I think it’s a horrible idea. It means moving to a future, better standard (let’s say, USB-D) is neigh impossible as it would require a change to an EU directive (that is: 27 countries need to agree on it).
Just getting this into law has already been in the works for years and years, if the EU had worked a bit faster we would have been stuck with micro USB-B, which would have been unfortunate.
This could've all been avoided if all manufacturers just followed the previous EU guideline (explicitly not a law) and agreed on a connector. It more or less said "we don't care what you choose, just choose one".
But Apple didn't want to listen and now the EU commission is sick of it and introduces a law. It's the industry's own damn fault that it didn't take the hand that reached out to it.
We're stuck with USB A on desktops since the late 90s. It hasn't harmed us. The connector is non-reversible, but it's robust with many, many disconnect-connect cycles and can support higher speeds with USB 3.2. I still use USB chargers made 10 years ago. They work fine.
I think it's fine to be stuck on a "good enough" standard, if this results in less e-waste and less need to upgrade all accessories simply because the dominant connection port changed.
If we wanted to have the standard update itself every 15 years or so, we can have a body dedicated to selecting, or creating, such a standard. We don't write automotive standards directly into our laws, so we don't have to the same with charging port technology either. As the maxim goes, "every problem of computer science can be solved with another layer of indirection, except for having too many layers of indirection".
> I think it's fine to be stuck on a "good enough" standard, if this results in less e-waste and less need to upgrade all accessories simply because the dominant connection port changed.
That’s your opinion. I disagree and I certainly don’t want to see it written into law.
but without writing in law apple will never care about environment right? They are getting money from each connector so why would they? Is it possible to solve such issue without law?
What solution do you propose? If you have solution let us know?
I don’t think that’s entirely fair to Apple: they are trying to not include a charger at all in the first place (just the cable), which does a lot more for the environment than including a charger which you can use with anything as well as forcing the cable to be useful for more than one device.
Good, but not relevant to me defending Apple in this instance; Apple are even doing this (or at least tried to do this) where there not only wasn’t a legal requirement to do so, but a legal prohibition against doing so: https://www.engadget.com/apple-brazil-fine-over-iphone-12-ch...
If citizens care about the environment they will stop buying Apple products. They don’t, hence they don’t care about the environment. Why make laws that go against the citizen wishes?
It's not that they don't care, it's that they are not knowledgeable enough about the issue and don't have time or will to research it further. That's why we have laws and regulations, so that average Joe doesn't have to research the impact of everything he buys on his body/environment.
With that logic you could say, "why ban dangerous levels of pesticides in the food, if people don't like it, they will not buy the product."
Apple recycles huge amounts of materials from old products. I really hope that people are not following your suggestion and estimate the environmental impact only by iPhone cable and connector port.
Plus, this is such a minor issue. You get a device and the charger for it and that is the end of it. If you buy multiple devices that you carry around with incompatible chargers then you carry (assuming you even need to charge on the road) a couple of cables (or one with multiple connectors). It's about as much of a none issue as you will ever get.
It wasn't a non-issue till the EU stepped in. Every manufacturer had their own plug and some (eg. Nokia) even had more than one, of course they were incompatible. I'm grateful that the EU stepped up here.
I feel for Apple's hurt pride here that they should adopt something they didn't invent, but since we are a mixed Android/Apple household, getting rid of Lightning will be nice.
I live in a mixed Apple and Android house and its a non-issue. If it was an issue, we'd just consolidate our house, but we don't, because -- like you -- we don't find it enough of an issue to care.
Precisely. Nokia was blessedly standardised, in fact, because you only ever had 2 charging ports so you could mix and match. Most other manufacturers were a mess with proprietary connectors that weren't barrel jacks.
Sony had a different charger model (with a different voltage down to tens of volts, or with a different connector) for nearly every single device released.
Want more than one power brick (one for the office and one for the home/vacation home)? Spend a lot of money for the convenience, or carry 2 kilos of chargers wherever you go.
Some devices eschewed power supplies altogether and used cradles. Lose the cradle and the device is unusable. Carry the cradle, and it becomes an extra 500g in your everyday carry.
If you were lucky, your device supported a barrel jack or another generic connector, but you had to carry around a universal power supply with adjustable voltage and polarity because they all used different configurations. Get something wrong, and your expensive device is fried.
I remember the early 2000s and the pre-USB charger era. I don't remember it fondly, because it was frankly stupid. Even the worst universal standard is better than no standard at all. And I say this having lived through the era of Micro USB dominance, an era that has killed the charging ports of many of my phones.
The way it usually works with industry standards is that if the industry agrees that a different connector would be superior, their lobbyists are highly effective at changing the legislation.
We don't know the language to the legislation yet, so I think it's worth withhold judgment for now.
Based on other recent legislation from the EU that I've had to work closely with, I would say the EU legislators are very aware of the pitfalls that come with writing a specific technology into law. They seem to deal with this by writing an initial recommendation, or providing a few concrete examples of how to conform int to the law. But hand off the longer term management to some sort of agency or regulator that already exists, and instructs them to work directly with industry to fine tune the technical aspects.
Taking this approach create a natural escape hatch for new standards being introduced without new law being written. It'll still create a natural dampener on innovation in specific area, but it avoid completely stifling it.
Also on quick FYI, USB-B has never been used on a modern mobile phone. The port is bigger than most phones!
No, this has to be voted by the parliament like any law, not approved by each member.
> getting this into law has already been in the works for years and years
The goal was to not require a law and make manufacturers agree to a standard without legislation, because that makes it easier to evolve.
Apple is the only one that wouldn't agree to that, so that means it has to become a law apparently, otherwise they won't do anything.
If a new standard appears, I expect the USB-IF to notify the EU while they're working on it so that legislation can evolve in time. The EU parliament is very quick to pass new laws when necessary.
>No, this has to be voted by the parliament like any law, not approved by each member.
Almost all EU legislation needs the approval of the Council of the European Union - which comprises representatives from all 27 member states.
The Ordinary Legislative Procedure goes Commission -> Parliament -> Council -> Adoption. If the Council and Parliament don't immediately agree then there's a step in there for negotiation between all three institutions.
Aaargh20318 is probably wrong that all 27 need to agree, though, most things are decided in Council on the basis of Qualified Majority Voting which does not need all 27 to agree.
USB C's physical form is likely to remain stable for years to come. There seems to be plenty of room to evolve the cables and device capabilities while retaining physical backwards compatibility.
I mean, USB 4 can already do up to 40 Gbps, and upcoming versions of the standard are said to be going to 80 Gbps[1]
I am surprised we are not seeing more positive sentiment for this among HN members. I had to scroll quite a bit to find this comment.
In the other hand, HN is US-dominated and they don't like regulations over there.
This is absolutely a good regulation, proven by previous similar regulations. I have about a kg of waste cables laying around. We need to start acting smart about how we deal with plastics.
It was, and quite a success, and probably encouraged the current step.
It changed a problem from "find the right charger" to "will this charger charge this phone quickly or slowly?" with hardly any problems. Someone will post a link to that Google engineer who tested cables, and there was a manufacturer who supplied non-USB power via a USB plug (can't remember which voltage but it wasn't 5V1A), but on the whole, a great improvement over the old state.
Somehow my 25W USB-PD original genuine Samsung charger doesn't charge my 2021 iPad Pro which normally uses a 20W USB-C charger...it just makes no sense.
Sure. I too have a device that "won't" charge from a particular charger. The device and that charger negotiate some ridiculously low effect, and the device turns on its screen while charging. The net effect is awfully close to zero, sometimes it's negative.
But compare it to the mess phone chargers were in 2005.
Good, though in practice it's not the charger the problem, I use the same USB plug everywhere, it's Apple and their cable. Right now I always need with me a micro USB cable, an USB-C one, and Lightning, because Apple thinks different™.
What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones?
They didn't see this as a problem when they introduced lightning and USB-C on their macBooks and high-end iPads, though. Instead you were supposed to buy more future electronic waste in form of dongles.
I think the iPad pro etc lives in a different category. They're all high end devices that are bought by people who either like tech, or use it for work. People who want the latest everything, and are happy to change things like cables to make it happen.
The iPhone at this point is just a phone. I suspect most people own them because their good tools for everyday life. Based on an observation of my parents, their friends, and parents of my partner, I would say that most of them don't give a rat-arse about the port on the bottom. They just want the phone to work with the cables they already have. For many of these people an iPhone and iPad Air will be the only computers they own.
I appreciate that my point is a little undermined by the new iPad Air, but I suspect that iPhone will go to wireless only charging, something the iPad can't do, and Apple don't want to go through two transitions in less than 5 years.
USB-C to USB-A dongles were and are cheap, and USB-C/TB on MacBooks enabled one-cable docking solutions for the first time on the MBP platform so people actually welcomed that.
This concern does not translate well to anybody wanting to switch platforms. This level of sunk cost fallacy would not fly as an excuse for any other technology, let alone on HN.
I have never seen a lightning dock ever. Docks seemed to die after the 30 pin was discontinued. Every car I have seen now uses Bluetooth and has a usb A port for cables.
Is that the exact one you've ordered from them before? Is it reliable, can fast charge, etc? I've found usb cables such a huge hit and miss, even buying from "reputable" places, as they just re-sell cheap chinese knockoffs that don't work.
I haven't tried that cable, but I've had a good experience with that shop (Baseus). Unlike Amazon, Aliexpress doesn't comingle listings, so generally I shop by seller I have good experiences with, or just popular ones as they list the number of times an item has been purchased.
Probably they think they can make the jump to a completely wireless phone before any USB-C mandates come in.
Apple's timing with the lighting port wasn't great, with it arriving just before USB-C, and I imagine they're very reluctant to change the port on their phones because people already have lightning cables everywhere.
Personally I would love to see USB-C on my iPhone, but I look at my parents, and having the port change for them would be a pain in the arse. All their cables are lightning cables, they don't have any USB-C devices, and ofcourse, all of their cables are the ones that came in the box. I suspect a significant portion of Apple's customers fall into that category.
Not great, but better than I personally expected: "Inductive charging is not as efficient as direct charging [...] An analysis of energy use found that charging a Pixel 4 from 0 to 100 percent on a classic cable used 14.26 Wh (watt-hours), while doing so with a wireless charger took 21.01 Wh, a 47 percent increase. "
I did some maths (which maybe some should double check), but for an iPhone with a 12 wh battery. Doing a complete charge cycle everyday would consume an extra 5.6kwh over a year! Far more than I expected.
But thats not point here. Everyone is talking about the climate change and then we want to charge millions or billions of phones with ~50% extra power?
In absolute terms it's nothing though. An average household uses 4000 kWh of electricity in the UK (less than half of the average us household), so saving the 5kWh on 4 phones is a 0.5% saving, which is roughly equivalent to running your home boiler for 10 minutes per year. Turning off your thermostat for one evening would have the equivalent impact of not using a wireless charger for a century.
Do we not have enough symbols? Plastic bags, domestic recycling, plastic straws are all strong "symbols" and yet we're still fighting about a couple of kWh rather than making any meaningful change.
"900 million active iphones in use" - CFO Luca Maestri
14.26 Wh * 900000000 * 365 (days) = 4684 GWh/yr
46% = 2154 GWh/yr wasted energy
That's about the total energy output of Madagascar with a population of 27 million people.
There's a lot of reasons why the above numbers are wrong but I just wanted to highlight that at current efficiency, there would be a lot of wasted energy. :)
I see a lot of comments suggesting that Apple want to go fully wireless but it makes no practical sense to me. Their MagSafe charger not only charges far slower (as of now), but it's also huge. It's just not practical to ask someone to carry that around with them or take it when they go travelling.
An interesting point to think about is that MagSafe appears to be about 75% efficient (due to alignment of coils from the magnets), but also the battery size on iPhones tends to be much smaller than competitor phones.
For example, Samsung S21 uses a 4000mAh battery. iPhone 12 Pro uses a 2700mAh battery.
At 75% efficiency, it's effectively like charging a 3600mAh battery.
Both likely get a full charge every day. So, even with less efficient charging, you come out ahead vs. a Samsung device.
That's also assuming efficiency of the actual charging bricks is similar. Apple tends to be known for high quality and efficient charger bricks, so it wouldn't surprise me if that has an impact.
Sure, but let's say efficiency comes up to closer to like 85-90%, which should be achievable. Would you suggest that it's still not worthwhile? You'd never need to worry about damaging your charging port, since everything is now solid-state.
I know a few folks that moved to exclusively wireless charging because they broke the USB port on their phones over the years.
Good luck believing that the next regulation in that spirit will not target wireless charging. The motivation on this regulation is the waste produced by endless stream of chargers. wired or not, does not make a difference in that thinking.
Only at the slow 7.5W speed. Despite the fact that MagSafe follows the 15W Qi standard, the iPhone will only charge at 15W with a MagSafe-branded device.
If Apple, for example placed both a USB-C and lightning port on future phones, but the charge speed of the USB was crippled, I’d argue that they wouldn’t be compliant with the EU regulation.
I suspect a significant portion of Apple's customers fall into that category.
Existing customers, yes. Apple are probably trying to grow their market share though, which means they also need to consider those people who have usb cables too.
Wireless charging is terrible from an energy efficiency standpoint.
Considering that the standardization effort is supposed to be for the environment, and that includes energy efficiency requirements for chargers, I don't think switching to a less efficient charging method will be looked over kindly.
But it is Apple, who knows what they are going to do to avoid regulation.
> Apple's timing with the lighting port wasn't great, with it arriving just before USB-C, and I imagine they're very reluctant to change the port on their phones because people already have lightning cables everywhere.
Apple was on the USB-design committee (and lightning experience informed the design) and knew all the timing. The standard wasn’t even finalized for quite some time after Apple started shipping lightning.
Lightning has now been around longer than the 30-pin connector, I really don’t understand Apple’s reluctance. I go of my way to by Type C devices for simplicity’s sake, though still have to travel with micro-A, Type C, lightning, and a special watch charger, grr. At least I have only one type of power brick.
> Good, though in practice it's not the charger the problem, I use the same USB plug everywhere
This isn't the first time the EU mentioned those plans, the current situation is basically the phone manufacturers regulating themselves to avoid an explicit regulation by the EU.
> it's Apple and their cable.
Of course there is always that one greedy asshole ruining it for everyone else.
> What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones?
They probably considered Lightning to be superior but couldn't make it the industry standard without loosing their ability to charge absurd amounts of licensing fees for it.
> They probably considered Lightning to be superior but couldn't make it the industry standard without loosing their ability to charge absurd amounts of licensing fees for it.
I don't think it's this. Lightning was superior to micro-USB, but it's certainly not superior to USB-C.
I think the problem is that everyone remembers the transition from the 30 pin dock connector to Lightning. Apple has a huge reputation for just changing their cables all the time.
This is largely unwarranted. For the portable devices they had 30-pin for ~10 years, then lightning for ~10 years, and it looks like it's on its way out soon. I think 10 years is a fairly reasonable time to keep ecosystems the same. People don't have 10 year old cables and chargers around.
This reputation is pervasive though. I think they're holding off until they can drop the cable entirely in 1-2 years.
> People don't have 10 year old cables and chargers around.
Yes they do, why wouldn't they? I have mini/micro USB chargers and cables that are older, same for USB A/B cables, same for network cables.
Only cables that get tossed are Apple lightning cables because they are crap quality and fray within 2-3 years, and other non-standard crap (pre-2010 proprietary phone/camera chargers like 30-pin and the like)
> People don't have 10 year old cables and chargers around.
Just looking in my cable drawer I have USB types A, B, mini-A, mini-B, micro-A, micro-B, and C. I also have lightening and apple dock from the original iPhone. I have some weird Chinese cable that looks like USB micro-A and micro-B but doesn't fit either. There are a few barrel connectors from my old Nokia phones. A couple of my wife's old Samsung phone cables. This is just from the stuff I've owned.
So I don’t have to pay for a new ones next time I need one. My headphones need micro-b, my gps uses mini-a for data and mini-b for power, my China phones might use any of the mini or micro connectors - whatever they had a lot of that month, usb-a is the most common connector I find while traveling, raspberry pi uses micro b, etc.
Thanks for your answer! I understand the USB "estandards" going around, but what surprised me was that you kept old Nokia and Samsung charging cables. I got rid of all of them in my last moving.
I think that the idea of the USB-C port on the iPads is to connect external devices. These are more likely to have a USB-C <-> something (e.g. USB-C -> USB-[micro|C|A]) cable that people already have lying around, as opposed to lightning -> something cable.
From the perspective of Apple though, that's another adapter for them to sell. They already make a lightning -> USB-A adapter.
And the idea of a common, readily available for most people, port is exactly what this legislation is about. It should apply to charging cables for phones too.
> What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones?
I can think of 3 reasons:
1. A lightning port is slightly smaller than USB-c, so it enable Apple to keep their phone slimmer than the competition in theory.
2. Apple loves to be in control of everything. With lightning, they could make a switch to a "lightning 2.O" cable / port whenever they so pleased. With USB-C they would be restricted by the USB-IF.
3. They can sell more cable and licensing fees this way. With USB-C, everyone will be able to buy a better and cheaper cable than the Apple ones, and Apple won't receive even a cent from them.
I think most iPhones on offer are a fair bit thicker than their Android counterparts. Specifically, most Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy phones are smaller than all but the Mini iPhones.
Besides, what's the point of a thinner phone when you got a huge bump for the camera's. Rather it be a bit thicker so that there is more room for battery.
I personally really wish for a flag ship phone like the Galaxy S21 Ultra that doesn't have such a huge camera array.
I’m always amused at people who upgrade to the latest phone regularly and then keep it in a bulky case. Around iPhone 5, I switched to buying 1-year old used phones about every 2-3 years and enjoying them without a case.
Only non-minor damage I’ve suffered is I broke the volume down button (the spring behind it, really) on my Xs Max. Minor scratches I don’t care about. I’m pretty amazed at how durable the phones actually are and, if I break one now, it’s probably an $85 screen and an hour of my time or worst case a $400-600 replacement phone.
Cases are overrated. Sure, they may protect from some scratches, but they don't protect agains fall as much as people think, and I think they induce falls by making large phones even more difficult to hold.
I bought a IPhone 12 pro max six months ago, never used a case, still looks like new.
IMHO, the camera bumps are also just ugly. That is mitigated by protective cases, but still thicker phones would be more robust and have place for larger batteries. That being said, modern day phones all look the same anyway, once they are in a non-transparent case.
> With USB-C they would be restricted by the USB-IF.
Apple will still find a way to do what they want, especially given they play a non-trivial role in the USB-IF and provided significant resources towards developing USB-C in the first place.
I would like USB-C on my iPhone, but I think the biggest reason why Apple hasn't done it is just because of momentum, and that it _is_ a switch from the current situation.
I mean, technically, they can keep using the same connector (usb-c) but make extensive change to the underlying protocol making it required to buy an "Apple cable" for anything else than charging and maybe still respecting the U.E law.
You mean with a lightning connector or a usb-c one ? In my experience, lightning connector were much more easy to break than usb-c one, since there is no actual protection/shielding to the actual pads/connector. It is so easy to snap the connector part of a lightning port.
> 1. A lightning port is slightly smaller than USB-c, so it enable Apple to keep their phone slimmer than the competition in theory.
In theory sure but in practice there are thinner Android phones with USB-C connectors than any iPhone. Basically these days the thickness is purely about how good camera you want and how much battery. The usb/lightning plug is not really an issue.
For the record the thinnest iPhone is iPhone 5 at 7.6 mm and thinnest Android is Xiaomi Mi 11 Lite at 6.8mm
Also from a purely user experience point of view making the phones thinner then they mostly are now does not add anything instead just makes the experience worse as the phone will feel worse when hold (if the other dimensions and weight stay the same)
> keep their phone slimmer than the competition in theory.
This always struck me as a solution looking for a problem. Are modern phones really that chunky that we have to sacrifice functionality to shave a few fractions of a mm?
Just curious, for which use cases is weight a significant problem? Even the heaviest phones - rugged or foldables - seem to hover around 300g.
That shouldn't be at all tiring unless you are holding them for literal hours nonstop, or unless you're a small child - and in both scenarios it's good to be encouraged to put the phone down after a while.
Weight is important for some people like me. I'm not anything special or have disabilities, but I really prefer lightweight smartphones. Heavier smartphones (say > 200g) significantly increases tiring on single hand use. Weight balance is also important. I'm Japanese and I can confirm some similar people exists but seems to not majority. Maybe who use smartphone in both hand never care about weight.
Those are all reasonable arguments, but the argument I most believe reflects Apple's internal thinking is pretty much just "everyone already has lightning at this point, switching to USBC would make headlines in a bad way, generate a ton of lightning e-waste, and Qi is so close to wide adoption that maybe we can just jump USBC for these small devices which don't need 30watt+ of power".
The argument that its a physically smaller port feels like an "Apple circa-2016" argument, not an "Apple circa-2021" argument. They just made the iPhone 13 0.25mm thicker to fit a bigger battery (among other things); I think they've moved past the "thinner at any cost" argument (though I do believe that was an argument for lightning at one time).
"Control" is a tenuous given they've thrown USBC/Thunderbolt on everything except the iPhone. They already have a massive voice inside the USB-IF; switching the iPhone to USBC would only increase their strength among the USB community. And sure, they'd still have to be standards compliant, but I really don't think "lightning 2.0" is ever coming, period. I think they have the hard metrics to prove that 0.1% of iPhone users ever use that port for anything except charging.
And selling more cables is also tenuous. They'll sell USB-C cables anyway; I just paid them $30 or whatever for one for my laptop charger, because the two offbrand ones Best Buy sold me couldn't carry 85 watts.
The best argument I've ever heard for lightning is actually: Physically, its a MUCH sturdier connector. Just look at the inside of a USBC female port, versus lightning. There's just less stuff; USBC has a big tooth that sticks out, whereas lightning is just contacts along the outside. Lightning connectors, and cables, are much simpler, and thus less likely to experience damage over time.
So, yeah; I think they want to skip USBC and go right to Qi, basically seal up the entire outside of the phone. And I can't say I disagree; my iPhone only ever charges over Qi. But, maybe its worthwhile to just make them keep USBC around, if for no other reason than e-waste.
Lighting still has a "tooth" (actually two) on the socket side. The choice of keeping the teeth in the connector for USB-C is intentional, the idea is for the wear to be in the connector and not the device.
You also don't need a 30$ cable for 90W, any cable that is rated for 5 amps will do the job.
I think this was a typo and you meant to say “cable connector (plug), not device connector (socket)”.
It’s a good design and specifically designed to avoid a USB mini A design botch in which the device side would wear out before the cable side did.
FWIW Apple is a USB member and participated in the USB-C design, including learning from lightning (which was comtemporaneously secretly under way). This is like Intel and IEEE-754
Moving to USB-C doesn't mean anything from licensing or certification fees. USB-C offers ways of cable authentication, so nothing needs to change there. There is nothing that USB-IF restricts that would get in the way of certification or licensing.
The lightning cable is not required for the MFi program, you can certify lots of things for MFi. Not sure why they couldn't expand the program to USB-C cables. They might do it already, honestly.
Similar-ish but the waste aspect isn't there: each car does not come with its own gas station and most people do not own multiple redundant gas stations already.
>(f) Every retailer and wholesale purchaser-consumer shall equip all gasoline pumps from which gasoline is dispensed into motor vehicles with a nozzle spout that meets all the following specifications:
>(1) The outside diameter of the terminal end shall not be greater than 0.840 inches (2.134 centimeters).
>(2) The terminal end shall have a straight section of at least 2.5 inches (6.34 centimeters).
>(3) The retaining spring shall terminate at least 3.0 inches (7.6 centimeters) from the terminal end.
If these regulations weren't present, Ford could have it's own gas stations and gasoline that were incompatible with GM's and so on.
They do so — for example hose pipe diameter is regulated so you can’t accidentally put regular fuel into a diesel car (sadly, not the opposite though).
They use USB-C everywhere else, including their iPads. If it was about control, why did they abandon lightning for their iPad line, or FireWire for their computer lines?
To me, this smells like internal turf protection or politics.
The lightning connector is a more physically robust one than USB-C.
The male lightning connector is a single flat piece; the female connector is a hole with the contacts on the top + bottom of the port.
Compare to USB-C, which has an exposed "tab" in the middle of the female connector, and the male connector has a matching "hole" in the middle.
This makes USB-C more vulnerable to e.g. dust collecting, and damage of the exposed tab. Unlike lightning, which can collect dust in the female port, but it's easily cleaned out using a paperclip or SIM card removal tool.
We don't really know that -- USB-C hasn't been out long enough. I can tell you that for durability I hate lightning, because it always seems to have connection problems after a while and the plug itself seems overly complex for what it does. I can't recall ever having any such connection problems with micro USB or USB A for example.
In general it's easy to see also that the lightning connector itself is far more exposed to the environment than any of the USB connectors which are largely enclosed.
This is weird. My experience has always been the opposite. I’ve broken lots of usb-c cables with the metal bit coming loose. Lightening hardly ever. Any connection problems are usually pocket lint in the hole and fixed with a paper clip.
This applies in theory but I see things happen differently in real life. I have got macbook 2016 usb c cable and that dust problem etc has never happened to me. And my android cable are pretty robust too. But the funny thing is I always need to put spring so that join don't gets damaged in iphone charger.
It can be argued that lightning is slightly better, sure. But billions of people use USB-C daily, and even half of Apples product line only has them instead of lightning, so not sure if the difference is that meaningful.
According to Wikipedia the S7 was first released 2016-03-11. The Oneplus 2 was released on 2015-07-28 which was one the first with a USB-C port.
One of the big reasons for me getting the OP2 was the port and I'm still using it (with LineageOS). I'm sure I would have upgraded long ago if it didn't have a USB-C port as that's what I've standardised on for all my portable electronics.
I’m at a hotel breakfast, so far this morning I’ve seen half a dozen usb-a sockets and not a single usb-c socket.
Majority of electronic devices are older than usb-c standard, even the electric screwdriver I bought two months ago was micro-usb, as is the shaver I used this morning. At work about half the low power devices are PoE or Micro-USB.
That's still just anecdote. I have USB-C for one pair of headphones, two pairs of earbuds, a bedside light/charger, and of course my phone. But I don't assume my experience is universal. I look at data, as should you, and it does seem that there are indeed billions of devices out there using USB-C.
Looks like phones alone account for ~3B in a single year, so no, it's not just laptops. Even if you exclude those, the "consumer electronics" segment looks like it'll go over 1B/year pretty soon. Get out of your bubble.
This is not about what connector is better. It is about everyone using the same connector. I believe if Apple allowed others to use their connector for free, they could "beat" USBs and become the only existing standard.
The lightning connector is perfectly capable of supporting USB3.0, ( and they did at one point in time ), but it just doesn't make sense when iPad's ecosystem are more general purpose and requires interaction with USB-C, from display port to memory sticks.
We have one type of electric sockets (at least within each country). But there certainly can exist better kinds of sockets than those used in your our my country. But I am glad that we all have same sockets in our houses, even though they are not perfect.
A trouble with lightning is the dust etc. gets stuck in the phone socket - I've had to replace two at like £50 a go. Getting a new cable is often easier.
I have had similar issues in the past, but instead of having to have a port repaired, when I brought my iPhone to the Apple Store, they simply cleaned out the dust from the port with a SIM removal tool and sent me on my way.
They are both physically robust and very reliable, to the point where I don’t think this is a valid excuse. We’ve come a long way since the early days of mobile phones.
USB-C puts the compliant side (springs) in the plug. This is the part that fatigues and wears out. Lightning puts it in the socket. This means that Lightning will wear out after sufficient connection cycles, and you need to repair your device; with USB-C you can wear out a cable and just replace it, the device will be fine.
Additionally, Lightning plug connectors have a higher tendency to corrode. This is, I believe because the exposed mating surface on the plug end easily gathers debris (in particular e.g. oils and grease), and that can cause poor contact which can result in oxidation due to heating and electrolytic effects. USB-C does not have this problem, as none of the mating surfaces are exposed to being touched. The debris that tends to collect inside USB-C ports is usually solid fluff, not liquids.
And Lightning is just a terrible standard anyway. iPhones to this day use compressed video over USB2 for their "HDMI" output dongles (which actually have an Ax class CPU in them just to decode the video) because Apple were too short-sighted in their design to allow for enough expandability to support uncompressed digital video properly.
I have like 3 lightning cables, apple deprecating lightning would account to me throwing these cables away and buying usb-c. I suppose other apple users would have to do the same. Not to mention other lightning accessories, headphones and such. Lightning is still included on airpods (pro and max).
Furthermore, usb-c is younger than lightning. And lightning was arguably superior to previous usbs (more durable).
So while unification sounds nice, net gain would be actually close to nothing, it would be a change for the sake of change, and would probably annoy as much people as it would please.
people always look for short term gains while completely ignoring the long term benefits
go look for phone charger waste and why it is important to stop having 4685486468478 different type of chargers, people are very selfish in this thread
I think by a "charger", the EU means everything needed to charge a device, i.e. including the cables. Which means, that the charging ports should be identical on all devices sold in the EU.
3.5mm headphone jack with hole drilled in midle carrying optical fiber would handle all use cases i can imagine. From delivering power, charging phones to connecting several 8K monitors. multiple protocols can use separate wavelengths of light, all at once in single fiber. Hundreds of gigabits are possible, maybe more, depending on the length. While still being able to connect wired headphones.
fiber optics are pretty robust to bending, as long as you're happy to suffer lost light.
Pretty much, if you bend it too much, your connection will slow down temporarily till you straighten it again. That seems like a fine tradeoff.
Industrial fiber systems usually used fixed speed, so too much bending leads to a total failure of the connection - hence the strict bend limits on fibers.
The sockets would need some work for decent power transfer - it needs to do at least the 150 watts that USB-C can do, and preferably 150 kwatts for charging a car.
For 150 watts while maintaining backwards compatibility, all that's needed is larger contact area (curved spring clips) to support 3 amps and the use of 48 volts after negotiation.
For 150 kilowatts we'd be talking some cutting edge stuff, but not beyond the realms of possibility. Specifically, you'd probably need to use voltages up to 20,000 volts, 10 amps, which is going to mean you need to have mating and sealing rubber isolators on both plug and socket at least 3mm thick between poles. At these voltages, you cannot have air between the pins, so it must be a hermetic seal. You'd also need to measure leakage current and keep the cable capacitance low enough that when someone cuts through the cable with scissors the voltage can be dropped in microseconds to prevent zapping them.
The engineer in me says I want to quit my job and spend the next 6 months and $100k prototyping a 3.5mm compatible jack that can charge a car, and safe even when licked by toddlers, underwater, full of grit, and cut with powertools...
But the business person tells me that even if I could do it and make it safe enough to use, there is zero chance any big company would license the tech.
USB-C is protocol-agnostic. In alt-mode the extra wires can be used for HDMI, DisplayPort, PCIe, analog audio, or anything else really.
You can also put whatever voltage that can be physically handled over the power pins after negotiating with the other side. USB-PD is the common standard but it can be extended.
That's because of EU regulation. All the big manufacturers had their own connector before that, micro-USB started to look like a common connector among the low end manufacturers.
This is the next step for that regulation and has been in the cards for some time.
I am interested in that (because the "secret history" of many market driven change often ends up being a regulator in one influential area made a good decision - the usual example being California and car pollution standards)
Edit: just to say I am not commenting either way on the EU here, or on regulators in general. I am just interested if there was a clear point in USB standards process that EU intervention made a difference.
If so it would be useful to know their track record in this when judging this situation.
EU basically said to manufacturers: Find a common ground for charging cables / chargers, otherwise we will simply regulate it. So all manufacturers apart from Apple agreed to use microUSB (at the time). Apple was still part of this, but decided to simply provide an adapter to microUSB.
These regulations aren’t secret, and are usually heavily reported on — the government wants people to know it is doing things in their favor.
Before the charger regulations the biggest world wide impact of EU regulations was RoHS. That’s when the EU really started to come into its own as a global player. Did you realize all those old cables you still have lying around have lead in them to make them flexible?
> All the big manufacturers had their own connector before that
Worse yet, "before micro-USB", chargers universally had a captive cable. Situation that GP describes - same charger, 3 cables - is already an improvement on that.
Patently untrue: the Micro USB has won over proprietary connectors before the EU regulation, thanks to being cheaper than ever-changing charging & data cables that used to be the norm. That in turn was possible through large volume, and also through well designed standard; it was the third iteration of the plug - after original full sized A/B, and after the somewhat underwhelming Mini USB.
In particular the Micro USB was specced for quite good reliability - including 10,000 plug-unplug cycles, which is quite high for consumer grade hardware, and that was made possible thanks to the sheer experience amassed over years by the USB consortium. Not by regulator's fiat.
That currently USB-C is ruling the market is again thanks to USB consortium's active push, together with large volume of all sorts of devices using it.
There isn't any regulation because the THREATS from the EU to impose it from above was enough for everyone but Apple to fall in line, and that's damn lucky because otherwise we might've not seen USB-C emerge in phones as well as it's done now. (Do we need a new standard in the future? Hopefully that can happen without clunky regulatory processes)
Personally I like my lighting cables and I do hope there'll be a grandfather clause but Apples behaviour(logical for them) has put us in an uncomfortable seat tbh.
Absolutely no, you're making things up. USB was part of the android specification since day one as it was a natural technical choice at that time, due to the availability of chipsets, and due to the fact that google wanted standardization across android manufacturers. There's no alternate universe where google wouldn't use USB because it was not told so by some eurocrats.
I agree in theory that it’s good. It’s a pain having to also have a lightening cable with me.
But I will say this - the lightening connector is a lot more reliable than my usb-c connector. It fits better. It falls out less. And it breaks less often - it’s not as bad as the old usb connector but it’s not as good as lightening.
> What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning
I don't know about other technical aspects but I really like the fact that Lightning male is just a solid block. It's definitely more durable than type-C
>What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones?
There are currently more than 1 Billion active iPhone worldwide, even at one lightning cable per iPhone that equates to 1 billion lightning cable in use. And you have iPad and other accessories. I would not be surprise if there are more than 2Billion Lightning cable currently in use.
Seems wasteful to abandon 2 billion cables? Although I suppose Apple could stop shipping cables as well. And only include a Lightning to USB-C adopter.
Not to mention lightning is a better design and higher quality cable than USB-C. Apple could mandate MFi for iPhone USB-C charging as well, but that sort of defeat the purpose of USB-C?
Or even better if EU could mandate USB-C quality and standards. Say not to crappy USB-C cables. Which would be even better than forcing USB-C on devices.
I think they made commitments to manufacturers to keep Lightning around for a certain period. Regardless of standardization Lightning is already showing its age, it’s limiting charging and sync speeds.
Their existing customers will be super pissed having to change all their cables and docks, just like they where when apple went from 30 pin to Lightning.
Yes, they earn money from the MFI program, but there's no reason to ditch that when changing to USB-C.
Remember the outrage among "normal" users when the Dock Connector was replaced by Lightning? Everyone was upset they'd have to buy new cables - even though Lightning was vastly superior.
Now, there's hardy a difference in the form factor. And make no mistake - normal people don't have USB-C chargers and cables lying around.
But perhaps that is the intention: the government can just switch out your USB charger and then has access to everything that isn't covered by Apple cloud yet.
> As for Lightning's expected lifespan, the format is estimated to be in use for the next five to ten years, almost identical to the now-defunct 30-pin standard.
Yes, it's nice that we finally have a supposedly universal plug, but we only recently got here. It may be that they simply don't think it's worth it yet to 'force' people to switch infrastructure yet. That the USB-C ecosystem is universal enough (though I'm sure them switching would push it forward).
This is a little unfair, when Apple has been more consistent in keeping the same ports and cables, and moved to generic USB-chargers long before it was standard for anyone else?
USB-C wasn't even finalised until 2014; I can't remember how common USB-C was on phones before that, but Apple was using lightning for _years_ before that.
What's the e-Waste consequence of changing and forcing everyone to buy new chargers, adapters, cables when they next buy a new device? Suddenly all the cables and chargers you've been using for ten years are useless.
>USB-C wasn't even finalised until 2014; I can't remember how common USB-C was on phones before that, but Apple was using lightning for _years_ before that.
Everyone else was using micro USB for years before usb-C. So for years, every phone cable except Apple could also be used to charge your headphones, Kindle, Tablet, etc. It isn’t just phones we are talking about. When pretty much all devices are on one standard, and Apple refuses, that is where the e waste comes from. All my micro usb cables are still useful for random older products around the house. All my USB C cables are useful for random newer products around the house. My lightning cable is useful for exactly one item around my house ever at any given time. I have zero other uses for it. People don’t need to go out and buy new chargers and cables because they already have them for their other devices. That’s the whole point of interoperability.
> Everyone else was using micro USB for years before usb-C. So for years, every phone cable except Apple could also be used to charge your headphones, Kindle, Tablet, etc.
There were multiple other connectors in use (the 4 most common were Mini-USB A, Mini-USB B, Micro-USB A and Micro-USB B but that's not exclusive) — I still have a few of them because that “every phone cable” nirvana was never true at any point prior to USB-C. microUSB's fragility also meant that most people ended up buying many cheap replacement cables so from an e-waste perspective I'd be hesitant to say that was an advantage over the lifetime of the device.
microUSB also had many limitations — not just the inconvenience of being handed and easily broken in normal usage but also core features like not being able to supply enough power: many non-Apple tablets used proprietary cables because otherwise it would have taken hours longer to charge.
USB C came out years after Apple shipped Lightning and unsurprisingly is a lot more competitive — it's not like the industry didn't learn from the problems with earlier USB standards and I think that it makes sense for Apple to switch now.
It is reasonable to believe Apple builds a better phone. While I can't speak for the mass of Apple customers, it seems unlikely that they secretly want the European Commission to design their phones.
This is a bad decision, because:
1. The European Commission doesn't have the time or resources to make consistently good decisions about phone design. It is a minor miracle that Apple managed to gather enough talented people together in one spot to give us the iPhone. The EU can't replicate that level of ability (observe the quite remarkable failure of EU phone manufacturers).
2. If (when, really) technology improves, progress will be slowed.
3. Heaven help us if we need a bureaucratic response to protect indifferent customers from nonuniform chargers. There are actual problems in the world they could be focusing on.
Simple. They changed from the 30 pin adaptor to Lightning 9 years ago. People complained to the high heavens about it. I recall Apple promising they would keep the new Lightning adaptor for at least 10 years. Guess what? When the new iPhones are released next year it will have been 10 years. The EU is probably aware of this situation and simply want to ensure Apple doesn't try to come up with some other solution. I don't think they needed to do that since Apple has already adopted USB-C on their iPads.
Bottom line? My prediction is next year's iPhone is going to have USB-C.
I came to the same conclusion. There is so much hand wringing on the internet about it, and most of these people don't remember the 30 pin to lightning transition. Specifically people don't remember what a huge upgrade lightning was over 30 pin or even the USB standard at the time.
The people also talk about huge profits apple is making on charging cables, which just doesn't make sense if you take even a cursory glance at the price of lightning cables on Amazon. I saw numerous multi packs of cables selling for ~$2.25 for a 6ft+ cables. Apple has already signaled the direction they are going with charging standards, and it's USB-C. They are just waiting for the supported lifetime of the lightning cable to be over.
Seems like most USB-C cables and chargers on the market are fake. And as per "the market for lemons" the fake $2 chargers that can't output full power without smoking or have zero isolation from power line or refuse to use X/Y safety rated capacitors will push the good more expensive chargers off the market. The "Real World" is a lot more like "DiodeGoneWild"'s autopsies of power supplies than most people think. Its odd, really, just how much more often USB-C hardware catches fire than Lightning hardware.
Submarine patents and the like can't appear on products you invented for yourself. Admittedly kinda far fetched in the case of USB-C. Then again look at historical madness like USB to RS232 adapter knock off chips and drivers written to brick knock off hardware.
Nobody wants the wild west experience of USB-C where nothing is reliable or trustworthy. The user experience is just likely to be better with lightning.
> What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones?
The benefits don't outweigh the inconveniences of switching. There's a mature ecosystem around Lightning for third party accessories. And at 50% market share, their cables are pretty ubiquitous. [0]
And they added Lightning charging to other products they ship (Apple Pencil, Mouse, Keyboard, Remote...).
Right now, I don't think USB-C, especially with the smart cables that might or might not support every features, is an improvement over Lightning.
This is non-news, this has already been the case since 2009 [1]. It mandates micro USB, EU iPhones come with an adapter. I'm not sure what the current status is, USB-C phones don't come with an adapter.
I don't know if it's what the author of this comment meant, but iphone chargers have an USB plug and the charging cable is a USB - Lightning cable.
But it's the case everywhere no?
It might differ per country. In NL it has been the case. The latest comes with an USB-C -> lightning cable [1]. I think the micro-USB might have been around iPhone 7 era.
That doesn’t really solve the problem, though. In fact it makes it worse if you have to curry around a wireless charger that is more bulky than the cable it replaces!
That's the theory with all charging, isn't it? But I'm talking about while travelling or all those unexpected circumstances when you find yourself needing a charge when you're not at home.
One night recently, I managed to get locked out of my flat, after midnight, with nothing but my phone in my pocket. On about 15% charge! Thankfully that was enough to book a hotel and buy a lightning cable (and a toothbrush) at a 24-hour convenience store using Apple Pay, enabling me to recharge the phone on the hotel's USB charging sockets. If I'd needed to find a wireless charger I would have been totally screwed!
I suppose wireless chargers will become similarly ubiquitous if they're the only way to charge phones. If you can expect to find wireless charging in every hotel room and every train seat then it's not a problem. But I suspect that's a long way off.
I remember a few Starbucks in London introduced wireless chargers years ago (maybe around 2017 or so?). They've long since disappeared now though. Many UK trains have full 230V outlets under the seats now so you can charge your laptop, not just your phone!
I travel a significant amount of times, sometimes for work, mostly for leisure. Nowadays I carry one single 65w USB-C charger, it charges: my work laptop (if travelling for work), my personal laptop, my phone, my book, my NC headphones for the airplane, my TWS earbuds. I only own two chargeable items that it doesn't charge: my watch (which I charge with the reverse wireless charging my phone does so I still don't need to carry a charger) and my car (lost cause, obviously usb-c will never replace CCS).
Could they do this given current or near-future technology? My understanding is wireless charging is ~30% less efficient then using a cable, and degrades the battery more. I'm not sure it'd be much of an environmental win to have to use more energy/replace batteries more often (although perhaps Apple would see it as replacing lightning revenue with battery replacement revenue)
You think Apple cares about environmentalism? If anything, Apple is the king of green-washing and being anti-environment. Just take a peek at the gargantuan amount of e-waste Apple is producing year after year with their device-repair policies (= "buy a new one, we can't repair it, sorry. oh and third party repair are terrorists that steal your data and money. just buy a new one, willya?").
Apple cares about one thing only, and that is market capitalization and profits.
What you do to avoid that is legislate it for a limited time (lets say ~5-10 years) and then not renew it. This forces everyone to move to the standard in the medium term and doesn't impose long-term restrictions to new, better formats coming along.
That's marginally useful, but if the aim is indeed to reduce waste then the key measure would be to stop bundling chargers with phones, as also suggested by the article.
What creates waste is that every time people buy a new phone they get a new charger, which they don't need in 99% of cases because they already have a box full of them.
Is this something yet to come into law? I find it very hard to buy the vegetables I want at German supermarkets because they so often come wrapped in plastic sets of three. Even bananas have a substantial amount of sticky tape around them.
Well USB cables use some copper and some have gold-plated contacts. In any case, the EU has been complaining about cables for who knows how long, so I guess they have their own reasons, backed by data, to argue for their standardisation.
It surely doesn't make that much sense to let Apple do its own hypocrite thing where they spew out platitudes about the environment while clearly the only driving force behind their decisions is how they suit their financial targets.
Agree. given that USB-C has an insane bandwidth and can power even laptops, there is absolutely no need for different standards. Let's all agree on one and move on. Apple's stance is ridiculous and justifies only some more profit.
The valuable part of the charger and the cable is not actually plastic. The point is that replaced chargers account for ~ 1_000_000 kg of e-waste per year.
Cable is 30% copper, 24% stainless steel, 16% other non-plastic materials. EPS is 13% copper and copper alloys, 7% aluminium, 6% steel, 37% other non-plastic components.
According to EU studies, 31% of the EPS and cables are incorrectly disposed.
Entirely agree with your point. However, i would point out that there's many other sources of waste that can be easily avoided:
- food waste and related food wrapping waste
- planned obsolescence (TVs, cars, washing machines, and just about every product out there)
- car-oriented architecture in the cities, where public transportation is an afterthought
- energy waste due to personal infrastructure/tooling (cooking/washing/heating infra, personal TV vs shared screening rooms, etc)
- war and social control: what's the environmental cost (transportation, manufacture of mechanical/chemical weapons) of repression (of, say an environmental protest like the anti-COP21 movement)? what about an outright war on a foreign nation?
These are just examples, but environmental concerns are rather "easy" to tackle given proper political will. The problem is people concerned with the coming ecological apocalypse are either ignored, silenced, bullied, mutilated or murdered by Nation States and multinationals.
The EU is also tackling all those points you mentioned. Many single-use plastics are already banned in the EU, the EU wants smartphone manufacturers to support their hardware for at least 5 years, many EU members give out incentives to improve house insulation, EV will become the norm in a few years and energy standard get stricter every few years.
It's not like the whole EU legislative body is now pushing with all their might to ban phone chargers, it's just a single working group of many.
The EU can tackle more than one issue at once. In fact, the EU has already put out mandates and regulations to reduce food packagin waste and a directive to combat planned obsolescence in TVs and Kitch Appliances.
Digging up rare earth and metals to use them a coupe of years and then throw them in a landfill is insane. I'm happy the EU has stepped in for this kind of regulation.
As for the supermarket, vote with your wallet and buy the less plastic you can.
I think the biggest benefit is that you won't need a charger if basically every train/plane/hotel/school etc can have charging bases for all phones. Just like we don't need to carry a power plug adapter wherever we go
If this was done years ago we’d be stuck using micro or even mini usb. I shudder at the thought. Lightning was superior to those two. Under this regulation, Lightning and USB-C couldn’t have happened.
That's why the EU back then banged the heads of the manufacturers together to force them to come up with a common standard, instead of picking one and forcing it down their throat.
See other thread. If the industry wants it, it is highly effective in influencing legislators. It is called lobbyism and typically we complain about it but sometimes it is also good.
First off, I am not sure we need to improve on it in the short term. USB-A has existed for ~20y by now on the desktop and is still going strong. If USB-C lives as long, we'll get a break from having to buy different cables for quite some time, which at least is great for /my/ nerves. When I threw away old phone chargers from 1996 and later, it was literally 10 different models.
And if USB-C doesn't cut it anymore, who's to say that industry can't move to a different system? EU legislation usually isn't outlandish but follows industry practices. If device manufacturers bring up a pressing need for USB-D, EU will allow both for a transition period and then mandate USB-D (or split up mandatory standards by device class if need be).
I don't see how every tiny iteration of a standard has to result in a different plug system - the incentive for companies to iterate plugs just to force consumers to re-buy gear is just too high.
Is that why the standard that USB-C cables use is such a ridiculous mess?
>Even the seemingly most basic function of USB-C — powering devices — continues to be a mess of compatibility issues, conflicting proprietary standards, and a general lack of consumer information to guide purchasing decisions.
Worst examples of USB-C in that list is better than USB2.0...
USB-C is not lacking. You simply get what you paid for. I am using USB-C to charge my laptop, phone, earbuds. It's been amazing having just 1 single cable dangling on my desk, instead of several. This alone has been enough positive to justify the move over to USB-C.
Even charging from cable to cable is completely different. But I do not believe at all that regular people do not ever have the need to connect their device to a computer. They might not most of the time, but that one time they do they'll be kicking themselves over it.
Also, $40 per cable is completely and utterly ridiculous. That's 5-8% of monthly salary of Bulgaria (EU country) for a short cable.
>> Also, $40 per cable is completely and utterly ridiculous. That's 5-8% of monthly salary of Bulgaria (EU country) for a short cable.
That's why you don't buy a $40 usb cable for charging. You don't need all the pins in usb-c standard for all purposes. You can have a few USB-C cables for various purposes. Fully-implemented ones are easy to identify, just by their weight difference really.
>> Even charging from cable to cable is completely different. But I do not believe at all that regular people do not ever have the need to connect their device to a computer. They might not most of the time, but that one time they do they'll be kicking themselves over it.
I wouldn't say they will be kicking themselves over it. If they really cared and knew about transfer speeds of different cables, they would be one to invest in a better cable ahead of time.
If they didn't know about those details, they will have no surprises to begin with. Because it works on par with USB2.0 at least.
Maybe unpopular opinion but I like lightning more than USB-C, it makes more sense to me to have the connective parts of the cable on the outside of it, which gets rid of that little "notch" on the inside of USB-C ports which just seems like it can get bent at any time.
I also prefer Lightning. The central pin of USB-C being in the device's port rather than the charger seems like a bad idea to me. Lightning is the opposite.
I think it helps against dust getting stuck inside though.
Also, more ports on USB-C make for better "alternate mode" functionality, where some data lanes are re-purposed (with an analog mux) for another use, like displayport, or audio DAC.
Normal USB A ports have that little notch on the inside too. For all the years I've lived on this planet I've never broken a USB port. USB C is perfectly fine.
The worst part of lightning is how flimsy it feels once it's been worn in.
Plus having the connectors inside with something to line it up seems like a battle hardened design choice now. Unless you're an idiot, you're not gonna break anything.
Fwiw I broke I think more then 10 micro usb cables / ports throughout the time when they were everywhere, it was kind of prone to breaking. Never managed to break a regular usb, mini usb or usb c though. So I don't think proneness to breaking is inherent to this design, but the opposite isn't true either.
I have broken at least two female USB-A ports, with a cable pulled sideways tearing the inside tab off. Luckily, this always was on motherboards that had a spare one just next to it.
In later revisions (at least starting with micro USB, perhaps mini as well), the cable was explicitly designed to be the part prone to breakage, as it's easier to replace.
I wholeheartedly agree. Lightning, as a connecor, is really superior to USB-C : solid, stable, simple and compact.
Too bad Apple didn't wanted to give this one to the USB consortium and we'll now be stuck with USB-C (and don't get me wrong : as much as i love the lightning connector, I vastly prefer a standard connector for everything, so USB-C it'll be).
So do I, I would have preferred Lightning ports over USB-C. Unfortunately, Apple never plays nice and always has restrictive and money-making standards, so I guess they never tried to pitch it to the USB standards body.
USB-C is a very capable plug system, so I'll be happy if everything converges on this one instead.
I dunno, I seem to go through Lightning charging cables like water, whereas I've never replaced a USB-C charging cable. That may have less to do with the intrinsic properties of the design so much as Apple's unwillingness to build stable cables, but usually I have two or three cables (at home, at the office) which are usually whatever's cheapest, so it seems like it must be intrinsic to the market's ability to produce durable third party cables.
I'm sure mechanical engineers calculated the entry, insertion distance and wiggle room, so that you can't apply any relevant force onto the notch inside.
They always do. These things have mechanical physical standards as well as the electronic/software side.
Micro-USB requires more force because of its 2 teeth underneath, that's made to latch onto the socket. That was a mistake. In comparison, Mini-USB don't have this problem and slides straight similarly to USB-C in that sense.
A lot of thought process goes into this mechanical interaction of male/female plug/sockets.
I design/3d printed a lot of mechanical stuff for hobby for some years now. You can't make stuff work without calculating these tolerances. I am sure professionals who work on standards know/do better than me.
I already have a common charger. In fact I have three! They are all USB-C Power Delivery devices: small lightweight charger, large powerful charger, and a battery pack.
I also have special cables for different devices, but it’s hardly onerous.
Please go back and rewrite your cookie law to be implemented in HTTP / some wire protocol so that I can use browser whitelisting.
We are not going to be stuck with usb c for decades. Good grief. If a significantly better technology comes along that requires a new connector I am sure new legislation can make way for it. That said I don't support laws like this. I don't like laws that limit possibilities for consumers. I prefer laws that expand them like right-to-repair and network neutrality when it comes to tech.
Would it be possible for EU to select a standard, and request each member state to tax non-standard products sold at an increasing YOY rate. This would give some time to Apple to figure it out while putting the words in action now without punishing consumers from day one. Also, making some money on the back of a GAFA.
There is a time to figure it out. The whole thing is discussed for years. Apple must have seen it coming. In addition the legaslative process isn't finished, yet. And then the final legislative measure will have a grace period and only affect new products.
Great news but needs serious enforcement and vigilance against various tricks that manufacturers might employ to "encourage" users to buy their own charger. Example: if a phone sets a lower charging current when it is not connected to the same-brand charger, no matter if that charger can source the necessary current, that would trick the user in believing the original charger is better by shorting the charging time, so the user would be lured into buying one, and we could end up in a even worse situation in which for most people a product and its charger would come in two packages and two shipments.
It seems to me thr EU is very good at making plans without considering second and 3rd order consequences.
This seems like a good idea on the surface but look at the shit-show that the cookie/data regs have created on the web today.
I hope whatever law they write is encompassing enough that we don’t get the equivalent of horrible workarounds - maybe apple just stops having a cable and we all have to buy MagSafe now…..
2. Impact assessment study: unbundling of chargers for mobile phones and similar devices (June 2021) - to identify different regulatory and non-regulatory policy options to achieve unbundling and address the technical pre-conditions and consequences of unbundling
3. Technical supporting study: wireless charging technologies used for mobile phones and similar devices (April 2021) - to analyse and update on the status of wireless charging technologies
I feel like there's bigger fish to fry. There's more and more li-ion appliances and tools, most with proprietary chargers (think all the power tools), and in many cases no user replaceable battery packs (e.g. vacuum cleaners).
It really sucks that I need a new charger + battery if I want to use some bosch or dewalt tool instead of a ryobi or whatever I happen to have. And I can't use these tools' batteries to power USB devices..
I'm sure all these electric vacuum cleaners are a big lump of e-waste when the battery inevitably dies.
Phones have standardized pretty well. Apple is an outlier but I don't think that's a huge deal, and the cost of forcing them (and their users) to switch may be worse than the status quo.
I think that's a lot harder problem, since there's a wide variety of needs that general batteries will have, vs smartphone chargers (and not even smartphone batteries)
There are some hard parts (e.g. I don't expect mechanical compatibility across appliances anytime soon) and easy parts (charging). There's really nothing fancy about the chargers that all the appliances use.
USB PD isn't designed for smartphone batteries, it can power lots of things, including laptops, monitors, soldering irons, large power banks. Appliances' batteries are hardly any different from a power bank. There is no "battery smarts" in the charger itself, it just gives juice to a charge controller located by the battery. I don't know if it scales enough to be usable for 48V appliances, but a lot of stuff could be powered by a common interface (and, conversely, most large batteries could easily double as a power bank, and they indeed do if you just attach the right electronics downstream of it; having this built-in would be an interesting step).
Have they figured out how a mere mortal can tell what a USB cable can do without plugging it in? Because USB might be one of the most confusing standards there is.
And I don't believe for a second that making all USB-C cables capable of everything in the standard isn't massively wasteful itself. If the intent is to cut down on waste then that would miss the mark.
I'm also curious about this. 99% of Ethernet cables i've come across had "CAT5e" (or another cat) spelled out on the cable's coat, and that proved useful. With USB, on the other hand...
1) legislation forces a standard upon every device maker. Because technology advances all the time legislation will have to change the port every ~10 years. This might happen or not, potentially forcing device makers into building obsolete tech into their devices.
2) make a law which forces device makers to hold regular meetings/whatever to decide upon themselves which port they want to use. The port that gets 51% or more of the votes becomes the standard. If two consecutive rounds of voting can’t find a standard legislation will decide the standard.
I can think of many more ways, one of which being to just let companies decide which port to use without enforced coordination.
I think it's way more likely for new port technology to advance if a OEM can immediately put it in their next product to validate it in the market than waiting for coordination.
If someone designs a new port that is way better, how will they convince other manufacturers at the regular meeting that this should be the new one if it's not even tested in the market?
What you're proposing are two "design by committee" ways of handling this and making it look like there's no other way to handle this or that the status quo isn't better than the proposed changes.
I can think of other ways too, but the EU wants to regulate this part of the economy and i believe they will take way too much time to adopt new standards or simply ignore new ones. Making USB-C the port for decades and stopping any advance in technology here.
Your second scenario is basically what happened: the EU MOU gave the industry a decade, they came up with USB C in 2014, and here we are with most of the industry using USB C and legislation pushing Apple to adopt it.
750 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 288 ms ] threadJust getting this into law has already been in the works for years and years, if the EU had worked a bit faster we would have been stuck with micro USB-B, which would have been unfortunate.
But Apple didn't want to listen and now the EU commission is sick of it and introduces a law. It's the industry's own damn fault that it didn't take the hand that reached out to it.
I think it's fine to be stuck on a "good enough" standard, if this results in less e-waste and less need to upgrade all accessories simply because the dominant connection port changed.
If we wanted to have the standard update itself every 15 years or so, we can have a body dedicated to selecting, or creating, such a standard. We don't write automotive standards directly into our laws, so we don't have to the same with charging port technology either. As the maxim goes, "every problem of computer science can be solved with another layer of indirection, except for having too many layers of indirection".
That’s your opinion. I disagree and I certainly don’t want to see it written into law.
What solution do you propose? If you have solution let us know?
With that logic you could say, "why ban dangerous levels of pesticides in the food, if people don't like it, they will not buy the product."
It will be interesting to know how the connector is agreed upon and by whom.
Plus, this is such a minor issue. You get a device and the charger for it and that is the end of it. If you buy multiple devices that you carry around with incompatible chargers then you carry (assuming you even need to charge on the road) a couple of cables (or one with multiple connectors). It's about as much of a none issue as you will ever get.
I feel for Apple's hurt pride here that they should adopt something they didn't invent, but since we are a mixed Android/Apple household, getting rid of Lightning will be nice.
I live in a mixed Apple and Android house and its a non-issue. If it was an issue, we'd just consolidate our house, but we don't, because -- like you -- we don't find it enough of an issue to care.
Sony had a different charger model (with a different voltage down to tens of volts, or with a different connector) for nearly every single device released.
Want more than one power brick (one for the office and one for the home/vacation home)? Spend a lot of money for the convenience, or carry 2 kilos of chargers wherever you go.
Some devices eschewed power supplies altogether and used cradles. Lose the cradle and the device is unusable. Carry the cradle, and it becomes an extra 500g in your everyday carry.
If you were lucky, your device supported a barrel jack or another generic connector, but you had to carry around a universal power supply with adjustable voltage and polarity because they all used different configurations. Get something wrong, and your expensive device is fried.
I remember the early 2000s and the pre-USB charger era. I don't remember it fondly, because it was frankly stupid. Even the worst universal standard is better than no standard at all. And I say this having lived through the era of Micro USB dominance, an era that has killed the charging ports of many of my phones.
Based on other recent legislation from the EU that I've had to work closely with, I would say the EU legislators are very aware of the pitfalls that come with writing a specific technology into law. They seem to deal with this by writing an initial recommendation, or providing a few concrete examples of how to conform int to the law. But hand off the longer term management to some sort of agency or regulator that already exists, and instructs them to work directly with industry to fine tune the technical aspects.
Taking this approach create a natural escape hatch for new standards being introduced without new law being written. It'll still create a natural dampener on innovation in specific area, but it avoid completely stifling it.
Also on quick FYI, USB-B has never been used on a modern mobile phone. The port is bigger than most phones!
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USB-3.0-Stecker_(Typ...
No, this has to be voted by the parliament like any law, not approved by each member.
> getting this into law has already been in the works for years and years
The goal was to not require a law and make manufacturers agree to a standard without legislation, because that makes it easier to evolve.
Apple is the only one that wouldn't agree to that, so that means it has to become a law apparently, otherwise they won't do anything.
If a new standard appears, I expect the USB-IF to notify the EU while they're working on it so that legislation can evolve in time. The EU parliament is very quick to pass new laws when necessary.
Almost all EU legislation needs the approval of the Council of the European Union - which comprises representatives from all 27 member states.
The Ordinary Legislative Procedure goes Commission -> Parliament -> Council -> Adoption. If the Council and Parliament don't immediately agree then there's a step in there for negotiation between all three institutions.
Aaargh20318 is probably wrong that all 27 need to agree, though, most things are decided in Council on the basis of Qualified Majority Voting which does not need all 27 to agree.
I mean, USB 4 can already do up to 40 Gbps, and upcoming versions of the standard are said to be going to 80 Gbps[1]
[1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/16858/intel-executive-posts-t...
In the other hand, HN is US-dominated and they don't like regulations over there.
This is absolutely a good regulation, proven by previous similar regulations. I have about a kg of waste cables laying around. We need to start acting smart about how we deal with plastics.
Ah, yes - confirmed in the article!
It changed a problem from "find the right charger" to "will this charger charge this phone quickly or slowly?" with hardly any problems. Someone will post a link to that Google engineer who tested cables, and there was a manufacturer who supplied non-USB power via a USB plug (can't remember which voltage but it wasn't 5V1A), but on the whole, a great improvement over the old state.
Somehow my 25W USB-PD original genuine Samsung charger doesn't charge my 2021 iPad Pro which normally uses a 20W USB-C charger...it just makes no sense.
But compare it to the mess phone chargers were in 2005.
What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones?
People having a lot of legacy MFi stuff. Car docks and stereo systems in particular are expensive to replace.
The iPhone at this point is just a phone. I suspect most people own them because their good tools for everyday life. Based on an observation of my parents, their friends, and parents of my partner, I would say that most of them don't give a rat-arse about the port on the bottom. They just want the phone to work with the cables they already have. For many of these people an iPhone and iPad Air will be the only computers they own.
I appreciate that my point is a little undermined by the new iPad Air, but I suspect that iPhone will go to wireless only charging, something the iPad can't do, and Apple don't want to go through two transitions in less than 5 years.
Apple now ship more lightning cable in a single year than all the 30 Pin exist in the ecosystem combined. The scale is just different.
Now days of course, they’re all moving to wireless charging anyway.
Actually stumbled on this right now and if I ever need another one, will give this a go.
Apple's timing with the lighting port wasn't great, with it arriving just before USB-C, and I imagine they're very reluctant to change the port on their phones because people already have lightning cables everywhere.
Personally I would love to see USB-C on my iPhone, but I look at my parents, and having the port change for them would be a pain in the arse. All their cables are lightning cables, they don't have any USB-C devices, and ofcourse, all of their cables are the ones that came in the box. I suspect a significant portion of Apple's customers fall into that category.
What is the efficiency of wireless charging?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_charging
Of course problems like heating up the battery and the huge amount of power needed if everyone does it remain.
But thats not point here. Everyone is talking about the climate change and then we want to charge millions or billions of phones with ~50% extra power?
Good idea!
Symbols can hold power though.
14.26 Wh * 900000000 * 365 (days) = 4684 GWh/yr
46% = 2154 GWh/yr wasted energy
That's about the total energy output of Madagascar with a population of 27 million people.
There's a lot of reasons why the above numbers are wrong but I just wanted to highlight that at current efficiency, there would be a lot of wasted energy. :)
I would be more concerned about charging speed and heating.
Inefficiency implies heating :)
And wow, do I love charging my phone using my laptops USB-C charger.. it's just so fast!
I don't really see the appeal of wireless charging. Faster direct charging would be a bigger win, IMO.
For example, Samsung S21 uses a 4000mAh battery. iPhone 12 Pro uses a 2700mAh battery.
At 75% efficiency, it's effectively like charging a 3600mAh battery.
Both likely get a full charge every day. So, even with less efficient charging, you come out ahead vs. a Samsung device.
That's also assuming efficiency of the actual charging bricks is similar. Apple tends to be known for high quality and efficient charger bricks, so it wouldn't surprise me if that has an impact.
I know a few folks that moved to exclusively wireless charging because they broke the USB port on their phones over the years.
But it will give them some years.
If Apple, for example placed both a USB-C and lightning port on future phones, but the charge speed of the USB was crippled, I’d argue that they wouldn’t be compliant with the EU regulation.
Existing customers, yes. Apple are probably trying to grow their market share though, which means they also need to consider those people who have usb cables too.
But it is Apple, who knows what they are going to do to avoid regulation.
That doesn’t sound right either.
Should a government be able to dictate the feature set of a class of devices?
Which is even more of a waste given the inefficiency of wireless charging and the kWh cost of electricity in an ICE.
Apple was on the USB-design committee (and lightning experience informed the design) and knew all the timing. The standard wasn’t even finalized for quite some time after Apple started shipping lightning.
Lightning has now been around longer than the 30-pin connector, I really don’t understand Apple’s reluctance. I go of my way to by Type C devices for simplicity’s sake, though still have to travel with micro-A, Type C, lightning, and a special watch charger, grr. At least I have only one type of power brick.
This isn't the first time the EU mentioned those plans, the current situation is basically the phone manufacturers regulating themselves to avoid an explicit regulation by the EU.
> it's Apple and their cable.
Of course there is always that one greedy asshole ruining it for everyone else.
> What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones?
They probably considered Lightning to be superior but couldn't make it the industry standard without loosing their ability to charge absurd amounts of licensing fees for it.
I don't think it's this. Lightning was superior to micro-USB, but it's certainly not superior to USB-C.
I think the problem is that everyone remembers the transition from the 30 pin dock connector to Lightning. Apple has a huge reputation for just changing their cables all the time.
This is largely unwarranted. For the portable devices they had 30-pin for ~10 years, then lightning for ~10 years, and it looks like it's on its way out soon. I think 10 years is a fairly reasonable time to keep ecosystems the same. People don't have 10 year old cables and chargers around.
This reputation is pervasive though. I think they're holding off until they can drop the cable entirely in 1-2 years.
Yes they do, why wouldn't they? I have mini/micro USB chargers and cables that are older, same for USB A/B cables, same for network cables.
Only cables that get tossed are Apple lightning cables because they are crap quality and fray within 2-3 years, and other non-standard crap (pre-2010 proprietary phone/camera chargers like 30-pin and the like)
Just looking in my cable drawer I have USB types A, B, mini-A, mini-B, micro-A, micro-B, and C. I also have lightening and apple dock from the original iPhone. I have some weird Chinese cable that looks like USB micro-A and micro-B but doesn't fit either. There are a few barrel connectors from my old Nokia phones. A couple of my wife's old Samsung phone cables. This is just from the stuff I've owned.
And the idea of a common, readily available for most people, port is exactly what this legislation is about. It should apply to charging cables for phones too.
I can think of 3 reasons:
1. A lightning port is slightly smaller than USB-c, so it enable Apple to keep their phone slimmer than the competition in theory.
2. Apple loves to be in control of everything. With lightning, they could make a switch to a "lightning 2.O" cable / port whenever they so pleased. With USB-C they would be restricted by the USB-IF.
3. They can sell more cable and licensing fees this way. With USB-C, everyone will be able to buy a better and cheaper cable than the Apple ones, and Apple won't receive even a cent from them.
So I suggest
4. They think lightning may become a real standard, everyone will adopt it, with licensing fees.
Reason 1 I can kind of understand (if valid).
I personally really wish for a flag ship phone like the Galaxy S21 Ultra that doesn't have such a huge camera array.
Only non-minor damage I’ve suffered is I broke the volume down button (the spring behind it, really) on my Xs Max. Minor scratches I don’t care about. I’m pretty amazed at how durable the phones actually are and, if I break one now, it’s probably an $85 screen and an hour of my time or worst case a $400-600 replacement phone.
Yeah I'd much prefer a phone that's what, 1mm thicker? Maybe 2 at a push
Apple will still find a way to do what they want, especially given they play a non-trivial role in the USB-IF and provided significant resources towards developing USB-C in the first place.
I would like USB-C on my iPhone, but I think the biggest reason why Apple hasn't done it is just because of momentum, and that it _is_ a switch from the current situation.
In theory sure but in practice there are thinner Android phones with USB-C connectors than any iPhone. Basically these days the thickness is purely about how good camera you want and how much battery. The usb/lightning plug is not really an issue.
For the record the thinnest iPhone is iPhone 5 at 7.6 mm and thinnest Android is Xiaomi Mi 11 Lite at 6.8mm
Also from a purely user experience point of view making the phones thinner then they mostly are now does not add anything instead just makes the experience worse as the phone will feel worse when hold (if the other dimensions and weight stay the same)
This always struck me as a solution looking for a problem. Are modern phones really that chunky that we have to sacrifice functionality to shave a few fractions of a mm?
That shouldn't be at all tiring unless you are holding them for literal hours nonstop, or unless you're a small child - and in both scenarios it's good to be encouraged to put the phone down after a while.
The argument that its a physically smaller port feels like an "Apple circa-2016" argument, not an "Apple circa-2021" argument. They just made the iPhone 13 0.25mm thicker to fit a bigger battery (among other things); I think they've moved past the "thinner at any cost" argument (though I do believe that was an argument for lightning at one time).
"Control" is a tenuous given they've thrown USBC/Thunderbolt on everything except the iPhone. They already have a massive voice inside the USB-IF; switching the iPhone to USBC would only increase their strength among the USB community. And sure, they'd still have to be standards compliant, but I really don't think "lightning 2.0" is ever coming, period. I think they have the hard metrics to prove that 0.1% of iPhone users ever use that port for anything except charging.
And selling more cables is also tenuous. They'll sell USB-C cables anyway; I just paid them $30 or whatever for one for my laptop charger, because the two offbrand ones Best Buy sold me couldn't carry 85 watts.
The best argument I've ever heard for lightning is actually: Physically, its a MUCH sturdier connector. Just look at the inside of a USBC female port, versus lightning. There's just less stuff; USBC has a big tooth that sticks out, whereas lightning is just contacts along the outside. Lightning connectors, and cables, are much simpler, and thus less likely to experience damage over time.
So, yeah; I think they want to skip USBC and go right to Qi, basically seal up the entire outside of the phone. And I can't say I disagree; my iPhone only ever charges over Qi. But, maybe its worthwhile to just make them keep USBC around, if for no other reason than e-waste.
You also don't need a 30$ cable for 90W, any cable that is rated for 5 amps will do the job.
I think this was a typo and you meant to say “cable connector (plug), not device connector (socket)”.
It’s a good design and specifically designed to avoid a USB mini A design botch in which the device side would wear out before the cable side did.
FWIW Apple is a USB member and participated in the USB-C design, including learning from lightning (which was comtemporaneously secretly under way). This is like Intel and IEEE-754
The lightning cable is not required for the MFi program, you can certify lots of things for MFi. Not sure why they couldn't expand the program to USB-C cables. They might do it already, honestly.
>https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/40/80.22
>(f) Every retailer and wholesale purchaser-consumer shall equip all gasoline pumps from which gasoline is dispensed into motor vehicles with a nozzle spout that meets all the following specifications:
>(1) The outside diameter of the terminal end shall not be greater than 0.840 inches (2.134 centimeters).
>(2) The terminal end shall have a straight section of at least 2.5 inches (6.34 centimeters).
>(3) The retaining spring shall terminate at least 3.0 inches (7.6 centimeters) from the terminal end.
If these regulations weren't present, Ford could have it's own gas stations and gasoline that were incompatible with GM's and so on.
To me, this smells like internal turf protection or politics.
The male lightning connector is a single flat piece; the female connector is a hole with the contacts on the top + bottom of the port.
Compare to USB-C, which has an exposed "tab" in the middle of the female connector, and the male connector has a matching "hole" in the middle.
This makes USB-C more vulnerable to e.g. dust collecting, and damage of the exposed tab. Unlike lightning, which can collect dust in the female port, but it's easily cleaned out using a paperclip or SIM card removal tool.
In general it's easy to see also that the lightning connector itself is far more exposed to the environment than any of the USB connectors which are largely enclosed.
“Billions” sounds like a HN bubble statement.
I don't own a single lightning device, but everything (minus older devices) has usb-c. Even rechargeable battery inside a flashlight.
One of the big reasons for me getting the OP2 was the port and I'm still using it (with LineageOS). I'm sure I would have upgraded long ago if it didn't have a USB-C port as that's what I've standardised on for all my portable electronics.
Majority of electronic devices are older than usb-c standard, even the electric screwdriver I bought two months ago was micro-usb, as is the shaver I used this morning. At work about half the low power devices are PoE or Micro-USB.
Aside from a few laptops USB-C is still rare.
https://epsnews.com/2017/12/28/usb-type-c-adoption-keeps-gro...
Looks like phones alone account for ~3B in a single year, so no, it's not just laptops. Even if you exclude those, the "consumer electronics" segment looks like it'll go over 1B/year pretty soon. Get out of your bubble.
https://www.marketresearchblog.org/2021/09/22/usb-type-c-mar...
That seems to show that the US is a plurality, but not a majority, of USB-C shipments.
>What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones?
I would think that "what connector is better" definitely plays an important part in Apple's reasoning.
A trouble with lightning is the dust etc. gets stuck in the phone socket - I've had to replace two at like £50 a go. Getting a new cable is often easier.
Which means that the part which wears over time (the springs) is on the port instead of the cable.
On USB-C, the springs are all in the cable; the port is a single flat piece (the tab in the middle) surrounded by a metallic shield.
Additionally, Lightning plug connectors have a higher tendency to corrode. This is, I believe because the exposed mating surface on the plug end easily gathers debris (in particular e.g. oils and grease), and that can cause poor contact which can result in oxidation due to heating and electrolytic effects. USB-C does not have this problem, as none of the mating surfaces are exposed to being touched. The debris that tends to collect inside USB-C ports is usually solid fluff, not liquids.
And Lightning is just a terrible standard anyway. iPhones to this day use compressed video over USB2 for their "HDMI" output dongles (which actually have an Ax class CPU in them just to decode the video) because Apple were too short-sighted in their design to allow for enough expandability to support uncompressed digital video properly.
Furthermore, usb-c is younger than lightning. And lightning was arguably superior to previous usbs (more durable).
So while unification sounds nice, net gain would be actually close to nothing, it would be a change for the sake of change, and would probably annoy as much people as it would please.
I'm sure that's the same argument every phone manufacture made before the EU legislated it and Apple found their loophole.
An adapter to fit on the end of the lightening could alleviate that problem until people have switched.
go look for phone charger waste and why it is important to stop having 4685486468478 different type of chargers, people are very selfish in this thread
I mean, we use hundreds of different protocols over-the-air, so why can't we do the same with cables?
The only problem I see with this is that fiber optic cables are physically less robust (you can't bend them as much).
Pretty much, if you bend it too much, your connection will slow down temporarily till you straighten it again. That seems like a fine tradeoff.
Industrial fiber systems usually used fixed speed, so too much bending leads to a total failure of the connection - hence the strict bend limits on fibers.
The sockets would need some work for decent power transfer - it needs to do at least the 150 watts that USB-C can do, and preferably 150 kwatts for charging a car.
For 150 watts while maintaining backwards compatibility, all that's needed is larger contact area (curved spring clips) to support 3 amps and the use of 48 volts after negotiation.
For 150 kilowatts we'd be talking some cutting edge stuff, but not beyond the realms of possibility. Specifically, you'd probably need to use voltages up to 20,000 volts, 10 amps, which is going to mean you need to have mating and sealing rubber isolators on both plug and socket at least 3mm thick between poles. At these voltages, you cannot have air between the pins, so it must be a hermetic seal. You'd also need to measure leakage current and keep the cable capacitance low enough that when someone cuts through the cable with scissors the voltage can be dropped in microseconds to prevent zapping them.
But the business person tells me that even if I could do it and make it safe enough to use, there is zero chance any big company would license the tech.
You can also put whatever voltage that can be physically handled over the power pins after negotiating with the other side. USB-PD is the common standard but it can be extended.
That's because of EU regulation. All the big manufacturers had their own connector before that, micro-USB started to look like a common connector among the low end manufacturers.
This is the next step for that regulation and has been in the cards for some time.
I am interested in that (because the "secret history" of many market driven change often ends up being a regulator in one influential area made a good decision - the usual example being California and car pollution standards)
Edit: just to say I am not commenting either way on the EU here, or on regulators in general. I am just interested if there was a clear point in USB standards process that EU intervention made a difference.
If so it would be useful to know their track record in this when judging this situation.
Before the charger regulations the biggest world wide impact of EU regulations was RoHS. That’s when the EU really started to come into its own as a global player. Did you realize all those old cables you still have lying around have lead in them to make them flexible?
Worse yet, "before micro-USB", chargers universally had a captive cable. Situation that GP describes - same charger, 3 cables - is already an improvement on that.
>That's because of EU regulation.
Patently untrue: the Micro USB has won over proprietary connectors before the EU regulation, thanks to being cheaper than ever-changing charging & data cables that used to be the norm. That in turn was possible through large volume, and also through well designed standard; it was the third iteration of the plug - after original full sized A/B, and after the somewhat underwhelming Mini USB.
In particular the Micro USB was specced for quite good reliability - including 10,000 plug-unplug cycles, which is quite high for consumer grade hardware, and that was made possible thanks to the sheer experience amassed over years by the USB consortium. Not by regulator's fiat.
That currently USB-C is ruling the market is again thanks to USB consortium's active push, together with large volume of all sorts of devices using it.
Personally I like my lighting cables and I do hope there'll be a grandfather clause but Apples behaviour(logical for them) has put us in an uncomfortable seat tbh.
But I will say this - the lightening connector is a lot more reliable than my usb-c connector. It fits better. It falls out less. And it breaks less often - it’s not as bad as the old usb connector but it’s not as good as lightening.
I don't know about other technical aspects but I really like the fact that Lightning male is just a solid block. It's definitely more durable than type-C
There are currently more than 1 Billion active iPhone worldwide, even at one lightning cable per iPhone that equates to 1 billion lightning cable in use. And you have iPad and other accessories. I would not be surprise if there are more than 2 Billion Lightning cable currently in use.
Seems wasteful to abandon 2 billion cables? Although I suppose Apple could stop shipping cables as well. And only include a Lightning to USB-C adopter.
Not to mention lightning is a better design and higher quality cable than USB-C. Apple could mandate MFi for iPhone USB-C charging as well, but that sort of defeat the purpose of USB-C?
Or even better if EU could mandate USB-C quality and standards. Say not to crappy USB-C cables. Which would be even better than forcing USB-C on devices.
It's the $25 lightning cable, which is literally engineered to break.
Remember the outrage among "normal" users when the Dock Connector was replaced by Lightning? Everyone was upset they'd have to buy new cables - even though Lightning was vastly superior. Now, there's hardy a difference in the form factor. And make no mistake - normal people don't have USB-C chargers and cables lying around.
https://mg.lol/blog/badusb-cables/
But perhaps that is the intention: the government can just switch out your USB charger and then has access to everything that isn't covered by Apple cloud yet.
The original iPod (remember those?) 30-pint connector was around for eleven years, 2003-2014:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dock_connector#Mobile_devices
Lightning has been around for "only" nine as of 2021, having ben released in 2012:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_(connector)
An article from 2012:
> As for Lightning's expected lifespan, the format is estimated to be in use for the next five to ten years, almost identical to the now-defunct 30-pin standard.
* https://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/21/analyst_lightning...
Yes, it's nice that we finally have a supposedly universal plug, but we only recently got here. It may be that they simply don't think it's worth it yet to 'force' people to switch infrastructure yet. That the USB-C ecosystem is universal enough (though I'm sure them switching would push it forward).
This is a little unfair, when Apple has been more consistent in keeping the same ports and cables, and moved to generic USB-chargers long before it was standard for anyone else?
USB-C wasn't even finalised until 2014; I can't remember how common USB-C was on phones before that, but Apple was using lightning for _years_ before that.
What's the e-Waste consequence of changing and forcing everyone to buy new chargers, adapters, cables when they next buy a new device? Suddenly all the cables and chargers you've been using for ten years are useless.
Everyone else was using micro USB for years before usb-C. So for years, every phone cable except Apple could also be used to charge your headphones, Kindle, Tablet, etc. It isn’t just phones we are talking about. When pretty much all devices are on one standard, and Apple refuses, that is where the e waste comes from. All my micro usb cables are still useful for random older products around the house. All my USB C cables are useful for random newer products around the house. My lightning cable is useful for exactly one item around my house ever at any given time. I have zero other uses for it. People don’t need to go out and buy new chargers and cables because they already have them for their other devices. That’s the whole point of interoperability.
There were multiple other connectors in use (the 4 most common were Mini-USB A, Mini-USB B, Micro-USB A and Micro-USB B but that's not exclusive) — I still have a few of them because that “every phone cable” nirvana was never true at any point prior to USB-C. microUSB's fragility also meant that most people ended up buying many cheap replacement cables so from an e-waste perspective I'd be hesitant to say that was an advantage over the lifetime of the device.
microUSB also had many limitations — not just the inconvenience of being handed and easily broken in normal usage but also core features like not being able to supply enough power: many non-Apple tablets used proprietary cables because otherwise it would have taken hours longer to charge.
USB C came out years after Apple shipped Lightning and unsurprisingly is a lot more competitive — it's not like the industry didn't learn from the problems with earlier USB standards and I think that it makes sense for Apple to switch now.
Profit.
What was the reason for abandoning FireWire?
This is a bad decision, because:
1. The European Commission doesn't have the time or resources to make consistently good decisions about phone design. It is a minor miracle that Apple managed to gather enough talented people together in one spot to give us the iPhone. The EU can't replicate that level of ability (observe the quite remarkable failure of EU phone manufacturers).
2. If (when, really) technology improves, progress will be slowed.
3. Heaven help us if we need a bureaucratic response to protect indifferent customers from nonuniform chargers. There are actual problems in the world they could be focusing on.
Bottom line? My prediction is next year's iPhone is going to have USB-C.
The people also talk about huge profits apple is making on charging cables, which just doesn't make sense if you take even a cursory glance at the price of lightning cables on Amazon. I saw numerous multi packs of cables selling for ~$2.25 for a 6ft+ cables. Apple has already signaled the direction they are going with charging standards, and it's USB-C. They are just waiting for the supported lifetime of the lightning cable to be over.
Submarine patents and the like can't appear on products you invented for yourself. Admittedly kinda far fetched in the case of USB-C. Then again look at historical madness like USB to RS232 adapter knock off chips and drivers written to brick knock off hardware.
Nobody wants the wild west experience of USB-C where nothing is reliable or trustworthy. The user experience is just likely to be better with lightning.
The benefits don't outweigh the inconveniences of switching. There's a mature ecosystem around Lightning for third party accessories. And at 50% market share, their cables are pretty ubiquitous. [0]
And they added Lightning charging to other products they ship (Apple Pencil, Mouse, Keyboard, Remote...).
Right now, I don't think USB-C, especially with the smart cables that might or might not support every features, is an improvement over Lightning.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...
https://www.amazon.com/ASICEN-Retractable-Lightning-Charging...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply
Source? Since 2009 I probably had 8 iPhones or so, never seen or heard about any adapter
[1] https://www.apple.com/nl/iphone-13-pro/specs/
There’s nothing technically wrong with Lightning, but it’s a monumental pain to have to carry around 2 sets of incompatible cables because of it!
Also, you don’t need to carry around a wireless charger, you leave the charger at home and charge your phone overnight.
One night recently, I managed to get locked out of my flat, after midnight, with nothing but my phone in my pocket. On about 15% charge! Thankfully that was enough to book a hotel and buy a lightning cable (and a toothbrush) at a 24-hour convenience store using Apple Pay, enabling me to recharge the phone on the hotel's USB charging sockets. If I'd needed to find a wireless charger I would have been totally screwed!
I suppose wireless chargers will become similarly ubiquitous if they're the only way to charge phones. If you can expect to find wireless charging in every hotel room and every train seat then it's not a problem. But I suspect that's a long way off.
I have seen them in many commuter trains and most coffee shops, like Starbucks. They're surprisingly common if you know to look out for the symbol.
I travel a significant amount of times, sometimes for work, mostly for leisure. Nowadays I carry one single 65w USB-C charger, it charges: my work laptop (if travelling for work), my personal laptop, my phone, my book, my NC headphones for the airplane, my TWS earbuds. I only own two chargeable items that it doesn't charge: my watch (which I charge with the reverse wireless charging my phone does so I still don't need to carry a charger) and my car (lost cause, obviously usb-c will never replace CCS).
No. Why would I ?
I forgot, I have another chargeable item that I occasionally carry: a portable speaker. It charges via USB-c.
Apple cares about one thing only, and that is market capitalization and profits.
I wonder whether Apple would comply to a USB-based standard or move directly to only supporting wireless charging.
Thinner iPhones anyone?
I imagine that there was a time when it made sense to force everybody to have a VGA port..
What creates waste is that every time people buy a new phone they get a new charger, which they don't need in 99% of cases because they already have a box full of them.
This seems very small compared to the amount of non-recyclable plastic I get every time I go to the supermarket (Fruit and veg in plastic wrapping).
Are USB cables very resource heavy to make? Is there something that makes them especially bad when compared to other waste?
[1]: https://ec.europa.eu/environment/topics/plastics/single-use-...
It surely doesn't make that much sense to let Apple do its own hypocrite thing where they spew out platitudes about the environment while clearly the only driving force behind their decisions is how they suit their financial targets.
Cable is 30% copper, 24% stainless steel, 16% other non-plastic materials. EPS is 13% copper and copper alloys, 7% aluminium, 6% steel, 37% other non-plastic components.
According to EU studies, 31% of the EPS and cables are incorrectly disposed.
https://op.europa.eu/o/opportal-service/download-handler?ide...
They are not _especially_ bad compare to other waste, but it is the waste that be easily avoided.
- food waste and related food wrapping waste
- planned obsolescence (TVs, cars, washing machines, and just about every product out there)
- car-oriented architecture in the cities, where public transportation is an afterthought
- energy waste due to personal infrastructure/tooling (cooking/washing/heating infra, personal TV vs shared screening rooms, etc)
- war and social control: what's the environmental cost (transportation, manufacture of mechanical/chemical weapons) of repression (of, say an environmental protest like the anti-COP21 movement)? what about an outright war on a foreign nation?
These are just examples, but environmental concerns are rather "easy" to tackle given proper political will. The problem is people concerned with the coming ecological apocalypse are either ignored, silenced, bullied, mutilated or murdered by Nation States and multinationals.
It's not like the whole EU legislative body is now pushing with all their might to ban phone chargers, it's just a single working group of many.
Much closer to 4 years.
We don’t know the same “average” consumers.
And if USB-C doesn't cut it anymore, who's to say that industry can't move to a different system? EU legislation usually isn't outlandish but follows industry practices. If device manufacturers bring up a pressing need for USB-D, EU will allow both for a transition period and then mandate USB-D (or split up mandatory standards by device class if need be).
I don't see how every tiny iteration of a standard has to result in a different plug system - the incentive for companies to iterate plugs just to force consumers to re-buy gear is just too high.
>Even the seemingly most basic function of USB-C — powering devices — continues to be a mess of compatibility issues, conflicting proprietary standards, and a general lack of consumer information to guide purchasing decisions.
https://www.androidauthority.com/state-of-usb-c-870996/
USB-C is not lacking. You simply get what you paid for. I am using USB-C to charge my laptop, phone, earbuds. It's been amazing having just 1 single cable dangling on my desk, instead of several. This alone has been enough positive to justify the move over to USB-C.
Also, does it have data? At 2.0 speeds? At 3.1 speeds?
Just because tip of the cable is looking like USB-C, you shouldn't expect it to support HDMI etc.
Most people are not looking for full set of USB-C features. Most people are just looking to charge their device.
I don't remember last time I wired up my phone to my computer for any data transfer, and I am a nerd who reads HN. Think about the average folk.
If we go further, a big chunk of people, don't even use anything like a file manager.
In short, biggest reason we have cables around these days is; To Charge Up. That's it.
Also, $40 per cable is completely and utterly ridiculous. That's 5-8% of monthly salary of Bulgaria (EU country) for a short cable.
That's why you don't buy a $40 usb cable for charging. You don't need all the pins in usb-c standard for all purposes. You can have a few USB-C cables for various purposes. Fully-implemented ones are easy to identify, just by their weight difference really.
>> Even charging from cable to cable is completely different. But I do not believe at all that regular people do not ever have the need to connect their device to a computer. They might not most of the time, but that one time they do they'll be kicking themselves over it.
I wouldn't say they will be kicking themselves over it. If they really cared and knew about transfer speeds of different cables, they would be one to invest in a better cable ahead of time. If they didn't know about those details, they will have no surprises to begin with. Because it works on par with USB2.0 at least.
Actually you know you shouldn't expect much from the $5 one. But the $40 is a lottery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply
Also, more ports on USB-C make for better "alternate mode" functionality, where some data lanes are re-purposed (with an analog mux) for another use, like displayport, or audio DAC.
The worst part of lightning is how flimsy it feels once it's been worn in.
Plus having the connectors inside with something to line it up seems like a battle hardened design choice now. Unless you're an idiot, you're not gonna break anything.
it would be sad if they didn't try to improve on previous designs
In later revisions (at least starting with micro USB, perhaps mini as well), the cable was explicitly designed to be the part prone to breakage, as it's easier to replace.
Too bad Apple didn't wanted to give this one to the USB consortium and we'll now be stuck with USB-C (and don't get me wrong : as much as i love the lightning connector, I vastly prefer a standard connector for everything, so USB-C it'll be).
USB-C is a very capable plug system, so I'll be happy if everything converges on this one instead.
Micro-USB requires more force because of its 2 teeth underneath, that's made to latch onto the socket. That was a mistake. In comparison, Mini-USB don't have this problem and slides straight similarly to USB-C in that sense.
A lot of thought process goes into this mechanical interaction of male/female plug/sockets.
I design/3d printed a lot of mechanical stuff for hobby for some years now. You can't make stuff work without calculating these tolerances. I am sure professionals who work on standards know/do better than me.
I already have a common charger. In fact I have three! They are all USB-C Power Delivery devices: small lightweight charger, large powerful charger, and a battery pack.
I also have special cables for different devices, but it’s hardly onerous.
Please go back and rewrite your cookie law to be implemented in HTTP / some wire protocol so that I can use browser whitelisting.
Ambivalence,
gorgoiler
This seems like a good idea on the surface but look at the shit-show that the cookie/data regs have created on the web today.
I hope whatever law they write is encompassing enough that we don’t get the equivalent of horrible workarounds - maybe apple just stops having a cable and we all have to buy MagSafe now…..
https://ec.europa.eu/growth/sectors/electrical-engineering/r...
1. Impact assessment study: common chargers of portable devices (December 2019)
PDF: https://op.europa.eu/o/opportal-service/download-handler?ide...
2. Impact assessment study: unbundling of chargers for mobile phones and similar devices (June 2021) - to identify different regulatory and non-regulatory policy options to achieve unbundling and address the technical pre-conditions and consequences of unbundling
PDF: https://op.europa.eu/o/opportal-service/download-handler?ide...
3. Technical supporting study: wireless charging technologies used for mobile phones and similar devices (April 2021) - to analyse and update on the status of wireless charging technologies
PDF: https://op.europa.eu/o/opportal-service/download-handler?ide...
It really sucks that I need a new charger + battery if I want to use some bosch or dewalt tool instead of a ryobi or whatever I happen to have. And I can't use these tools' batteries to power USB devices..
I'm sure all these electric vacuum cleaners are a big lump of e-waste when the battery inevitably dies.
Phones have standardized pretty well. Apple is an outlier but I don't think that's a huge deal, and the cost of forcing them (and their users) to switch may be worse than the status quo.
USB PD isn't designed for smartphone batteries, it can power lots of things, including laptops, monitors, soldering irons, large power banks. Appliances' batteries are hardly any different from a power bank. There is no "battery smarts" in the charger itself, it just gives juice to a charge controller located by the battery. I don't know if it scales enough to be usable for 48V appliances, but a lot of stuff could be powered by a common interface (and, conversely, most large batteries could easily double as a power bank, and they indeed do if you just attach the right electronics downstream of it; having this built-in would be an interesting step).
A step-up converter would probably make more sense though, since the power requirement is not >100W.
And I don't believe for a second that making all USB-C cables capable of everything in the standard isn't massively wasteful itself. If the intent is to cut down on waste then that would miss the mark.
1) legislation forces a standard upon every device maker. Because technology advances all the time legislation will have to change the port every ~10 years. This might happen or not, potentially forcing device makers into building obsolete tech into their devices.
2) make a law which forces device makers to hold regular meetings/whatever to decide upon themselves which port they want to use. The port that gets 51% or more of the votes becomes the standard. If two consecutive rounds of voting can’t find a standard legislation will decide the standard.
I think it's way more likely for new port technology to advance if a OEM can immediately put it in their next product to validate it in the market than waiting for coordination.
If someone designs a new port that is way better, how will they convince other manufacturers at the regular meeting that this should be the new one if it's not even tested in the market?
What you're proposing are two "design by committee" ways of handling this and making it look like there's no other way to handle this or that the status quo isn't better than the proposed changes.
And I hope they will all be forced to use the same voltage/quality.
Same should be done for laptops, most ridiculous company in this regard is Asus (other than that, i love the products).