Hey EU: do universal replaceable batteries while you're at it please. That matters more than the chargers, as long as the chargers can be interchanged using the right cables or adapters.
Except, historically, it was “Tesla had a nice slim cable and all the other manufacturers didn’t want to use it so they invented a monstrosity”: I’d be really unhappy having to use a CCS port with a Tesla, after the current plug.
Exactly this. The American CCS is terrible. The European Mennekes connector isn't so bad, supports pretty high 3 phase power (as well as split phase), and Tesla even figured out how to run like 120kW DC power through it. Something like that wouldn't be so bad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_2_connector
Really, we ought to just standardize on the Tesla plug as it can handle 250kW (perhaps upgrading it to allow higher voltage... gets you to 500kW). It's simply better (as long as we're not going to do 3 phase power anyway). Probably cheaper, too, as it's much smaller.
And in what way does it make sense to make the connector that one manufacturer uses the standard one when you could make the connector that everyone, including that one specific manufacturer, uses the standard?
Tesla’s plug is smaller than the Level 2 J1772 plug (not to mention the fast charging standards) and is able to handle both Level 2 and Level 3 charging. I’ve used both types of plugs, and Tesla’s is just much more elegant and better designed.
It makes sense to standardize on Tesla’s plug because as far as I know Tesla built it before either of the other standards existed and Tesla was (and still is?) willing to let other manufacturers use the plug: I’ve never heard a good reason why the other manufacturers didn’t take up the Tesla plug and invest in the supercharger network when Elon invited them to.
Doesn't CCS handle level 2 and level 3 charging as well? CCS can also do up to 350 kW charging.
Tesla's plug being the first one doesn't make any sense when it comes to standardization. That's like saying that we should standardise on the Lightning connector instead of USB-C because it was the first one.
The plug being smaller also doesn't really make sense. Are petrol cars superior since the nozzle is much smaller and more elegant than even the smallest EV plug?
>I’ve never heard a good reason why the other manufacturers didn’t take up the Tesla plug and invest in the supercharger network when Elon invited them to.
Why would the major car companies start investing into an unknown startup's supercharger network? It doesn't make business sense.
The Model S was announced in ‘08 and first prototype was displayed in ‘09 (per wiki). I’m fairly certain that Tesla’s plug was finalized before the CCS standard existed.
It’s really hard to find a good timeline of the plugs, but I know I’ve seen at least one article that claimed the CCS standard exists because the other manufacturers didn’t want to adopt the Tesla plug.
But, even if I’m wrong about the history, I find the Tesla plug much more user-friendly than the alternatives.
Here in UK every single new station being built that I see is exclusively CCS. It really only affects Leaf owners as nothing else uses chademo standard.
If a cable fails, its easily swapped. Not great if it's proprietary, but it doesn't break the device itself.
If a non-replaceable battery fails, you're likely looking at a cumbersome repair/replacement, or (if the manufacturer gets their way) replacing the whole device. It's arguably the progenitor of planned obsolescence of modern electronics. Additionally, "Failure" here doesn't just mean 'no longer holds any charge at all', but also applies to a significantly reduced battery life/amperage that can result in your device no longer functioning as it once did - be it just not lasting the target usecase, or throttling or worse.
Non-replaceable batteries induce orders of magnitude more cost, inconvenience and waste than a lack of one charger cable to rule them all.
Are you just saying that all batteries should be replaceable, or also that they should be standardized somehow? Because I agree with the former but not the latter.
It would make it difficult to cram as much battery in as they do currently. The iPhone has L shaped batteries so they fit around the pcb.
I’m not convinced standardised batteries are required. The vast majority of people are using only a small number of phones. A battery store could easily stock the batteries for every iPhone model. The real problem is how hard it is for the average person to replace them.
A phone could be designed to handle other voltages. A phone that ran off NiMH AA batteries would actually be quite feasible.
It would be quite a bit thicker than most phones today, but not outrageously so--about as thick as my last pre-iPhone phone (a Palm Treo). We had no trouble carrying such thick phones around back then, and those were the days when we were also carrying our iPods or portable CD players around too.
Here are the battery capacities of various iPhones.
iPhone SE: 6.7 W h
iPhone X: 10.3 W h
iPhone 11: 11.5 W h
iPhone 11 Pro Max: 14.7 W h
Low self-discharge rechargeable AA MiMH batteries are available with capacities of 2.7 W h.
You'd need 3 of them to match an iPhone SE, 4 for an iPhone X, 5 for an 11, and 6 for an 11 Pro Max.
An AA battery is between 14 mm and 15 mm in diameter. That should be an upper limit on how much thicker you would need to make the phone.
Would there be enough people who would like the convenience of using off the shelve rechargeable NiMH AA batteries for such a phone to sell despite 14 mm more thickness?
In my area of the US, standard form factor lithium batteries are readily available such as in the grocery store, including the rectangular 9V, AA, and AAA types.
There's also the standard 18650 size, which is quite common and a lot of Chinese electronics have user-replaceable cells, but the big manufacturers like LG and Sony are vehemently against that and think people can't be trusted with bare cells.
Pixel 2 is notoriously hard (the phone is glued together) but anything that makes the end user likelier to buy a new phone instead of replacing a dead battery is a dark pattern. "Impossible" is not the issue.
Interestingly enough, the Chinese were the first to use de-facto standards for replaceable batteries; the BL5C is one that's still relatively common in (non-phone) devices today, although it started out as a Nokia-featurephone-specific size. I believe many of the varous generic multi-branded Android phones use a battery size that was originally from a popular Samsung model.
One of my relatives still has a Trimble GPS he used to measure fields, bundled with perfectly working Internet disconnected software. However, I can't find the Li-ion battery replacement for it so I gave him my >10y old Garmin eTrex device which uses AA batteries and still works fine. I was surprised that the old GPS layer was kept running.
Regarding phones, there'salso third party firmware like LineageOS.
I also have an old etrex with AA batteries. It's a wonderful device. It supports OSM map data, so it's easy to update, the batteries last a week and you can buy replacements literally everywhere.
Find a battery of the same size or a little smaller and put it in. batteryjunction.com has a big selection. You might have to solder some wires on or similar. Adafruit.com has some with JST connectors which have a good chance of being what your GPS uses inside, but they don't have that wide a selection of cell sizes, so it's iffy. Anyway the first thing to do is open up your GPS and look at the cell. In the old days you could usually find a phone battery the right size on places like dx.com, but replacement phone batteries aren't that common any more.
A device should not be unusable even if is not blessed with some security fix, also regular users don't update the phones or CPUs because there is a theoretical security issue(even the Apple fanboys did not exploded now that they know Pegasus exits), probably security issues is a good news since you could maybe get control or your property.
It's tricky, because most phones can't be flashed with an alternative aftermarket OS. I know that LineageOS etc. exist, but most phones don't have a stable build and a lot of SoCs will never work reliably with an aftermarket OS.
In that case whoever will exploit your phone first is the one who owns it, not you.
Maybe I have an old laptop that still works and still has Windows XP on it, I fucking own it more then an iOS user owns his device. iOS can be at any moment "owned" by NSO, or by some infected app or malware in the Apple blessed store.
It is a shame that security is a popular fetish now, not all bugs are exploitable and there are mitigation, you don't need to kill my device unless it was 100% exploited and it causes problems.
Also an interesting question in context of the regulation discussion: whoever sold you the phone is responsible for addressing significant product defects according to consumer protection rules in most (?) countries in EU. So it could become a problem if the irreplaceable phone batteries didn't die about the same time as the security updates end.
That is stupid, old computers don't die when the OS gets out of date, I still have an XP laptop around and it works, also old Apple computers still work and nobody demanded Apple to provide security updates for old stuff.
I'm pretty sure we would like to, but one battle at a time. It's not easy to mandate standards. We are trying to push back the greed, Margrethe Vestager for example, is doing a damn fine job of being annoying to the right people!
> Apple says that using a single charger would hurt innovation and create a mountain of electronic waste as consumers who own whatever cable they choose to force won’t be able to use them with future devices.
Is there some error in this sentence? It seems to say precisely the opposite of what would seem to make sense.
(Suppose they choose Cable Q, the sentence says that whoever owns Cable Q won’t be able to use it with future devices. I presume they meant anyone who owns anything other than whatever cable they choose to force.)
There apparently is no one cable with a majority market share in the EU, so the majority of people will wind up having obsolete cables if one cable becomes standard. Of course Apple’s argument is specious since standards change and people buy different types of phones anyways.
The EU standard recently changed from micro usb to usb type C. The only other charging cable in the EU market is Apple’s lightning. Forcing Apple to go to USB wouldn’t cause major damage.
All my devices are USB-C, micro USB, or some sort of barrel connector. Now I only pack USB-C to C cables, one USB-C power brick, and a micro USB adapter for my shaver.
They did mandate micro USB. In 2009. It didn't suck - for the past decade every single phone on the market charged with the same cable, except Apple's. I was never sure how they got away with that.
Micro USB is just so much harder to use than lightning. It’s one reason I’ve avoided Android phones, plugging in micro USB cables is much more tedious than lightning cables.
Thankfully they got away with it. USB-C is much better, still not as easy to plug-in as lightning, but at least you don’t have to think carefully about what the orientation is anymore. Wireless charging is even better, which is what I’m using right now. Cables kind of suck in general (though micro USB is probably the worse one in the last two decades).
In my experience, Micro-USB cables have a far shorter lifespan than any other common, comparable cable. Wish they'd gone straight from Mini-USB to USB-C.
Maybe you are younger or have more dexterity in your fingers? I really have problems with them, and my thumbs remember the pain of plugging those micro USB things in even now as I’m typing this.
But yes, I think magnetic adapters or wireless charging is the way forward. I’m pretty careful when I buy things now (eg the Bluetooth speakers I just bought has a wireless charging dock, and that’s why I bought them over the others).
I bought a magnetic USB-C adapter for my MacBook Pro charger but haven’t had a chance to use it yet (pandemic means I don’t move my laptop very much).
Personally, all my usb-c chargers can charge/power any of my usb-c devices, which include Google Wifi, Pixel, Samsung buds, MacBook Pro, Nintendo Switch, Oculus Quest...
> We, who consider ourselves absolutely leading on privacy, see what we are doing here as an advancement of the state of the art in privacy, as enabling a more private world.
>Apple says that using a single charger would hurt innovation and create a mountain of electronic waste as consumers who own whatever cable they choose to force won’t be able to use them with future devices.
What kind of innovation will Apple be stiffled from doing since apparently they are committed to never changing the Lightning port/cables in order to not create a mountain of electronic waste?
Their new charger with the ring magnet wouldn‘t be possible if they are forced to support a common one. I mean they could add it but almost nobody would use it if something like usb-c or standard qi charging is a european requirement.
I’m guessing it’s the shitty one you need to own if you want to recharge your Apple Watch, for example.
There’s not much worse than having to snap your Apple Watch into that piece of crap.
Of course, this claim isn’t even true. You could have a device that is a magnetic ring which plugs into the USB charger, which then can charge your Apple Watch in the shitty non standard way Apple wants you to.
Also, this only applies to cell phones from what I can tell.
The magnet forces the iPhone into the correct position for optimal wireless loading. The new iphone has a ring magnet in it‘s back to the charger jumps into place.
I'm actually with Ape on this. Reason? The only universal charger the EU can come up with is USB. In the past twenty years Apple has had two versions of its charger (30 pin and Lightning), and USB has had how many? 7 iterations? Resulting in a connector that is bigger than Lightning which matters for phones.
Also, by the time EU finalizes its decision the USB Consortium is as likely as not to come up with a new version.
> Apple has had two versions of its charger (30 pin and Lightning), and USB has had how many? 7 iterations?
Android phones only ever had micro-usb and usb-c, AFAIK. You can rant about variations on usb-c, but you can still charge your phone with any usb-c cable you've got.
You have to go back to pre-iPhone days to find (non-Android) smartphone that had mini-USB.
That's not totally true. Early, early android phones (HTC magic) had mini. The Nexus One and beyond were micro IIRC. You are 99% on the nose I believe.
Micro 3.0 is almost never going to be a problem because normal micro cables fit.
And realistically, how many had mini? The very first nexus had micro. The Droid had micro. LG's first one had micro. I see HTC had a couple nonstandard quasi-mini models before moving to micro?
And supporting Micro 3 via Micro is a non-starter for most people, one of the best parts of the 3.0 standard was a much sturdier connector. It's a terrible experience using a Micro with a Micro 3 port.
> And supporting Micro 3 via Micro is a non-starter for most people, one of the best parts of the 3.0 standard was a much sturdier connector. It's a terrible experience using a Micro with a Micro 3 port.
Even then, that's no worse than a micro 2.0 port. For someone that prioritizes the downsides of port proliferation, then only micro 2.0 and C really matter; they get to ignore micro 3. For someone that prioritizes sturdiness, there's more to discuss, but it's a separate issue.
You can use Lightning cable with only Apple products.
With a USB cable you can use it with your camera, power bank, phone, earbuds, toaster so on and so forth.
I’ve had a grand total of 2 USB cables, a USB A to micro USB for legacy devices and a USB A to USB C for every other recent device.
For my iPhone I needed to buy an extra USB A to lightning in addition to the one provided by Apple, because the cable they provided does not fit with any existing chargers (except with my laptop).
I agree Lightning port feels much sturdier than USB C, not sure if this is an inherent design flaw of USB C.
I have a grand total of god knows how many cables, and I still don't know which one will fit a certain device. I don't use them that often or have that many devices, but having just a bank card reader and a power bank requires me to have two different USB cables (mini and micro).
There are workarounds for parts of this. You can make proprietary keyed dongles that support extra pins (or even just signaling compatibility) that can support hdmi out.
Going by existing devices, lighting ports are capable of 4 lanes of communication and at least 5Gbps per lane.
That's easily enough for 4k at 60 Hz, if the device is set up for HDMI output. I don't think any existing devices can output through passive HDMI adapters, but it would be easy to make it possible.
Even if you were stuck with USB 3 speeds, which some existing devices can definitely do, that's still more than enough for 1080p.
If you can't get either of those, the problem isn't the port.
That is because Apple cables suck. They don't do strain reduction properly (which many people tend to solve by adding it themselves using shrinkwrap or the spring of a ball pen).
Other manufacturers don't put design functionality over styling and therefore add propper strain reduction even if it looks less elegant.
My other gripe is their white cables no longer go with their hardware. They worked with the original macbooks and ipods, but with so much bead-blasted aluminum on their new devices, the white cables don't really match.
I am still young, but I can remember when every friggin phone had its own charger. Going somewhere and hoping someone had a charger was literally not an option. Now thanks to the EU guideline you only have three chargers, USB-C, USB-B micro and whatever Apple does. Before every manufacturer had their own connector with their own peripherals.
And this is why Apple does it. Of they would comply with the standard they were in a situation where people had the expectation that all USB-C peripherals would work for Apple as well. Apple reduced the number of connectors on their macbooks not without reason, at first you got less PCB-space sure, but connectors are also expensive so you safe money and in the case of Apple you gain money by selling peripherals.
I never had or witnessed any issue with USB-C ports since they came out and I am working on PCBs under the microscope, people tend to come to me with their broken stuff privately and I repaired a number of USB-B micro jacks.
Even with those it rarely was the connector that failed but the PCB around it (lifted pads, broken substrate, etc). If you do something like the lockable USB-C connector mount from Neutrik I am pretty sure USB-C would win in a mechanical stress test.
I soldered USB-C connectors before (just never had to replace them yet) and they were ot weirder or harder to solder than any other current connector. And I would probably not have big troubles resoldering them of needed.
And what about the other connector at the bottom? There was power and data handled separately. I remember getting a successor Nokia phone with the physically same connector and not working in my car adapter. I also remember my Nokia headset having a different charging port diameter than my phone. Nokia failed to fully exploit the platform they had - not even considering the head-start they had on the app store front.
There were actually two different Nokia chargers, with the newer one using a smaller barrel jack. So even when living in Finland, where everyone had a Nokia or two, you'd still have some confusion since someone had the older barrel jack and someone had the newer barrel jack.
That was later on, and one of the dumber things Nokia did. People bought Nokia just for the ease of charging, then found out they had an incompatible charger nonetheless. That one burnt a lot of goodwill.
It seems Nokia never realized what power they had with their de facto market standards. They threw it all away for no reason at all.
They were also one of the few who had a chance to have a smartphone platform like android and apple. People would trust them,even if they were late to market. But their infighting made them blind to their own potential. The whole Microsoft thing at the end was just the cherry on top.
It's bizarre that they use USB-C to charge their laptops now, their magnet chargers were much nicer and if you have your laptop in a bag you'll likely have a charger with you so a custom charger is no big deal.
I have limited context here but I’m siding with Apple on this one. The ability to have grant and deny access to device data v.s. power is key. Especially in a world with growing number of 3rd party hardware extensions to devices, if helps to know that something is Apple certified. I’m not sure how this works on Android yet.
The relationship isn’t the same as a phone case for instance. Thorough I would be worried if it occupied the lightning port and forced me to use USB variant to charge the actual case. In some sense, I do see that as the strategy behind some of the recent mag based accessories.
That aside, I do see NFC as one area where this becomes a gray area. Do we advocate for less wasteful wires and accept the power throughput loss of -ductive (I forget which one :P) charging?
More important is the loss of autonomy in NFC where a singular input / output interface is now replaced with whatever is within the vicinity or range of the device (usually the top or back)
I’m not sure what direction consumer technology will take us but I do hope there are people actively keeping up with the standards and what they mean for security, privacy, and choice; seeing as how they’re essential to user autonomy.
Lastly: you obtain autonomy - gaining and losing implies a binary state; where obtaining implies a relinquishing gradient- loosening of what should start as an iron grip.
> Especially in a world with growing number of 3rd party hardware extensions to devices, if helps to know that something is Apple certified.
This would be a good news for an Apple fan, he could use his platinum Apple branded cable to charge all his accessories like toothbrushes,stereos, laptops,tablets.
well if you set the standard high then it's the road to the opposite because then they'll have to comply. Which is kind of the point of standards anyway
Um, hasn't this already happened? [1] It's what saved us from the quasi-distopian tech age where we had to carry adapters for everything, if memory serves.
This reads like an article from 10+ years ago, even the part where Apple objects.
I don't think Apple has at any point included an adapter. Mine at least didn't come with one. What I remember them actually doing was releasing a separate adapter and putting it on sale on their website, meaning that there are probably hundreds of them out there.
That ended up requiring the ability to charge from a micro-B cable, even if it needed an adapter to the lightning, USB-C, or other proprietary port on the phone. Probably a good thing too, or else USB-C would have been dead in the water for phones.
It's not clear to me whether they simply want to update the regulation from micro-B to USB-C (which would require development of a lightning to female USB-C adapter, but would probably reduce the number of phones that still have micro-b ports), or whether they want to really mandate the port side this time.
> which would require development of a lightning to female USB-C adapter
They already exist - I've got one in a little charging kit that I got somewhere online. Tiny USB-C cable, C-female to Lightning, C-female to micro, USB-A with female-C, IIRC.
Color me surprised. A company that has been openly against dissasembling/modifying/repairing their devices by end-users, third-party hardware, device longetivity, reuse and upcycling is against mobile standard charging. Shocking!
Some years ago that “universal “ in EU was USB-A, Apple had Lightning. Now EU wants that “universal” to be USB-C, Apple has Lightning. And in few years EU adapts USB-X as “universal” and Apple still goes with Lightning.
So, since the start of the iPad in 2010, Apple has used three different connectors.
What's even more embarrassing: for a long time you would not be able to connect a brand new iPhone to a brand new MacBook, since the MacBook would only have USB-C connectors and the iPhone would come with an USB-A to Lightning cable.
> for a long time you would not be able to connect a brand new iPhone to a brand new MacBook
I dunno about "long time" - I got the first USB-C Macbook when it came out and I think it was less than 16 hours after that before Amazon delivered me a USB-C to USB dongle (could have been quicker if I was in London instead of Manchester, I think.)
They were talking about the out of box experience. Until maybe 2019 iPhones came with a Lightning to USB-A cable and all MacBooks since 2016 had no USB-A ports, meaning that for years it was possible to go into the Apple shop and buy a new phone, and a new laptop, and have no way to connect the two without spending more money on top of the several thousand pounds you’ve already spent.
Apple built the product(s) that have generated the most buzz this century.
If you think the EU regulator is going to do a better job of deciding how consumers want their phones designed, you aren't making evidence based decisions. The more of this stuff gets locked in to be regulatory decisions, the worse the final quality is going to be.
It's just the cable. And it hasn't changed at all from the first iteration. Now Apple uses the EU legislation as an argument to avoid shipping a charger with the phone.
Garmin also has proprietary watch and GPS charging cables.
I don’t like the idea of a forced standard. All manufacturers with exception of Apple have converged to USB-C or micro-B for older models. Even Apple uses USB-C on iPad Pro’s. Apple should just switch to USB-C everywhere out of their own volition and be done with it. Though I like lightning, ditching one cable when traveling would be nice.
My issues are with line of apple’s official concerns. If we standardisé on usb-c now, how long will it take to switch if something substantially better comes out.
The reality is there is such a quantity of Apple Lightning cables and accessories that implementing the law would create the very problem it's trying to resolve (an entire pile of e-waste).
Would make more sense to me to legislate that if they ever change from lightning it has to be to USB-C and to move all the USB bricks to USB-C on that end.
The reality is that Apple’s Lightning cables don’t last forever anyway (some even say they have terrible durability) and hundreds are replaced every day somewhere in the world, on a cadence of every few years max. Introducing legislation means that the next time people upgrade they’ll buy a USB-C cable instead. The “extra” waste is not as big as you or Apple make it sound like.
Apple has been very obviously going towards a port-free iPhone for a while, this means that they’ll be forced to have a USB-C port, which doesn’t fit with their plans.
Honestly I really dislike the idea of a port-free phone. Personally I find it very useful to take a full device backup of my phone to my computer. It makes setting up a new device easy and it makes wiping a second hand phone with a clean image super easy too.
> So when the socket wears out you’re forced to get an expensive repair that only apple can perform (officially).
You see it poorly engineered, they see it as extremely well engineering (most likely).
The charging cables are cheap to manufacture and they can still charge you a bunch for them. Other manufactures still have to pay them licensing fee, so more money.
And when the in-device springs wear down and you need to repair them or change the device, they make even more money.
It's great engineering for their interests, not yours.
Every single USB-C device I have had got problems with USB-C connector, never had issues with Apple lightning connector. I don't like Apple really but USB-C is garbage. Had less problems with micro-b.
MFi provides a firewall against Apple having to support external, 3rd-party USB-C devices directly on their handsets, as well as to address their power and data consumption and throttling.
MFi / Lightning also reduces the physical attack vector-not defending it per se, but calling it out.
I'm curious why Apple went with USB-C for laptops but not phones. With laptops it was more surprising, because they ditched the beloved MagSafe.
I see no technical advantage in Lightning over USB-C. So the only reason I can think of for Apple to prefer Lightning is profits. But then why relent on MagSafe? Is it because it sells so far fewer laptops than phones that laptop accessories are just a blip?
Also what makes Apple's history incongruous is that they were the ones who first embraced USB with gusto, putting no other kind of port on the iMac, in 1998.
computers require peripherals much more than phones, which usually require none. they were going to have to add USB C anyway, and apple is all about reducing ports, so they kept just the USB C
Lightning came out years before USB-C (in fact, USB-C is inspired by Lightning). Macs never used Lightning; they transitioned from MagSafe to USB-C (which caused its own gripes).
> This move would affect Apple the most, as it uses Lightning cables, while most Android phones use UBC-C.
Not sure I believe that, most existing Android phones use micro USB, only newer ones use USB-C. But they don't mention the mountains of other stuff that use one of these two plugs. What uses a Lightning cable?
153 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 214 ms ] threadReally, we ought to just standardize on the Tesla plug as it can handle 250kW (perhaps upgrading it to allow higher voltage... gets you to 500kW). It's simply better (as long as we're not going to do 3 phase power anyway). Probably cheaper, too, as it's much smaller.
https://cdn.nettiauto.com/live/2021/03/10/9199ab21d7082c3d-l...
https://cdn.nettiauto.com/live/2021/08/06/66c771a8155706d1-l...
And in what way does it make sense to make the connector that one manufacturer uses the standard one when you could make the connector that everyone, including that one specific manufacturer, uses the standard?
It makes sense to standardize on Tesla’s plug because as far as I know Tesla built it before either of the other standards existed and Tesla was (and still is?) willing to let other manufacturers use the plug: I’ve never heard a good reason why the other manufacturers didn’t take up the Tesla plug and invest in the supercharger network when Elon invited them to.
Tesla's plug being the first one doesn't make any sense when it comes to standardization. That's like saying that we should standardise on the Lightning connector instead of USB-C because it was the first one.
The plug being smaller also doesn't really make sense. Are petrol cars superior since the nozzle is much smaller and more elegant than even the smallest EV plug?
>I’ve never heard a good reason why the other manufacturers didn’t take up the Tesla plug and invest in the supercharger network when Elon invited them to.
Why would the major car companies start investing into an unknown startup's supercharger network? It doesn't make business sense.
But, even if I’m wrong about the history, I find the Tesla plug much more user-friendly than the alternatives.
https://electrek.co/2020/04/28/chademo-and-china-release-new...
Didn't or couldn't? Especially due to some sneaky Tesla clause preventing use.
https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a35030461/why-other-car-co...
Is that the case in the EU?
If a cable fails, its easily swapped. Not great if it's proprietary, but it doesn't break the device itself.
If a non-replaceable battery fails, you're likely looking at a cumbersome repair/replacement, or (if the manufacturer gets their way) replacing the whole device. It's arguably the progenitor of planned obsolescence of modern electronics. Additionally, "Failure" here doesn't just mean 'no longer holds any charge at all', but also applies to a significantly reduced battery life/amperage that can result in your device no longer functioning as it once did - be it just not lasting the target usecase, or throttling or worse.
Non-replaceable batteries induce orders of magnitude more cost, inconvenience and waste than a lack of one charger cable to rule them all.
I’m not convinced standardised batteries are required. The vast majority of people are using only a small number of phones. A battery store could easily stock the batteries for every iPhone model. The real problem is how hard it is for the average person to replace them.
It would be quite a bit thicker than most phones today, but not outrageously so--about as thick as my last pre-iPhone phone (a Palm Treo). We had no trouble carrying such thick phones around back then, and those were the days when we were also carrying our iPods or portable CD players around too.
Here are the battery capacities of various iPhones.
iPhone SE: 6.7 W h
iPhone X: 10.3 W h
iPhone 11: 11.5 W h
iPhone 11 Pro Max: 14.7 W h
Low self-discharge rechargeable AA MiMH batteries are available with capacities of 2.7 W h.
You'd need 3 of them to match an iPhone SE, 4 for an iPhone X, 5 for an 11, and 6 for an 11 Pro Max.
An AA battery is between 14 mm and 15 mm in diameter. That should be an upper limit on how much thicker you would need to make the phone.
Would there be enough people who would like the convenience of using off the shelve rechargeable NiMH AA batteries for such a phone to sell despite 14 mm more thickness?
I have no idea.
https://www.amazon.com/KENTLI-Rechargeable-Battery-Lithium-i...
Pixels have become so much worse than the iPhone ever was.
On that note, I hope something like this comes to the US: https://www.fairphone.com/en/
Regarding phones, there'salso third party firmware like LineageOS.
In that case whoever will exploit your phone first is the one who owns it, not you.
It is a shame that security is a popular fetish now, not all bugs are exploitable and there are mitigation, you don't need to kill my device unless it was 100% exploited and it causes problems.
Is there some error in this sentence? It seems to say precisely the opposite of what would seem to make sense.
(Suppose they choose Cable Q, the sentence says that whoever owns Cable Q won’t be able to use it with future devices. I presume they meant anyone who owns anything other than whatever cable they choose to force.)
...and a cable just for my airpods.
Hoisted by your own petard, Apple!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply
Thankfully they got away with it. USB-C is much better, still not as easy to plug-in as lightning, but at least you don’t have to think carefully about what the orientation is anymore. Wireless charging is even better, which is what I’m using right now. Cables kind of suck in general (though micro USB is probably the worse one in the last two decades).
I charge my phone every... 2 days? And Micro USB takes... 3 seconds to plug in? Type C maybe 1/2 seconds?
Is saving 2 or 3 minutes a year worth the environmental (and actual monetary!) cost of duplicate cables?
If you dislike having to plug things in then just buy one of those magnetic adaptors so it takes... 1 second.
But yes, I think magnetic adapters or wireless charging is the way forward. I’m pretty careful when I buy things now (eg the Bluetooth speakers I just bought has a wireless charging dock, and that’s why I bought them over the others).
I bought a magnetic USB-C adapter for my MacBook Pro charger but haven’t had a chance to use it yet (pandemic means I don’t move my laptop very much).
What's the most you'd be willing to pay per minute if you could just add more minutes to your life?
It's for charging a phone, so data rate doesn't matter.
And that's about it for variations.
> We, who consider ourselves absolutely leading on privacy, see what we are doing here as an advancement of the state of the art in privacy, as enabling a more private world.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/08/apple-defends-ip...
What kind of innovation will Apple be stiffled from doing since apparently they are committed to never changing the Lightning port/cables in order to not create a mountain of electronic waste?
There’s not much worse than having to snap your Apple Watch into that piece of crap.
Of course, this claim isn’t even true. You could have a device that is a magnetic ring which plugs into the USB charger, which then can charge your Apple Watch in the shitty non standard way Apple wants you to.
Also, this only applies to cell phones from what I can tell.
The magnet forces the iPhone into the correct position for optimal wireless loading. The new iphone has a ring magnet in it‘s back to the charger jumps into place.
Also, by the time EU finalizes its decision the USB Consortium is as likely as not to come up with a new version.
Android phones only ever had micro-usb and usb-c, AFAIK. You can rant about variations on usb-c, but you can still charge your phone with any usb-c cable you've got.
You have to go back to pre-iPhone days to find (non-Android) smartphone that had mini-USB.
And realistically, how many had mini? The very first nexus had micro. The Droid had micro. LG's first one had micro. I see HTC had a couple nonstandard quasi-mini models before moving to micro?
And supporting Micro 3 via Micro is a non-starter for most people, one of the best parts of the 3.0 standard was a much sturdier connector. It's a terrible experience using a Micro with a Micro 3 port.
Noted, but I'm most worried about phones.
> And supporting Micro 3 via Micro is a non-starter for most people, one of the best parts of the 3.0 standard was a much sturdier connector. It's a terrible experience using a Micro with a Micro 3 port.
Even then, that's no worse than a micro 2.0 port. For someone that prioritizes the downsides of port proliferation, then only micro 2.0 and C really matter; they get to ignore micro 3. For someone that prioritizes sturdiness, there's more to discuss, but it's a separate issue.
With a USB cable you can use it with your camera, power bank, phone, earbuds, toaster so on and so forth.
I’ve had a grand total of 2 USB cables, a USB A to micro USB for legacy devices and a USB A to USB C for every other recent device.
For my iPhone I needed to buy an extra USB A to lightning in addition to the one provided by Apple, because the cable they provided does not fit with any existing chargers (except with my laptop).
I agree Lightning port feels much sturdier than USB C, not sure if this is an inherent design flaw of USB C.
It’s only if I need to pair my MacBook with an iPhone that I now need to different charging cables.
Which are also a major pain to replace in both phones and laptops due to the pin count and general construction.
That's easily enough for 4k at 60 Hz, if the device is set up for HDMI output. I don't think any existing devices can output through passive HDMI adapters, but it would be easy to make it possible.
Even if you were stuck with USB 3 speeds, which some existing devices can definitely do, that's still more than enough for 1080p.
If you can't get either of those, the problem isn't the port.
Other manufacturers don't put design functionality over styling and therefore add propper strain reduction even if it looks less elegant.
And this is why Apple does it. Of they would comply with the standard they were in a situation where people had the expectation that all USB-C peripherals would work for Apple as well. Apple reduced the number of connectors on their macbooks not without reason, at first you got less PCB-space sure, but connectors are also expensive so you safe money and in the case of Apple you gain money by selling peripherals.
I never had or witnessed any issue with USB-C ports since they came out and I am working on PCBs under the microscope, people tend to come to me with their broken stuff privately and I repaired a number of USB-B micro jacks.
Even with those it rarely was the connector that failed but the PCB around it (lifted pads, broken substrate, etc). If you do something like the lockable USB-C connector mount from Neutrik I am pretty sure USB-C would win in a mechanical stress test.
I soldered USB-C connectors before (just never had to replace them yet) and they were ot weirder or harder to solder than any other current connector. And I would probably not have big troubles resoldering them of needed.
It seems Nokia never realized what power they had with their de facto market standards. They threw it all away for no reason at all.
They were also one of the few who had a chance to have a smartphone platform like android and apple. People would trust them,even if they were late to market. But their infighting made them blind to their own potential. The whole Microsoft thing at the end was just the cherry on top.
You know that they ship USB-C ports on their laptops right?
The relationship isn’t the same as a phone case for instance. Thorough I would be worried if it occupied the lightning port and forced me to use USB variant to charge the actual case. In some sense, I do see that as the strategy behind some of the recent mag based accessories.
That aside, I do see NFC as one area where this becomes a gray area. Do we advocate for less wasteful wires and accept the power throughput loss of -ductive (I forget which one :P) charging?
More important is the loss of autonomy in NFC where a singular input / output interface is now replaced with whatever is within the vicinity or range of the device (usually the top or back)
I’m not sure what direction consumer technology will take us but I do hope there are people actively keeping up with the standards and what they mean for security, privacy, and choice; seeing as how they’re essential to user autonomy.
Lastly: you obtain autonomy - gaining and losing implies a binary state; where obtaining implies a relinquishing gradient- loosening of what should start as an iron grip.
magnetic induction
This would be a good news for an Apple fan, he could use his platinum Apple branded cable to charge all his accessories like toothbrushes,stereos, laptops,tablets.
Apple = manufacturer who has consistently offered what customers are willing to pay for
This reads like an article from 10+ years ago, even the part where Apple objects.
1: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply
Nevertheless, from that Wikipedia: > Although compliance is voluntary[...]
Which sounds weird, because the Wikipedia describes Apple phones comming with an adapter to be compliant.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD820AM/A/lightning-to-mi...
It's not clear to me whether they simply want to update the regulation from micro-B to USB-C (which would require development of a lightning to female USB-C adapter, but would probably reduce the number of phones that still have micro-b ports), or whether they want to really mandate the port side this time.
They already exist - I've got one in a little charging kit that I got somewhere online. Tiny USB-C cable, C-female to Lightning, C-female to micro, USB-A with female-C, IIRC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dock_connector#30-pin_dock_con...
So, since the start of the iPad in 2010, Apple has used three different connectors.
What's even more embarrassing: for a long time you would not be able to connect a brand new iPhone to a brand new MacBook, since the MacBook would only have USB-C connectors and the iPhone would come with an USB-A to Lightning cable.
I dunno about "long time" - I got the first USB-C Macbook when it came out and I think it was less than 16 hours after that before Amazon delivered me a USB-C to USB dongle (could have been quicker if I was in London instead of Manchester, I think.)
Some years later, Apple changed to lightning. Some years after that, "universal" changed to USB-C.
They've both changed once.
If you think the EU regulator is going to do a better job of deciding how consumers want their phones designed, you aren't making evidence based decisions. The more of this stuff gets locked in to be regulatory decisions, the worse the final quality is going to be.
Garmin also has proprietary watch and GPS charging cables.
> Even Apple uses USB-C on iPad Pro’s. Apple should just switch to USB-C everywhere out of their own volition and be done with it
They should and everyone will be better off, but they don't want to. Hence, regulators will force them. What's the problem here?
Surely those corporate lobbyists can help this process, if they want to.
Note: they probably don't, since they're the ones obstructing the normal legal process.
Would make more sense to me to legislate that if they ever change from lightning it has to be to USB-C and to move all the USB bricks to USB-C on that end.
I can’t wait for the day I can ditch Lightning and micro USB cables.
Wireless charging is super slow and prone to miss connection if my iphone SE is anything to go by.
It just about ok for overnight but if it misconnects you want the option to be able to fast charge using PD.
What I mean by that is that the springs are in the device not the cable.
So when the socket wears out you’re forced to get an expensive repair that only apple can perform (officially).
I’d like to see them go USB-C as per MacBook Pro and iPad Pro and be done with it.
Then when I travel it’s one cable for everything.
You see it poorly engineered, they see it as extremely well engineering (most likely).
The charging cables are cheap to manufacture and they can still charge you a bunch for them. Other manufactures still have to pay them licensing fee, so more money.
And when the in-device springs wear down and you need to repair them or change the device, they make even more money.
It's great engineering for their interests, not yours.
MFi provides a firewall against Apple having to support external, 3rd-party USB-C devices directly on their handsets, as well as to address their power and data consumption and throttling.
MFi / Lightning also reduces the physical attack vector-not defending it per se, but calling it out.
I see no technical advantage in Lightning over USB-C. So the only reason I can think of for Apple to prefer Lightning is profits. But then why relent on MagSafe? Is it because it sells so far fewer laptops than phones that laptop accessories are just a blip?
Also what makes Apple's history incongruous is that they were the ones who first embraced USB with gusto, putting no other kind of port on the iMac, in 1998.
Not sure I believe that, most existing Android phones use micro USB, only newer ones use USB-C. But they don't mention the mountains of other stuff that use one of these two plugs. What uses a Lightning cable?
AKA lying:
* Privacy
* Innovation
* Repairability