation would have been done if Apple had signalled to be moving away from Lightning.
C'mon. Apple went all in on usb-c before anyone else. It hurt them with the laptop line and they reversed some. They have moved the iPad, include usb-c -> puck for the watch, and usb-c to lightning for the iPhone. They are transitioning.
Eh? The iPhone charges over a USB-Lightning cable. There are USB-C and USB-A versions of the cable available. The charger was never the issue. In fact Apple stopped including (USB) chargers with the iPhone a while back.
>If there is one thing that drives EU legislation ideas, it is the convergence towards open and common, market-wide standards. This reduces the barriers to entry for small players and leads to more innovation as a result.
Can you provide some examples of innovation that the EU has made in this industry in the last 20 years?
- mobile phone and data roaming, the most notable user-facing innovation
- the single market itself with all the associated side legislation (GDPR, VAT OSS) that allows every tiny small business to serve the entire EU
- Schengen free-movement zone
- Euro currency
- SEPA instead of national schemes (ties in into the single market aspect as well) with everything from card payments over wire transfers to direct debit covered. Strong authentication required for opening bank accounts. No more paper cheques. (Directly compare all of this to the hot mess that the US is)
- EPD PS2 that forces banks to provide APIs to third parties, e.g. budget planners
- unified drone legislation that allows me without tons of paperwork and individual permits to fly my drone everywhere reasonable in Europe
I meant innovation in consumer electronics or even just software services as a result of legislation, not legislation itself. Payments and bank APIs count. Thanks for the examples.
>Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me
this idea that it is somehow a bad thing to force mega-corporations to do things that are good for society. it's so widespread and yet - short of actual communism - I have literally never seen any evidence of public action against mega-corporate interests resulting in damage to society as a whole, beyond the inevitable political lobbying and media corruption that ensues
is it any surprise that entities whose entire existence has been justified by clever storytelling (i.e. marketing) have been successful at convincing people that rules for them are a bad thing, while rules for you on the street are perfectly fine and actually good?
people act like these mega-corps are weak, soft little babies that need to be treated with kid gloves. "no, but what if this law could do that to them? but what if this law means they make 0.1% less profit this year?". I absolutely understand this kind of reticence with actual babies, or individual people, or small-to-medium-sized businesses, but it makes me angry that people are so reluctant to act against these unaccountable mega-entities. it is hamstringing society
> Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me.
School shootings - why do we have to enforce not commiting school shootings with the stupid law, surely everyone can get together and agreee murdering a 10 year old for fun is evil and just not do it?
Kind of a ridiculous comparison. If you absolutely must compare this to school shootings, compare it this way:
Should a national government mandate only one method of security that every school must implement, or allow states/provinces/districts to experiment with what works for them? Even if the national government improves security in the short term, there is a strong possibility that the bureaucracy of national government's slowness to adapt will cause security to be worse in the long term.
> Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me.
It's because consumers have rights too. Standardising something actually fosters competition (healthy capitalism), increases profit (as standardising something often leads to lower manufacturing costs) while reducing costs for consumers (due to increased competition). It also reduces waste which is good for the environment.
> I don't see any win besides a minor convenience.
You will, when you have to buy another USB-C cable for your iDevice. I recently had to, for an iPad Air, and I was able to buy a good quality replacement USB-C cable (of similar spec) from Samsung for Rs. 750 (around $10) rather than paying Apple an exorbitant Rs. 2000 (around $20+). (Past experience with Apple cables has taught me that the higher price charged by Apple is no guarantee of better quality, and other non-Apple cables from reputed companies are often cheaper, more durable and last longer than Apple's).
You can already buy non-Apple branded lightning cables.
Apart from the cable that came in my iPhone 7's box many years ago (which still works perfectly and, excluding a little dirt, looks like new), all my other lightning cables are off-brand ones that cost much less than $20 apiece. More like 10.
Some of them (Aukey brand) developed a wonky connection after a while, or only work on one side. The others (Amazon Basics) still work perfectly, after spending uncountable hours in the sun and rain powering my phone on my motorbike's handlebars.
> You can already buy non-Apple branded lightning cables.
Lightening cables are not a standard and thus Apple dictates terms even with non-Apple lightening cables. As lightening cables are not an industry standard the prices are influenced by Apple and artificially inflated (even for non-Apple ones). And they can only be used with Apple devices. (Lightening cables have seen a recent price fall only after Apple shifted to USB-C for some iDevices, as the market fears Apple is already preparing to switch to USB-C).
USB-C cables will be even cheaper in the future as they are standardised, and since they can be used with multiple devices (due to such regulations) you need to buy fewer of them too.
> since they can be used with multiple devices (due to such regulations) you need to buy fewer of them too.
I’ve seen this argument a few times “yay now I only have to take one cable on holiday”. Sure, unless you want to charge two devices at once while you’re sleeping, perhaps… it’s an unrelated argument to which connector is better.
I don't particularly follow Apple's products, so I don't know when they started selling USB-C devices, and hence what "recently" means to you.
What I can say, is that in France on Amazon, USB-C cables and Lightning cables had similar prices when I last bought mine a few years ago. I usually compare Amazon Basics and Ugreen / Aukey brands.
This I really don't get. It reads as though you're saying that non-apple cables are cheaper and better, and also that mandating USB-C is valuable because it means you don't have to buy cables from apple.
Most certainly there are cables that are much better than the ones Apple is selling. I’ve been an iPhone/iPad user for more than 10 years and I no longer use Apple cables because they are gone in 6-8 months. This is an issue they had from the very beginning and which they utterly ignored.
In contrast, I bought an usb-c cable from one plus 5 years ago, which is still in perfect condition. With the iPhones, I use cables from some company (forgot the name) that have lifetime warranty. I swear I could tow my car with those, _for the same price_
Lightening cables have currently seen a price fall as Apple introduced USB-C devices. Yes, it's an automatic win for us consumers when regulation creates industry standard and fosters competition as that gives us the option to buy a product from multiple vendor. When something is standardised it is better for the whole industry, and especially for us consumers as it means we are not forced to buy something whose design and manufacturing is dictated by a single company. With lightening cables, Apple dictated the design and manufacturing terms and thus had an influence on its price even for non-Apple branded cables. With USB-C as a standard it can no longer do so.
What exactly is your USB-C cable example meant to illustrate? You were successfully able to buy a cheaper cable without any laws being passed. Seems like things are working fine as-is.
I benefited only because I bought a USB-C iDevice. Apple introduced USB-C support in some of its devices not because they wanted to but only because they realised that regulation would force them to in the future. Now that the regulation is in effect, Apple will be forced to drop support for its proprietary lightening cable and switch to supporting USB-C standards for all its devices. That's a huge win for consumers and the industry too.
A 4 year old iPhone still works perfectly, but a $200 Android will find its way to a landfill way sooner. As a rule of thumb, appliances that last are better for the environment than cheap products. Apple is good at make devices that last.
Nowadays all laptops can charge over usb-c (including Apple laptops, mind you!). Did anybody have to force Apple to do this? No, because charging technology improved so much that what used to be a big brick is now a pocketable GAN charger. Even the new magsafe laptops still support usb-c charging. And iPhones support wireless qi charging as well as Apple's proprietary magnet based wireless charging solution. Thanks to cheaper chips all devices can now negotiate how much power they need from the power brick. That's a big win, and this just wasn't possible a decade ago.
We're in the final stretch of a 20 year trend towards universal chargers, and this EU mandate is totally unnecessary.
> A 4 year old iPhone still works perfectly, but a $200 Android will find its way to a landfill way sooner
Not really, though. I'm using one and it's just fine. Nonsense aside...
> Nowadays all laptops can charge over usb-c (including Apple laptops, mind you!). Did anybody have to force Apple to do this? No
Yes. That's what the EU has been doing by talking about forcing the standardization. Dollars to donuts that apple would still be on their proprietary connector if not for that.
> this EU mandate is totally unnecessary
Disagree. Just look at the iPhones apple is still manufacturing, which they'll now be forced to change.
Android uses RAM as planned obselesence when they stop giving security updates to your old OS. The updated OS always uses more RAM and slows the phone down because of swapping to disk
I don't know that any stock Android swaps to disk. They swap to zram, generally.
That said, the thing that seems to make old Android devices obsolete is Google Play Services. It takes up significantly more RAM over time, and it keeps getting updated even when your OS isn't. A degoogled older Android device stays about as useful as it ever was.
Why has apple bucked this 20 year trend for iPhone charging? Much progress has been made, but never at this place. For a long time, it has looked like they will, but they never did. The EU finally got impatient and decided this mandate was needed to get apple to do this.
Note that the threat of a law like this is what caused many other manufacturers to standardize. If Apple gets a pass, what does that signal to the manufacturers who caved, and to everyone else. I would wager it tells them "the eu makes empty threats". This was the result of Apple saying "bluff" to EU demands, and the EU deciding to follow through.
Apple could have prevented this. The EU sort of had its hands bound when it started the process of pushing everyone to one charging. That process was largely very valuable, for apple specifically it isn't that important. But leaving the process incomplete would send the wrong message.
Hence I think that Apple is at fault for this regrettable law as the EU is.
This is a bad law that is the result of a process that was, on balance, still very valuable. This law is a small element in the minus column, that does not weigh against the many elements in the plus column. The process I refer to is the EU push to get manufactures to use the same charging port.
Anecdotal, but my friend has been complaining for over a year that the updates are making his iPhone too slow. Otoh, my 6+ year old Android phone is still going strong (after 1 battery replacement).
Your friend's iPhone will go a lot faster after he also gets his battery replaced. Once the battery degrades too much the iPhone slows itself down in order to not crash by trying to use more power than the battery can provide.
>A 4 year old iPhone still works perfectly, but a $200 Android will find its way to a landfill way sooner. As a rule of thumb, appliances that last are better for the environment than cheap products. Apple is good at make devices that last.
I will definitely switch to iPhone as soon as they come with USB-C. It feels like they're just not doing it out of spite - I already have 20 USB-C chargers and power banks for all of my hardware. If you've been in the Apple ecosystem for years, no, it probably won't matter to you and will probably annoy you more than what it's worth because you now need separate cables to charge your mouse and your phone.
Out of spite? What about it feeling out of spite to make this change for the tens of millions of users who have one or two or four sets of AirPods, and several wireless Apple keyboards and mice and trackpads, and various other gear, all of which uses Lightning?
Some people need to remember that it's not all about them.
And your USB-C chargers and power banks were and are perfectly capable of charging Lightning devices.
Perhaps you can outline the many times that Apple dropped support for something to move to something new?
Phones no longer have "dock connectors" do they? What about anyone who had a dock port?
Having an iPhone and android phones, Lightening is ANNOYING. Almost nothing uses it. I can charge my Kindle via USB-C, my headphones via USB-C but need an ancient lightening to charge my phone?
Lastly, can you outline what devices people have which are dependent on Lightning? AirPods? they could have been released with USB-C from the start, allowing Apple to move away from lightning.
I find this argument really funny since Apple already dropped lightning connectors on the newer IPADs in favor of USB C and already doesn't support lightning laptops.
I guess you'll have to figure out how to handle the slight inconvenience that Apple is putting their IPAD customers and laptop customers through.
It's a common misconception for the less tech savvy but you can just buy a USB-C to Lightning cable for a few bucks. In fact, here's a 3-pack for $7: https://a.co/d/1WFoRGZ
The constant dongle arguments are so funny, especially in this case.
1) You buy a USB-C to Lightning cable. Obviously.
2) Everyone bitches about Apple supposedly requiring all kinds of dongles, but of course, what caused that? Apple's insistence on putting only Thunderbolt ports on the Mac. Which of course use what connector? USB-C.
People need to figure out what they are bitching about before just mouthing words about dongles all the time.
I agree with the overall tone in the comments here: yay in general, but what a shame a law needs to specify a specific port for ~iPhones~ devices.
I really like USB-C. It's sooo convenient to charge my notebook, my headphones, my phone, my everything with the same cable. However what bothers me since someone pointed it out to me: for phones, which are used all day in all kind of situations, lightning has a big andvantage over USB-C. It's has no parts inside the port and therefore is harder to break. Maybe we get something like this with USB-D, but hopefully it will take a long time until then. Meanwhile I'll enjoy my Fairphone, which has a replacable USB-C port.
On the flipside, this means the thin logic board that connects to the pins is in the host device, not in the cable.
Which means if you break it off, you need to replace the whole port, which might be difficult or expensive; instead of the (relatively) cheap cable.
I _love_ USB-C as a concept, but this alone makes, in my opinion, Lightning the superior physical connector.
And yes, I have had to replace / throw away entire devices because of a USB-C port breaking like this.
Sure, I should be less of a clumsy oaf around my electronics, but I also don't think "not bricking the entire device when extra force is applied to the port" is unreasonable design goal for a physical connector as universal as USB-C is.
Anecdotal evidence: I have had to replace a device because of a failed USB-C port, but I have never had to replace a device because of a failed Lightning port. I know, it's one data point, but there it is.
Was it on a Macbook? I think there could be some confounding factors if not -- there exist bottom of the barrel laptop manufacturers who'll somehow figure out a shitty way to implement a USB-C port. There doesn't exist a bottom of the barrel iPhone manufacturer. Apple does a good job of making sure all their components are mid-tier at least, I think. Maybe we could compare to third party lightning ports but they tend to be pretty rare.
The 2016 and 2017 MBPs had garbage USB-C ports which wore out their detents after like 10 insertions. The charge cable (or worse, data cable for an external hard drive) would fall out or lose connectivity with the slightest shift in position.
Interesting about the springs, I didn’t know that. In practice though, the opposite to everything you say seems to be true based on using many (many) of both connectors over the years. I’ve had a couple of disasters with USB-C ports breaking (on the device, not the cable), while I’ve never had anything go permanently wrong with Lightning sockets. Your point that it has delicate springs inside it sounds concerning but seems to be totally theoretical - you can see customer service staff in Apple stores frequently just whip out a SIM key or paperclip and waggle it about in a customer’s iPhone to clean it with total abandon. And I’ve always done this with mine, treating it very rough with metal paperclips, I’ve never worried about hurting the springs. And it has never, ever gone wrong for me. The evidence seems to be that Lightning is just much more resilient.
You say that cleaning out a USB-C port is safe, but I know it’s not, because of that little snap-off wafer inside, which has broken on me twice before. It’s not safe, I promise. Don’t do it unless you have a good warranty!
Thank you for the clarification. I didn't know that.
In my experience, cleaning the lightning port with the end of a paperclip was never an issue (dust from my pocket liked the spot; always helped when charging got unreliable).
> "what a shame a law needs to specify a specific port for ~iPhones~ devices."
The only shame here is that companies consistently chose lock-in over open standards, even when it's clearly detrimental to the user's experience and the environment.
If the "adults in the room" can't figure it out (out of greed), it's fair game for governments to step in and make a choice for everybody. That's what a government should do: create clarity and accountability where there is none.
This idea that we need dedicated connectors for every little piece of hardware we own is simply not sustainable.
> even when it's clearly detrimental to the user's experience
This is entirely subjective. Personally, I’ve never been bothered by the different port type. I’ve also never really known it to be a problem for friends and family.
That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t prefer USB-C for the iPhone. Just that for me it’s not been “clearly detrimental.”
What's positive about having to buy different cables, chargers and converters every year for your phones, cameras, laptops and whatnot? Maybe you're just used to it, but if you truly think about what it means and the implications of doing this at-scale, I seriously doubt there's any benefit to it.
I haven’t ever bought a lightening cable. Every device that uses one (iPhone, Magic Mouse, whatever) has come with one. And lightening cables don’t require unique chargers or converters.
I don’t think it’s some great positive, but I also don’t think it is “clearly detrimental” to the user experience, either.
This is not. Apple has the opportunity to standardize all of their devices under one serial/power connector - they have neglected to do this for over a decade, and it overtly effects the user experience. Case closed, apologist anecdata will not be considered.
> You don’t offer any evidence that it’s not subjective.
Let me break it down for you, case-by-case:
> Apple has the opportunity to standardize all of their devices under one serial/power connector
This is objectively true. Apple helped design the USB-C standard to replace the ports on their own devices, and demonstrated this intent on the Macbook and later, the iPad.
> they have neglected to do this for over a decade
This is also true. While USB-C isn't a decade old, USB 3.0 is, and Apple has refused to update Lightning cables to reflect the newer standards in serial transfer technology.
> it overtly effects the user experience.
This is, undeniably and objectively, true. USB 2.0 is extremely slow - to the point that most users resort to slow wireless transfers to avoid an even slower wired one. Apple can fix this. They don't even need to get rid of USB-C to do this, but by switching to USB-C they will no longer have a choice. They had their opportunity to play fair, now they have to play by the rules instead. I'm closing the case because the EU has done so as well. Apple is negligent here, regardless of how Apple, their customers or other bystanders feel.
Very much agree. The port design of lightning is superior, too bad that now a law mandates Apple to sell the inferior solution. But that’s what you get when laws eliminate competition.
Bell Labs allowed others to produce transistor based hearing aids royalty free. Volvo allowed others to use a 3-point harness system royalty free. Apple created Lightning to solve a problem and wanted royalties on all products using it. Naturally, the market moved to another solution.
While Lightning may be a good piece of technology, I think Apple is largely to blame for its demise. Standardization is good for consumers. Apple had control over its fate. I don’t blame them for wanting to collect royalties, but they were the only major manufacturer on the market not playing ball with a standardized port. Yet even their other products use USB-C, and the MacBook was actually an early adopter.
Accordingly, I don’t think this law eliminates competition. It brings simplification to consumers for a simple, boring port that can now be shared with many of their other goods and a single cable.
> they were the only major manufacturer on the market not playing ball with a standardized port
I genuinely believe that there’s only one real reason Apple resisted moving away from Lightning:
They saw the writing on the wall from the EU over the last few years, and - remembering the way people lost their minds over the switch from 40-pin to Lightning (“it’s a money grab! they want me to replace all of my accessories!”) - chose to wait so they’d have someone to deflect blame to.
Licensing revenue from Lightning MFi is a drop in the bucket. I’m not a manufacturing operations expert, but I have to imagine that the simplification of supply chains alone will nearly offset that loss over time.
Except if Apple voluntarily made iPhones that charged over USB-C, most people would rejoice, because most people already have loads of USB-C chargers for all of their other electronic devices.
Between my wife and I, we have two cell phones, three laptops, and a pair of wireless headphones. Only one of those devices doesn't use USB-C- her iPhone. I don't believe the other five devices have USB-C because they were forced to.
Great anecdote! My wife and I have a number of cell phones, tablets, headphones, and computers. The computers have USB-C, and so does one of the tablets. One headphone has micro-USB, and everything else is lightning. We have plenty of charging solutions for lightning (mostly USB-A bricks with lightning connectors), so moving to USB-C will mean we'll have to buy a 5-10 new bricks and cables. Not looking forward to it!
Perhaps, but the vast majority of devices in our house do not use USB-C. They are either still on micro-USB, or they're on lightning. I realize people's experiences differ on this, but for many people USB-C devices are not common. These people do not have charging infrastructures in their homes for USB-C devices, and transitioning means throwing away a lot of cables and such.
> moving to USB-C will mean we'll have to buy a 5-10 new bricks and cables
Why? Your computers and one of your tablets already have USB-C chargers, so you could just use those for your phones. Further, USB-A to USB-C cables exist, so you could reuse your existing USB-A bricks, too.
I can't unplug my computer to charge my phone because I use my computer in clamshell mode, which sadly only works when its plugged in. I do sometimes charge through my computer, but I find this is pretty slow. I figured that USB-A to USB-C cables exist, and we might decide to buy some of these. But if the change is happening, it might be foolish to purchase cables that have one foot in the grave already. The upside would be that we could still charge our micro USB devices from the same bricks.
> But if the change is happening, it might be foolish to purchase cables that have one foot in the grave already.
I don't see USB-A going anywhere in the next decade or so, especially now that they're popping up in wall outlets and power strips alongside traditional wall plugs (at least here in the US; YMMV elsewhere). Hell, I was at a casino last weekend and pretty much every slot machine has a USB-A port specifically for charging phones (unfortunately, the casino's gift shop was sold out of USB-C and Lightning, but had lots of micro-B on hand - go figure lol).
Lightning vs USB-C is like VHS vs Betamax or HD-DVD vs Bluray, only Apple has sufficient market power it can abuse to avoid the inevitable convergence towards a common standard. It's exactly the correct thing to do for a regulator to step in and fix this.
Lightning ports have springs that wear out inside. They have issues with arcing, which damages the plug (look at a charging cable that has been in use for a bunch of cycles. One pin on each side will be burnt.).
But hey, the plug part is pretty, so it must be better
I’ve bought and worn out SO many lightning cables.
Never before have I dealt with such a poor connector. All my usb c is working fine. All my lightning cables work about half the time, need to be jostled. I know if I buy all new ones AGAIN it will sort out the problem.
I don’t understand this take and replies.
Also, lightning doesn’t power external devices. Love that I can run a midi keyboard off my new iPad. The same on my iPhone requires a powered usb hub.
> It's sooo convenient to charge my notebook, my headphones, my phone, my everything with the same cable.
This really works for you? When I try charging my laptop with my phone cable/charger, it not only doesn't charge, but the laptop requires a hard reset to start turn on again. When I try charging my phone with my laptop cable/charger, it just doesn't charge. So while it's great in theory that everything is USB-C, it doesn't solve that much for me...
It does for me. When I travel, I only travel with my laptop's USB-C power supply. That charges my phone, my laptop, my Switch, my wife's phone, her headphones, and her e-reader.
When I travel, I bring one 30W USB-C charging brick and a 2m USB-C cable, in addition to a Dell battery bank that has a short integrated USB-C cable. These charge my phone, laptop, iPad mini, and Nintendo Switch. At home I have a dedicated 45W charger for my laptop, but the 30W charger is much smaller and works just fine.
Unfortunately, I still need to bring a 6" microUSB cable as well, because my Logitech mouse, bicycle headlamp, and pocket flashlight (that uses 14500 lithium batteries) still don't have USB-C ports. I plan on upgrading all of them to USB-C when I can, but these rarely need to be charged so it's not as big a deal for me.
I’ve tripped over an old iPhone, catching the cable and deforming the charging port. That made charging the phone difficult until I got a new one. Now I only use the MagSafe charger to prevent another such mishap. One more “moving part” that I don’t have to worry about.
Beware, there is a lot of actual safety equipment that goes into a MagSafe connector that probably isn’t in the knock-offs. Moving 5 A of current can cause a spark and start a fire right in your lap.
I have a "bootleg" magsafe usb-c cable for my 2018 "worst model in history" mbpro with emoji keyboard.
When I bought it i did the research and random magnetic cables on amazon were reviewed along the lines of "this burned my laptop". I ended up getting an (expensive-ish) one from my local apple dealer.
You don't have to use a counterfeit charger with your after-market usb-c to magsafe-2 cable. I use it with a newer real apple charger with usb-c (... since this is an older magsafe-2 macbook, not a new magsafe-3 one, and I don't want to buy any more magsafe-2 non-detachable-cable chargers). The only downside is that it's a bit dumb and always tells the laptop it has 60W, so you need to use >= 60W usb-c charger, and your laptop will only use 60W of it.
That first link describing how magsafe 1/2 work is what convinced me it should be fine :)
At the time I wrote my comment, I read/skimmed to the greater part of the comments and the pattern was pretty clear. Maybe now there are more voices who beleive the market (tm) would've done it's part.
Honestly yeah, the standardisation part is fantastic but I absolutely hate that the industry at large settled on USB-C ports that are so pathetically easy to break it's hilarious. Micro-USB and Mini-USB were both far more robust.
And also the part where there are a billion specs for the same cable so you never know what you're dealing with. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the bluetooth team came up with the standards...
This is the first claim I've ever heard that Mini-B is "far more robust" than USB-C. Mini-B is legendarily breakable, both from a pin standpoint (really low lifetime insertions) and from a physical one (the port profile put a ton of strain on the device side). Micro-B was created to resolve those problems, and did a decent job through the latching teeth on the back, but has fewer pins available for advanced connectivity and no room to add them in a backwards-compatible way. Even for small devices, the additional pins are beneficial for standardized high-rate charging via USB-PD.
Both Micro-B and USB-C are similarly rated for robustness.
> Micro-USB and Mini-USB were both far more robust.
Micro-USB and USB-C both have the same minimum durability ratings, you may just be buying non-compliant cables (or you're encountering selection bias or something):
>the newer Micro-USB[4] and USB-C receptacles are both designed for a minimum rated lifetime of 10,000 cycles of insertion and removal.
Micro-USB is an abomination from a durability perspective, and in no way does this reflect reality for the majority of Micro-USB plugs and sockets I've found in the wild.
I'm pretty sure that rated lifetime is for correct insertion, yeah. USB-C has a thicker cross-section and the rounded ends definitely help with correct insertion to reduce the likelihood of whomping on the socket when you plug it in.
I personally have owned 5 phones with worn out USB micro-b ports, where to charge them I'd have to lay a book on the cable or position the phone at an odd angle.
I have never seen anyone do this with a USB-c port. I have never heard anyone complain their USB-C port wore out.
USB-C was designed for far greater durability & reliability & IMO it clearly & obviously shows.
I like USB-C and would even be in favour of the iPhone using USB-C, but I really dislike the idea that EU regulators would know what's better for consumers than consumer electronics companies and the consumers themselves.
I do kind of get it though. It's probably better for a whole host of reasons if electronics all used the same cords, but I guess you could make that argument for a lot of things. There would be benefits if there was only one mobile operating system or if all mobiles used the same interchangeable batteries, for example.
When a standard makes sense companies will generally adopt it naturally. The fact so many manufacturers use USB-C today just proves that this probably doesn't need to be enforced. I suppose it's just strange to me this would even need to be a law or that there are people paid to pass laws like this.
Are you old enough to remember the early 2000s when every phone and portable media player had it's own charger, which often wasn't even transferable between devices by the same manufacturer? It led to lots of old chargers when devices were replaced, which were useless for anything else (I remember having bags of cables and chargers). And if you wanted a second charger for whatever reason (this was before you needed to charge your device every 3 hours), you needed to find the specific charger for your device. If it was a few years old, it might not even be possible to purchase one.
Then almost by magic everyone switched to micro USB. You could charge different devices from different manufacturers with the same cable. This wasn't some feat of magic, it was because the European Commission worked to bring manufacturers to an agreement on a common charging standard.
Well, everyone except Apple, who did actually sign the agreement. They just decided to bundle a dongle to be compliant.
Mini-USB was introduced in 2000, so manufactures had plenty of time to choose a common interface themselves, but decided not to.
Even amongst Apple's own devices it is a mess. To charge an Apple Pencil with an iPad Pro you need not one, but two adapters.
> Are you old enough to remember the early 2000s when every […]
One does not have to be that old enough.
Look no further than personal care and small home appliances (electric shavers – yes, Braun, I am looking at you; electric toothbrushes – and you, too, Philips! As well as household and kitchen appliances) the vast majority of which still come with incompatible proprietary chargers that are so hard, expensive or inconvenient (usually all of the above) to procure to replace that the entire gadget oftentimes gets disposed of because of the failed charger.
Governments ought to crack down on those ones as well, and crack down real, real hard.
It would be nice if those same EU regulations where applied to all industries and not some specifically designated ones. For example my German Braun Shaver Charger will not be impacted by this regulation ...
Why? I got a new shaver recently and it has a 5V 1A charger. The old one had a 5V 0.5A charger. A common interface would make perfect sense, and the power range is within what the USB standard can provide.
> When a standard makes sense companies will generally adopt it naturally.
My point was that manufacturers could have done so (with Mini-USB) if they wanted to, but chose not to. Until smart phones came around, most phones were more than thick enough to have a Mini-USB port (and a lot did).
Worse, the Pencil 1 didn't have a lightning port, it insanely had a lightning plug - it had to be charged precariously sticking out of the bottom of the iPad like this:
Not entirely true. It came with a little female-female lightning adapter so you could charge it with whatever other lightning cable you have. The pencil end of the adapter is deeper than the other end, I think so you can't plug a lightning cable into each end.
> I really dislike the idea that EU regulators would know what's better for consumers than consumer electronics companies and the consumers themselves
What proportion of phone consumers have an informed opinion on charging technology? Why would the electronics companies work in a way that benefits everyone/the environment instead of themselves.
> I guess you could make that argument for a lot of things
We do, we have standards for a ridiculous amount of things no one ever thinks about.
> There would be benefits if there was only one mobile operating system or if all mobiles used the same interchangeable batterie
Standardising the operating system would create a monopoly and have no obvious society wide benefits. Whereas cables can be made by anyone competent. It would be more prudent to mandate user replacable batteries before thinking about if such a specific battery standard could feasibly work. Something you can probably make a good argument for.
That point maybe sounds smart, but doesn't actually make any sense to have added, as I can respond with "yes!!" and it doesn't contradict anything about the argument you are ostensibly trying to undermine. That (importantly) said, the new statement isn't even a true thing to be trying to note anyway in this context: unlike USB-C, which is an industry standard, Apple owns lightning and so if one were to imagine forcing the world to standardize on it it would actually CREATE a monopoly.
I think it was pretty obvious from context clues that they were talking about USB since it's standardized. If lightning were standardized then other companies would be able to produce the cables. I don't see what your point is.
Electronics companies decide what's best for them. Competition in the smart phone market is done, so consumers no longer have a say. These kinds of interoperability standards are great and would love to see more of them internationally.
Consumers still don't have a say. Now instead of companies choosing what hardware & features are best for their product, and you then choosing products based on your preferences, EU regulators are now forcing companies (and therefore you) to use whatever they think is best.
I think in the case of USB-C it's not too bad just because USB-C is widely agreed to be a good connector that's already widely adopted, but there have been plenty of bad connectors in the past which in theory the EU could now be deciding consumer electronics companies are forced to use.
This also assumes USB-C is always the best option which I doubt. I'm sure there are products which given the application, size or price point might suite a different cable better. Technology also moves on and connectors change for a reason. Now we're going to be stuck with outdated hardware until EU regulators update laws. At which companies and you as the consumer will be forced to adopt that new connector regardless of your preferences.
The EU consulted with phone producers before standardizing on micro-USB, then again before standardizing on USB-C, and it will do again when something better comes up.
They have explicitly called out not regulating wireless charging for this reason.
Yours is a valid concern, but it's not grounded in reality.
I think the point is that there's no clear consensus on a "winner" right now. USB-C (back then micro-USB) had vast backing, had been in use for a while in many places and was "good enough" for everyone (except Apple-only-on-iphones). It's unclear what is the equivalent for wireless right now.
> The following companies have signed the MoU: Apple, LG, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Qualcomm, Research in Motion (RIM), Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Texas Instruments.
That's when they moved to Micro-USB. This is the next step. But yeah, I'd imagine the same companies voiced their opinions this time around, along with others.
I can't find the exact names right now, but from the Impact Assessment report[1] they did stakeholder surveys, which included 121 stakeholders of which 23% were private companies. In addition to that they did targeted interviews with 7 manufacturers associations and 17 manufacturers.
The idea this somehow limits consumer choice is nonsense. It opens up choice because now I don't have to pay insane markups for proprietary items.
Printer ink, razor blades, and so on are other examples besides connector cables where companies' `innovations' tend to make things worse for the consumer. Even if the new cable is technically slightly better, the other factors of price, availability, and lack of inter-operability ultimately make things worse for the consumer.
Also, you'd likely have more luck getting elected officials to change EU policies than you would have with mega company board members changing profit-maximizing strategies.
Standardizing shit that doesn't need to be different, in order to let markets function better, is one of the oldest functions of the state as we know it, and a precursor to the development of capitalism.
Seeing the benefit to doing that kind of thing (which required developments in thought & practice in political economy) and being able to effectively enforce such decrees (which required various other developments in theory and technology, plus the right circumstances) on a large area is even seen as one of the hallmarks of the development of the nation-state, and a major stepping stone to our modern global economic system and the modern state.
Where are all the market players that sell phones with iOS with USB-C? I might have voted on them. Or, perhaps one that allows side-loading and has a removable battery and a fingerprint sensor?
Oh, capitalism makes all these choices possible for me, how wonderful!
> I really dislike the idea that EU regulators would know what's better for consumers than consumer electronics companies and the consumers themselves
This isn't something created by faceless bureaucrats behind closed doors.
The "regulators" are the EU Parliament, who are elected by residents in the various countries. The issue has been talked about for a few years, and was voted on 603 to 13, that's over 96% (including abstentions).
> I really dislike the idea that EU regulators would know what's better for consumers than consumer electronics companies and the consumers themselves.
It's not that, it's that companies know what's good for them and consumers are a secondary consideration, if that.
Consider EU mobile phone roaming regulation: it's an unalloyed good. We've gone from expensive and inconvenient roaming charges and roaming add-ons to free roaming at almost no increase in prices. There was initially some increase in very low priced plans yet I have a 2.65 euro a month 1GB data only plan (with full roaming) which is a blindingly good deal.
The very Adam Smith even have said that capitalism only work in well-defined markets. I don’t see how a more-or-less democratically elected entity would have a negative effect on competition by upholding some consumer-centric rules.
I agree. What happens if companies want to make something better or technology improves? The way the legislation is written, will help consumers in the short-term but could stifle innovation in the long-term. Imagine if the EU had mandated DC power ports or CD-ROM drives two decades ago.
It took this long for the EU to pass common standard legislation after talking about it for years. I can't imagine they will be any faster in updating it if USB-C becomes outdated.
How fast can charging ports evolve even in theory, given that they have to be somewhat backwards compatible to begin with? I think the law can keep up with all these iterations of lightning cables apple invented during its free reign over their port.
Companies are now disincentived to innovate because there is no guarantee money spent developing a new standard will result in something allowed to be sold.
No one can predict new technology. Ideally the law should have an end date or require regular renewal.
I am hoping for my next car to be chargeable through a USB-C port too! /s
I love the fact that there is a standardized port, and I can get devices of any type to charge with a single powerful charger. But connector and cables are wonky at best if you want to have a single cable for everything too (look up prices, thickness and lengths of USB-C PD 100W, alt-DP 1.4 capable, USB 3+ speeds cables, and then watch them break in a few months of "regular" use like in a car charger).
But I want a better, more robust standard than USB-C! Can that happen with the law in place? I don't know, but that scares me.
> I am hoping for my next car to be chargeable through a USB-C port too! /s
I’m aware of your sarcasm, but it did bother me that my Tesla used a proprietary port that made it more difficult to use other charging locations, such as the charger next to my apartment. Electric vehicle charging ports need standardization as well.
Perhaps having these laws standardizing ports will set the groundwork for a more robust standard in the future. I don’t think there’s ever going to be a perfect solution since there are so many differing opinions, but I do believe this is a good start.
While I was obviously tongue in cheek, higher current requires thicker cables, and I think USB-C is already being pushed to over 200W. Can we make those tiny connectors robust enough for the weight of the cable?
Similarly for cars: as you push for faster charging, you'll need bigger connector pins, though I am sure (I hope?) standard EV ports are sufficiently over-engineered for the time being.
> I’m aware of your sarcasm, but it did bother me that my Tesla used a proprietary port that made it more difficult to use other charging locations, such as the charger next to my apartment. Electric vehicle charging ports need standardization as well.
This is happening in europe, tesla is switching to type 2 connectors. I think these laws certainly play a role in motivating the company.
> Regardless of their manufacturer, all new mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones and headsets, handheld videogame consoles and portable speakers, e-readers, keyboards, mice, portable navigation systems, earbuds and laptops that are rechargeable via a wired cable, operating with a power delivery of up to 100 Watts, will have to be equipped with a USB Type-C port.
Regulation has always been a part of government, to increase the efficiency of the open market. But in regards to your first point:
> why should the committee put any effort into developing anything better?
The EU is absolutely not in the business of developing any connector whatsoever. They wanted _a_ standard (for eco/market reasons), and asked the industry to create one. This became USB and the USB Forum. Now they make it mandatory to follow that standard. In the act they passed, the power to set the specific standard is deferred to the European Commission, to make it easier to update it if necessary. These are called delegated acts [0].
If a new physical connector is ever necessary, the USB forum will write the standard, ask the EU if they can update the reference, which is easy since it's only a matter of pushing paperwork.
_Not_ hardcoding a feature like this, and following what industry wants is an explicit goal of the legislative process. It has worked extremely well in these sorts of circumstances.
The only risk I could see is a technical innovation for connectors, which the USB Forum refuses to implement for some reason. This could happen, but I don't see it as being any different then current industry practices.
Because they always did, and never needed Apple to compete.
USB comitee is filled with companies competing with each other, and Apple is one of these companies.
This gives me some cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, having a common connector will reduce waste and be much more convenient (eg "Hey have you got an iPhone charger?") and make losing a charger a cheaper mistake. On the other hand I'm not sure I like the idea of government mandating electrical connectors on devices, which could stifle innovation, or be very shortsighted in the typical government-rules-on-tech way (eg "banning encryption").
Have you seen this outside Italy? Everywhere else in Europe I've always seen the Europlug, it's only Italy where sometimes you have the weird 3-in-a-line plug, at least in Western Europe
Denmark has the smiley face plug. It works fine if you don't need a grounded connection, but still.. they have a lot of sockets that don't follow the EU standard.
I think France has the one where the ground pin sticks out? That can be a problem depending on which cable you have.
And then there's UK of course, though they're not part of EU anymore.
We have the UK plugs in Ireland too and we’re in the EU. I wish it was feasible to switch to the europlug, I wouldn’t have to carry a handful of adapters around when travelling.
Your comment really got me thinking. Or actually continue thinking since I recently met some N.I. relatives in France and noticed their plethora of plug adapters. I almost forgot Ireland (the whole island) uses a UK style plug as I haven't been there in a while due to life and covid, and meanwhile have travelled a lot in Europe. Meanwhile, I grew up in Canada (US style plugs), recently lived in Japan for a decade (US style plugs), recently traveled a lot for work between Japan and Europe, but sometimes also UAE (UK style plugs). I just moved to mainland Europe and living in Ireland is a possibility someday.
In tech circles like HN, I have seen the UK style plug and its fuse and local power switch lauded for its superior safety, but it's really just belt and suspenders added to make up for old, cheap not forward-thinking design. I like US style plugs because they are small, and for portable stuff often have a folding design that saves space. But I'm biased because I have only lived in Canada and Japan until recently so naturally all my stuff uses this standard.
In addition to that I am a huge nerd about plugs, chargers and travel adapters. Anything I have that is remotely portable is usb-c powered. I've hacked every old wireless mouse, keyboard, headphones that I own to use usb-c to reduce the number of cables and adapters I need for life and travel to the minimum[1]. I don't recommend this to you or anyone else but when I do end up with a UK plug power source, I use a plastic pen lid to brute force my europlug adapter into a UK socket.
Changing to europlug in Ireland is an interesting topic. It would be so tough to phase-in europlugs given that one of the differences is the UK plug with fuse is possible to use with ring circuits. And changing existing ring circuits to radial (each circuit goes back to the breaker box on an independent wiring run) would be expensive enough in wood-framed houses/North America but incredibly expensive in Ireland. Ireland is famously mostly deforested, so old houses are usually stone and new ones are usually concrete. On top of that, Ireland didn't experience recent destruction and rebuilding/postwar-rebuilding like mainland Europe did. A lot of houses[2] are very old, and many are protected cultural assets even if privately owned so you couldn't just send any old contractor in to start drilling holes and carving out channels or adding wall-mounted conduit for new wiring. It wouldn't be popular to spend on this or to potentially scar a lot of historical or family homes.
On the other hand, post-brexit there could be enough will to align more to the single EU marketplace. I don't want to be that guy that speculates "just do this" on a topic I am not an expert in, but I didn't find any serious proposal or discussion by googling it. I think the solution would be to require local outlets or permanent adapters that assume the function of the fuse in UK plugs at each outlet, and provide both EU and UK plug compatibility. You wouldn't want to allow temporary adapters because any unqualified person could make a working but unsafe configuration. You wouldn't want to force EU plugs on everyone because that would also encourage unsafe modification/adapters, or be unpopular/expensive by requiring modification of an antique device.
[1] If you are comfortable with soldering, filing, 3d printing and taking things apart, you can find usb-c sockets with the appropriate resistors installed, and tiny dc-dc converter boards with usb-c input on aliexpress, and easily update old low-power, stuff from micro-usb, barrel connector, etc to usb-c. I even added usb-c power to my NES, SNES, gamecube, wii and wii-u.
[2] I say houses and not buildings because I want to highlight the considerations for the average person, and I also presume anything commercial or open to the public already mandates using the latest building codes and safety features above all considerations. This is evident when you visit a beautiful ancient castle or church and see a jarring green exit sign, or handrails and conduit laid all over the place on top of ancient stonework. Of course, many of these places due their best to conceal modern things and keep everything beautiful except for the green exit signs. But Ireland would have to commit to funding the work to upgrade all of the family heirloom old houses.
Traveling much of Europe (humble brag) the only places where I have seen some noticeable difference is Britain (of course) Italy and Malta. That being said, any remotely modern building or establishment expecting travelers on Malta or Italy has plugs with at least USB-A or the two prong "European" (with the round prongs, don't know the standard name).
The UK is not in the EU and use all kinds of weird units and other nonsense. If they had stayed in the EU long enough, they would have caught up eventually, as will Italy.
I doubt we're changing the side of the road we drive on, but now it's much more expensive to import LHD used cars from the UK. I doubt that we're changing power plugs because there's hundreds of millions of them out there.
I'm not sure that other EU standards there would be that we don't have, being an EU member, except for decent cycling and mass transport infra, and that would be dramatic improvement.
Having travelled the EU with Irish/UK plugs on my electronics, it's a pain in the ass unless you have swapped the plug on several power strips.
Also, basically all of the adapters say not for long term use, and they're nowhere near as stout or secure as either type of plug alone.
Anyway, the UK plug is the best one out there, except for stepping on them. They're worse than legos, and that's saying something. (and maybe size, weight, and cost. But electrically, they're good)
true but also false: italian, french and german standards (and the rest of smaller european countries) are different but compatible. and i'm glad for that.
This is a great example in that residential electrical systems evolve at a snails pace. There's almost no innovation and most houses are full of dangerous legacy systems because regulation makes updating difficult and expensive.
Also of note: you aren't required by national or state law to use any kind of electrical system in the U.S. The National Electric Code is not a binding document. It's up to individual municipalities to decide whether they want to adopt it (or some other standard, which they're free to do).
Except electricians and the companies that insure them for professional liability, or the companies that insure houses against electrical fires use that national code as a reference, same for building codes, etc.
It's interesting to read the comments here from people that have equipment and stuff in their houses and cars and workplaces that are constrained by regulations and laws all around them, but are worried about a connector on their phone.
A "free" market needs regulation otherwise it develops into monopolies. Setting standards is a way to regulate to ensure a level playing field for competition.
It's not like the EU has rushed this decision, or that anyone is proposing some other standard that wasn't considered.
There are plenty of non governmental standards. Some like openGL or http are driven by industry consortiums. Others like keurig/Nespresso generic pods, x86 chips, or cup holder sizes are driven by compatibility with wildly successful products.
Edit: usb-c is both the former and the latter. Macbooks and ipads had already switched, it seems likely the next iphone would have been usb-c anyway, or perhaps portless.
You don't even know what else could have happened if there was no standardization. Maybe the industry must have progressed without the need of outlets in the first place.
Yeah, we would definitely use nuclear mini-reactors in our vacuum cleaners otherwise, if only it wasn’t for the damn EU!
These are very well understood areas, there is only so many ways you can transport electricity. Also, there is nothing stopping innovation “after” the plug. It’s like saying that HTTP somehow stifles innovation.
I am similarly of two minds. As an engineer, I can imagine how legal mandates for technology choices could stifle innovation and make the future of technology worse.
But at the same time, I think there may be a place for mandating interface compatibility.
To give some old-school examples, how differently might industrialization have gone if rail systems weren't mandated to operate under some shared standards? Or where would we be if every country had a handful of competing power grids with different voltages and outlet types?
So I am not sure the cable which plugs into our phones is the correct target for standardization, but in spirit I think it's worthwhile to consider how the public good of interoperability should be weighed against a handful of corporations' interest in building technological moats around themselves and their users.
> To give some old-school examples, how differently might industrialization have gone if rail systems weren't mandated to operate under some shared standards?
I'm not sure that analogy holds particularly well. The UK did build rail systems without shared standards, and only standardised on gauge in 1846, which was very late in the industrial revolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Gauge_War - Standards for other things like signalling also came late, and broad gauge was still in use until 1892. (Notably though, this did happen just at the turn of Railway Mania, so affected a lot of the new lines.)
Effectively, the UK let (mainly by omission, not intentionally) the solutions compete and then selected the most broadly used solution to standardise on.
(I'd love to see any scholarly research on this though; I haven't seen a huge degree of it. Obviously things are different outside of the UK, but given it's where (uncoincidentally) both the industrial revolution and railways were born, that's the clear case to look at.)
> Effectively, the UK let (mainly by omission, not intentionally) the solutions compete and then selected the most broadly used solution to standardise on.
We're down to two connectors here, one of which is only used by a single vendor; do you think that hasn't already happened?
I’m not questioning that at all! I’m only responding to the question posed by the parent about railway standardisation in the context of industrialisation.
What happened is the worse more common standard was converged upon, so instead of the west coast main line having a comfortable, stable 7’ gauge, we ended up with the less comfortable standard gauge that requires longer trains to seat the same number of people.
I think that’s what weirds me out. In cases like rail, it’s necessary for interoperability and prevents anti competitive practices. There’s a clear state interest there.
But swapping a plug doesn’t buy us that. This is evidenced by the fact that no company is forced to use lightning to compete.
Almost everything uses USB-A at the outlet and choose your other end. We’re starting to see USB-C at the outlet, but same thing.
I also don’t see the e-waste argument. I haven’t had a cable outlive a device. My kids go through them every other month. No plug fixes that, it’s almost always where the cable joins the plug. (Except micro-USB, we shall never speak of that again).
My other biggest practical problem is that, despite appearances, USB-C != USB-C, and the off-the-shelf cables are awful, especially for normal humans.
In my dream world, I’d love to see clearly labeled device and cord capabilities, and USB-C all the things, and a reigned in USB-C spec.
I just think that government is a bad place to do it, and don’t see a necessary state interest case for their intervention.
> I also don’t see the e-waste argument. I haven’t had a cable outlive a device.
My old Nokia Micro-B cables outlived their bundled devices by a factor of… 3x or so? And I only took those out of use because I don't have a lot of stuff that still uses Micro-B.
Actually, I don't think I've ever managed to break a USB cable yet. What on earth are you doing to the things?!
Apple cables were notoriously shitty for many years, because they didn't build strain relief into them, until a couple generations ago, and they would fray with time.
I imagine this is what GP experienced, based on my experience with it on iphones and apple laptops.
Come to think of it, I don’t break them. It’s when I let my kids borrow/take them. Except micro, those connectors just wear out in a year or two.
My kids keep their tablets plugged in while using a lot of the time. I think it’s the stress on the joint from having the cable taut or yanking it around or something.
I did change to making them pay for replacements. That definitely slowed the rate :).
I can “reassure” you: this is unambiguously a bad idea.
First, market forces already standardized on two main standards.
Second, the interop problem is a $10 cable between wall-wart and device.
So the problem solved is a small one. I think this idea got its momentum from years ago when practically every model of phone had a different charger and wall wart.
Meanwhile, think about what you lose.
Is USB-C really the end-game of charging connectors? It has existing issues with labeling and capabilities confusion. What about mag-safe-style connectors? Does a phone necessarily need a charging connector at all and might there not be advantages to not having one?
As an aside, ewaste will increase in the short term, of course, as people will have to throw out their lighting stuff and buy USB-C stuff. (Don’t worry, it’s not a lot — small problem, remember.)
> First, market forces already standardized on two main standards.
EU sat down the manufacturers and told them that if they don't come to an agreement the EU will make the choice for them. Most of them came to an agreement. So you are right, market forces did make manufacturers to standardize on two main standards. That force is named EU.
> Is USB-C really the end-game of charging connectors?
No, and EU has no illusions that it is.
> Does a phone necessarily need a charging connector at all and might there not be advantages to not having one?
No, and the EU doesn't think that it does.
> As an aside, ewaste will increase in the short term, of course, as people will have to throw out their lighting stuff and buy USB-C stuff. (Don’t worry, it’s not a lot — small problem, remember.)
This is just stupid fearmongering. People won't have to throw their lightning stuff.
Even if they throw them out, it's better to pull off the bandaid than to go on creating more and more redundant cables and e-waste for the next 30 years
> First, market forces already standardized on two main standards.
So, one standard too many. Especially when one of those standards is held hostage by one corporation.
> Is USB-C really the end-game of charging connectors?
It's close enough, we can already see that improvements have been incredibly incremental already. Hell, it would have been fine to stick to micro-B or even mini-B.
> What about mag-safe-style connectors?
You already have people building those as third-party dongles. Clearly it doesn't have to be part of the spec.
> Does a phone necessarily need a charging connector at all
Yes. Wireless charging is inherently far less efficient than wired charging.
> and might there not be advantages to not having one?
No. To steal a quote from yourself: this is unambiguously a bad idea.
I'd be interested to see an actual proposed improvement that isn't just "we changed the plug so you have to buy new cables (from us)!" or "we made charging 80% less efficient!".
But so far there has been no meaningful improvement in the last… 20 years or so, and an awful lot of new incompatible standards.
Yes. The one improvement that has happened has been the advent of fast chargers… but that has always been rolled out as a backwards-compatible upgrade that is negotiated between the phone, charger, and cable.
Shit, did not know web devs are so bad so you get EU GDPR pops in US, the idiots are showing you what dirty thing they are doing without having to do it, or maybe the devs are smart and wanted you to see all those 100+ partners are giving the US citizens the option to opt out, if the later great from them to give you the option.
But you're assuming this USB-C decision is eternal right? Couldn't the problems you raised be solved by having a standards organization which could monitor and update the status quo over time based on the technologies available?
We have plenty of free market examples of why "innovation" in the connector space almost always spawns lemons and makes everything worse in the meantime.
Do we? By the same token what are examples of where innovation in the connector space helped out?
I find laws like this problematic because measuring success or failure is super tricky. How do you know about innovation that hasn't happened? If in 5 years or 10 years we're using USB-C connectors is that great or does it mean there's some better idea that isn't being taken to market? I'm sure there are subject matter experts who might confidently weigh in on that but could they realistically get this law changed? Even if those experts agreed there was a better solution would the majority of the incumbent players in the space want that solution?
Laws like this create a situation where opposition depends upon people missing things they've never had and wanting things that they can't conceive of.
> On the other hand I'm not sure I like the idea of government mandating electrical connectors on devices
Depends on the device.
Standards for EV fast charging are a very good thing. North America has two different plugs and protocols for DC fast charging (three if you count CHAdeMO) and it's a mess. The EU has standardized on CCS Type 2 Combo so any brand of CCS charging car can charge on any brand of CCS charging network. That's good common sense and it benefits everyone.
Incompatible charging infrastructure doesn't benefit any EV owner. It's a drag on the EV market. Closed networks like Tesla's and Rivian's are continuing to be part of the problem.
> Closed networks like Tesla's and Rivian's are continuing to be part of the problem.
All new Tesla stations in Europe use CCS and most of the older stations have been retrofitted with CCS connectors in addition to Type 2.
I have an adaptor for my 2017 Model S that allows it to use CCS instead of Type 2 and newer cars can be converted so that CCS connectors can be used without adaptors. All new EVs in Europe already use CCS and Tesla are slowly opening up their network to other brands of car.
> All new EVs in Europe already use CCS and Tesla are slowly opening up their network to other brands of car.
Yes. You're restating what I have said. Tesla should hurry up and open them all.
> So how is Tesla part of the problem?
Because Tesla chargers are not open to all brands everywhere.
A better question to ask is why is Tesla not the leader in multi-brand charging. Other charging networks have delivered chargers which support all brands of EV with longer cables for more vehicle types and are faster than Tesla's chargers to boot.
I wouldn’t be too concerned. They did it before to standardise on micro USB, in such a way that didn’t stop manufacturers from moving to USB-C. This is really just an update of that same rule.
This so much. This era was defined by vendor lock-in. Getting e.g. a dedicated car phone audio setup was tough decision, since you could not just change the phone.
I still have a box of old phones with custom chargers, headsets and data cables. The Nokia barrel plug (different sizes), the Siemens comb style connector, the Ericsson break away type connector, the Motorola two prong, the Bosch connector and some really weird LG/NEC/SAGEM plugs.
Yes, exactly: The market could innovate and develop better connectors. For example Apples Lightning, which is older (and smaller/more robust) than USB-C. Imagine instead the EU mandating micro USB and how we would be forced till the end of times to have a 50% chance to plugging it in wrong.
Is USB-C the best connector or form factor we could ever do?
Maybe not, but it is good enough. "Perfect is the enemy of good" is a phrase I like to keep in mind while programming or making something and can also apply here. Should we wait around for a perfect connector? Or is USB-C as close as we can get as of now?
Forcing everyone to change cables creates waste. Apple is teh onyl company that might not have already been using USBC by the time this went into effect, and now all their customers that already had lightning cables and accessories will have to throw them out of get adapters. Not to mention that by then we will probably already be talking about USB-D or whatever is coming next. Maybe the USB counsel can just conglomerate everything under the usbc name so that companies can just use whatever they want. "Micro usbc, its just micro usb but with a new name!". Maybe that is why they have been renaming all their skews every 6 months.
I wonder if they will just be able to ship iphones with lightning cables and a usbc adapter and a usbc to lightning port adapter so the customers can just throw out the adapters and use the lightning cables.
At this point, I think even the average household in developing countries has USB-C. And that's probably due to entry-level android phone makers choosing to go with it.
> On the other hand I'm not sure I like the idea of government mandating electrical connectors on devices, which could stifle innovation, or be very shortsighted in the typical government-rules-on-tech way
You seem unaware that the government regulate a LOT of things and while this has stiffed some innovation, the cost is probably worth it.
When was the last time a house burned down due to electrical issues? In the past, prior to standards this was rather common.
If you want a general understanding of what things were like prior to "regulation".
It will end up with the terrible quality fake usb cables and chargers we have today, thanks for the usb organisation not being stricter. Seems hard to find specific types of USB 3/C cables. In some cases they have damaged the connected devices which should be considered a failure of the U part.
If anything this will increase the value of official apple chargers because at least those will be well designed.
Even if you're buying from Amazon or AliExpress, there have been very few cases over the last few years of them damaging your device compared to the first years of USB-C.
They might still have other issues, but nothing that damages your device.
> On the other hand I'm not sure I like the idea of government mandating electrical connectors on devices, which could stifle innovation, or be very shortsighted in the typical government-rules-on-tech way (eg "banning encryption").
I'd certainly much rather type-c than lightning or, god forbid, micro usb, but it also has its own issues. Issues that one would hope would be solved by the usb-d, and so on. The problem with this law is that it makes it much more difficult to start using future usb standards.
The EU addressed this by saying that they'll keep up with technology as it moves, but one thing that technology is famous for, and the EU is infamous for, is the speed at which it moves. 5 years is a blink of an eye in politics, and a lifetime in tech.
Thats not to say we'll never see another USB version, I just worry this will considerably slow things down.
It seems to me the more future-proof way to do this would be to force companies to use an open-standard. We'd still be stuck with the dreaded micro-usb, and possibly lightning if apple let everyone else use it too, but it solves the proprietary issue without locking us in for another ~10 years of just type-c
Saying they’ll keep up doesn’t really make sense. The regulation will cause innovation to slow or stop in this area. So there won’t be a whole lot to keep up with.
After all, why invest money in improving your charging connector if you are going to be mandated to use USB-C anyway?
I said in another comment, its a chicken & egg problem. The EU will allow new standards as they're used, but nobody will use new standards until the EU allows it.
Seeing as the U in USB stands for Universal, there are plenty of incentives besides politics to /not/ change physical designs such as the connections.
USB-C's introduction was (and arguably still is) fairly disruptive because it invalidated the universal nature of USB-A (and to a lesser extent -B and Micro).
Personally, I hope USB-C will be here to stay for at least the better part of a decade going forward. Finding that what was once universal won't be universal tomorrow is annoying.
They could have addressed this by having a built in sunset on the law - say, in 5 years. That would get everyone (Apple) on the same page in the short term but it would allow for further innovation.
Amazon voluntarily requires all USB-C cables sold to be USB-IF certified, starting in 2016, after the majority of cables for sale were exposed as being noncompliant safety hazards.
There is no EU law requiring any retailers to care, so far as I know, as long as the unsafe cables don’t have USB-IF logos printed on the connectors.
Did the current cable used by the iPhone have this problem too? If not, isn't this changing it to the worse?
edit to clarify: ... because while Apple might still include a working cable, but if you grab one of the 10 cables out of your cable box, you don't know if it will actually work.
It would be funny if this ruling strengthened Apple’s position because no one knows which off-brand cable will destroy their device by not limiting current draw.
Without strong regulations on the usb cables themselves, it almost seems like putting the cart before the horse.
Cables aren't the ones limiting current draw, they're cables. And the millions upon millions of USB-C devices in the world right now have no such issues with USB-C charging so where are you pulling these silly ideas from?
You think the rockstar engineers of Apple aren't capable of designing a charging circuit with reliability of a 80$ Chinese manufactured Android phone?
Incorrect. All USB-PD cables, whether their connectors are USB-A, -B, and/or USB-C, are responsible for honestly declaring their charging power limit to the charger and to the device, and in the USB-PD specifications are specifically responsible for limiting current draw to the rated capacity of the cable. Per USB PD spec:
> Sources Shall detect the type of Attached cable and limit the Capabilities they offer based on the current carrying capability of the cable determined by the Cable capabilities determined using the Discover Identity Command (see Section 6.4.4.2) sent using SOP’ Communication (see Section 2.4) to the Cable Plug.
> The Cable VDO returned as part of the Discover Identity Command details the maximum current and voltage values that Shall be negotiated for a given cable as part of an Explicit Contract.
Cheap, lying, uncertified USB cables that declare their ability to support higher charging rates — for example, 100W which is 5A at 20V in USB — have been known to short out and destroy chargers and devices in the process of doing so.
This was discussed in a couple hundred comments across multiple posts when a Google engineer had to pressure Amazon through product reviews to enforce USB-IF certification on all USB-C cables several years ago:
The cables are declaring their capability, but they're not LIMITING anything. That's on the charger and chargee side.
>Cheap, lying, uncertified USB cables that declare their ability to support higher charging rates — for example, 100W which is 5A at 20V in USB — have been known to short out and destroy chargers and devices in the process of doing so.
Yes, HN loves to discuss and gripe about it over and over again (quoting the same kind of unconfirmed posts that are out of date by years)... it just fails to prove that this is still any kind of widespread issue worse than any other cable connector issue.
Narrow roads aren’t limiting driver speed, and yet they’re used specifically by traffic planners to limit driver speed — with full knowledge that some drivers will disregard all limits.
Compliant USB-PD devices honor those cable limits. Non-compliant devices do not, but ignoring them does not negate their definition as limits.
No, Lightning was great because if you saw a lightning cable, you could plug it in and know exactly what it's going to do. USB-C has been an absolute fucking mess, half my cables don't charge half my devices with USB-C ports, and you have no idea from looking what a cable is supposed to do. Everything plugs into everything, but it's a completely different story if they'll actually interop how you want.
I can't believe people are celebrating the government getting involved with the design process of the only tech company that actually holds themselves to a standard on design. And by forcing them to use a port where the spec is such a mess.
All I need from a lightning cable is for it to charge things, but USB-C doesn't even guarantee that. I bought a shower speaker last year that charges through USB-C, and for some reason the charging cable that came with my Google Pixel won't charge it, but the cable for my Nintendo Switch Pro controller does. That's been my general experience.
i have a vape battery that charges by USB-C but only the 6" long cable it came with. none of my other cables will charge it, and its cable won't charge anything else.
Also repeated below, but it applies here too: I don't get it. Isn't the point of the EU directive that the cables are interchangeable to reduce waste? Why do different cables behave differently then?
The 2m one is “designed” to be used with MacBooks.
The 1m also supports 97W charging. I have the 2m (shipped with my MacBook Pro) and the 1m (shipped with my iPad Air) and I can confirm they charge my MacBook the same.
I don't get it. Isn't the point of the EU directive that the cables are interchangeable to reduce waste? Why do different cables behave differently then?
I think Apple will find a way to say that the iPhone 12 was made before the law was enacted and therefore shouldn’t apply to this particular model.
I also think the iPhone 15 will be the one to have with USB-C. At the same time, they haven’t had too many problems to keep multiple SKUs of the same model - ie CDMA iPhone 4, mmWave only 5G phones in the US, eSIM only versions of later models.
> With respect to charging by means other than wired charging, divergent solutions may be developed in the future, which may have negative impacts on interoperability, consumer convenience and the environment. Whilst it is premature to impose specific requirements on such solutions at this stage, the Commission should be able to take action towards harmonising them in the future, if fragmentation on the internal market is observed.
So they left the door open to regulate also Magsafe etc.
I have no sympathy or love for Apple, but this seems wrong.
Technology comes and goes, standards evolve and fall away as new ones arrive.
I don't think the law has any place in deciding who uses what connector in this fashion. They can make an e-waste argument all they want, but it's nonsense. All it does is stifle future work on connectors and devices in general.
The law just makes it so that a single industry standard must be followed. Changing this standard is fairly easy, it just requires the European Commission to amend it. This means that if there's a better connector, USB-IF (being made up out of most of the people actually designing the hardware using it) can just release a new standard and get it approved.
Edit: It's actually the Commission, not parliament that's allowed to change standards.
Words of Comission spokesperson, 2060: We're fully aware of Deukhoofd's words and even though they aren't in the letter of law, we're still working hard on approving a better connector. Unfortunately as all things in life, there are tradeoffs with every single change, so we're planning to come up with a new definition of the term "better connector" in the next 10 years. Stay tuned in our hard work and don't forget to vote on us if you want to see this finished.
> 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
Part I of Annex Ia in the light of technical progress or market developments, 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.’
> Changing this standard is fairly easy, it just requires the European Commission to amend it.
Is this sentence intended to be sarcastic? I can imagine nothing more draconian and backwards than having to lobby a political organization for permission to do something innovative and outside the norm.
They are explicitly trying to avoid this, where everyone has their own "innovative" proprietary charger.
It is fairly easy for an organization such as USB-IF to put it forward to the commission when they have a new standard, considering it means that the industry has already decided on the new standard. If a new cable is improvement enough that it warrants a new standard, I don't doubt that the industry as a whole will try and make a push for it.
What if there's more than 1 design in progress for a better cable and connector with competing tradeoffs? Designing stuff means picking the right tradeoffs. For instance, you could probably design a phone that is close to indestructible and has a battery that lasts for a month if you made it as big as a brick, but obviously nobody wants that. For cable connectors, there's all kinds of subtle tradeoffs that could be taken into account: data transfer speed, electricity transfer, size and weight of cable, how easy it is to connect and how secure it is when connected, its role in waterproofing, stability in heat and challenging environments, security, etc. Are you really comfortable with some parliamentary committee vote picking between the right design tradeoffs?
And what if there's a connector that's slightly better than the existing one today, but you know that something that's clearly much better is ready in about 1-3 years? Can a parliament have the judgement needed to make the right engineering decision in the face of loads of political pressures?
Their choice has to be right because no market alternative would exist. Do you genuinely feel comfortable with this? I sure don't.
>For cable connectors, there's all kinds of subtle tradeoffs that could be taken into account: data transfer speed, electricity transfer, size and weight of cable, how easy it is to connect and how secure it is when connected, its role in waterproofing, stability in heat and challenging environments, security, etc.
>Are you really comfortable with some parliamentary committee vote picking between the right design tradeoffs?
Are you comfortable with the USB-IF picking between the right design tradeoffs?
In principle I agree with you, but in practice I don't. When Apple released lightning we didn't yet have a USB-C, so lightning was a good alternative, even though it was proprietary. Now things are very different, and USB-C is here and is widely used.
It would be one thing if we were stuck on Micro/MiniUSB and the EU wanted apple to use a clearly inferior technology, but USB-C stacks up very well against lightning, possibly even better.
I don't see this as the EU saying "you must start using USB-C" and more "look you can't use your proprietary cords anymore that we have very good standards, considering you are the biggest phone maker on the planet"
I don't see it is a regulation against Apple. It is just a question of being coherent with the other hundred of smartphone brands that are forced to use a single interface for the charger. And I really don't miss at all the times when we needed to have 3 different types of them at home.
Bizarrely enough, this is actually a big boost to consider an iPhone for me. Having everything on USB-C is such a convenience that it was my no. 1 reason to stay in the other ecosystem.
It's the number one reason, why I am not upgrading and tell everyone who asks me, to not do it either. This law is so good, even its anticipation has environmental benefits.
The successful development & widespread use of USB-C afterwards, culminating in this updated directive standardizing it, is a very neat demonstration that it didn't stifle innovation at all.
There wasn't a mandate - the EU asked the manufactures to adopt a standard "or else we'll look at regulating it", and that worked great, everyone adopted microUSB and then switched to USB-C just fine. Except Apple. And since Apple continually refused to get in line, we're now getting that "or else". Apple is who got the whole industry in this situation.
hilarious that the people in favor can't even agree on the previous state of things... they just get high on "doing something" and forcing compliance - when in reality they've done nothing and have no concept of what creates innovation and progress
Lightning had a good 10-year run. Let’s not forget that it was released a full 2 years before USB-C, and one of the first to being reversible connectors to the masses.
Also, here is the final report commissioned by the EU: “Impact Assessment Study to Assess Unbundling of Chargers (July 2021)” [0].
Only in the US, I believe. My UK iPhone 14 certainly has a SIM tray with a physical SIM in it - lucky, really, because my provider doesn't support eSIMs.
[edit: just checked and it seems my provider is the only big one that doesn't support them.]
> just checked and it seems my provider is the only big one that doesn't support them
And how about the small ones? I see eSim as limiting choice.
First the provider must support it. Second they have to support it and be compatible with my phone.
Third, how do you switch providers with an eSim? Do you need to contact servers for both the provider you're leaving and the one you're switching to? What if one of them is not reachable?
How likely is it that the provider you're turning off can put in some innocent administrative hurdles?
Physical sims seem to give me a lot more choice since no one has any say in what I plug into the phone.
> And how about the small ones? I see eSim as limiting choice.
I think most of the UK's small providers are just virtual providers (MVNOs)backed onto one of the big ones - eSIM support would presumably just be an option they select.
> Third, how do you switch providers with an eSim?
Haven't checked but I suspect it's exactly the same as porting your number with a physical SIM which, in the UK, is basically either a webform or phoning up to get a code from customer service.
> How likely is it that the provider you're turning off can put in some innocent administrative hurdles?
In the UK, zero, because they are explicitly prohibited from putting up any kind of obstruction to people wanting to move providers.
Oh, I wasn't clear. I was thinking of the scenario where you regularly use multiple SIMs.
Not of when you port your number.
> I think most of the UK's small providers are just virtual providers (MVNOs)backed onto one of the big ones - eSIM support would presumably just be an option they select.
And are they big enough for Apple to talk to them? :)
Good decision, but bizarrely only after USB-C was established on almost every phone, except iPhones.
I hope this has an expiration date, or they have a provision for easily updating the law when somebody develops a better standard. Otherwise this could mean we would be stuck with USB-C forever.
(As a developer, writing "USB-C" in a law this seems to me like hardcoding a magic string in source code. Often, it is better to have your data separate from code. Maybe it would make more sense if the law would defer to some standards body, that could update the technical decision more easily.)
> As a developer, writing "USB-C" in a law this seems to me like hardcoding a magic string in source code
Between various generations of Qualcomm Quick Charge and USB PD at various wattages for charging alone, and then USB 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2 Gen 1, 3.2 Gen 2, 3.2 Gen 2 2x2, Thunderbolt 2, Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 for data, it seems like they have plenty of room for future movement/fragmentation.
Is this just mandating the physical plug? USB-C has a near infinite number of power delivery and/or data modes. Not to mention thunderbolt, display port, etc which are totally different protocols running on the same physical cable as USB-C.
How will this legislation be maintained? Are Europeans going to be stuck to USB-C in 30 years, when the rest of the world has phones that charge wirelessly in 10 seconds and last for weeks?
It mandates Type C plug and receptacle and the use of PD. PD 3.0 doesn’t require so many modes, and since there isn’t much choice in chipsets things should work OK as long as the brick provides adequate power.
I do wish there were type C USB condoms that passed PD only but they are hard to build.
EU previously required USB mini A, and permit wireless (which isn’t completely standardized) so I wouldn’t worry about the “30 years” problem, though it’s a good problem to have: IEC 60320 is over 50 years old: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60320
The core of the law is to have the same standard across the entire consumer products. Which basically it is already, only Apple having the power to ask you more money for unnecessary accessories whilst contributing to more e-waste, even if they talk against it - hypocricy detected.
Isn't the reason we're comfortable with mandating USB-C the fact that it's been implemented successfully in so many devices already? How's that supposed to work next time around? Will politicians or bureaucrats pick the next standard in a vacuum of real-world implementation/testing? I'm skeptical they'll do that well.
I personally already have a number of USB-C cables that had their connectors detach at one point or another. They are mostly braided, rather thick, 100W-rated PD cables, but they generally suck and are quick to break (I keep a couple at my desk, a couple in my car, a couple stored away for travel, and a couple bedside — it's great they can charge both my laptop and my phone).
Connectors in my devices also look a bit fragile.
I am all for sharing connectors and standardization in this space (and I check if a device has an USB-C port before I consider it), but I surely hope this does not stop improvements to the charging port which are highly needed!
USB-C cables and ports are more fragile than Lightning cables and ports, unfortunately. USB-C is sort of the complement of Lightning: instead of a sturdy paddle on the cable end, it has a delicate paddle inside the port. It is very easy to break this paddle off. That happened almost immediately to my Nexus 5x, one of the first USB-C implementations. You can also easily break off the pins when you need to clean pocket lint out of the port, an extremely common problem for mobile phones.
Physically, Lightning is a much more robust solution.
No matter what you think about regulating this kind of thing in general, in this case I think it's not a big deal and definitely a positive. No matter whether it's a lightning, usb c, or other kind of connector, these connectors break fairly often and thus should be easily swap-able modules by design in the first place. Manufacturers like Apple who think they have a better connector will be incentivized to make the connectors as modular as possible so that having different models for different markets will add little to the cost. Everybody wins.
A really good thing for the planet would be to force manufacturers to only produce repairable phones with purely open source components. Sure it's not good for business neither for innovation but who cares? The climate is a mess and we have produced enough phones already. You have a computer in your picket that take photo and you can communicate with anybody. What else could you possibly need in the future ? I'll tell you what, a climate that is not trying to kill you.
I didn't search _that_ hard, but I can't find the text of the EU directive; everything I did find does seem to mention USB-C explicitly. What is the procedure/convention for superseding this directive when something supersedes USB-C?
That said, even if the upgrade path is not expressly defined, I think on balance this is still a good thing. In a "best time to plant a tree was yesterday; second best time is today" kind of way, when it comes to reducing e-waste.
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-CTM Cable and Connector Specification’, which should remain accessible and operational at all times;
> What is the procedure/convention for superseding this directive when something supersedes USB-C?
From the amended text:
> The Commission shall review the application of this Directive in relation to new charging technologies and, report thereon to the European Parliament and to the Council by ... [three years after the date entry into force of this Directive], and every three years thereafter. That report shall be accompanied, if appropriate, by a proposal to amend this Directive to introduce mandatory unbundling.
If the USB Implementor’s Forum want’s to change from USB-C or USB-PD it can speak with the European Commission. It’s an organization with telephones and mail and an address and – I fear – fax machines. Not some weird angels in the sky.
> What is the procedure/convention for superseding this directive when something supersedes USB-C?
I believe the EU are saying they'll keep up with new standards as they come in. The problem I see is, how can a new standard come in if nobody is allowed to use it. Its a chicken & egg problem, the EU will allow new standards as they're used, but nobody is allowed to use new standards until the EU allows it. Thats aside from the obvious problem that the EU isnt exactly famous for its speed.
The only ways around it I can think of is either if new standards become popular in markets foreign to the EU, or if some company decides to add both USB-C and USB-D to their device, which in a world of needlessly removing the headphone jack I cant see happening.
The connector can still remain the same while the internal changes. USB-C is just the connector head. Look at USB4 that still uses the USB-C head.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB4
It's just like we have new modern electronics, but they are all able to plug into the same wall sockets. I don't have to remodel my home.
Ironically, thats one of the problems with USB-C. So many different standards for wildly different use cases and compatibilities, all visually identical. You pretty much just have to trust (and often times, decipher) the sellers description, and even then thats not always good enough.
USB-C is inferior from the hardware/form standpoint. It's a larger, more fragile and flimsy connector (than lightning) which is very un-apple. It can be crimped shut if rolled on by a chair. Additionally the charging standards are a total mess, with PD and QC requiring compatible chargers and cables, which are often unlabeled.
I'm all for a great charging standard but USB-C ain't it.
Apple itself is using the USB-C connector on their Apple MacBooks and Apple iPads. Somehow it's "Apple" there?!
(Seriously, why am I constantly seeing these utterly ridiculous comments in Apple topics? Do you not think for half a second before writing something utterly misguided?)
Well maybe it's because you're also misguided. You missed the part where they use USB-C where appropriate. Think for just a second about how people use different devices, and you'll understand. Or if I have to explain: iPads are mostly used by responsible adults (such as parents). iPhones are used by a wide range of people who might be charging them while driving on the road, while sitting in a chair, in a public transit terminal, etc. iPhones need a much more rugged connector. So I suggest that you "think for half a second before writing".
It's certainly better than micro-USB, but agreed: Lightning is the superior design.
Who puts the weak point of the connector inside the more expensive of the two objects? That was a terrible design decision. Maybe Apple's patents prevented USB from doing a similar design, so they had to come up with one that was objectively slightly worse?
Lightning has the springs in the port, if the springs wear out you have to replace the device. USB-C has the springs in the cable, the cheap part to replace.
Then USB-C went and added that "tongue" in the port to break.
I thought it was the other way around? All the springs and movey bits are in the male usb c connector. With Lightning, those bits are in the phone. I’ll agree Lightning has the nicer “feel”, that’s for sure.
That's a fantastic point actually. I wonder why they choose to use USB-C at all for any device, when Lightning is objectively better from a physical engineering standpoint.
But worse from a data transfer standpoint - still USB 2.0 speeds.
The cynic in me would think it's to force people to pay for iCloud storage instead of having to plug their phone into their computer for several hours to backup locally.
Apple has never managed to make a lightning device that can output 4k video or transfers data faster than USB 2.0. They are either incapable of improving the lightning connectors or couldn't be bothered.
Then have the cord part removable and replaceable from the brick (which is already the case with most phone chargers). If the connector gets damaged, buying a replacement would be easy and cheap.
E.g. I hate it when the 3.5mm audio jack cord of expensive headphones is soldered stuck to the headphones. When it breaks, and it will, I have to replace the entire headphones (or do a lousy soldering job) rather then just the cord. Computer chargers are the same.
If they really cared about charger durability they wouldn't have removed the supports from the cable joints until their first party cables regularly frayed apart at the cable ends.
Apple better keep Lightning for Non-EU markets, it's is a vastly superior connector in every way. The most fragile part is at the cheap cable end instead of inside the device. There's no upside here for those of us with a half dozen lightning cables around the house and cars.
This is great in the short term, but does the law covers what happens when a superior format is invented in a few years. Are we stuck legislated to the old plug?
No, the law allows for technological innovation if the usb group proposes a new connector, or if the industry wants to move to another connector. It will require some lobbying though, but the big tech companies are well skilled in that.
Being recently in the market for car tires I say that some standardisation benefits the consumer and reduces waste. There are so many sizes of tires that you have limited choice on purchase and resell. Unfortunately there is no incentive for companies to standardize because they loose revenue. Apple can make a custom port and sell an overpriced cable and adapter for it. Maybe it's slightly better but is it that much better to worth keeping it?
There should be a work group that takes more of these decisions with the aim to reduce waste says the dreamer in my but the circumspect thinks otherwise. If Apple invents a revolutionary port what happens next? Do they need EU approval?
Car tire sizes are designed for specific wheel sizes (diameter and width), which in turn are manufactured on criteria such as arch sizes, break disc and caliper clearance requirements, engine power, steering mechanism and suspension setup (for offset) and of course looks. Car wheels are interchangeable to an extent but you have to maintain same diameter to keep speed measurement accurate, so bigger wheel results in thinner tires for summer for example, and smaller, cheaper and uglier wheels for winter season where you risk curb damage, but then smaller wheel - taller tire. We would have to give up the massive car choice amounts we have to standardise here so I'd say not a great analogy.
I genuinely believe if Apple thought USB-C was better for the phone they would have implemented it.
For one thing, I suspect it is harder to the make the phone as thin, or as waterproof, with the bigger connector.
Apple also doesn’t have a monopoly, Android has far larger market share globally than they do.
I’m confused what is supposed to happen as new connectors are developed, will the Eu prevent progress on phone connectors or does this law have a sunset?
I’m having trouble seeing a bright side here. If we’d had this law before we would all be stuck using mini-usb.
"Starting in 2026, USB-C will also become the norm for laptop chargers."
I believe it when I see it! My Surfacebook has USB-C Charging but its not enough to run the GPU at max. I hate the surface dock that I need to use but from my understanding -i do have to use it- because of the power requirments.
Seems current USB-C is limited to 100W, future will be limited to 240W. Seems most modern mobile GPUs could exceed 100W, but are within 240W at least so seems we're relatively safe.
But who knows with the new GPUs... Maybe should be a bit more headroom?
Does the law require only USB-C charging or must charge by USB-C? The language of "will have to be equipped with a USB Type-C charging port" makes it sound like it's only required to take USB-C power not that it can't have a higher power alternate port.
Why is it so hard for Europeans to not buy an iPhone if they don’t like the charger type?
This will slow any innovation in charging cables until enough powerful companies need something new. Small innovators are SOL since they won’t have the influence to get the EU to allow it.
This will allow me to use my Apple iPad charger or my Apple MacBook charger to charge my Apple iPhone. Not being able to do that currently is not innovative, it's annoying.
For the younger: EU regulation is the sole reason why most devices charge by USB nowadays. In the age before the smartphone, every company would ship their own charging bricks with fixed cables and connectors. I still have a drawer full of that stuff...
Amazing to witness all the Apple apologists coming out to defend the lightning cable, which is both technologically inferior to USB-C, and proprietary.
Apple has reached sufficient scale where their anti-competitive practices can be hugely detrimental to society... we don't need regulation if they would opt into consumer friendly practices to begin with.
Obviously any regulation needs to be implemented in such a way to avoid stifling innovation. Connectors have been pretty much standardized without the need for any regulation, barring Apple. Is there any logical justification for their design choice?
This isn't an "anti-competitive" thing. (1) Lightning was introduced a decade ago when USB-C was just a dream, and (2) Lightning works.
> Connectors have been pretty much standardized without the need for any regulation, barring Apple.
In reality, Apple took a leading role in USB-C adoption starting with 2015's MacBook Pro. Do you really think Apple wasn't going to adopt USB-C everywhere anyway?
The cool thing is that this is an absolute P.R. coup for Apple. Apple now gets to go all-USB-C, and can redirect blame for the unimaginable amount of electronic waste that this will create to the EU.
Apple could have easily adopted USB-C on the iphone, just as they did on many of their other devices years and years ago.
The fact that they didn’t strongly implies they didn’t want to give up the revenue from their proprietary connector. Because there is no technical reason not to use it.
Cables being sold for a dead protocol are the real waste. There is far less waste in the long run having all devices use the same connector. There’s not even an argument otherwise
I read the law and perhaps I misunderstood it, but I'm curious if there is a grey area with regards to pogo pin like connectors, seen as the MagSafe connectors on Apple's MacBooks or the ones on the back of modern iPads / the ones on the side of my old Galaxy Nexus.
Do those count as wired or wireless charging? To me, that's the only tricky part. My bet is that it would count as "wired" (and thus be illegal in the EU).
My knee-jerk reaction to the law in general is "but why...", but after reading more and the comments in this thread, I think this is a major win.
This "Europe is morally superior to USA" vs "the USA is technically superior to Europe" dispute needs to stop. It's making this forum suck. Can't we do better?
No mention of sex toys, even though globally I believe that market is already larger than the smartwatch market. Are they covered but not mentioned in the article, or have they been left out?
Doesn't matter anyway, Apple's paid the fines and whatnot while delaying this move until they believe they're ready to go full wireless for charging/data transfer, etc.
Maybe they'll stick C in a couple more devices, maybe one iPhone gen, but in all likelihood I'd say they're gonna go portless - something I wish other manufacturers had just done already, but Apple will tout it as a technologically advanced, "bold" move or something.
A bunch of politicians thinking they know what is best for consumers across dozens of countries better than the companies operating in the free market.
*elected* politicians is the key. The member states voted them in, they have a democratic mandate. No one running these companies have anywhere near the same level of responsibility to people as someone that's actually elected.
This is just another regulation on that free market, decided for by democratically elected people and not by the companies choosing not to be regulated.
Would someone happen to know what that means for MFi/accessories? Hint: Apple themselves don't seem to be aware that USB-C does not have an MFi program.
Nice, it is pretty stupid I need Lightning cable for my iPhone, an USB-C cable for my iPad and MacBook and electric tooth brush. One less able that I can be lost
I wonder what the EU thinks of Tesla's charging port? Will all electric cars in the EU eventually be regulated into using J1772 ports without an adapter?
EU doesn't use J1772 but CCS Combo 2 instead (for DC fast charging and AC). Vehicles without DC charging usually have a Mennekes connector. Tesla has an adapter to allow charging via CCS. Almost all cars in Europe use CCS, except for a few older Asian cars which may use CHAdeMO. Modern Tesla vehicles also use standard CCS.
Besides, this EU regulation is for small portable electronics. Last time I checked I didn't carry my car in my back pocket.
Legislation to require CCS on charging points has been active in the EU since 2014, 8 years ago.
Most Teslas in the EU use the standard ports. I believe the Tesla charging network also uses these. Imported Teslas probably need some kind of adapter to work.
I'm pretty sure if I remember a technology connections video right, that EU Tesla's already ship with either the standard port or an adapter, none of the US supercharger plug mess.
Tesla's plug support max 250kw charging, while CCS2, the standard in EU supports 350kw max.
The trade off for the CCS2 plug is mainly that it is a bit bigger than other plugs, but it's really nice to have a standard across almost all of Europe.
Tesla superchargers in the EU all use the standard CCS2 ports. Tesla model 3 cars in Europe have the standard CCS2 port instead of the Tesla port, the older models ship with adapters.
For car charging, the industry appears to be self-regulation well enough.
https://www.androidauthority.com/state-of-usb-c-870996/
"Editor’s note: This is an updated version of an article published in 2018, 2019, and 2020."
USB-C is a mess. It's not getting better over time.
If i buy a cable, will it work? Usually, sometimes, maybe.
Ok, I really like to have one connector for everything, and USB-C is quite dominant.
But at least for me, USB-C feels way more sensitive/fragile compared to Lightning.
While Plugging-in the USB-C Cable into my steam-deck i’m a bit afraid to break the port. Ramming in a Lightning Cable to any matching device doesn’t give me that feel.
Besides the obvious benefit of a single connector, do you really think USB-C is a good connector for phones/portables?
This is supposed to "prevent e-waste", but I can't imagine how. Like I've switched between iOS and Android, and I didn't just throw all my lightning cables out.
Now with them being made actually useless rather than not what I'm using right now, it's going to create so much e-waste when every iPhone user switches cables.
Seems like it's doing the exact opposite of what it's intended.
It also mandates that manufacturers must make "do you want a charger" optional in purchases of electronic devices, which is where waste reduction comes in. That only works because the chargers are all interoperable, and hopefully leads to a world where far fewer device chargers & cables are produced and distributed unnecessarily.
HN: a corporation with a monopoly dictating standards is bad
Also HN: government bureaucrats dictating standards in a monopolistic manner is good
Also HN: choice good
Also HN: the government must protect us from choice
Yeah, sure. This is just psychotic nanny state behavior. Millions of Europeans cried out in unison: protect me from myself, I can't make decisions on my own, I'm not well enough informed to know what to do!
> HN: a corporation with a monopoly dictating standards is bad
Typically on HN it's "Corporation enforcing closed standards is bad. Unless it's Apple. They for sure do this for innovation".
I've seen people saying that iMessage is closed for "security", where there are literally emails from Apple execs denying that. Now tons of people state that USB 2.0 molded into different plastic was vastly superior to USB-C.
This legislation would have been stupid at any other time in the history of hardware. It will prove to be stupid now as well. There is no reason to think the USB-C is the peak of technical achievement or even consistently a local optimum design choice.
The EU has enough problems right now, they don't need to try and help Apple design iPhones.
There is no reason the EU can't upgrade to a new standard, or the USB consortium can't create a backward compatible upgrade. My USB 1.0 keyboard from long ago still works, BTW.
Meanwhile, I have a box full of chargers for all kinds of old stuff. Replacing them all with 1 standard is great. And USB is doing just that, not only for cell phones but for all kinds of gadgets. Even if I only require an USB micro and an USB C charger, that's a ton of chargers not in my house, and a ton of time not hunting around for the right one.
The main problem here is Apple. The EU went to all cellphone makers and told them to either agree to a standard voluntarily, or the EU would decide from them. This kind of process is quite normal for technology decisions in europe, BTW. Most manufacturers agreed on an USB variant( might have been micro at the time, don't know if C already existed ). Apple refused to join the club or come with an other acceptable proposal.
If a kid refuses to play along, the adults have to force the situation. The kid might not like the result and whine a bit afterwards. What surprises me is that it took so many years before this happens.
For reference on how quickly the EU moves on these things, USB-C is over 8 years old. It has been ubiquitous for years before this legislation came down. They aren't exactly staying on top of new tech.
Also consider: USB-D is going to have a much harder time reaching the market penetration it needs to be relevant. It creates a chicken and egg problem. No manufacturer will want to upgrade if they are required to use USB-C, and the EU will never update the legislation if USB-D isn't widely used.
The EU has traded some extra convenience now for severely limited innovation later.
You're complaining about the time Apple managed to stall them. The EU has been very patient with them. Too patient, IMHO
USB B micro was what the manufacturers were deciding amongst themselves (except Apple). The EU would not have created a law if they managed to agree, and some representative industry consortium could then upgrade the standard on their own. Nobody likes how the situation is forced now, including the EU. Apple foolishly fucked over everyone.
Also note that USB 4 had no touble reaching market penetration, as it was backward compatible. A backward compatible connector is still possible. So is multiple charging methods like wireless charging. It's just that a minimum has been enshrined in law.
> This kind of process is quite normal for technology decisions in europe, BTW.
Europe is technologically backwards. They got destroyed by Shenzhen and Silicon Valley because their bureaucrats keep rolling in with this sort of idiocy. They feel a need to bring this backseat design process because their local companies aren't up to the challenge of competing with more-nimble American megacorporations.
Their phone company (Nokia) was the market leader until they got wrecked by an inability to innovate. This policy will make that outcome even more likely for European companies.
Then to add insult to injury, Huawei comes along and showed that they could operate at any standard you care to ask them to. If you get outcompeted by authoritarians and communists, it is worth asking what is wrong with your economic policies.
> Their phone company (Nokia) was the market leader until they got wrecked by an inability to innovate
Until they got wrecked by ex-Microsoftie North American Steve Elop - who drove the company agains the wall so hard that many people who looked at it at the time said that it couldn't have been accidental...
And what do you think the board was thinking when they bought Elop in? They were thinking "Oh no, there is no way a European CEO will have enough experience in a real market to compete with this American juggernaut that is crushing us".
They didn't bring Elop in because they thought they needed a steady pair of hands. They'd been caught out doing what great-grandparent says they do - sticking to the herd, playing safe, doing things the standard way and not innovating too hard.
If only the EU had thought to forestall him by mandating that all EU-sold phones were UI-compatible with Symbian and used high-quality Swiss keyboards. Or maybe stick to the cutting edge and standardise on Blackberry to really future-proof the Union. Then all would have been well.
Apple's tightly-integrated design was capturing more than 100% of the profit share of mobile pones for a few humourous quarters a decade ago, due to losses by everyone else.
I suspect that forcing modular designs would not have helped the Europeans get products out that consumers wanted.
Elop was the last nail. The reviews for the N9 were good, but it was too little, too late. Mind-share was already taken by Android and iOS, and Samsung were already eating into Nokia's dumb phone dominance. Nokia were dead in the water.
This is not about making the best technical choice, this is about ecology and limiting waste, which frankly is a very important and urgent issue.
They let the industry regulate itself before regulating, Apple didn't play ball, leading to samsung saying either regulation or we do our thing too, so, regulation.
I prefer a slightly worse technical solution and a regulation that needs to be updated every few years, than every phone going back to the waste hell that used to be the cellphone charger/cable market.
> This is not about making the best technical choice...
Thank goodness for the EU parliament, protecting their citizenry from accidentally being exposed to the best technical outcome? Wouldn't want that. If people can't confidently say that the EU is making the best technical choices then the EU shouldn't be legislating technical outcomes. And they can't say that, because this isn't going to be the best choice - the best choice is flexible and context dependent. There are going to be better options than USB-C in some use cases. Possibly many use cases as technology improves. The legislators can't see the future - if they could they'd make better decisions.
I bet this doesn't have any material difference on waste. People will still lose and throw charges out at the same rate they always have. And manufacturers are going to turn out to be less efficient, the market is absolutely cut-throat at dealing with manufacturing processes that generate unnecessary waste. It won't be better than it is now, and they've locked out anyone doing a cheaper and less material-intensive charger than USB-C.
> Thank goodness for the EU parliament, protecting their citizenry from accidentally being exposed to the best technical outcome? Wouldn't want that.
That is a nice way to completly miss the point and how we got there, but you do you.
> I bet this doesn't have any material difference on waste.
I bet it does, you're again missing the point, it's about not going back to what we had before, and what we have now made a significant different to what we had before.
> the market is absolutely cut-throat at dealing with manufacturing processes that generate unnecessary waste.
Ah ah ah ah. Pretty much every phone until very recently had a paid of low quality headphones that were instantly thrown out or put in a box and forgotten, and it only disapeared because jack is going away, so your own exemple doesn't work.
> There are going to be better options than USB-C in some use cases. Possibly many use cases as technology improves. The legislators can't see the future - if they could they'd make better decisions.
Yes, so the regulation will need to be kept up to date, just like regulations on things like food, pesticides, industrial processes, ... Still, parliament recognized the inferiority on the technical level of a system driven by regulation in this specific case and offered manufacturers to handle it themselves without involving them, but they couldn't (more specifically, apple refused).
Anyway, each his point of view, these people are elected and I personnaly consider this a big issue that I'm glad to see resolved by my representatives.
> Ah ah ah ah. Pretty much every phone until very recently had a paid of low quality headphones that were instantly thrown out or put in a box and forgotten, and it only disapeared because jack is going away, so your own exemple doesn't work.
On what basis do you believe that? It probably isn't true, and nothing about this legislation will change the situation. They're still going to include headphones with the phone if they think it makes sense to.
> I personnaly consider this a big issue that I'm glad to see resolved by my representatives.
There is a land war in Europe right now, that triggered an energy crisis which could see governments toppled and reformed. We've already seen some pretty impressive elections in Italy and Sweden for example.
I put it to you that while you might see headphone jacks as a big issue worthy of their time you're a bit out of touch and your representatives could end up getting you killed if they agree with your priorities.
Is there something in this regulation that says it can never be changed to something else in the future? Why do you assume USB-C will remain the standard for all future? Seems likely if something else pops up in 2030 that is way better, there is nothing to suggest a new regulation couldn't be made.
The industry (Apple) could have played nice and decided to use the best thing and make it standard without being forced by a law, but this would not make them money... if that would have happen then there would not be a need to update the law...
As a EU citizen I benefit each time EU forces big companies like banks, telecoms to do the right thing for the citizens and be just a tiny bit less greedy. I was not on HN when telecoms were regulated to have small roaming charges , or when companies were forced to print clear information on their product labels, or when banks were forced to have some limits on the ATM charges but something tells me americans predicted a big collapse in EU and that we will have no telecoms and banks anymore. But reality shows that for telecoms we have even better prices then US, so for some reason regulations did not collapse this giants.
The sellers in other countries will adapt to the EU regulation, like every phone producer other than apple has already done since 2010 when the EU asked to standardize on
micro-USB.
And yet, we managed to also adopt USB-C after that.
No, it's really not. The EPS was a voluntary specification[1]. It was a memorandum of understanding signed by the manufacturers. Basically, everyone but Apple agreed that it was in their own best interest to align to micro-B.
I am saying that this legislation started with the EU parliament regulating at a time when the consensus was micro-USB and then transitioning to USB-C in the intervening time.
So the fear that somehow the EU will freeze in time while the rest of the world adopts futuristic connectors is unfounded.
Prototypes came up with Micro-USB and USB-C before either were released to the public, which then - in millions of tests - realized these are nimble things that break easily as compared to the rather robust Lightning connector.
Creating something in isolation, with virtually no chance of it becoming "allowed" by an hostile state actor is nice, expensive, and thus won't happen. If you want to figure out if an idea works, lots and lots of field tests are what you want.
Why bother? The competition can't out-compete because it'll be illegal. And the most likely outcome of a prototyping project is people will say "looks nice" then not bother to seriously consider it.
The EU is never going to produce a charger that isn't backwards compatible with USB-C. They'd better hope nobody comes up with a cheaper alternative that catches on in Asia.
So basically if tomorrow I create a USB-D spec, this law will prevent adoption? What a stupid law! Why did not they instead create a law that prohibits non-standard connectors license-only connectors? That also creates roadblocks to innovation (of proprietary stuff), sure! But it does not kill innovation outright.
California did something similarly stupid in 1990s. They mandated the selling of EVs. Car makers asked the courts to limit the law "in case no one wanted them." Then car makers tried to prove no one wanted EVs and then tried to convince everyone against buying the very EV they were making!
I am waiting for the web... critical sites working with noscript/basic (x)html browsers, and not requiring those grotesquely and massively complex and huge big tech browsers with their similar SDK.
They did something for "whatsapp", but it seems it does not handle account creation.
Hope that they will extend this regulation to not just mobile phones, tablets and cameras but also to electric razors, hair care appliances, toothbrushes, home appliances, etc ... considering that many big EU corporations manufacture those products, maybe the likelihood is low ?
To be honest I have pretty mixed feelings about this. The Lightning port is extremely robust, and I already have quite a few Lightning cables from several generations of iPhone, so to some extent this seems like it's just going to generate quite a bit of e-waste.
Are there exceptions to this for things like small devices? For instance, my Xiaomi smart watch charges with a USB->magnetic pogo pin adapter and that seems apt for the small size.
Way easier than trying to fiddle with a tiny door covering a USB port like on some of my headphones.
>> Exemptions will apply for devices that are too small to offer a USB-C port, such as smart watches, health trackers, and some sports equipment, but the legislation is expected to be expanded to other devices over time. Companies will also have to ensure that dedicated labels clearly inform consumers about the charging characteristics of devices they buy.
I'm eager to watch how Apple spins this as a voluntary decision in their product announcement. To see the specific wording they pick for how the timing is a coincidence and they really just care about their customers' best interests.
This is an awesome move in my opinion. While it's pretty much defactor making it universal and legally required will be with the cutter and waste that is created by often requiring a special charger or a different charge for a device.
With each release of iphones this creates a waste (they ship lightning cables with those phones/accessories) - now they can drop it because Apple users will use standard like the rest of the world.
How about not stubbornly staying with lightning when Apple had the option to switch to usb-c? They did that with malicious compliance to upsell their damn adapter.
The law itself. It is amending Directive 2014/53 which allowed dongles. The part which allowed dongles is made away by this new directive.
It's entire raison d'être of the law is to mandate that devices themselves and their charger share a common standard. So an example e.g. Annex 2a clarifies that:
> The requirements in points 2 and 3 below shall apply to the following categories or classes
of radio equipment [mobile phones, tablets, cameras, headsets, mice, etc, ...]
> [They shall] 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® Cable and Connector Specification’, which should remain accessible and operational at all times;
Yes, a big finally! I love my Apple device (personal iPhone 12 mini, work iPhone 8, Apple TV 4K with new remote, iPad Air, ...) but the lightning connection should obviously have been retired a few years ago.
Except that it isn't obvious. You're essentially at the end of an extremely long and complicated supply chain for a multi-million device pipeline. You have no idea what a change, any change, involves. And because you don't know this (assuming you're not a supply chain engineer of design for manufacture specialist) you cannot state that it is obvious either.
What is obvious is that some people would have liked it sooner, and what is also obvious is that the manufacturer (Apple) has been moving in that direction for years (on other lower-volume lower-risk devices).
Yes, USB-C charging demands a supply chain of such incredible complexity that it has only been mastered by every other manufacturer of phones, tablets and laptops; and by apple themselves on the ipad and macbook.
And Apple has been cruelly blindsided, as the EU has only been pushing this issue since 2009, giving Apple a mere 13 years to prepare.
It just wasn't reasonable to expect them to conquer the massive challenge of USB charging in the iPhone 4, 4s, 5, 5c, 5s, 6, 6 plus, 6s, 6s plus, 7, 7 plus, 8, 8 plus, x, xr, xs, xs max, 11, 11 pro, 11 pro max, 12, 12 mini, 12 pro, 12 pro max, 13, 13 min, 13 pro, 13 pro max,13, 14 plus, 14 pro, or 14 pro max.
You seem to be shoehorned into believing that everything is just a technical problem and needs to be solved with a technical solution. You also seem to forget that so many of those USB-C implementations are so bad a lot of phones were better off on micro-B. It has also been reported on extensively, especially by your example of "other manufacturers".
- https://www.androidauthority.com/state-of-usb-c-870996/
- https://www.pcworld.com/article/424287/beware-bad-usb-c-cables-google-engineer-warnswhile-naming-names.html
- https://pocketnow.com/usb-c-compatibility-problems/
- https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/fix-usb-c-problems-in-windows-f4e0e529-74f5-cdae-3194-43743f30eed2
- https://hackaday.com/2021/03/22/cursed-usb-c-when-plug-orientation-matters/ (this one is for the USB2 compatibility pins which are orientation-specific)
So far, companies like HP, Dell, Microsoft, Xiaomi, Motorola, Google, OnePlus, Sony, Nintendo etc. have all made products with really bad implementations in cables, chargers, and devices like handhelds (gaming, phones etc.) and larger (laptops, TVs).
Also, suggesting someone was blindsided is just a dumb flame bait and you know it. If you can't properly discuss this, why are you even here?
I'm obviously talking from a customer and consumer perspective, but can you provide any kind of explanation why implementing USB-C is problematic in the iPhone when it already is in the iPad and desktop and laptop Macs and Apple displays?
Tim Cook made himself a legendary leader in logistics and manufacturing before taking on the CEO role for being able to do just what you say he would have problem doing.
I would imagine that it has more to do with the existing ecosystem, the swap between trident and the custom USB-C controller they use in the other devices and mechanical changes in the form factor internal to the phone.
If you nuke lightning from iPhones, you have the same problem as with the 30-pin connectors: entire cars suddenly don't work with your phone anymore, many years worth of produced lightning devices no longer connect and everything from charging and data exchange to debugging and alternate output modes will no longer work. This is not a technical problem to solve, since they already wrote tools and created workflows for doing that on the less risky product lines (Macs, iPads etc.) where the impact of a bad port implementation is much lower. But phones are still carried around all day (in pockets no less), charged/plugged a lot etc. which while seemingly slightly different makes for additional risk when implementing.
Considering that seemingly insignificant changes (like that dumb antenna shorting problem when holding the phone in the iPhone 4 due to a small case change) can lead to huge and very expensive problems (like replacing all panels on the first white iPhones due to the paint not sticking well enough). If you have 70 million iPads and 1% has the issue, that's not great but also not too bad. If you have 200+ million iPhones and 1% has an issue, that's pretty bad, and you also get a lot more flak because people are very emotional about their phones, as well as phones they don't have and would never buy but still complain about.
Back to the supply chain and logistics, all fixtures, machining workflows, testing and component sourcing would have to change, which isn't too bad on its own, but because there are still many many years of supported phones out there, you have to keep the old method around as well. This problem doesn't exactly go away, regardless of how long you stall, but if you work on a method to make that less of a problem (i.e. make sure the next revision of test harnesses and repair fixtures account for it when they get cycled), while also growing your ecosystem (other devices with USB-C within your brand) you can build up knowledge and specialism in your workforce (i.e. the people that make the manuals for the people that work in the store can lean from inevitable mistakes they will make in the initial USB-C versions of iPads). That means that when you do finally make the seemingly tiny change (which for charging really is just a bunch of B.S. since it's not about the port on the device but the plug you stick in the charger) and get those internal USB-C models they probably have had for years up in the design for manufacture and retail phase, the risk is much lower.
It is however, just as likely that they will go full iPhone X again and make a portless phone instead. Going portless has the same ecosystem risk (mostly marketing risk) since they would be breaking compatibility with lighting anyway, but because there won't be a new port, there isn't going to be a change in material thickness, ingress points in general or new chips to add to the design. So perhaps that would be half the risk of another connector migration.
The discussion is about EU forcing Apple to play ball. The discussion should be about how the EU just mandated a monopoly for the USB-IF. For Apple detractors, this is a hollow victory.
Thinking out loud if Apple would resort to making 2 versions of their iPhones? And then exclusively selling the USB-C version in the EU, and everywhere else giving the customers a choice.
I'm European, I understand the good intentions at the root of such enforcement. But I believe such mandatory enforcements are liberticide, and against consumers in the long run.
I don’t understand it. Apple has only changed their connector once since 2007. Where I have untold number of USB devices that are either A, Mini, Micro, or now C.
Since 2007 the de facto standard for other devices has only changed once too (micro to USB-C). Mini USB has been obsolete since 2007 and USB-A is the other end of the connector and not really comparable (Apple has actually since changed on their devices from type A to type C in that time).
For me Lightning is just another in your list of connectors that I wish would go away and standardise to USB-C.
As someone who is travelling right now, with a two port charger and two iPhones, an iPad, a laptop, a Switch, an Apple Watch and two sets of USB-C headphones between us, one connector would actually be a significant quality of life improvement (though an even better one would be hotels not killing power to the socket when I’m not in the room so I can charge my devices while I’m out!)
I imagine that the caterwauling around the change from 32-pin to Lightning somewhat plays into their decision not to move to USB-C. Obviously the overtly cynical will put it down to purely profiteering...
Tell me. How many different kind of chargers and connectors did you have before the EU mandated everyone should use micro-usb (or something equally standardized)? And how many do you have now?
Personally I had 1 charger per device I had, each with their own weird connector, and each cable sold at $20+ a pop, and definitely more if you wanted a "data-cable". These days I only have 2: USB for almost everything, and Lighting for the Apple-thingies only.
With a move like this, I can be down to having only 1 type of charger and connector. It'll be great!
It was mandatory in the sense that EU told manufacturers that they either agree on the standard or the EU will make the choice for them. No way in hell voluntary adoption would be of the scale that it was without the EU threat.
I have no real preference whatsoever in the Lightning vs USB-C battle but it seems strange to me that the EU's approach to supposedly reducing e-waste is by condemning 10 years of Lightning accessories to becoming e-waste. An iPhone 4 charger from 2012 will still charge an iPhone 14 today. That doesn't seem incredibly wasteful to me.
So what is the alternative? Should we stay on Lightning for the next 20 years? 30 years? 50 years? That'll only increase the cables globally to discard when something finally replaces Lightning
At least a shared standard connector cable will still be usable with other devices. I still have devices that take mini-USB, micro USB, and USB B. Give it 10 or 15 years after iPhone switches off Lightning, and no one will even have a lightning cable anymore, because no one is interested in using a 10 year old iPhone, and no other device uses Lightning.
Everyone upset about losing lightning. Apple will 'malicious compliance' this and keep the lightning port and just add a USB-C port that does charging and nothing else.
I am much more expecting them to do something like remove the port entirely and move to wireless charging only; or, for maximum humor value, make the lightning port incapable of charging the phone in Europe only, such that it isn't a charging port there and thereby isn't subject to the regulations (forcing only the people in Europe to use wireless charging).
What is preventing Apple (could be considered the subtle target of the legislation) from weaseling out and attempting compliance by using adapters for USB-C?
Is really that big of a deal that we have two types of connectors for cellphones sold today?
Why does EU think it's so important to have USB-C on iphone that they must pass laws dictating apple's business strategy?
It feels the EU is overreaching here, by alot. There are alot of other e-waste that's much worst than iphone cables and they serve as a solid competitor to the usb-c clusterf%^$ standards that's going on right now.
Can't be passing consumer laws imo to make things slightly more convenient for the end user.
Around five years or so ago, I had lots of gadgets, all using Micro-USB. Life was good, I had purchased a job lot of cables and made sure every location on my house, car and desk at work had more than enough cables so any gadget would be ready to be charged up.
Then I bought a new phone. I had a USB-C port. Suddenly, I couldn't charge it up just anywhere. If that phone had a Micro-USB version, I'd have chosen that one in a heartbeat.
Yes, USB-C is nice. Better than Micro-USB. So good that it compensates for the hassle? No.
I would argue it is good enough it compensates for the hassle.
I think USB-C is one of the first "good enough" connectors we have had for the arbitrary use-case. It's reversible. It's suitable for high-power and high-bandwidth use-cases. It's robust. micro-USB works ok for charging small devices, but would it really make sense to replace USB-A with it for plugging peripherals into your PC for example?
Fair point, but my lived experience of USB-C is that several of my Micro-USB cables dotted around now have little converter heads added. My tablets and battery packs (and other gizmos) still need the Micro-USB port so I can't just replace the cables.
Yes, being able to plug in the connector both ways around is nice, but it wasn't that inconvenient not to be able to do that, especially when put against the inconvenience of needing these extra heads.
I can certainly imagine someone having similar frustrations when Mini-USB gave way to Micro-USB. I can only hope that when USB-D connectors come around, there's more than only small incremental improvements to get me on board.
But again, this is if you think of USB-C as a replacement for Mini-USB and Micro-USB. USB-A remained an uncontested standard for roughly 30 years, and is now gradually being replaced by USB-C.
If USB-C has the same longevity, and can also replace small-form-factor connectors, that's a pretty big win right? It's not too bad to put up with a connector change 2-4 times in your life.
Well, better in most ways. It's worse in a couple of minor ones. It's larger, so particularly tiny devices still come with microUSB charge ports. It also gets smooshed flat if you happen to step on it, which is a problem I had my first few months with a type-C phone.
What happens if a constructor wants to push for full wireless charging?
I didn't read the texts, but wouldn't something like mandating companies to release a version of their products with USB-C better instead of only allowing USB-C? Say for example Apple wants to release iPhone 20 with Lightning, or full wireless, then force them to also release iPhone 20 with USB-C and leave the choice to consumers? Is this allowed by the texts?
I'd rather it hadn't come to this because I don't believe in regulation to this extent. But there honestly hasnt been any excuse for a long time for them not to do it. Especially when some other iOS products have it, same with the AirPods case. It's purely to make more money from cables and you can tell this from the lengths they go to that make sure non-legit cables are so unreliable and have DRM.
AirPods use Lightning cables for charging, not USB-C. (Potentially your sentence could be read the other way though so not sure if you intended to say that.)
There’s an eternal conflict between “Chaotic but Smart” vs “Orderly but Dumb.” Historically the tech industry has been very much on the side of “Chaotic but Smart.”
Am I understanding this correctly that the first required iPhone to be updated would be the iPhone 16 (2025), given that next years iPhone will most likely be released before this effective date.
All these different types of connectors had little to do with innovation than they had to do with companies trying to force you to buy their own chargers and peripherals. Its a good thing that the Eu is forcing them to adopt a standard.
does this mean Apple will finally have fast transfer speeds that Android phones have had for at least 5+ years? or will they still give you USB2 speeds over USB C?
Can Apple under these rules still ID the charger and refuse or downgrade the loading process if a 'non-genuine up-to-date model version' charger is failed to be detected?
A law specifying a technical hardware feature on a consumer device not related to safety is ridiculous. Is there no other higher priority for the EU to work on?
That is nominally related to safety, is not mandated EU wide, and if it were would be a great example of a dumb idea unless they standardized on the type G plug. I have encountered four different connectors just this week in the EU, none of which are as safe as the British design.
Why? I use the same Baseus 65-W power brick for two phones and two laptops very, very conveniently. And GAN chargers are a third of the size of traditional power bricks.
Also, who cares about magsafe? Only Apple laptops have it.
I think the move to USB-C is a smart one, it can even reach 100W.
Speeds are insane too.
> Also, who cares about magsafe? Only Apple laptops have it.
I wish more laptops had it. My old work HP laptop's USB-C port started having some play, so my monitor wouldn't always connect properly to it. Bump the desk, and the screen would start to flicker. The same monitor / cable works perfectly on other PCs.
My new HP work laptop has the USB-C port so tight, that whenever I need to unplug the charger, it counts as arm day.
And while I, personally, don't do it all the time, it does happen from time to time that I grab my foot in the power cable and drag the laptop with it. I usually realize it quickly enough to not pull it completely off the desk, but it's the kind of fear I never had with my MBP.
It would seem so. The connection is magnetic, so there's not a lot of wear. I only have the older macs (2012 / 2013), where the connector seems fairly securely attached to the case, instead of hanging off the motherboard. Don't know how the newer ones are.
I've never heard of anyone complaining about the connector wearing out or otherwise working less well after a while. What usually happens is that the cable frays around the connector, but I'd say that's not a connector problem, but rather thin plastic without enough tension relief.
USB-C for laptop chargers isn't a fantastic idea IMO. The majority of laptop manufacturers solder USB-C ports to the motherboard, so when the port inevitably wears out/becomes loose, you need to have micro soldering skills to replace it. Putting the USB-C port on a daughterboard (or flex cable as seen in phones) isn't easy to do if you want to push USB 4 speeds through the port (40 Gbit/s).
Compare that with the traditional barrel connector which is usually an easy repair. Most designs have the barrel connector on a cable assembly rather than having the connector soldered to the motherboard.
Gaming laptops draw over 100W. Won’t this eliminate an entire market of laptops that require specialized plugs that can deliver more power? Or else you’ll end up with the dreaded “dies while it’s plugged in” situation.
"...laptops that are rechargeable via a wired cable, operating with a power delivery of up to 100 Watts, will have to be equipped with a USB Type-C port"
1. if you are worried about these type of attacks than charger is least of your worries... You should probably turn off thunderbolt support completely...
2. I think mag safe chargers will be allowed to continue. Note that even now you can charge the macbooks with magsafe with usb-c charger..
The law does not mandate that USB-C be the only way of charging the device. Simply that it supports it as a charging method (if it supports any wired charging method at all) and that if the device can be charged via cable at voltages greater than 5 volts, or currents greater than 3 A, that it also support USB Power Delivery. Plus there are some labeling requirements, like indicating on the box if the device includes a charging brick or not, indicating minimum and maximum charging wattages supported, etc.
Had 2 Thinkpads through work from new - x280 and P14s. Both, within a month, had issues with the cable falling out of the socket. Tried several different cables, all fell out. The build quality is shitty by-and-large; I currently have keyboard keys that squeak and creek on the P series, cheap, plasticky and overpriced rubbish.
This is what I find most short-sighted about this. I swear the typical connectors I use for electronics have changed several times over the last decade alone (mini USB, micro USB, USB-C). The idea that innovation in this space is done seems optimistic to me. So now every few years do we just need to hope the EU will update it's laws in a timely manner so we can get better connectors for our electronics?
You do know that the reason we were using micro-USB for everything instead of a hodgepodge of proprietary connectors ie because of the same EU body bringing the hammer down that is now also mandating USB-C?
How is it a falsehood? The EU was threatening to enforce micro-usb unless the companies get their shit together. They did, so the EU didn't have to, then.
I suppose petty outburst are an explanation for your comment, given that this law has been in the works since 2018, and anticipated since 2005. I truly have no idea what your links have to do with the subject.
One, large entities like that have a lot of people working on a lot of things, and the people dealing with whatever emergency is the current one are not disturbed or slowed down by that in the slightest
Two, if you wait until everything is perfect and there are no issue to fix the everyday things, then you never do.
Is the USB-C connector going to be the best connector for everything on into the future?
What about mag-safe-like connectors? Wireless? Something you and I can't even think of right now?
Introducing such a connector won't be an engineering challenge so much as a political one. The barriers and cost will be much higher, and quite possibly insurmountable from a practical perspective.
Invidivual countries that constitute the EU today have standardized wall sockets long before EU was a thing. It's unfortunate that they ended up using somewhat different plugs, and if EU existed already when that standardization happened, it would probably have been a single plug instead, as with USB-C.
The EU did this to help the environment. Wireless charging is less efficient than charging cable and wastes electricity, so we may see the EU ban wireless charging.
Just a regular day in the EU. Can the EU pass law for all cars to use the same tyre dimensions? A set of EU approved haircuts would also be very welcome! /s
Did the EU just forbid improving on USB-C? Are cables really creating such a waste compared with the amount of resources that goes into creating the devices themselves?
So looks like EU knows USB-C is the best port for the citizens.
Following the logic, EU should also know what the best charger, screen, CPU, GPU, drivers etc for the phone is since EU is represented by the people.
Clearly, there should be also no reason why EU should not know what is the best way to source these items and manufacture it as well since EU is represented by the people.
So why stop at the USB-C regulation?
Why can't EU manufacturer the phone as well? How do I sign a petition for this?
EU knows best. Just look how well making everyone click to accept cookies worked out.
And “empower consumers to make more sustainable choices“. typical gov speak. If I was Apple I’d build in a lightning to usb-c adapter to the bottom and add a chin to the phone that resembled the older Pixels and engrave on it EU mandated.
The GDPR is an unalloyed good for consumer protection.
The fact that stupid website designers and even stupider web marketers want to collect useless information to the point that they have to have complicated cookie acceptance banners is not the EU's fault.
The GDPR forces system designers to actually work out how to deal with their customers saying "forget about me" and the regulations have the force of law and fines behind them.
It makes it much easier as a designer to say "No you can't collect random information and make a profile of the customer that we can sell to unrelated companies, because otherwise we'll get a huge fine."
I am an iPhone user, but having an iPhone is not ubiquitous here, almost all of my friends/special other, use an Android phone with USB-C. Most of their laptops, Mac or not, use or allow USB-C for charging. This as been the case for a few years now, yet, if I go somewhere for more than a full day and forget my lighting cable, my phone will become a useless paperweight while every non-iPhone user is fine in the meantime because of the wide adoption of USB-C. It is also ironic how Apple markets heavily on how you can take great RAW photos or videos but somehow you have to use lightning USB2 speeds to transfer them. Lightning is barely smaller than USB-C, and clearly my iPhone thickness will not change if it switches to USB-C.
As for the e-waste generated by "having to throw all of those lightning cables", how is it not e-waste that someone buying an iPhone will have yet another lightning cable that will only be used to charge it. If we want to really be more environmentally friendly, wouldn't it make more sense to have no cable at all with the devices we buy, force the sellers to clearly tell the consumers about it and offer the cable on the side only if needed? With that cable being usb-c, the consumer don't have to think about the cable type, for non-tech savvy people, that would be "the regular charging cable" and that's it. I would also add that all lightning cables won't suddenly go to the landfill in 2024. Many people will keep their iPhones/AirPods for a while after that date. Many would probably donate their old lightning cables to whoever needs them. In the meantime, we all already have an ever growing landfill in our homes called the cable drawer, and it is also an issue that needs to be addressed.