2024? There's still plenty of time for them to remove the port altogether and go with just MagSafe/Qi. Which they control, and they still can get fees from.
Trust me when I say that Apple will NEVER submit to this legislation, they will find every sort of obscure or arcane tricks to comply with it without actually doing it. It would set a precedent that legislating can change Apple's behaviour, which they clearly do not want to give. If they show the EU Parliament it's pointless to go after them, maybe they will not try to dismantle their monopoly on the App Store, which is clearly the next thing they will go after this.
They already use USB-C in the iPad line. What I imagine as the most likely outcome is keeping USB-C as an option for charging (as it already is - you don't need to use MagSafe for charging any supported) and offering USB-C and/or wireless-only charging on phones. Being wireless-only on phones makes a lot of sense for ruggedness - a completely sealed iPhone could be easily used underwater.
- We already have reliable rumors that next-next iPhone (not this Sept, but next) will have USB-C port.
- Qi is not a standard they control like Lightning either way.
- Portless phone would be very unpopular (no fast charging), USB-C would be very popular. Apple would not choose to be unpopular just to watch the world hate them.
> - Portless phone would be very unpopular (no fast charging), USB-C would be very popular. Apple would not choose to be unpopular just to watch the world hate them.
The same Apple which removed headphone jack so they can sell more dongles and wireless headphones?
I can see them making portless phone just out of pure spite (maybe having cheaper version with port and not selling that in EU).
The headphone jack did take up a considerable amount of space and made waterproofing quite a bit harder. It't not like it was not a well-considered tradeoff. Companies don't work based on spite, but based on profit.
The existence of waterproof Samsung phones of the same thickness seems to disprove this line for me; it’s not a coincidence that AirPods were released at the same time. Removing the headphone jack and was at least in part about the upsell to wireless headphones apple also makes.
> I can see them making portless phone just out of pure spite (maybe having cheaper version with port and not selling that in EU).
What kind of mindset is this? Sometimes Apple prefers aesthetics over practicality, but they are not a spiteful company (unless you are Nvidia), particularly when it hurts customers.
Apple dropped the headphone port, despite wireless headphones still not being as good as wired (IMHO). This shows that they are perfectly willing to do that which is unpopular.
They already use USB-C on macs and iPads. The only practical reason for Lightning to survive is existing iPhone accessories. It could have been on the way out even before this. Not sure the fight is worth picking.
> The only practical reason for Lightning to survive is existing iPhone accessories
Do you have any vague idea how much money Apple makes from Lightning accessories? Every single thing that wants to use Lightning has to pay an Apple tax, and go through an incredibly cumbersome and expensive certification process. Letting that slip away from Apple's control means they lose a bit of control on their walled garden.
Meanwhile, MagSafe is also an environment for accessories they can control, and they can use as a way to extort fees from accessory developers. Apple has only one goal in mind - their margins. Everything they do must be seen in function of that. It's clear Apple is going to remove every single port from the iPhone, they only have to find how.
1. Macs have always had standard ports, such as USB-A and FireWire, and Lightning basically is never used in a master configuration anyway, so it would make no sense to put it on a Mac
2. iPads have just a tiny share of the overall market of iDevices, and they only put USB-C on the most expensive models with the selling point that the port could now be used also in a master configuration, and not only as a slave (and it's advertised as such on their website).
1. Not to get too pedantic, I hope, but Macs have certainly not "always" had standard ports -- before USB, mice and keyboards used ADB! In fact, Apple were fairly early adopters of USB, and arguably helped make it a de facto standard for desktop peripherals.
Firewire was also a technical standard but never became widespread; if I recall, it was Apple's attempt to push against the converging industry standards with what they saw as a technically superior solution. But only Apple and Sony ever bet on Firewire in a big way.
If Lightning is never used in a master configuration, how come you can use it to plug headphone into an iPhone? It wouldn't have made "no sense" to put Lightning connectors on Macs (although I definitely agree it wouldn't have been wise and I'm glad they didn't).
MagSafe is another non-standard Mac thing -- which was replaced with USB-C and then came back again, very unusually for Apple.
So, they certainly haven't always have standard ports, and Apple have not always been consistent.
2. You don't need USB-C to have your device act as a host, whatever the marketing material might say. USB On-The-Go has been around for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_On-The-Go The advantage of USB-C is that it gives you access to a wider market of third-party peripherals -- I'd say Apple saw the way the wind was blowing, and decided to sacrifice the control and fat margins you mentioned in favour of a better overall product.
Apple has only one goal in mind - their margins. Everything they do must be seen in function of that. It's clear Apple is going to remove every single port from the iPhone, they only have to find how.
I agree that they love a fat margin, and feel entitled to it, but I don't think that's quite the full story. Maybe I'm buying too much into the reality distortion field, but I think they genuinely believe they make better products due to their unique approach. That involves exercising strict control where they can (walled garden app store, proprietary connectors) and aggressively removing features that 10% of users rely on in order to give what they see as a better experience for the 90% (e.g. removing headphone jack); but sometimes also bending to market forces and embracing standards when they think it benefits users -- sometimes very early indeed. Think of the 2015 MacBook, which launched with just a single USB-C port for everything, when USB-C peripherals hadn't even become very widespread.
The test of all this will be whether iPhones continue using Lightning, or switch to USB-C. I'm very confident that they'll switch, in either the next revision or the one after.
It'll be a painful switch, but Apple is very good at powering through those (ADB to USB, 68K to PowerPC, removing floppy drive, removing CD drive, PowerPC to x86, 30-pin connector to Lightning, removing headphone jack, x86 to ARM). When they make up their mind to switch, they make it happen very quickly.
1.I was referring to new Macs, at least those that came after Steve Jobs came back (~97). Older computers were a nightmare in terms of ports and incompatibility thereof, the standardisation around the PC platform helped a lot and Apple was for a long time the only company going against that paradigm with its own platform. Also I'm not saying that Lightning can't and isn't used in a master configuration, I'm just saying that's not what it is usually meant to do, and it's seldom used as such.
2. I was there when USB OTG on USB A/B was a thing, and it was _horrible_. The combo A/B micro ports were terrible, and it was rare to find the right cables, let alone accessories compatible with your devices. USB-C has been the first connector that made OTG really a thing, before it was just a crappy experience limited to a handful of devices (Samsung Galaxy, for instance)
> aggressively removing features that 10% of users rely on in order to give what they see as a better experience for the 90% (e.g. removing headphone jack)
I call bullshit on this point. That's simply not true. I do not know a single person that liked or benefited from the switch, except Apple shareholders of course. Everyone, myself included, hates the fact you can't use standard headphones with mobile phones anymore, it's arguably a crappy experience that was forced by Apple and the industry with moronic justifications to hide the end goal to cut their costs and push people to buy more expensive Bluetooth headphones. The fact Apple did that just before releasing the AirPods and after buying out Beats speaks volumes about what their true goal was. It's just as hypocritical and fake as their "green" push is, they are trying to paint their corporate greed as something beneficial for the world, which is outright despicable. I'd rather buy my products from a company that's unapologetically honest with their customers than one that tries to gaslight you.
> I do not know a single person that liked or benefited from the switch, except Apple shareholders of course. Everyone, myself included, hates the fact you can't use standard headphones with mobile phones anymore
None of my friends or colleagues care. They use AirPods or wireless headphones on the latest iPhones and are happy with them. Your circles are not representative of the whole population.
I remember using wired earbuds and hating it every time. I don't miss the headphone jack that much. Why would you want to mess with entangled cables when you can just turn your headphones on and have them connect over the air?
Yeah, exactly -- for some people, losing the headphone jack really does suck, but plenty of other people honestly prefer wireless headphones. (I'd like to have the option of a headphone jack, personally, even if it means the device is a teensy bit thicker.)
Apple would argue that they force users to accept these changes because it makes the product better. You can counter that it's purely to make extra money out of peripherals, but if that's all there is to it, why are Apple products popular? Why do competitors (notably Samsung) keep following their lead on this kind of thing? Is it entirely down to their marketing, or could it be that their products actually are better, at least for some people?
If it's going down to a pettiness war, I don't think the legislators will give up that easily.
Apple reacting in a petty way not only shows that the legislators were right on the money (while adapting shows they were forced, whether for good or bad) but gives them even more reason to push the buttons further.
Digital Markets Act is definitely getting more fuel and attention after Apple's petty response to ACM's complaints in the Netherlands. [1]
I think GP's point is that you almost never win when you go against regulators head-on. Ultimately, they're the ones who have the guns (i.e control imports, exports, and enforcement). Now that it got to this point, Apple will yield if it wants to continue profiting off those markets.
I do agree that legislating technology this way is a big mistake on EU's part. This is basically South Korea's ActiveX law all over again, and like South Korea, the EU will eventually be left behind.
Apple and Google won when EU countries tried the centralized covid control tracing, and they both went "you're not going to get this". Some countries were furious, yelled they're going to force Apple, that the EU is going to force Apple, yadda yadda.
Nothing prevailed. Apple and Google dictated the API and the EU countries submitted, because they did not have time to enforce their will.
It is not Apple's, Google's, or America's fault that the EU has become so little innovative, rather hostile towards software developers and entrepreneurs, that they have no power in the digital world. And for the EU it is easier to blame american companies, instead of admitting failure and working towards creating an more enterprise-friendly hub in Europe.
I mean, as others have noted, why isn't the EU regulating the other side of the connector? Why are there 3+ power plugs in the EU? Shouldn't this be regulated first, if the EU's argument of reducing electronic waste be considered? No, those aren't created by american companies.
I'm sick of the EU, its constant attempts to circumvent privacy (such as the current legislation of ending end to end encryption for chats), while obviously lacking in the democracy department (why is the comission not elected?).
In Europe, and this is well known, companies must comply with the intent of the law, especially on something related to customers and compatibility. This is very very different from the US legal system, which can be tricked “ad nauseam”.
Apple may well do what they please but there will be fines, and even prohibition of sales. Because the EU “knows” that it can be done without much burden and “sees” it as a benefit for the citizens. I agree in this case on both things.
This is a nice fantasy and all, but how did that whole "In Europe [...] companies must comply with the intent of the law" work out for GDPR?
As far as I am aware, all the big tech companies that were used as the primary reason for creating GDPR are still doing the exact same things (that people were upset about) they were doing back then (just in a legally compliant™ way now according to "the intent of the law").
Not trying to take a dig at GDPR with this, it definitely made some tech companies to make some small concessions, like being able to export your data easier. But it would be difficult to argue that companies comply with GDPR according to the intent of the law, and not according to the letter of the law instead.
I mean, "in EU, law interpretation tends to follow the intent of the law when it comes to hardware, but it tends to follow the letter of the law when it comes to software" feels like an extremely strange and unrealistic statement. Both software and hardware are tightly related areas (i.e., tech), and I cannot imagine why the baseline of the law interpretation would be radically opposite.
Basically what I'm assuming is that Apple will adopt USB-C on the iPhone Pro models (since they need faster file transfer for the huge 4K ProRes video files anyway, and they were happy to adopt USB-C on the iPad "Pro" models early) and drop the ports completely on the non-Pro models.
I wonder if they'll do that with all their "Pro" stuff. Like, would the AirPods be Qi-only or Lightning+Qi-only, with USB-C reserved for AirPods Pro? Or would they go USB-C across the board? Or does Apple imagine a world in which their ideal "Pro" customer, with their iPad Pro, iPhone Pro, MacBook Pro and AirPods Pro, keeps around a Lightning charger for only their earbuds while literally everything else uses USB-C?
IMO, the only clean solution here is to go with USB-C across the board. But I also have no faith that will happen.
Yep, but Apple controls MagSafe, which extends Qi. In a wireless iPhone, you would use whatever magical shenanigan Apple comes up with to seamlessly pair and communicate with MagSafe accessories, all while they get huge fees from accessory sales and certifications. It's a true and tested approach.
No more e-waste as well. And, as the regulation moved from micro USB to USB-C, it's clear that innovation is still possible, within regulations. That's also why you can't have jet-engine powered cars on the streets.
It's a long term plan for a universal system. The benefit is very clear, just a few days ago a friend asked to charge his iphone at my place, I don't own lightning cables, everybody owns ubs-c cables
They sell 1 TB iPhones that shoot 4K ProRes video. It also has terrible quality when used for video out connecting to a TV for e.g. a presentation. Lightning is wholly inadequate for modern devices.
There's a reason they've transitioned most of the iPads to USB-C.
It seems like all that's mandated is that a USB-C charger would be compatible. You can still run a proprietary protocol on top of it if you wanted or use a hybrid, proprietary connector as long as a standard USB-C charger would still work.
What innovations are ruled out by mandatory use of the USB-C connector? It supports more power and data than a mobile device is ever really likely to need.
All that's left is the physical form factor and I'm not sure there's a lot of room for improvement there, especially enough to justify the tons of electronic waste.
I try to be devil's advocate with a sci-fi bullshit: a five seconds supercharger with a laser over a fiber optic cable (to keep the beam confined and not to burn stuff.)
Lightning is a far superior plug than usb-c (don’t tell me about data transfer, I don’t care, I care about the durability and ease of plugging of the plug itself), I have MANY lightning cables (that I will have to throw away, how is that good for e-waste?), and in a more general sense the law basically forbids evolution. I am livid that they’d do something like that instead of working on actual stuff like forbidding mining which actually actively harms the environment, and depletes primary resources for idiotic reasons.
So Apple should share its proprietary connector (good luck with that) for free (?) and everyone else should adopt it (good luck with that too) because _you_ bought a bunch of cables ? I don't see Samsung and the other big ones investing in a whole new connector for their entire lineup to please Europe, whereas apple already has usb-c devices
They're both equally easy to use, lightning is just slower. Seems like it's just your personal case, I have 0 lightning cables and maybe 5 usb-c, it would be equally a waste to throw them away.
Also, nothing forbids evolution, usb-c evolved a lot already, you just have to make it backward compatible. I haven't bought a usb cable since I got my pixel 3 and everything works just fine
Fair enough about your existing cables, but cables would be thrown away if we enforced Lightning, as well (probably a lot more, but I have no numbers on that). I don't really get the arguments of durability and ease of plugging, both cable types seem very easy to plug. As for durability, that seems to depend on cable quality and not on the USB C standard.
As for evolution/innovation, sure, that's a real downside. Seems like a quite small price to pay though because it is just about charging. And if I understand this correctly, you can still innovate and add Super Charge 3000 to your device, it just needs to have USB C charging as well, and you need to be able to opt out of getting yet another charger with your new device.
As for working on actual stuff: They can do both - Regulating mining would be great, but this is also good.
Sadly, they actively refused to work on mining IIRC. I think it’s what’s making me the more mad (and sad) really. They’re willing to work on stuff that don’t matter at best/make thing worse depending on PoV (because in all honesty imposing a specific plug does not matter, the market had _already_ chosen USB-C), but working on stuff that would actually do good, that they won’t.
Apple already moved the ipad and macbook to usb-c charging, and have stated the iphone after next would be usb-c anyway. I doubt this changed Apple's plans a bit. In fact, Apple's decision might have been the driver for the EU to move on this.
Anecdotally, while I've had usb-c connectors break off about as often as lightening ones, the lightening cables seem to just stop working sometimes, and I've never had that with even cheap usb-c cables.
> that I will have to throw away, how is that good for e-waste?
We are not most people. Most people get yet another lightning cable with every Apple device when they could just use the cables we all already have for other devices. I also have a bunch of lightning cables because each device came with one, but, at least, they stopped coming with power bricks.
> I am livid that they’d do something like that instead of working on actual stuff like forbidding mining
This is not an either/or thing. Other groups are working on doing that without causing supply chain collapses and crashing economies. It's a very complicated and chaotic system with tons of interesting emerging behaviors.
The problem with USB-C is that you can't just pick up a device cable and power brick and expect them to work together. As an example, my Apple 96W USB-C charger doesn't charge my nintendo switch. The cable that came with my phone doesn't charge said fully Mac when used with the 96w charger. There is no indication of incompatibility between these devices until you realise they don't work. This is going back to the dc jack era where you end up with these [0] guys with various tips and dials that all meet the USB-C "standard" for a connector but don't work.
The issue with the Nintendo Switch is that Nintendo designed their own faulty USB-C charging implementation rather than merely using the reference design. It's not a failure of the spec, it's a failure to adhere to the spec.
It's still not a great spec if it's so complex that you can screw it up. I understand the complexity for data, but for power I wish it was as simple as power & ground wires and that's it.
Compare that with USB-A where even cheap Chinese cables from the lowest bidder usually work (work well enough at least - you might get voltage drop but it will still charge if you leave it on long enough) because the spec is so simple that even the worst manufacturers manage to do a good enough job, and it's something you can trivially DIY if you need to.
Now compare that with USB-C. So many moving parts that can go wrong and so much corners that can be cut by unscrupulous manufacturers. Not to mention that even the most expensive devices (Apple) don't give you any visibility on what type of cable/charger/etc you have even though that information is technically available to the device (that's how it negotiates power delivery) which is extremely confusing even to tech-savvy people.
My point is that I don't like USB-C because it tries to do everything and manufacturer must implement that "everything" properly which adds cost & frustration.
Compare USB-C power delivery and the 12-pin cable & connector with USB-A's 4 pins and a resistor on the data lines to communicate allowed current draw, or even a barrel jack with the standard 19V ~3A PSU and no negotiation at all. Which one is the easiest to build (hint: one is easy enough to DIY) and which one is more reliable?
Power and ground wires alone don't cut it sadly when you're dealing with much higher wattages. There needs to be a level of negotiation between the host and the charger to decide on a specific power (current & voltage) that both can support.
In USB-A this was accomplished through a hodge-podge of different resistances applied across data lines, not officially part of the standard but just done by manufacturers. USB-C is a huge improvement on this.
I do agree however that the cable-labelling situation is awful. Maybe some kinda tier system could help. Every charger, cable and device could have a class. The charging rate is the lowest of the three. E.g. a "Class 5 cable will charge up to 200 watts and has a pink end". If you pair that with a Class 2 charger (say, 50 watts) and a class 3 laptop (100 watts) you'll be limited to charging your laptop at 50 watts.
>It's still not a great spec if it's so complex that you can screw it up.
People and companies can screw thing up royally regardless of spec complexity when there's no review/oversight involved. That's not a valid argument.
If you want to force and check adherence to a spec you need to involve certification authorities (TÜV, SGS, UL, etc.) but then widget prices would increase dramatically.
Edit: to address the child comments below: who gets to be the judge of the complexity of the spec? If Nintendo fucked it up but some EE students can get it right through side projects on github, does that make the spec complex or does that make Nintendo incompetent (lacks a HW review/qualification process)?
The spec could be as simple as "white wire goes to positive terminal, black wire goes to negative terminal" and there's still the chance of an implementation fuckup in the design pipeline, especially in large projects/companies with distributed siloed teams like Nintendo due to poor internal communication, if there is no proper internal review/qualification process in the design loop.
Edit 2: I looked at the USB-C charging specs and they're easy enough to understand for any graduate EE and for any company who's had some basic experience with USB as a whole, let alone 100 year old multi-billion HW conglomerates like Nintendo.
IMHO, Nintendo's USB-C charging fuckup is 100% on them. I wish people would stop needlessly defending them here.
Edit 3: Also, what if Nintendo intentionally chose not to follow the spec in order to force the users to use and buy only original parts from them? Either way, incompetence or malice, you really can't blame the spec here.
Just pick a couple of those USB-C docks on the market and check how many are actually working for you. I used over 10 different USB-C docks from different vendors. It doesn't matter which vendor, they all have various issues. They might be perfectly fine for some machines but lots lots of troubles for some other machines which are also perfectly fine with some of the other docks. I have never seen something worse than that.
>Just pick a couple of those USB-C docks on the market and check how many are actually working for you.
1) How is it the spec's fault that random OEMs go to extreme cost cutting measures in order to price dump themselves to the bottom by not following the spec? Of course they won't work properly.
But again, for the 100th time, that's not the specs fault that manufacturers actively choose to ignore it.
If a driver chooses to knowingly run a red light, is it automatically the fault of the spec (the highway code) ?
2) You're moving the goalposts. We are talking about USB-C charging spec here that's super easy to follow, and Nintendo didn't, not USB-C docs with display-port and other fluff. So this dock example doesn't apply to Nintendos' refusal to follow the charging spec.
Well, if a spec has no validation procedure, compatibility enforcement or certification, what’s even the point? If the switch isn’t actually working as intended they shouldn’t be allowed to call it usb-c. There should be some minimum mandatory requirements. I haven’t studied these spec, but if there exists a min spec to qualify to call yourself USB and the switch case isn’t covered, OR, there’s no minimum spec, it IS the spec’s fault.
The USB consortium seemingly refuses to do anything that would hamper adoption, even if it's bad for consumers. They could make a list of icons that products can put on if they support. So a cable that supports 15W charging would indicate it with a little icon on the product or packaging. Then mandate a testing procedure, where failure to follow it or lying about the results is trademark infringement.
Some vendors now let the USB-IF compliance test most products (Amazon Basics, Apple), but no consumer cares. Even amongst the ones which do certify their product, no one uses the logo.
>Well, if a spec has no validation procedure, compatibility enforcement or certification, what’s even the point?
What is the point of anything then? Most pieces of tech we take for granted are an unregulated bundle of specs that more or less work together with one another most of the time well enough to be valued at several trillions and be in every household.
If you want to regulate and certify every USB-C cable in your household then increase prices would stop the adoption of any such tech and you would then complain about the costs and over-regulation.
The EU is already regulating USB-C into place. How much more regulation do you want?
Let's not let 'perfect' be the enemy of 'good'. Remember 20 years ago when every phone and electronic widget in your house came with its own proprietary cable and proprietary interface and included CD with proprietary Windows-only software to work? Yeah! Lost the original cable/dock with the proprietary 20-pin connector? Good luck with that mate.
Yes, USB-C still has teething problems due to manufacturers cutting costs and fighting tooth and nail against standardization so they can keep their walled garden rent seeking models of the past (remember Sony shoving their proprietary Memory-Stick everywhere despite SD cards having won?), but despite these issues, we've never had it so good in terms of cross-compatibility as we have it today and this push for USB-C everything is a step in the right direction.
Looks this isn’t that complicated, what people want is the ability to know that I all conforming USB-C cables are identical and can be interchanged freely. I don’t give two shits about the devices at the ends not being able to negotiate or different power bricks charging faster or slower.
Do you have any reason to believe that they "screwed up" due to a spec being complex, over much more likely explanations like.. they simply didn't want to follow the spec?
> I understand the complexity for data, but for power I wish it was as simple as power & ground wires and that's it.
The minimum requirements are that you have to support the USB 2.0 protocol:
> While BC1.2 is still supported over USB Type-C because it depends on the USB2.0 lane, a significantly simplified and higher power current capability mechanism is also implemented. This simplified approach involves resistor pull-down/ pull-up relationships. These pull-down/pull-up resistors are connected to the CC wire and the upstream facing port (UFP) must monitor the voltage on the CC1 and CC2 pins in order to detect the current sourcing capability of the down- stream facing port (DFP) it is connected to. This is a substantial improvement over the complicated handshake mech- anisms involved with USB BC1.2.
> The basic USB Type-C current capabilities are Default USB (500mA for USB2.0 and 900mA for USB3.0), 1.5A@5V, and 3A@5V.
USB-C is infamous for being complex like that, but I think the charging part is basically fine? People talk about the Nintendo Switch often, but I have never heard any _other_ example of something where the charging didn't work, so I think maybe it's a rare exception.
(This is distinct from the "fast charging" mode(s?), which does seem to have compatibility problems. But in that case, the failure mode is that device charges slowly, which is probably not a big issue for the kind of small phones/gadgets that the EU regulation targets. The previous standard was micro-USB, which can't do fast-charging anyway.)
I wanted to get a trimmer with USB-C. Unfortunately, all that I found would not allow c-to-c charging. Only charging from A. The 'A' basically allows a 'hot wire' type charge to go through for power. C-only charging requires negotiation. There's no way to tell up front that the charging is limited like this and manufacturers don't want to highlight it.
You can build your own cable by buying a "USB-C trigger" (as they're called on eBay), it's a board with a USB-C port and a power delivery controller chip that's preconfigured for the specified voltage.
And how am I supposed to know that when looking at a device that has a USB-C port for charging, and the instructions on the charger [0] say "Nintendo Switch can be charged by plugging the AC adapter into the console's USB Type-C connector."
Nintendo always does something that's JUST slightly off with their consoles that make them annoying as hell to use.
With the switch it's the screwed up USB-C implementation and the fact that you can't use bluetooth headphones (it has BT support, but only for the controllers)
With the DS, the wifi only supported WEP, not WPA, even though WPA2 had been released by the time the DS came out
The Switch was updated to support BT headphones, with the caveat that you can only have 2 BT controllers simultaneously connected with the headphones, and the controllers can’t be switched while headphones are in.
The reason for the limitation is bandwidth and latency.
Multiple devices on one Bluetooth controller have to timeslice in 4 millisecond (iirc) chunks. Audio devices in a high quality mode consume a substantial amount of the overall bandwidth. It also doesn't matter if your packet consumes the full size of a chunk of not, all of them are equally sized. You'd have to do two audio chunks and one controller chunk * 2 controllers to maintain a 60 Hz sample rate on the controllers.
By trying, returning the device (ouch for the shop), and then complaining to your local enforcer of Radio Equipment Directive (ouch for the manufacturer).
The only comment I could see in the article on that topic is this:
> the EU simply said that "consumers will be provided with clear information on the charging characteristics of new devices, making it easier for them to see whether their existing chargers are compatible.
Which is super disappointing, as the person who wrote TFA clearly didn't read anything other than the press release. The actual supporting documentation is here [0] and says:
> on the packaging or a label, manufacturers would have to
provide information on specifications relating to charging capabilities, in line with annex Ia (amended Article 10(8) RED). This includes a description of the wired chargers' power requirements (the text displayed should read: 'The minimum power delivered by charger shall be equal or higher than [xx] watts') and specifications on charging capabilities ('USB PD fast charging' and an indication of any other supported charging protocols).
Which is still not great - this doesn't cover cables for example, and it doesn't guarantee that it will be printed on the device. Here [1] are apples chargers in the UK - unless they're side by side it's impossible to tell which one of those chargers is which, and even at that unless you know for sure one of the devices is X, its' really quite difficult to tell.
It's worse than that, just because a charger can support 60W doesn't mean it supports every standard combination of volts and amps below that level and just because a device can charge at 60W doesn't mean it uses the same combination of volts and amps your charger supports. I have a 100W charger than can't "fast charge" my phone (USB-C on both ends) because they only overlap capabilities on lower wattages.
> New Annex (Part I): It requires that mobiles phones and the similar radio devices, if they are capable to be recharged via wired charging, are equipped with the USB Type-C receptacle and, if they also require charging at voltages higher than 5 volts or currents higher than 3 amperes or powers higher than 15 watts , incorporate the USB Power Delivery charging communication protocol.
Nintendo will have to get its crap together and properly support Power Delivery, the burden is not on you.
It's obviously the failure of the spec. Why cables with different capabilities have to look exactly the same? Put the looking aside, I wondering if anyone can tell what's the exact differences between different specs? USB standards are already a mass, USB-C just made things 10 times if not 100 times worse.
It looks like Nintendo would have to fix that in order to comply with the regulations. The bare minimum, if I read it correctly, is to label the port and charger making it clear what their limitations are.
I have a launch-model Switch, and it still has trouble charging even on latest firmware. It's very possible that this is one of the "Mariko" fixes; Nintendo silently released a refresh of the Nintendo Switch before the OLED model was announced, dubbed the Mariko models. These had a number of changes, including but not limited to:
- New, more secure boot sequence
- Updated Nvidia Tegra board
- ~20% better battery life
- Reinforced chassis design
It seems likely that they took the opportunity with Mariko to redesign their charging ICs to be more tolerant. I heartily recommend looking up some of the more subtle differences between the models too, it's really interesting to see how Nintendo updated a mass-market product without anyone really noticing.
Just to make this thread a bit more aggravating, I have two pre-Mariko switches — at least they both have the Nvidia Tegra vulnerability, anyway — and I have yet to see either fail to charge on random USB-C cables and chargers.
As another poster mentioned, however, they will only dock with the OEM charger.
Seems like whatever is happening with the OG switch USB-C implementation it’s not straightforward.
When docking, the Switch specifically wants 15V/2.6A [1]. Any less and it won't dock. There are some third-party vendors which have somehow circumvented this requirement, though [2].
Creating a spec that people don’t want, can’t, or can’t afford to adhere is a failure.
I don’t recall ever seeing prior USB devices fail at adherence.
The problem is that USB C is a massive spec with a lot of things that aren’t always needed in it (display, pd, high data speeds etc). You can either design your product to implement a lot more things (eg Macs) or skimp out and cause confusion (Switch). By breaking the standard, people effectively have to buy your charger or cables to know it’ll work. If I have to either buy a high end product or buy cables and chargers only from the original brand, we aren’t really any better off with this.
>I don’t recall ever seeing prior USB devices fail at adherence.
Really? You've never seen a power only micro-usb cable (missing 2 bus lines)? I have dozens from all types of devices that use USB as a charging only connector.
This has been a problem with every USB iteration (hard to have the U in USB if you aren't able to handle a wide variety of applications), but I vastly prefer it to the early 00s when you might have 5 different cables to each "specialty" application.
Sure we are, if they don't conform to the spec then they can't get a CE mark; which then means it can't be sold in the EU and the device misses out on a 350~400M person market.
Or maybe Nintendo just decided that they didn't care. I really don't see how any technical specification could be expected to physically prevent everyone in the world from deliberately implementing it partially or incorrectly. I don't doubt that USB-C might be technically complicated and confusing compared to alternatives and predecessors, but I find it very difficult to believe that Nintendo engineering gave it their best shot and simply couldn't manage to do it correctly.
> I find it very difficult to believe that Nintendo engineering gave it their best shot and simply couldn't manage to do it correctly.
I'm sure that's not it. I'm sure it was
"Hey product manager. We can launch in 6 weeks if this port accepts power and connects to a dock, or 36 weeks if we need to conform to standards in section 17, subsection 5 part 41.2B of standard 1120 on European code B7"
"what does <standards> get us"
"Nothing, we don't need those features. Also it'll add $25 to the bill of materials"
"ignore it then, we want to launch sooner and increase our margin."
Perhaps so, but how is that something you can blame the spec for? Any remotely non-trivial spec will be easier to implement partially than to implement completely.
Maybe the spec should be more “trivial”. I like USB C over something like micro usb but micro usb is easy enough to use as a power source in my high school electronics class but i don’t think usb c would be.
Maybe apple had it right originally to have “thunderbolt” as a super powerful all-in-one cable (except add power) and we needed a simple “reversible micro usb” for everything else.
It may not be fully compliant to the spec but it does always charge in my experience. It will charge eventually from most any usb-c charger, including Apple's. But, a docked switch requires 15V and not all chargers will provide it, or maybe they just don't provide it to the off-spec switch. Similar story with the HDMI output of the dock. It took a bit of research to buy a charger and HDMI adapter that work with both my switch and macbook, but it was possible and it's nice for travel.
It's even funnier that. Even your charger have 15v. The dock something failed the handshake and require you to unplug and plug again to trigger the 15v. I think the switch is just not spec compliant. That shouldn't happen on a device that implement the spec properly.
Honestly I think we need different ports. My laptop can already draw more power than the charger that came with it can provide, it's insulting for it to pretend it is charging when I plug a 5w a to c charger into it.
Enforcing USB pd as a standard would be another acceptable one.
"not as fast as it can go" is selling it short. I have an old 5w usb charger that I found in my drawer and plugged an A to C charger from it into my 2016 MacBook Pro, and it "worked" by some definition of worked - the laptop thinks it's charging, however it's 19x below what the charger that came with the device outputs, so it's clearly not fit for purpose.
>you can't just pick up a device cable and power brick and expect them to work together
I never understood this sentiment. That would be even more true if USB-C wasn't the standard so I don't really understand the complaint. Obviously "same shape" isn't an indicator that it will "just work" for USB-C, so why would we expect that to be the case for anything else with modern complexity?
It would be nice if fits == works but that's just not a world we live in, USB-C or not.
There's no cable that has lightning on both ends; the 5V configuration has USB-A on the power supply side. My point is just that that lightning connector isn't limited to 5V.
USB charging usually works unless you care about max watts. Apple chargers would be different based on the brick. Lots of barrel chargers were not compatible.
Because USB has always been, "if it fits, it works (possibly with a driver)". Maybe not explicitly, but it was widely understood to be that. USB-C, OTOH, with all its modes and whatnot, make it so I can't tell what my device supports, and a driver installer won't fix it.
Basically, things that require extra ICs are now being shoved into "one connector for all" thing with no way of telling them apart.
No, that was already not the case with USB 3 devices not working when plugged in a USB 1 slot.
Not made easy when some computer or hub have both USB 3 and USB 1 port on the same machine and you must remember the color code.
I recall that one time when I tried to configure the bios of a computer and the keyboard wouldn't work in the bios because it was connected to the "wrong" usb port that was not powered in that stage of the boot
Not sure about Nintendo, but my macbook charger is charging perfectly fine my (Android) smartphone, and I don't even take my Android charger when traveling (charging at decent pace but unfortunately not in "very fast" mode). Either way, this is quite ironic in regard to the so-called Apple ecosystem and iPhone users still having to carry their own charger in 2022
Well, no, doesn't apple make 1/3 of their money on cables and dongles? that's like the whole point. It's not some sticky customer issue that they just can't work out, it's clearly a straight profit decision and the customer comes last in that matrix.
I have the same issue with my Wahoo Elemnt Bolt v2. It has USB-C charger, but doesn't work with Apple's USB-C cable or my M1 30W brick. I need to use the cable that came with the Bolt (amusing is USB-A -> USB-C).
Then at least one isn't USB-C? Or the spec isn't good enough?
The regulation (I hope) is about actually adhering to USB-C, not merely shipping with USB-C connectors. And the bar to pass should be to be able to use a large stack of USB-C chargers and work.
It's a mess. Using a lower wattage charger (apple or other brand) won't charge a Macbook. If the battery is flat, it won't do anything to it, no sound, no light, macbook looking dead. But if the Macbook is booted up, the same charger can provide enough power to keep it charged forever.
> There is no indication of incompatibility between these devices
That's not quite correct. The Nintendo Switch and the Switch Dock works with some Macbook chargers, and all you need to do is read the small print on the devices.
The Macbook chargers list the supported voltages & currents on the outside (in very small light grey text, but it is there), and the Switch has the supported voltages and required currents printed on the back. It's confusing because the Switch Dock needs a different voltage & current than just the Switch itself, but if you read the fine print on the devices you can see if they are compatible.
Awesome! I recently put off buying an adapter I lost for one device, and just started using an old USB battery with the correct connector to charge it up outside my home instead, I was THAT annoyed with the fact I need to hurt my back and stress my mind dealing with all these... ports.
This is a positive example of the EU influencing American technology companies.
(I say that as someone considering getting an EU passport though, so I might be biased.)
USB-A has been with us for over 20 years. It's only disappearing because of USB-C, and USB-C seems to have room to grow. I wouldn't be surprised if it will still be the most popular connector in 2035, and not just because "legislation stops innovation".
Making sure there are no weird exceptions to a very good port is reasonable and good.
I wouldn't stand on the hill of this is obsolete tech, there should be more devices built with power efficiency from the ground up as well as less focus on the USBC charges your phone faster. This is more about usbc will charge every device you have in a few years so no reaching for custom chargers. Usbc->X cables however are another matter nothing is stopping HP making a custom usbc->HP port for their laptops for instance
This almost certainly prompts a USB-C iPhone followed by a portless one. (I don’t think they’re thin enough yet for USB-C to be structurally compromising.) In the box will either be no charger or a wireless charger with a USB-C port, thereby technically meeting the requirement.
I have an old Blackberry charger that has the cord attached, and I'm pretty sure I also have some old Samsung charger that's the same. But they're clearly quite rare.
Your chargers are USB-A, and you can make them usable with an A-to-C cable.
There are no chargers with micro-USB output port (USB never specified such thing). Micro-USB has been designed to make cables essentially disposable (and not meant to be hardwired into any device), because the more robust side of the connector is in the device's port, and the fragile side is in the cable.
> Micro-USB has been designed to make cables essentially disposable [..], because the more robust side of the connector is in the device's port, and the fragile side is in the cable.
In my experience, this wasn't true. I had both a tablet and a phone that had the charging port fail. If I didn't apply a constant sideways force on the cable, it wouldn't charge. Tried other cables to make sure it wasn't a bad cable, but still had the same problem.
> There are no chargers with micro-USB output port (USB never specified such thing
I have several chargers with a brick and a permanently attached micro-USB cable that came with devices. One from Samsung; a couple from Grandcentral; a few for Raspberry Pis.
Great until you have some "sales rep" in a supermarket dealing with a Karen who's device won't charge fast enough off a 10W USBC charger that fundamentally isn't the same as a 60W one.
Yeah, but now there are the bonus points for a "fastish" USB-A charger (QC something, that puts out ~20W) which won't do anything to a laptop that requires "PD", even though the 20W would be enough to at least slowly charge the battery while off.
Legacy fast charging was always a mess of competing proprietary standards. A charger adhering to one standard (e.g. Samsung AFC or Oppo VOOC) wouldn't fast charge a phone using a different standard (e.g. Qualcomm QC or Apple 2.4A).
Kind of is new when all of the specs rely on cable capability and not all manufacturers label different cables differently. The spec for what it is, is a mess, but it's a nice, nay, highly desirable form factor.
It does stop innovation in things like lightning and MagSafe. And it doesn’t fix the multiple charger issue either, because so many manufacturers don’t adhere to the USB-C standard that any combination of charger + cable + device has an unreasonably non-zero chance of not working or even damaging the device.
So in the end we still have to have multiple chargers, but now we can roll the dice on which one works with or damages which device because they all use the same connector.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'unreasonably non-zero', but I've been sharing chargers between Macbook, XPS 13 and Thinkpad with no concern, + a charger from amazon.
Some charger are less powerful than others, so charge is not always as quick, but in real life it does not matter : it's still charging fast enough in any combination, and for the last year the only reason I have multiple chargers is to have one at home and one at work, but any laptop works well on all chargers.
I have seen it in some forums as well, but do you have any explanation links about why that may be ?
I have trouble finding relevant information that is not some random dude on a forum speaking very confidently one way or another without much data to back it up, and I don't see why that would cause any harm other than charging more slowly, eventually to the point of discharging if you consume a lot of power (which is a pretty tolerable downside).
By the way, it’s been talked on HN a lot when USB c comes up, it you shouldn’t use those magnetic cables. The “magnetic disconnect” motion can cause arcing and static electricity that can theoretically damage the thing they’re plugged into. Especially if you leave the exposed pins on the device as you use it unplugged.
There's communication between the device and the power brick. When the communication stops the power stops being delivered. Not sure how Apple is doing that these days with the MagSafe USB-C they have introduced on their laptops since you can plug the other end into any and all USB-C capable chargers.
I don't think an adapter is the kind of innovation HN users are looking for.
I've fried at least one USB-C device, a high-end wireless headset, seemingly by connecting it to a name-brand USB-C charger that had some kind of incompatibility with the headset.
Plus, even among Apple chargers, some USB-C chargers will support fast charging, and some won't, regardless of their rated wattage. Plus some will and will not support fast charging via a wireless charger (either a MagSafe wireless charger or an Apple Watch charger). There are a lot of charging incompatibilities in the current state of USB-C, even among devices from a single manufacturer.
> So in the end we still have to have multiple chargers, but now we can roll the dice on which one works with or damages which device because they all use the same connector.
Doesn't really matter. Just charge with any charger that's USB-C compatible. If it breaks the machine just RMA it. It didn't adhere to the spec so file a complain to the EU commission in charge of these charging standards as well.
Wait what was the point again? Ohh E-Waste reduction.
> that any combination of charger + cable + device has an unreasonably non-zero chance of not working
These issues have evaporated for me in the past couple of years. The only devices that I have in use that are still finicky are Nintendo Switch, and it's my understanding that newer models have fixed these problems, too.
My only complaints are that I wish my MBP would draw 10W from non-PD USB, instead of 5W (not really a USB-C problem), and my kids' laptops that have USB-C ports but don't support USB-PD and only charge from coaxial power adapters.
Apple can keep selling laptops with MagSafe because they are also capable of charging via the USB-C ports. Same with phones, they can add whatever wireless charging technology they want, it's the wired charging port that is required to be USB-C.
There is little to no incentive to stop tiktok streamers and vapid tech fans throwing out their 6 month old devices and upgrading. But it's a start.
Whilst important, we have done much better to FORCE the industry to provide security support and updates as part of the sale of devices for a minimum of 5 years on all products.
This is one of the biggest insurmountable reasons I see for people who don't even want to, to have to upgrade because of the locked down nature of phones/watches/washing-machines/hoovers/etc...
Although I doubt it'll be the EU project to push through something so bold that will have enough of an impact.
What's interesting is that nearly all of my recent electronics purchases have used USB-C.
Headphones, thermal printer, neck-cooler, rechargable screwdriver - all USB-C.
What's weird are the few things which don't. Amazon Alexa use a barrel charger. Brand new HP printer has the old square style USB plug. Pulse Oximeter user micro-USB.
So C is certainly getting there. Appearing in cheap and expensive products. And, I'm happy to say, works well. Just needs a few laggards to update!
>> What's interesting is that nearly all of my recent electronics purchases have used USB-C.
I've started noticing this recently. It's taken longer than I thought but the only devices remaining I have that I need to search for cables for are my iPhone/Apple Watch/old iPod. Everything else, including laptops, I usually have a USB-C charger already plugged in and ready to go no matter what room I'm in.
It makes sense that there should be a standard for this, just like we do (although it varies by country) for our plugs.
I usually try to buy devices with detachable IEC 60320[1] mains cable. So when I move to a different country I only need to change the cables and not the devices.
The "old square style USB plug" is USB-B. It's the counterpart of USB-A, the ubiquitous microUSB-B connector is meant to be a tiny version of it (there's also miniUSB-B, which now is mostly dead, and mini and micro A, which no one ever used).
I wish USB-C was more robust, or at least had the option of being more robust. I miss not being scared of accidentally stepping on my laptop charge connector and crushing it flat. I'd pay good money for a type-C un-flattener.
Yeah. Type c is worse then micro or mini in this regard but still no where as bad as type A. I can't tell you how many USB cables I have thrown away because office chairs have run over the ends.
The only advantage with type A is that it's large enough you can use a set of flat pliers to straighten it out. Type-C is nearly impossible to do that with.
Is there a halfway-modern port that is more robust? Hell, is it possible to make a port/adapter that you can't destroy by stepping on it?
I've personally destroyed VGA, PS/2, and ADB adapters by stepping on them in the past. (I've since gotten somewhat more careful, and haven't yet destroyed any USB or Lightning adapters the same way.)
How, exactly, do you propose that they design a port that you can't accidentally crush, aside from something dirt-simple like an 8mm headphone jack...?
Everybody who is frenetically celebrating this as the end of the manufacturer-specific power brick, does simply not know that USB-C is not USB-C. There is no single USB-C.
USB-C is a bunch of specifications that may can be combined or may not. USB-C is only the physical connector. USB-C PD (Power delivery) does support many different modes. There are at least 11 different modes with at least 4 of them are optional. I haven't read the latest version of the specification, but I would bet that there are optionally also some implementation-specific options aka manufacturer-specific. All that combined with the many different cable definitions for the different use cases, makes it for the average consumer a nightmare.
I've never seen a USB-C cable that didn't charge all my devices with all my chargers. OK, maybe one that came with an HP screen and was clearly labeled as "data only".
I think this will make cables interchangeable in most cases. Fast charging and fast transfers are nice to have but rarely vital.
You haven't brought any of those cheap Chinese cables, haven't you?
I have such cables, which can't be really used for charging as well as for fast data transfer. They are good for my development hardware kits, I have. Because those kits don't have any high power requirements. But I cannot use them to power my notebook.
But they may be very suboptimal. Most likely, they are not Thunderbolt or USB4 capable. Also, there is no guarantee that they can supply higher wattages.
I don't think this matters as much as some on HN think. People look for an iPhone charger, not for a USB4.0 Gen2 40W fast-charging cable and assorted wall plug that will transfer their movie collection in 2 minutes and charge to 100% in 5.
No, it doesn't. Almost all my devices (macbook, camera, speaker, phone, headphones...) use usb c pd and I am using the same three cables interchangeably for all of them, no issues.
If Apple choses to intentionally break this compatibility it's a user hostile company.
All passive USB-C cables support PD 2.0 or 3.0, all charging features. The only things a cable needs to need to support PD are:
Vbus wire
Gnd wire
CC wire
Therefore, all USB cables, even the lowest end USB 2.0 cable support USB PD. You don't need an identifier chip to support basic USB PD charging.
Literally it's just the CC wire that goes end to end that enables USB PD charging from one end to the other.
USB PD is supposed to be backward and forward compatible, and a USB 2.0 cable can't actually differentiate itself as a USB PD 2.0 or PD 3.0 cable, since chances are it doesn't actually have an identifier chip. Your basic cable (which the Anker is) should work all the way up to 60W with PPS.
PPS also doesn't matter. A USB 2.0 C-to-C cable is supposed to support PPS.
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In other words as long as you have any proper usb c cable (spec compliant) and a usb c Pd charger with sufficient power output, everything will work.
I want to like this, but I charge my iPhone with a cable that has lightning on one end and USB-C on the other, and I know from extensive direct experience that the lightning end is the better physical design.
Supporting this is tantamount to believing that there will never need to be a USB-D that improves upon USB-C, and I just can’t believe that.
My 6 year-old iPhone that I plug and unplug a bunch of times a day still keeps the plugs in very snuggly. They basically don't move. And I've pulled on the connector many, many times, by stepping on the cord and pulling the phone up.
Contrast this with my 2 month-old laptop in which the usb-c cables move around, even though it spends 90% on the time plugged in.
---
Edit: I did have connection issues at one point, but it was due to pocket lint that had accumulated inside the port. It was easily removable with a toothpick, and the connector went back to working like new.
> I know from extensive direct experience that the lightning end is the better physical design.
What's so great about it? USB-C is just as easy to plug in and these cables usually last longer. The only difference for me is that Lightning eventually ends up with black pins and I have to buy another cable.
Also, is it really worth the few technical advantages if the alternative is a good-enough plug that works with absolutely everything?
The previous standard was Micro-USB (that's why you still see it on dashcams, standalone GPSes, drawing tablets and other devices) and yet, USB-C came to exist.
If there's a better standard in the future the law can be changed, they didn't put this in the constitution.
I've never had a phone with USB-C to compare, but I've had rotten luck with Lightning. I always get that one power pin that blackens and makes the cable unreliable.
Yeah, me too. Or even though the cable is supposed to be reversible and yet my phone will only charge if the cable is inserted one way, but not the other. I've had that happen a lot too!
I'm just glad USB-C has come along so we didn't do something foolish like standardize on Micro USB - I hate those ports! I recently bought two brand-new BT speakers and guess how they're charged? Micro USB! Grrrrrrr!!!
The only way I see there being a need to evolve from USB-C is if we see some major developments in optical (cost/size)
The EU seems perfectly willing to adopt new standards if you look at what has been happening in mobile standards (e.g. despite 3G being standardized we got 4G, despite 4G being standardized we got 5G)
3G/4G/5G isn't a good example. Standards evolve, but the issue many people have is that this isn't a standard, but a mandate to use said standard. So people are concerned that the USB Consortium will come up with a USB-D, but new devices won't be able to use it until the EU updates their law.
> If there's a better standard in the future the law can be changed, they didn't put this in the constitution.
Who will build the spec and research and then lobby Europe to change the law when no device uses it? The marketing of saying “this new spec is better… throw out EVERYTHING” won’t happen.
What will happen is that the hot mess of a market that is the Asian market will grow and change and develop… and throw out cables. And it’ll get better over time while the availability in Europe stagnates.
PS you can clean the blackened pin so it works again.
>Who will build the spec and research and then lobby Europe to change the law when no device uses it? The marketing of saying “this new spec is better… throw out EVERYTHING” won’t happen.
Except that's basically what happened with USB-C. Micro-B was the standard for the EU, USB-C was developed and got approved, and now it's replacing micro-b as the standard.
USB-C was developed partly because lightning should how much better a reversible multipurpose cable could be. The argument is that without the ability for one player to innovate with a new port we not have the same quality of USB-C port we have now.
Any technological developments in wired charging can be reflected in a timely adjustment of technical requirements/ specific standards under the Radio Equipment Directive. This would ensure that the technology used is not outdated.
At the same time, the implementation of any new standards in further revisions of Radio Equipment Directive would need to be developed in a harmonised manner, respecting the objectives of full interoperability. Industry is therefore expected to continue the work already undertaken on the standardised interface, led by the USB-IF organisation, in view of developing new interoperable, open and non-controversial solutions.
One thing I would love to see here is an end of life for this ruling. I.e. “effective as of 2024, but not enforced after 2030 without renewal”. Market saturation of the standard alone should be enough to get alignment on a single connector, following which it will require significant effort to deviate from it regardless of legislation. I’m still happy with this in the short term - very tired of having to juggle two types of charging cables. I just wish there was a bit of forward thinking involved here.
Oh well. I just returned 3 USB-C hubs in a row, one almost fried my computer. Since the introduce of USB-C, I have more cables than ever. There are virtually so many types of USB-C cables with different capabilities and all looks almost exactly the same. Some cannot handle charging current of 2A or less. Some might be able to do 3A, some maybe 5A. And some of it is USB 2.0, some are USB 3.x 5Gbps, 10Gbps, 20 Gbps or maybe even 40 Gbps. Some have DP-Alt mode, some don't. It's simply a random combination of any of the previous stuff. I wish I had read the specs and labeled them correctly. Now I have a whole bunch of them and I cannot tell which can do what except very few long thick ones for my monitors.
It's simply a random combination of any of the previous stuff. [...] Now I have a whole bunch of them and I cannot tell which can do what except very few long thick ones for my monitors.
Get a Thunderbolt 4 cable, they can carry Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4, every USB protocol up to and including 4, DP alt-mode, and 100W power delivery. Moreover, most of them are clearly marked. The Apple cables are expensive, but some other good brands (like CalDigit) offer them at reasonable prices.
I just returned 3 USB-C hubs in a row, one almost fried my computer.
Most USB USB-C hubs (USB-C is only the connector) are terrible. Even many premium brands (like Satechi) often use cheap Chinese reference designs that will fry themselves pretty quickly, cause a lot of interference, and have all kinds of annoying limitations (mostly because they use 5 or 10 GBit/s USB 3 standards).
Since I have switched to quality Thunderbolt Docks, I haven't had any issues.
I've tried several through work, so far Dell has been the only ones that just worked with everything. Lenovo was fine for most things, HP didn't even work with the laptop it was designed for.
I think the biggest thing is how much power the dock provides and how much attached devices need.
Mostly checking reviews and specs. My wife and I both use a StarTech dock at work and we have two at home. So far no issues with our Macs.
One thing to watch out for (when you are using a Mac) is to avoid Docks with a Realtek NIC. They use a generic USB driver on macOS that adds CPU load and usually only reaches 700-900MBit. Intel I210 NICs are great, they use PCIe over Thunderbolt and have a native driver.
Just curious. If there is a seemingly better connector emerged in the future, could vendors experiment it on new devices on their own? Or do they have to first submit a proposal to the regulator and then deploy it to the device after the proposal has been accepted? I am afraid that the latter could harm innovation.
Apple is already doing that on MacBooks. They have USB-C connectors for charging (that will be mandated by the EU law in the future) and they have a MagSafe connector (their innovation).
They can do the same for iPhone: one USB-C connector for charging and one innovation connector.
"Any technological developments in wired charging can be reflected in a timely adjustment of technical requirements/ specific standards under the Radio Equipment Directive. This would ensure that the technology used is not outdated.
At the same time, the implementation of any new standards in further revisions of Radio Equipment Directive would need to be developed in a harmonised manner, respecting the objectives of full interoperability. Industry is therefore expected to continue the work already undertaken on the standardised interface, led by the USB-IF organisation, in view of developing new interoperable, open and non-controversial solutions."
They provide a USB-C charger already, and it's not magically faster than good quality third-party chargers. It's top-end, for sure, but not proprietary.
Right, the idea being the EU mandate would reduce sales of their charger, and eliminate sales of their USB-C -> Lightning cable. And how they might respond.
Portless could be a pain for developers, if the only way to deploy/debug is wifi, and the only way to charge is a wireless charger (which may not be able to keep up with the discharge rate of a device being used to test a game/app all day)
USB-C is highly extensible (some would say way too much), I doubt we will need to make a connector that is physically incompatible anytime soon (although I'm sure the standard will be upgraded for more speed/uses)
> I doubt we will need to make a connector that is physically incompatible anytime soon
Didn't USB-C already do that to itself? I suppose that depends on how narrow the definition of "physically incompatible" is. But IIRC you can't buy a perfect do-everything USB-C cable today, because some USB-C use cases are flat out incompatible with others.
At the cost of being shorter and stiffer; a cable which can only use USB 2.0 and 3A charging can be longer and thinner. And there are also buggy devices (like the first hardware revision of the Raspberry Pi 4) which incorrectly short the two configuration pins together and can only work with less capable cables. But other than that, I agree: a passive Thunderbolt 4 cable can be considered a "perfect do-everything USB-C cable".
That's a pretty huge leap. Just because a design existed before regulation doesn't mean you can keep making it after the regulation. I would be surprised if Apple was allowed to keep selling non-USB-C phones manufactured in winter 2024 or 2025. They will likely be allowed to sell existing inventory, maybe offer refurbished phones that aren't compliant.
As I read it, the new laws are concerned with the chargers more than the devices being charged - if Apple just includes a lightning to USB-C cable (as they already do for the 12), wouldn’t that be enough to satisfy the legislation?
I keep hearing that this is about waste, primarily chargers, as you point out. I wonder if the best solution is to just include neither a charger nor a cable. At this point I have USB chargers and cables for every situation in my life and any additional cable or charger would just be a waste, no matter if USB-C or -A. Have just the people who still need more chargers or cables buy those (or maybe reverb outlet covers with chargers built-in). Everyone else can safe some money and reduce future garbage.
For cars, changes like these are phased in multiple steps. For each car model, companies mass producing cars have to obtain a permit for the model. Then, they are allowed to sell those cars. At which point the individual owners get their cars registered at the government office.
The phasing in happens by first requiring it for permits for new models. The manufacturers can still build and sell older models. A few years later, the rule also applies to all first registration of new cars, to prevent car manufacturers to avoid the new rules by keeping to produce an older model.
IDK if something similar exists for electric household devices. For the famous light bulb ban, they introduced it via import and manufacturing restrictions, so you could still sell the light bulbs, and still can today, but you can't either build new light bulbs or (legally) get light bulbs from outside of the EU into the EU.
You could do the same for phones, just ban the imports at a specified date in the future so that the hardware can be readjusted in time.
Anyways, this only affects one manufacturer (Apple) and they don't have as much of a market share here as in the US.
With your numbers, that'd be 4% relative to the entire market, which is definitely something that Apple and the other phone manufacturers can deal with.
This all seems pretty short sighted. Great in the short term (I want a USB-C iPhone and for everything today to be USB-C) but will surely be a pain going forward - where would USB-C be if this policy had standardised on micro USB earlier? Some will say wireless is the future but I’m not convinced. Maybe the best solution would be to have this policy expire after a certain number of years?
It wasn't that standardized. Between my house and the office around that time, I had a mix of micro USB, mini USB and barrel ports. And always had the wrong adapter with me, it seemed.
Agree, I still have a gaggle of random USB cables for various devices. Micro USB was common, but far from standardized. And on top of that, it sucks. I keep a bunch of spares around because it's such a fragile connector.
The article already hints at it, but lawmakers are not completely dense and allow for relatively easy amendments by the Commission. From the legislation [1]:
> "With respect to radio equipment capable of being recharged via wired charging, the Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 44 to amend Annex Ia in the light of technical progress, and to ensure the minimum common interoperability between radio equipment and their charging devices, by:
(a) modifying, adding or removing categories or classes of radio equipment;
(b) modifying, adding or removing technical specifications, including references
and descriptions, in relation to the charging receptacle(s) and charging
communication protocol(s), for each category or class of radio equipment
concerned."
That's good but usually a new standard is phased in for one or two models to gain experience with it and then increasing numbers of phones use it. If you require all phones to use it from day one, you lose that. You'd at least need an "experimentation" mechanism where the commission allows manufacturers to build different devices that represent a few percent of their sales.
Phones have been doing USB charging for more than 10 years now. USB-C was designed based on the experience, and is what most phones use already.
Your point isn't wrong, but is is several years out of date: USB-C is already well past the few models to gain experience point and now moving to the late adopter part of the cycle. A phone without USB-C charging is as quaint as a phone with a rotary dial at this point.
Experimentation can still happen by having 2 ports. Might not be practical for phones since they are so small these days but it being on phones wouldn't be necessary for testing a new universal standard. It could be tested on other larger devices.
> where would USB-C be if this policy had standardised on micro USB earlier?
It would be a separate port next to the micro-USB port.
The point is that we don't need a new connector every few years for charging a device. This saves e-waste, since the chargers can stay the same. For data, you might want to have a new connector, though.
I blame Apple on this (as an iPhone user). If they had adopted USB-C sooner, or if they had invented something much better than USB-C, this regulation would never pass.
Right now, the charging speed of iPhone is way less than Android phone sold in China. Here most phones charge at 50W+, some at 120W, several times faster than iPhone. While the limitation is not because of Lightning, it is hard to maintain a straight face when Apple insists that they use Lightning because of technical advantage.
USB-C has been out and stable for years and they haven't so I'm not certain they're going to drop lightning for their phones any time soon. It's been a few generations of iPhone since they went with C on the iPad and I would have expected those to move together or more closely if they were interested in moving to USB-C on their phones.
I don't have an apple phone, but my daughter does, and I've always thought that mechanically at least the Apple connector was better because it had less bits to go wrong.
USB C, like micro USB has that "tongue" piece that has to fit inside the end of the cable which always looks like it could snap off. The Apple connector is just a solid piece that goes in the end of the phone. No fiddly interlock pieces.
The lightning connection does seem to have interlocking pieces, but the moving parts are in the socket rather than on the plug. The plug has grooves on the side to lock into the sprung clips in the socket.
The socket half of the lightning connector is actually pretty delicate inside: there are little tiny fingers that contact the strips on the plug. It's quite easy to damage those fingers and ruin the port when cleaning it out after exposure to dust or sand.
Mind you my 7 year old broke the USB C connector on his Switch in much the same way. There's only so strong you can make something that small and dense with contacts.
In all the discussions I've seen where people complain about USB-C, not once have I read about that tab snapping off, so it does not seem to be a problem in practice.
The reason USB-C has the tab on the device is to have the springs, which are the bits which can go wrong the most, on the cable instead of the device. When they start to become loose, you only have to replace an inexpensive cable, instead of having to replace or repair the device. It also better protects the contacts on both the cable and the device (the contacts on Apple's lightning cable are exposed).
It happened to me once. It was a cheap no-name hub so I don't really blame type c for it. I also haven't heard it happen to anyone else and most of my friends and family have an android.
In essence, they seem to believe that wired charging is mature enough for standardisation but further technologies can be implemented through "Radio Equipment Directive". In the same time, it appears that the wireless charging is unaffected because the tech is new and fast changing, therefore the manufacturers can include whatever wireless charging they see fit.
It really boils down to "No funny cables, why don't you try wireless charging of your liking if USB-C doesn't cut it for you?".
The constitution gives US congress the right to set standards for weights and measures, which unless you use a very strict reading says they can set charging standards. I wish they would. Tesla (and Nissan) as early movers 10 years ago can be forgiven for not adopting a standard charger, but now they need to update to the standard. (IIRC both are planning on it)
Standardization of metering devices used in commerce is directly in the purview of Weights and Measures regulation.
For example, NIST Weights and Measures division regulates the nozzle on the dispenser used for gasoline in the US.
> Each retail dispensing device from which fuel products are sold shall be equipped with a nozzle spout having a diameter that conforms with the latest version of SAE J285, “Dispenser Nozzle Spouts for Liquid Fuel Intended for Use with Spark-Ignition and Compression Ignition Engines.”
It's an overreach. "A pound is 16 ounces" is not the same as "cakes shall only be 5 ounces," i.e., a standard of measure does not extend to regulation of what is measured and what measures are permitted. An originalist court could fix this.
These are very fundamental consumer protection regulations that have been solidly cemented in western civilization for many centuries now.
>not extend to regulation of [...] what measures are permitted.
That was exactly the point of that clause. The colonies all had their own system of measurement and it was a mess trying to do business. Now, congress did very little about it, but the founders intentionally reserved the right for them to fix that problem.
The problem with your formulation is that there is no limiting principle. Perversely, the government could rule that a pregnant person is a metering device for gestation and establish standards.
Ensuring accurate metering in the context of commerce is within the scope of "To … fix the Standard of Weights and Measures". The specific form of the nozzle clearly is not, but they might justify it on the basis of some other enumerated power—the interstate commerce clause is frequently (ab)used for this sort of thing. Nothing technically requires every regulation produced by the NIST Weights and Measures division to be grounded exclusively in the Weights and Measures clause, though one could be forgiven for making that assumption.
As dpratt remarked earlier[0], any interpretation which would deem nozzle size—or the specific form of an electrical connector—to be covered by the Weights and Measures clause of the Constitution would effectively cede unlimited power to the federal government. What couldn't they regulate under such broad rules?
I'm not saying that the regulatory power in this case is derived solely from the weights and measures clause, I'm countering golemotron's suggestion that it's a wholly unrelated topic. It's a topic so closely relevant to weights and measures that the regulatory division that currently regulates them bears that title.
Society claiming this is wrong and being correct is exactly balanced by society claiming whales aren't fish and being incorrect.
(Whales are fish because they're descendants of fish and are more closely related to salmon than sharks are. The same goes for you. You're also a fish.)
If by “strict reading” you mean “any reading at all”, I would agree.
I’m not sure how the legal power to say “the unit of mass called the ‘gram’ shall be defined as the mass of a cube of pure water, one centimeter on each side” allows you to say “anybody that manufactures a phone must include the following physical and logical features.” If you go off that definition, you’re basically ceding pretty much unlimited power to the government.
For cars, we have public metering devices that measure units of stuff and charge money. This makes it fall into the category of metering devices used in trade. And we do regulate those almost universally. You can’t just put a different shape nozzle on a gas pump, for instance.
That is good because I think as late as three years ago there was still at least one "laptop" (possibly more, only one I have heard of) which were heavy desktop replacement that required two power bricks during some gaming.
In the USA all modern electric cars also use the normal standard, except for Tesla. There were a few early offshoots and Tesla had good reason to come up with their own connector initially (no other plug could transfer that much power!) but these days everything has been pretty much consolidated.
For charging your car at Tesla chargers that haven't been upgraded to the standard yet there are adaptors available from Tesla plugs to standard fast charging plugs.
Older cars may need their weird custom connections but everything else has been pretty much been standardised. I don't know how much the EU decision has affected this, but it's not an EU exclusive feat.
There's this thing called Brussels effect where manufacturers pick to default to EU requirements instead of having different supply chains unless they absolutely have to.
EU don't like the idea of manufacturers locking down their users through different standards. EU is a densely populated place with limited natural resources and free space, therefore cables piling up or 10 different types of charging stations are problems that EU cannot afford. EU trash being shipped to poorer countries is already a serious problem for example.
Good to hear that in the US only Tesla was the outlier and the industry acted responsibly but unless regulated you can't guarantee that it will be like that or stay like that.
Businesses love to lock down their users, Tesla chargers are a major selling point for Tesla and from EU perspective having multiple charging networks that cannot be made interoperable without a substantial modifications is a no-no.
True, and tbh, the adapters don't have to be particularly clunky. The CCS1 -> Tesla connector adapter is generally pretty elegant. Its not as nice as the Tesla connector itself, of course.
Sadly, the US standard (CCS1) was heavily influenced by a desire for backward compatibility with J1772. Its not a great standard in itself.
I don't really get this trash argument even though I hear it over and over. I throw away a higher volume of stuff in one or two average days than all the wall warts and phone cables I've ever owned probably add up to. I've been on smart phones since Blackberry, and I don't think all of the chargers and cables I've used over the two decades combined add up to a single trash can full.
> I throw away a higher volume of stuff in one or two average days than all the wall warts and phone cables I've ever owned probably add up to.
I would think ‘mass’ is a better metric to use than ‘volume’. Also, it’s not only the waste, but also the work needed to make it, and I would guess that’s a lot harder for electric chargers than for, say, the plastic bags that take up the bulk of the volume of trash.
Also, “Others are worse” isn’t a strong argument. Some of the large contributors to trash may not be completely unavoidable (example: plastic packaging). Because of that, it’s not possible to significantly reduce the amount of waste by making a few cuts on the largest contributors of trash. You have to do it by making lots of small cuts. This is one of them, and also a relatively easy gain.
I would think volume is a better metric because landfills don't really much care about mass.
If you wanted to save trash you'd probably go after packaging. Ban disposable water bottles (or something less drastic like taxing them extra) and there's 50 lifetimes of wall warts per person per annum.
This just isn't really an enviromental problem. Or if it is, it's so far down the scale as to be pointless to prioritize over almost anything. It's really about competition.
> I would think volume is a better metric because landfills don't really much care about mass.
Most EU countries have actually outlawed landfills in favor of waste-to-energy systems. [1] Of course waste-to-energy only works for stuff like plastics, not for electronics which you'd rather want to disassemble carefully to recover the precious metals.
> If you wanted to save trash you'd probably go after packaging.
Which the EU does too. There is legislation underway (or possibly already passed) to outlaw many types of single-use plastic items. Everyone switching from plastic straws to paper straws may actually be another case of Brussels effect.
> it's so far down the scale as to be pointless to prioritize over almost anything
The thing is, from experience we know that these legislations take so long to enact and enforce that you cannot just start with the biggest items, wait for it to be done, and then move to the next biggest item. You need to tackle many possible avenues for waste reduction at once.
in so far as they are
capable of being recharged via wired charging, shall:
so you can have all the funny cables you want, as long as you provide the USB-C plug
If there is no wired charging, there is no problem of funny cables.
but companies are free to experiment all the kinds of wired charging they want, it's just more convenient to have a standard and they'll comply happily I guess, now that they are forced by the law and can stop competing on stupid stuff like charging cables.
There is a huge question of what exactly “are capable of being recharged via wired charging” means. Does the hidden Lightning connector on Apple Watch that most consumers don't even know is there count?
It already has. Tesla's connector is nicer (you can call that subjective but it isn't) and the supercharging network in the US is deploying the clunky standard sort of connector as well.
If EU legislation were universal, that would preclude any future where the superior connector is licensed and takes over from the crappy designed-by-committee alternative, because Tesla would be forced to stop manufacturing it.
Legislators deciding who gets to be VHS and who has to be Betamax is bad, actually.
I second this. I'm frequently using the volkswagen ID.3 and there is no way to unplug it unless you unlock it from charging station with the card you find it in the car (at least in Berlin).
The locking feature is misguided. There should absolutely be a mechanical interlock to prevent unplugging under load. But no key should be required to unplug a home charger, and no key should be needed to plug in a charger once the charge port is open. As I see it, the only security goals should be:
1. At a public charger, one should have to authenticate to _either_ the car or the charger to interrupt an active charging session.
2. When using a portable charger of the sort that is owned by the car’s owner, one should not be able to unplug the charger and thus steal it if one cannot authenticate to the car.
And that’s it. You should be able to unplug someone else from a public charger that can reach multiple parking spaces once it finishes charging.
The CCS2 standard used in Europe and most of the world locks the cable similarly to Tesla.
The CCS1 standard locks the cable using a little flap that folds down on top of the CCS1 latch to hold it in place. Its every bit as clumsy as it sounds, but it does mean there is a locked cable.
EU is a densely populated place where having multiple charging networks of incomparable plugs will be horrible.
When you are not happy with decisions the governments make, it usually means that you should be involved in the process of making the decisions.
Europeans don't trust that the industry will always come up with the best solutions for the user, Americans usually don't trust the government doing something well unless it's the military. Let's agree to disagree.
I like that the car plugs are the same everywhere in EU and want it to stay that way and enjoy the Tesla plugs on a trip to USA.
> EU is a densely populated place where having multiple charging networks of incomparable plugs will be horrible.
In the short term, yes. In the long term however competition between these different standards will cause consolidation and overall technology improvement. The next step will be regulating wireless charging so that all devices have to use/do the same thing, rinse-wash-repeat.
> Europeans don't trust that the industry will always come up with the best solutions for the user, Americans usually don't trust the government doing something well unless it's the military. Let's agree to disagree.
A better way to think about this is that both "groups" can learn from one another. For example you could say that Europeans should be suspicious about USB-C manufacturers and advocates effectively being granted a monopoly in the name of convenience. Americans should better trust that certainly in the case of infrastructure it makes sense to have a single standard "plug" for electric vehicles because we really need as many people driving them as possible in the most convenient way.
We can copy the US if the cable freedom gives birth to superior cables on the long run. EU stuff is't written on stone, it changes as it needs to.
I guess In Europe we kind of like the idea of being able to overthrow the people in power if they screw us too much. It's much more socially acceptable to burn cars and occupy streets and decapitate politicians than shooting CEO's when you are really not happy with the way things work. It feels like you have control over the stuff going on in your country.
You’re really ignoring the amount of inertia that a deployed fleet of cars creates. You can’t just change standards with the snap of a finger once there are 10M cars in the field with it, once that happens, you’re stuck with that standard for probably decades, as the downsides of changing it become much more acute than the potential upsides.
If the US comes up with the superior cables, EU will simply allow it be optional and the industry will retrofit as needed.
Europe is very old, we are used to have old stuff laying around. Old building that definitely don't meet the modern requirements are everywhere. Besides, the states with Cable Freedom will also have all the obsolate cables when the industry finally comes up with the perfect cable.
> Europe is very old, we are used to have old stuff laying around.
So what's the problem with allowing lightning to exist, since as a standard it predated USB-C (and in fact was the impetus for the creation of the latter)? If we allow neighborhoods to keep their old power connectors without retrofit... why not allow lightning to continue to exist?
There's a difference between allowing old installations to continue existing and allowing mass manufacture of the old standard indefinitely. This legislation isn't going to touch anyone's old phones.
All aside, it’s pretending ‘we’ as civilians have any kind of influence in what the EU does. In reality it’s just an opaque process ran by politicians where 99% of the electorate has no idea whatsoever how they got there or even what party they belong to.
> In the long term however competition between these different standards will cause consolidation and overall technology improvement.
If you think that’s a superior solution, then the regulation should actually support it: require that all EV charging connectors have a free published specification, disallow patents on them, and require that interoperability be permitted without cost or other penalty. (e.g. anyone should be able to implement both ends of the Tesla supercharging protocol such that Tesla’s chargers would charge a competing car at the same prices that they charge Tesla’s; similarly, a competing charger should be able to charge a Tesla.)
I was set to be all libertarian about this, but your suggestion is probably more level headed.
There should be some common ground. Regulations that encourage innovation (perhaps even with timed financial incentives) while also ensuring that the best ideas are eventually freely adoptable across the board.
Seems like, as with most issues, people take one extreme or the other, when a common sense middle ground could be found with proper planning and forethought.
Disallowing patents is the libertarian solution, though it would be up to the customers to demand published specifications and official support for interoperability.
The original intention of patent system was to encourage open publication of inventions. It even still works that way for some verticals. The issue is that it also produced a system that it is profitable to game and thus there are patent attorneys who get by by writing the patent in as vague terms as is possible to pass by patent reviewers, and in these kind of adversarial situations it is quite obvious that the private sector will win over the government bureaucrats.
> The original intention of patent system was to encourage open publication of inventions.
That is how it was sold to the public. Unfortunately the system was never designed with the proper structure and incentives to ensure that patents were only granted when doing so actually resulted in the publication of accurate details about useful inventions which would not have become known to the public anyway well before the patent period expired.
In practice, if you think you can keep something a trade secret for more than 20 years without it being independently reinvented you'll do that and not file for a patent. Patents are thus useful only in those cases where a patent is expected to be worse for the public than a trade secret, as they inhibit independent reinvention and reverse engineering for the duration of the patent.
I'm not opposed to this and personally think it's all up for discussion/debate and it should be discussed and debated. I'm excited to see what develops in this space.
One nitpick would be:
> e.g. anyone should be able to implement both ends of the Tesla supercharging protocol such that Tesla’s chargers would charge a competing car at the same prices that they charge Tesla’s; similarly, a competing chargers should be able to charge a Tesla.
I think this sounds good, but one of the details here is ensuring that other manufacturers are able to actually build the products correctly so a supercharger doesn't light a car on fire or something due to faulty equipment. Who is at fault? How is it prevented? What are the legal agreements? Etc.
On the pricing side though I'd have to strongly disagree. Tesla (or whoever) builds the infrastructure so they should be able to charge what they want. It's about the plug and interoperability of that standard, not infringing on the business model which I think goes too far. If they charge too much money, people won't use them and competitors will continue to emerge (I see new charging stations in Meijer parking lots being put next to Tesla infrastructure). There's no reason in my view to mandate pricing here and I think it would set back EV adoption to do so.
Anyone can produce USB-C chargers. That's not a monopoly. This will effectively enable competition on the charging market, since the big players can't bind their products to their own proprietary chargers anymore.
Have you ever felt the Apple/Microsoft charger to be lacking in some way? Breaking easily, too long cords, too short, wrong color, too expensive? Congratulations now you can make and sell those better chargers. Before, this was not possible.
Yes but all you’re really doing is encouraging everyone to stay locked in to a USB-C market. This isn’t enabling competition in the charging market, it’s eliminating or hamstringing competing markets. You won’t create a new charging apparatus because you’re legally required to use USB-C.
"What if we created a charging cable that did X,Y,Z?"
"That would be cool but we have to use USB-C"
> Have you ever felt the Apple/Microsoft charger to be lacking in some way? Breaking easily, too long cords, too short, wrong color, too expensive?
No not really. In fact I’ve found most third-party products to be godawful. Good luck not buying something fraudulent on Amazon.com. But also, I’m not really sure what you are talking about. Companies sell charging equipment and cords now anyway.
Everything has trade-offs. I’m skeptical of the necessity of this regulation, especially given that the only holdout that anyone cares about is Apple and they’ve been adopting USB-C in all of their products over time. One benefit though will be manufacturers won’t include charging cables with new devices anymore. So that will further reduce waste. Wouldn’t be surprised to see lobbying behind the scenes from companies such as Apple to implement regulations like this so they can save money. I kind of like this as an investor because now you can save money by not including a cable (or maybe you still do and it’s just some cheap one for now) and then you go and up sell wireless chargers instead.
We all affect each other, a lot of American things have become de facto stands. Anyway, be careful what you wish because it might become real and you might find out that Asia is not the libertarian utopia.
Imagine different gasoline plugs...that would be stupid, isnt't it? Or different fuel formula for different car models or different AC sockets in the same house...
Also I'm not sure why you hold Asia so dear. You may soon get some centrally planned standards from China in the EV market and not only(i.e online services such tiktok)
I was unable to find any record of legislation forcing standardization of gas pump form factors. Also, in my experience different pumps operate at different rates. I think the fact that pumps tend to be quite similar is a result of their mechanical nature, where less precision is required.
> (f) Every retailer and wholesale purchaser-consumer shall equip all gasoline pumps from which gasoline is dispensed into motor vehicles with a nozzle spout that meets all the following specifications:
> (1) The outside diameter of the terminal end shall not be greater than 0.840 inches (2.134 centimeters).
> (2) The terminal end shall have a straight section of at least 2.5 inches (6.34 centimeters).
Fantastic, that’s exactly what I was looking for, thank you! I thought maybe there would be an earlier law, this one is about 100 years after the advent of cars. I suppose we’re close to thirty years past what could reasonably be considered the advent of cell phones, so maybe legislation about now is reasonable.
I agree with you, but noting that fuel may not be the best example as you have both completely different fuels (like diesel) and different types of normal gas (premium)
Still though, having the same “regular” gas at every single gas station is an underrated benefit!
How is this different from the American FAA dictating that all aeroplane toilets have to have ashtrays whist at the same time banning smoking on flights[1]?
Should Europeans start hoping the US economy fails so that then FAA has less influence?[3]
Really I don't think this is something that really matters in the grand scheme of things. USB-C is a good enough standard and I don't see Apple coming out with some great new alternative.
From my perspective I have loads of broken Lightning cables but no broken USB-C ones. Also if something is going to break I'd rather the springs be in the cheap cable than the expensive phone socket as with Lightning.
1. Now you might think it's for people who break the smoking rule to have somewhere to put out their fags[2] but the "innovative" solution to that would be the sink.
2. You know that I know you know that's slang for cigarette, so stick to the point at hand please. :P
3. Just in case that's not blindingly obvious, the answer is NO, that would be terrible for everyone involved including both Europeans and Americans.
Would you happier if you were affected by European corporate actions instead?
We live in a global economy, you are constantly affected by things happening thousand of miles away (e.g. Ukraine invasion bumped the price of gas across the world). Not sure why you're conflating that with the fact that these actions are "centrally-planned".
I can imagine that car charging is still too new and fast-moving to enforce a single standard, unlike phone charging, where it's just ridiculous to have 3 separate standards.
On the other hand, you're absolutely right that it doesn't help anyone if your car is incompatible with half of the chargers out there. Are adapter cables an option, perhaps?
Some adapters are more problematic than others. For example if the charger and the vehicle both expect the other side to initiate the charging process and withhold power until some voltage is detected then the adapter may need its own independent power supply to jump-start the charging process. Locks are another problem—some combinations would require the adapter to provide powered locking mechanisms for both sides. None of this makes an adapter impossible, but it could be too expensive or unwieldy to be a practical solution.
That's definitely true. I've used the Tesla chademo adapter and it was a beast. Its heavy, awkward, and the latching mechanism is difficult to fully engage.
The Tesla passive solution to the locking mechanism on their CCS1 passive adapter is as brilliant as it is simple. Just a little springloaded bar that locks the cable onto the adapter if and only if the adapter is inserted into the car. Then the car uses its regular adapter. This works well with CCS1 locking.
The other end of the spectrum are things like the setec adapter or the evhub adapter. Both of those don't have vehicle side locking with CCS1, which is a violation and a potential hazard.
I presume you're talking about the J1772/CCS1 adapter that comes for free with every Tesla. This adapter is occasionally handy but it does not allow fast ("super") DC charging. It's strictly a Level 2 AC adapter, which means it takes a few hours to charge your car fully.
The CCS adapter that allows you to supercharge a Tesla at non-Tesla DC superchargers is not (yet) available in the US [0]. Tesla does make them and you can buy them in South Korea, but not in the US.
[0] Except for a dodgy Chinese gizmo which I won't link to because it's reputed not to work reliably.
There is no combined J1772/CCS1 adapter. There are separate passive J1772 and CCS1 adapters, though. The J1772 adapter is obviously really small and easy to use.
I was referring to the CCS adapter that is currently available in South Korea. Its a little heavier, but its also fairly easy to use (well, as easy as CCS usually is). It has become really easy to import them too, thanks to Harumio and other importers. The speeds are 150+kw, and close to 200kw on the newer Model S/X[1]. I expect that official availability will happen sometime this year, but if it doesn't, then presumably a third party will make a suitable passive adapter. Its a ridiculously simple device.
[1] I know officially S/X isn't even supported, but it has been demonstrated to work. Higher speeds are because of the newer 450V battery pack.
You don't need to be. "We can't do anything about anything because the system is run by the billionaires and unless you are one, you have no power" narrative is not only false but also harmful.
Please pardon my inadvertent US-centrism! If you live in a country with a functioning democracy, of course it would make sense to participate. Here in the US, average citizens have little to no influence on policy:
This isn't the case in the US, either. How much influence do you think one person in the US, one of hundreds of millions of people, should normally have? Your power to influence policy is obviously going to dilute the further up the chain of government you go. You could involve yourself in local politics where the population of people is much smaller (and consequentially, your influence is much larger), or you could try to become a representative yourself.
National politics in the US is certainly perverse, though it's probably just your US-centrism at work again if you think it's exceptional in this regard.
I was paraphrasing Gilens and Page, from the linked research article. In their words, they found that "economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence".
If there has been subsequent research which contradicts their findings, I would be happy to read it.
> Please pardon my inadvertent US-centrism! If you live in a country with a functioning democracy, of course it would make sense to participate.
This implies that you think that the reason the person believes that they should participate in government is because they don't live in the US and as such, have a functioning democracy and can have an impact on policy. I am asserting that people can have an effect on policy, just that you are more likely to have an effect when you are dealing with local government. This doesn't require a research paper to figure out; There are approximately 334 million Americans. The "average citizen" in this case would have almost no influence whatsoever on policy even in a "functioning democracy" and this is how it is designed. However, if you narrow that down to your state, there is a much lower population and the policies implemented will have a more direct impact on you. If you go even further and look at it from a county, township, or city level, you, by the virtue of their being a small fraction of the people potentially involved in governance, have a much larger effect on policy. The issue is that it seems that people don't want to affect how their town is governed, they want to make mass impact with big changes in policies at a national level.
Special interest groups and economic elites affecting national policy isn't a unique trait to the United States and they are not a valid reason to encourage people against participating in government. You are teaching helplessness which just perpetuates the issue.
This reading of their study is well known to be false; what actually happens is that most of the population agrees on almost all policies, more often than they should, and that's the reason why they're in winning coalitions.
Since the US is education-polarized, rich people are also more left wing than average, as are people who donate to political campaigns, and the more they donate the more left wing they are. (This is called "being Shor pilled".)
Being densely-populated makes it easier to have a range of different plugs, since there will be a range of alternatives, and you'll be able to find the right one for you nearby.
Consider the opposite of a sparsely-populated region, where the next charging point may be 50 miles away. In that case, having a random hodge-podge of competing connectors could have actual consequences.
In practice though, there is not much of an effect either way. All parties have an interest in interoperability: car owners would have adapter to hand if this was a common problem, and charging stations would make themselves available to as many paying customers as possible.
When you have 24 official languages in 27 countries with no physical borders it doesn't end up having an even distribution of plugs but clusters of different types. There are no large wastelands of cheap land where every network can have a station, it's usually one station on each side of the road every 50km on the highways. In cities, a lot of things are retrofitted into medieval city structure so there's not much free space for all your charging needs.
As a result, this will create artificial limits on where people can travel. EU is that much into standardisation because we want to remove these artificial limits created through the thousands years of history.
Random anecdote: I once got stuck at a friends place in Denmark with my Tesla, because the mobile connector wouldn't work. Turns out despite the voltage and socket being the same, the grounding can vary between countries and the connector wouldn't let me charge (this was back in 2016, I'm not sure if newer mobile connectors are better in that regard)
Is that because some places have 230V and neutral, while others have -115V and +115V (yes like in the US but in Europe)?
There's a single neighborhood in Rome where that happens and car chargers don't work. The "solution" is to request a three-phase 400V connection: the utility company can't deny it and it must be 220V to neutral.
I would like to live in the alternative reality were all AC is three-phase AC; probably it would be uselessly more expensive for normal domestic stuff but it would be quite cooler.
Let's say I invent a better connector tomorrow. Nobody other than me really knows if it's better or not. The only way for me to convince people is to get it out there in the market so people can try it.
How does that work by voting or any other democratic activity?
Others will be unconvinced that it's really better, for the same reason people are skeptical of startup ideas until they become mainstream. So nobody will want to update the standard. So I couldn't release it in the market to prove that it's better, because that would be "lock-in". And the idea would die.
No, I do not believe that a multi trillion dollar company would spend billions of dollars making a major change to their devices, without having any idea of if it will be better or not.
Whatever internal research that these companies made, to make them want to change their multi billion dollar market like this, they can go public with it first.
If you're designing such a connector, I'm sure you'll have the car manufacturers on board immediately. After all, your connector is better. Not only a tiny bit better, it's much better.
The EU will obviously be happy to include your better connector, provided that old cars can use it too via an adapter and new cars can use old connectors via an adapter. Then they can without issue transition to the new connector without wasting everyone's time and money.
The committe that handles the Radio Equipment Directive has been fairly reasonable in their reaction time to newer technology coming out. It's not the full blown comission or council, after all.
It's not anyone's business what kind of phone I buy. If chargers pollute so much, just tax them and be done with it.
I'll add to kukx's reason the fact that I can't access some websites anymore because who wants to spend time with bureaucracy so that the website is 100% compliant with GDPR?
Agree 100%. The cookie law is the most visible failure of these regulations. I feel like they should pay me from their own pockets each time I have to click the cookie banner. And by their own pockets I mean the money they got from other sources than taxpayers money. Of course someone will argue that the intentions were good. Often they are! But it does not make it much better.
Most people are more bothered by the annoyance then some nebulous, intangible “tracking“ that will likely never have a visible effect on their lives.
Outside of high tech places like HackerNews, mention the tracking and you’ll get a shrug, mention the cookie banners and you’ll get a “yeah I hate that crap“
Industry already converged on charging cables though, just Apple is left and they've been moving away from lightning for some time... this legislation is a waste of time.
I am "European", whatever that word means, and I definitely don't trust the government to do something well. It happens sometimes that some governments in some countries do some specific thing well. That's definitely not a general rule.
On the other hand, companies building wholly proprietary infrastructure is just pure e-waste on the back of the citizens of those countries that ALSO limits innovation.
Imagine a world where Ford cars use a different gas nozzle from a GM product in the US. The average person would have to pick and choose stations and if one were to go out of business, the lesser standard would encounter mass disposal and retrofit, all on the backs of consumers. The intent with these products is generally not innovation...it is lock in and licensing fees. The EU law in case here has a committee that reviews the standard yearly and accepts proposals.
Diesel pump nozzles actually have multiple standards - there's one about the same size as a gas nozzle that's used for diesel cars and pickups, and a bigger one that's used for trucks and buses.
We should also mandate the reduction of open source projects, after all there are too many competing standards. We don’t want code to be wasted now do we? Let’s start by banning the use of Tensorflow
Yeah. The rollout of domestic wiring standards was pre-EU, and dealing with the entrenched incompatible standardisation gets in the way of the EU goal of a single market in goods and services. They really don't want more arbitrary standards that vary nationally.
Of course, that's not quite the same as the laptop charger question where the fragmentation is between companies and less entrenched. But still.
No, EU uses a single plug, it is called "Type C" (no, not USB-C).
What you might find in some poorer regions in EU is old plugs that were there pre-EU, or prestandardization.
I can say that, because Brexit happened, I have no clue what those were thinking when designing their own gigantic plug.
This is just not true. Denmark and Italy use their own plugs; Ireland, Malta, and Cyprus use the British plug; and the heart of the EU is divided between French-style and Schuko plugs. (Switzerland, though outside the EU, also uses its own plugs.)
As I understand it, EU moves to standardise plugs failed in the 90s.
> But Italy has the "normal" (schuko or French) plug. The old one (three holes in line) are in older houses mostly.
That's a bit of an oversimplification. I was in Italy on Thursday and also early in May. My very modern hotel rooms mostly had Italian three-hole sockets, with a single token 'standard' euro socket provided at the table, that nevertheless didn't always accept my (French-style) laptop cable because the prongs were too thick.
Also, flashy modern hotels aside, I'd say most houses in Italy are "older houses". The three-hole socket is definitely extremely common in Italy in my experience. In fact, there's two incompatible three-hole Italian sockets - a larger one for most appliances, and a smaller one for lights.
No. Type C is limited to 2.5 A ungrounded appliances. For regular (16 A, grounded) sockets, half of EU use type E and other half type F. Fortunately, there is CEE 7/7 plug, which is compatible with both type E and type F sockets.
They're all a part of the NEMA standard. The different plugs denote different capacities of the circuit and the requirements of the load. That way you can't accidentally plug a 30A device in a 15A circuit or you can't plug a 120V device into a 240V plug. If the wiring to your stove top is only 30A but you bought a 50A stove, you shouldn't be able to plug it in and just hope the circuit breaker trips before the wires melt to let you know you did it wrong.
Its not like there's a plug for Samsung TVs, a different plug for Sonos sound bars, a different plug for a Sony alarm clock, a different plug for a Singer sewing machine, etc. They're all going to be a NEMA 5-15 plug since all of these things are ~120V and use less than 15A.
Sure, the Tesla connector is smaller, and a little sleeker. But from a functionality perspective, the plug types are basically identical. Both allow AC standard charging and DC fast charging. Electric cables aren't that complicated.
Compared to CCS, Tesla made a ton of smart decisions with their charging setup:
- All Teslas have their charging ports at the rear left side. This means that charging cables can be very short. Longer cables would cause tangles, cost more, and be harder to cool.
- Tesla's protocol has built-in payment. You plug in and charge. With CCS it varies. Sometimes you use a credit card. Sometimes you download a mobile app and sign up for some account. Sometimes the planets align and CCS's plug-and-charge works.
- The CCS plug is much bigger. If you look at the connector sizes[1] or adapters[2], the CSS plug is comically huge. Tesla had to redesign the tail lights on the Model S/X to fit CCS Combo 2 ports.
- Every exposed contact is a potential failure point, and CCS exposes more contacts than Tesla's charging port.
- CCS has two different plug dimensions which are used in different regions, so a European CCS vehicle brought to North America will need an adapter (and vice-versa).
- If your vehicle only supports AC charging, you cannot charge with CCS Combo plugs. They won't fit. Since some Teslas were made before the CCS Combo standard took off, older Model S/X's used a CCS Type 2 port. So now every Supercharger in Europe has two plugs: CCS Type 2 & Combo 2.[3]
Several of your points don't have anything to do with CSS and are simply costs of having multiple competing brands on the markets who need to use the same infrastructure (real estate is a very limited resource in many areas).
- Older X/S were never that numerous and shouldn't hold up the vast majority of the population. First movers disadvantage if you like.
- Moving vehicles across the Atlantic is also a tiny tiny use case and already difficult as is.
> Legislators deciding who gets to be VHS and who has to be Betamax is bad, actually.
They didn't make the decision. It's more like legislators observing that Betamax is failing and deciding that it's in everyone's best interests to tell Sony that they have to adopt VHS instead of creating confusion in the marketplace.
> Tesla's connector is nicer
Tesla's system only goes up to 400 volts. CCS goes up to 800 volts. The higher voltage supports faster charging.
(This is similar to Betamax's critical flaw. The smaller, more elegant Betamax tape compared to the clunky VHS tape meant that VHS could record 6 hours on a tape when Betamax was limited to about 3.5 hours on a tape. It also meant that feature length films were often recorded at slower tape speeds, thus meaning that prerecorded VHS tapes were often a better quality than the Betamax version.)
CCS spec limits are actually 1000V and 500A. Electrify America uses 350A units, hence the 350 kW chargers (1000V x 350A). Lucid battery packs are 924V to maximize CCS capability.
DC Fast charging has to match pack voltage, so with 400ish volt pack voltage Tesla gets big charging speed by providing extreme amperage. CCS is limited to 500A, so the best way to provide really fast charging is higher pack voltages.
Higher voltage does have some benefits around heat and losses, but also has downsides like cost of electronics and installations over 600V generally require special electrical licensing.
It's hard to deny the tesla connector is a lot nicer to work with (especially V3 with thin, liquid cooled cables), but I still wish my model 3 sr+ had CCS like euro cars. I'd love to be able to have more charging options.
I'm not sure that Tesla's connector is a limiting element there. The Tesla system can also go to higher amperages than CCS, which is an advantage. For example, the F150 Lightning charging rate is hampered by its 400 volt CCS system. It can't do more than 200kw. That's creating a lot of the pressure to move to 800 volt.
Tesla doesn't have a similar limitation and can do 250-300kw on the existing 400-450V cars.
It's more like legislators observing that Betamax is failing and deciding that it's in everyone's best interests to tell Sony that they have to adopt VHS instead of creating confusion in the marketplace.
Or like 1996 when Apple was failing and everyone should have been forced to standardize on Windows.
Different countries already have many different rules for autos. That's why it's difficult to be a world-wide auto manufacturer: you have to comply with so many different rules from different countries. That's just the cost of doing business and has been for decades.
If Apple believes USB-C is really that bad (which I don't think they do) - then they have the option of creating a handset only for sale in Europe or they can remove all charging ports and go wireless charging. I bet they go with USB-C charging and wireless charging.
>Legislators deciding who gets to be VHS and who has to be Betamax is bad, actually
Interesting example. Betamax was technologically superior, but lost out due to marginally higher costs. What makes you think Tesla's connector wouldn't suffer the same fate?
> Tesla's connector is nicer (you can call that subjective but it isn't)
I like the Tesla connector in the US, but in Europe, I'd argue that CCS2 is objectively superior. They need 3-phase power support and the Tesla connector doesn't support that. They also use a different CCS connector from the US. The CCS2 connector uses a latching mechanism that is similar to the proprietary Tesla one. Its simple and very reliable.
The US CCS1 system uses a dual latching mechanism. The cable and the car each have moving parts that are somewhat complicated. The cable side latch is a common failure point. It makes sense, given the desire to retain backward compatiblity with J1772 L1/L2 chargers, but I don't really think that was worth the tradeoff, tbh.
I would say that the IEC 62196-2 used by Tesla in Europe is the most sane EV charging connector design there is. It is standard (albeit in the fast charge mode it is apparently only used by Tesla), the connector is not ridiculously large and the whole mechanical design is derived from industrial power connector that can be used to power entire typical European household.
I would rather have a shared and slightly less optimal cable, than a unique and "nicer" cable. USB-C is the perfect example, you can argue that lightning cable is actually nicer, but being able to charge all my different devices with a single cable is far nicer.
If every company thought like Tesla/Apple, we'd quickly go down a very untenable road.
It makes sense for cars to have a standard connector so that they may be charged without any problem at any public charging station. After all, there is a standard fuel nozzle for ICE vehicles.
On the other hand, this requirement to have an USB-C connector is pretty useless to downright counter-productive as it will indeed prevent innovation. It's just political hand-waving.
This is the case I try to make to friends and relatives (non-EV owners) who insist that a common plug is a prerequisite to EV ownership.
Standardizing against Tesla at any earlier point would have been a gift on a silver platter for legacy auto by slowing EV adoption, and it's Tesla's freedom to innovate that is why we're even having this discussion instead of theoretical questions about what EVs might be like in the future.
I usually tell them to let Tesla solve the remaining edge cases (semis, trailer hauling, and charge speeds comparable to ICE fill-ups) before we start regulating. Setting things in stone now would be like standardizing on DSL as the only last-mile broadband in 2004. We don't want to do that.
That's just impossible. Filling a 100 kWh "tank" in one minute requires 6 MW of power, plus all the power that goes into heat. The only solution would be replacing batteries on the fly but Tesla discontinued it.
Moving stuff is inherently faster than chemical reactions (unless you're talking about explosions).
The problem is not just the time to charge a single car but the capacity in cars/hour.
First, if a car takes five times longer to charge, you need a lot more space to cover the needs for peak days. This may not be a problem on highways (or in the US) but space in Europe is much more limited.
Second, a smallish 6-pump filling station serves 150-200 cars per hour. An equivalent charging station would need 12-15 MW which means working at 40 kV.
Dealing with peak days is easy for filling stations, you just request gasoline trucks more frequently. For charging stations you need to build infrastructure that might hardly exist in more rural places, it's the same as sneakernet vs broadband.
It's hard to calculate how many charging stations will be needed. Most EV owners plug their cars in at home and wake up every day with a full charge. They only use charging stations for road trips. Also charging stations can be installed in far more places than gas stations. There are no hazardous fumes or massive fire risks. They don't require nearly as much maintenance or staff. For these reasons it's common to see charging stations in parking garages, in front of hotels, or even next to the beach[1].
The problem is the peak demand on the road trips, such as everybody doing hundreds of km on the same days to go on vacation. Using the car for your summer holidays is quite more common in Europe than in the US for example.
> If EU legislation were universal, that would preclude any future where...
Your crystal ball seems broken. You could have said the exact same thing about micro-usb for phone chargers, yet somehow we ended up in the present.
Hint: Your supposed critical flaw is incredibly obvious. So either everyone but you is an idiot or just maybe the people making laws have thought of that too...
>> I's absolutely true that Tesla's EV connector is better than CCS, and it's a pity that Tesla lost that battle.
Currently working at a company that makes CCS chargers. Can confirm the standard is an absolute shit show, the cables are heavy, and the plugs are a giant pain in the ass. But hey, it's the standard so that's what we make. Oh, and why TF do we have a PowerLine Communication chip to talk to the vehicle over (non-power) signal wires? A few CAN messages would have done the job. One of the stupidest communication standards ever.
Tesla's connector uses CAN over signal wires, and it uses the same power pins for both AC and DC which makes the connector light and sleek. If you think VHS is worse than Betamax, CCS is more worse than Tesla's connector.
>It already has. Tesla's connector is nicer (you can call that subjective but it isn't) and the supercharging network in the US is deploying the clunky standard sort of connector as well.
you know what's even nicer? Being able to charge your car at any charging station and not just the ones built by your manufacturer.
Imagine if you could only fill up your gas tank at specific gas stations that support your tank opening.
What if Apple finally comes out with wired mag safe for the iPhone? Does they count as wireless? Or would it be illegal in Europe because a wire was still involved even if the connection was magnetic?
Since they've been using Lightning for about 10 years now, I'd say there's other things that are inhibiting their innovation. I suspect it has more to do with third-party accessory manufacturers. Unless you're suggesting that connector innovation requires at least a 10 year iteration cycle?
Yeah, people generally don’t want to have to throw out all that stuff after a short period of time, and after a long period, they’ve got even more money invested in that setup, so if it’s not broken… there’s just not really much of a compelling benefit to change types from the perspective of most normal people, and there are concrete downsides in the form of money sunk into it.
Anyway, I like USB-C more, I have to carry them anyway, so it’d eliminate one cable when I travel. We’re as close as I’ve ever seen to having the one cable to rule them all, which is pretty cool.
USBC can be made to be "MagSafe". When Apple only sold laptops with USB-C ports there were a bunch of MagSafe knockoffs sold for laptops. Although most of the time they would break eventually but it's not impossible. If it just was a special cord as long as you could use a regular USBC cord it seems like it would be compliant but IANAL.
Those solutions aren’t very good, so I doubt Apple would go that route.
Frankly, I’m expecting the lightning port to be replaced with a purely inductive/magnetic solution eventually, there probably will not even be a receptacle for it, just a wireless contact to the phone from the wire like how the Apple Watch can only charged.
I’m guessing in that case, they would be exempt from providing a usb-c port since the phones would be technically purely wireless by that point. At that point, other vendors will follow and the EU will mandate Qi as the standard wireless charging solution since the USB-C mandate will be obsolete.
I'd guess that they'd be required to implement both. If there's a USB-C charging option, I don't think the EU would prevent an additional magsafe charging. They havent banned wireless charging, for example. This is to insure an essential minimum compatibility (I hope/as I see it).
Innovation is overrated. And standardising is not blocking.
What we need more urgently than innovation is to stop creating so much waste, extracting so much stuff from the earth, and in general reduce consumption. Standardisation accomplishes at least some of that.
> Innovation is overrated. And standardising is not blocking.
Hard disagree? Both lightning and USB C were massive improvements in durability compared to Micro USB - I'd argue lightning is still better in that regard, because there's no thin piece inside the phone that can break (did phone repair, and 99% of the time a "broken" iphone port was just stuck lint).
USB C is not universally better then then Micro, namely it has a much larger footprint both on the connector side and the PCB.
> Will EU block innovation?
So my question is - if there's a new USB standard connector that's smaller, or is inside-out for better durability - is it now prevented from being used?
Granted this isn't the fault of the connector, but USB-C is certainly a mess. My Nintendo Switch uses USB-C charging, but I can't use my MacBook charger for it. There are different cables, ratings, etc. "make everything USB-C" is asking for confusion. As much as I hate having a different cable for every device, at least when I pick up a (Apple-branded) lightning cable, I know it will work correctly for my iPhone.
Isn't the switch a notorious outlier and oddball with respect to its usb-c implementation though? I think it's more just that Nintendo screwed up one product than the standard is bad.
It's certainly the most popular example of poor implementation. But one could argue that USB-C isn't even implemented and they just used the connector/form factor for their cable. I recall the RPI4 also having issues early on with power over USB-C.
But that's precisely my problem with this - if we're forcing every device to merely adopt a USB-C port, that does nothing to ensure they're actually using USB-C specifications or interoperable. Game System X and Phone Y may only work with USB-C cables/chargers X and Y, which satisfy the requirement without fixing the compatibility problem.
> …if we're forcing every device to merely adopt a USB-C port, that does nothing to ensure they're actually using USB-C specifications or interoperable.
You certainly need more than just the physical port. IMHO the minimum reasonable requirement would be that the device must charge at near the maximum supported rate (minimum of the device's, cable's, and charger's advertised rates) with any combination of compliant charger & cable. There wouldn't be much point in mandating the use of USB-C ports otherwise.
> My Nintendo Switch uses USB-C charging, but I can't use my MacBook charger for it.
Then I guess you got one from the first hardware revision. I have a 2018 Switch (second hardware revision as far as I understand), and I have in the past charged it successfully with Apple chargers and Lenovo chargers.
I really like what USB-C has done for peripherals and non-iphone devices, but I agree with you.
I'd be fine with a new USB-D that fixed all these issues. USB-C is just mostly better than the other alternatives for Android and charging laptops. Its far from perfect.
I've read that USB-C is a durability improvement over micro USB. This surprised me because I've never had the USB port on a phone fail on me until I got a USB-C phone.
How about non-removable batteries and unrepairable phones? Many phones would be still ok, but the non-removable (cheaply) battery means that they get replaced prematurely, because the cost of replacement is overlapping the price of a low/mid tear phones. Back in the day, you pulled the back cover off, put a new batter in, and the phone was as good as new. Same with other types of repair, especially the kinds where manufacturer just replaces the whole assembly just because of one small part malfunctioning.
It will probably last for very long consider 24 wire of type c is a lot compares to 4 of 3.5mm jack. And it can actually be repurposed by changing the protocol (software) ?
Probably until someday that 24 physical wire isn't enough for a phone. (but the iPhone don't even use the usb3 yet, why did it even need these bandwidth?)
This is a flawed comparison because the use cases for the former examples are very limited in comparison to USB C which is arguably evolving rapidly still.
You could imagine if we had formed such a standard around USB A in the 90s and how it might have blocked the already high friction establishment of USB C and thunderbolt 3 standards.
USB C currently seems more mature than USB A, so I can see where things ar ea bit subjective here, but it's not really possible to see where unrestricted development would have put us.
I think I would have been more comfortable with simply banning lightning and micro USB than restricting to only USB C.
This regulation is about charging - so power, not data / thunderbolt. And when it comes to charging USB C can delvier 100W, which is enough for any small gadget, phone, etc.
The 3.5mm jack is not that good in my opinion. It fails too quickly. Less than a year for a portable device that bumps around in your pocket and reconnect a couple times a day. Now I still prefer it in many situations to bluetooth with its latency and packet drop issues, but I do think that a better jack could be made and is worth making.
As for suggestions for improvements: it should not be able to spin, because spinning wears it down. Second, maybe some kind of latch to lock it into place.
It would be nice if we could limit new standards to once every 5-10 years. At which time people can submit new ideas for standardization approval and then the best one gets picked and everyone is required to switch. Backwards compatibility would probably score a lot of points.
> Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is what happens if better solutions are found. Will EU block innovation?
The EU has no problem with updating to improved standards. First there was USB-Mini-B, then USB-Micro-B, now USB-C. I would expect some different connector to replace it in a about a decade and 100% wireless in two decades roughly.
Mini-B (2000) had serious reliability problems, and would often damage the device rather than the cable. Micro-B (2007) was a pretty smart & necessary response. USB-C (2014) elegantly encompassed the additional high-speed data-connectivity that the hideous huge SuperSpeed USB Micro-B (2008) tacked on, & added significant future-proofing/adaptability (alt-modes).
I have a hard time imagining much advantage beyond USB-C. It's pretty mechanically fit & reliable, it has huge bandwidth (I think DisplayPort alt-modes can do 80Gbps?), it can transmit 240W in Extended Power Range variants. Someday perhaps. But I also think this might be here to stay for a long long time.
I would bet the industry will invent something to replace it anyway, even if there's no good reason for the change. Or maybe there will be some fundamental leap making 80 Gbps as irrelevant as 9600 bps are today.
Side note, there's some really really cheap fiber optic DisplayPort cables out there. They work, they're whatever length you want, mine were ~$0.60/foot. My monitors are 4k60 & 2k170; all resolutions run great. I feel like we're not too far off from fiber maybe happening for real.
USB-C only came to light because of the out of standard Intel's lightning cable. Same thing for x86 vs arm, you can't really block one in favour of the other.
> Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is what happens if better solutions are found. Will EU block innovation?
Usb typec wire from 65A(non e-marked wire) to 240A(the latest standardized e-marked wire) uses literally the same plug.
Typec is the header but not the protocol. Even China phone vendor's proprietary high speed charging protocol use typec wire. And Intel's tb4 wire also use a type c wire. (the bandwidth of tb4 is definitely overkill for every phone ever made on the world for now)
Force use of typec header and baseline charging protocol prevent innovation is just bs consider this didn't even prevent apple from making a MFA e-marked typec cable.(Or they don't want this to pass because they actually want to do this again?)
> the bandwidth of tb4 is definitely overkill for every phone ever made on the world for now
That depends on what you're doing with it. It would not be very strange to power a VR headset with a phone, which could easily get into that bandwidth range.
I'm considering TBT3/4 for our VR headset's tethered mode. It's a bit of a pain to implement, but the data rate is worth it.
For reference, we need 2-4 lanes of DP HBR3 (depending on compression) + PCIe Gen3x4 for the camera passthrough. TBT3/4 could do it over a single cable.
Feeds into the nightmare that is implementing that entire ecosystem though...
The tech for wireless charging is not really that new and isn't really changing a large amount. My Nokia 920 uses the same charging standard as the latest iPhones. iPhones can charge on the old charger I have, the 920 can charge on an iPhone charger. That phone came out a decade ago.
Standards are a good thing but I’m not sure that we have reached this point where USB-C is functionally the best. If we could completely eliminate on all other types of connectors on not just phones but computers then I would say it’s time to standardize. Unfortunately on my computer if I want a 4K resolution and frame rate that is way 300 hz then is it even possible that can be done over a USB-C connector? Hopefully some expert can chime in but display port or hdmi 2.1+ or multiple of those cables is what is used typically, and if USB-c worked perfectly why isn’t that already replacing every single port on a computer? Phones will eventually be as fast or faster than the current computers, so why implement a limitation when it feels like phones are still at the baby steps in phone evolution? That is just data transfer and I’m no expert but I’m not certain either than charging has reached it’s final form either. Am I wrong, is the USB-c connector capable of infinite data transfer rate as long as your cable is good enough?
Speaking of cars and standardization, I'm still waiting for the European Union to put the steering wheel on the left side of the car and while we're at it, make it mandatory to drive on the right side of the road.
Is your point that since there exist a standard which occurred without government intervention, then the government should never intervene to create any standards?
It's just really not clear to me that regulators need to be mandating product design.
I have no expectation, for example, that these same regulators will stay on top of this and revise it when USB-C stops being the preferred or best choice.
Twenty years ago, we really DID have a snarl of competing and proprietary phone ports. It was a mess -- Blackberry chargers didn't work with Palm; most WinMo devices had their own ports; etc. It was ugly.
Now, pretty much everything is either USB or Lightning. This is good! What problem is the EU solving here?
Plus Apple Watches have always been only charged via conductive, so it’s likely phones could have gone that way too within a short space of time if the lack of a data cable was deemed acceptable.
Even devices that charge with a cable do not need USB-C if they are too small to physically fit a USB-C port. Though at that point they wont fit a Lightning port either but instead some weird exposed charging pins or wireless charging.
I routinely charge my iPhone on a wireless charger. When I'm in a hurry, I plug it in. I don't want that option taken away, wireless is nowhere near fast enough yet.
I’ve also found wireless charging to be inconsistent at best, especially with a case. Half the time I come back and I didn’t place my phone in exactly the right place. Maybe it’s the quality of my chargers, but until I can buy a random charger on Amazon and assume it to be as reliable as an equivalent cable, I don’t think we can give up the cables.(fwiw my current charger is name brand)
This is why the last couple of generations of iPhones have supported "magsafe" charging, so the magnets line things up every time. Amazon has plenty of "magsafe" chargers for iPhones.
To be clear, wireless charging with "magsafe" is still slower than using a cable.
That's a bit over the top, don't you think? When Apple created the Lightning connector, the accepted alternative was micro-USB. And micro-USB is terrible, awful, no-good, crap. Many millions of people are happy Lightning existed to bridge the time before the rest of the world could design a slightly better small USB connector. Which, of course, might still not be as durable as Lightning, but it's good enough.
Are you telling me there has been other "USB" cables before? No, USB-C came down from the heavens in the dawn of time and evil Apple has been using their evil proprietary lighting all this time, just out of spite to anger Android fanboys.
Apple could have at least attempted to standardize his port, but they did not because they charged money when a third pary uses their proprietary ports. So stop crying for poor Apple, they have paid PR people to defend them with better arguments anyway.
How often does the world willingly standardize on something invented by a single company? Even if they had released it into public domain, USB-C was going to happen anyway.
The chance is larger the Zero, we can't even think of standardizing something if is proprietary and we have to pay some corporation outside our jurisdiction a lot of money. So Apple did not even try, as usual they tried to milk things as long as possible exactly how they done it with dating apps in some EU countries.
All the time. For example, Garmin created the ANT+ protocol for wirelessly communicating sensor data, such as with bicycle electronics. ANT+ is the standard because Garmin actively promoted it as an open standard and encouraged competitors to adopt it.
Like I said, regulators stepping in is an overstep for the reason you're stating. It's a free market, they built a better mouse trap.
But at this point, USBC is the better mousetrap, they're now just using their market dominance to force a worse mouse trap on everyone to keep milking lucrative patent fees outside of what an efficient market would allow.
So again, fuck em.
Side note, this is why I really hate IP law (or at least the over the top term lengths of it). If they didn't have a monopoly on lightening connectors this wouldn't be a problem and the market would resolve this "problem" on it's own.
You don't get to act like they're just behaving like a free market participant should when they're actively exploiting a different market regulation.
I wonder what the fix here is. Would it be choosing a patent term length that optimises for spurring innovation?
Too short and you make it not worth while. Too long and things stagnate like this. Why does society put up with such suboptimal market parameters?
USB-C is, in fact, NOT at all the "better mousetrap" in terms of an iPhone connector. It has no significant advantages for Apple users who already are using Lightning.
You seem to be leaving out all the ways in which it's better for Apple's customers to have, and to keep, Lightning, so, let's review so you can argue in good faith and from an informed perspective next time:
1) Lightning is significantly more compact than the USB-C port, enabling a more durable case in the vulnerable area surrounding the port
2) Lightning is more durable as well
3) Lightning even FEELS better to plug in and to use
4) Lightning has superior ability to be waterproofed
5) Billions of Lightning cables and accessories have already been manufactured and are in use and it'd be nice to not replace them all until that's actually necessary
I said monopolistic not monopoly. To say apple is a monopoly would be incorrect. To describe their behavior with service, repair, the app store, and lightening cable fees as anything other than monopolistic would be intellectually dishonest.
The debate over Lightning, of course, has nothing to do with repairability. As an aside, you might want to take a few minutes to look up what "monopolistic" means.
You forget that everything now being USB or Lightning is in part due to the EU attempting to harmonize the market on USB before today. All the larger market leaders signed an agreement to move to USB, which Apple understood as "USB at the charger" apparently.
But the EU pushing this for the past decades is responsible for almost everything being interoperable.
That would be believable except Apple has been fighting the EU for years now over not implementing USB at all. Sure the charger has USB, but the phones they've release the last decade don't have a USB port themselves. Even when the industry leaders signed their agreements, Apple had to be the butt. I don't see how them shipping USB chargers with proprietary adapters at some point helps their case here. Apple didn't standardize anything at all here.
This always gets bought up, and it's always wrong.
> I have no expectation, for example, that these same regulators will stay on top of this and revise it when USB-C stops being the preferred or best choice.
They didn't write the law as "you must use USB-C" They wrote the law as "The industry experts need to pick A standard for charging, and all manufacturers should respect that choice"
They are welcome to change it going forward, they just have to agree and consolidate.
> With respect to radio equipment capable of being recharged via means other than wired charging, the Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 44 in order to amend Annex Ia in the light of technical progress, and to ensure the minimum common interoperability between radio equipment and their charging devices, by:
(a) introducing, modifying, adding or removing categories or classes of radio equipment;
(b) introducing, modifying, adding or removing technical specifications, including references and descriptions, in relation to charging interface(s) and charging communication protocol(s), for each category or class of radio equipment concerned.’;
So the commission can adopt new standards trough a much lighter executive process. It does not require new legislation to update the standard.
This is not correct so far as I can tell -- the amendment to directive 2014/53/EU [1] says
> Hand-held mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones, headsets, handheld videogame consoles and portable speakers, in so far as they are capable of being recharged via wired charging, shall:
> (a) be equipped with the USB Type-C receptacle, as described in the standard EN IEC 62680-1-3:2021 ‘Universal serial bus interfaces for data and power - Part 1-3: Common components - USB Type-C TM Cable and Connector Specification’, which should remain accessible and operational at all times;
To switch to a new charger type would require legislative action, not just industry experts changing their mind. That said, I actually strongly prefer this approach to allowing an industry self-regulating group to make these decision.
Interesting, I may be out of date then. Previously all the RED proposals called for a common charger, but did not directly specify the charger required.
It seems like wireless charging still falls into that category (they require some form of interoperability by 2026, but do not state the exact form).
This is the truth of the matter. Apple has been dragging their feet on switching away from lightning.
Why? No idea. It's a much slower standard, and puts the wearing parts in the port instead of the cable. USB-C is designed by committee, sure, but the port itself is better than lightning in nearly every consumer metric there is.
Isn't USBC more fragile because of the middle piece that lives in the port? Lightning has always felt sturdier to me, though not enough to warrant carrying different types of cables..
The middle piece is thin and does look fragile, but you can't put any real side load on it. The outer wall of the connector takes that force before you can put any real force on the middle. Unless you're jamming a flathead screwdriver or something in it.
Beyond that, the springloaded contacts are on the cable end with type-c, with lightning it's inside the phone. I don't think it's a particularly common failure mode, but having less moving parts in the expensive bit is generally a good idea.
USB-C is perfectly fine, and I'm happy to switch, but let's not go overboard. Lightning is still arguably better than USB-C.
USB-C exists because Apple was in the process of creating Lightning. Also, in my experience, you seem to have the fragility point backward: the nub on lightning cables may break, but the port is fine, while the reverse is true for USB-C, where the fragile bit is in the port.
Apple has repeatedly said their phones are so thin that they don't have room for a USB-C port. This of course is total bullshit because many phones as thin or thinner than iPhones have USB-C ports.
Yep. Apple came out with their own connector because USB Mini (where everyone else wanted to go) sucked. We got a robust, flippable connector. All in all, using only two kinds of connectors over 14 years (so far) seems far better than the industry average (proprietary, mini, micro, C)
"Any technological developments in wired charging can be reflected in a timely adjustment of technical requirements/ specific standards under the Radio Equipment Directive. This would ensure that the technology used is not outdated."
"At the same time, the implementation of any new standards in further revisions of Radio Equipment Directive would need to be developed in a harmonised manner, respecting the objectives of full interoperability. Industry is therefore expected to continue the work already undertaken on the standardised interface, led by the USB-IF organisation, in view of developing new interoperable, open and non-controversial solutions."
I don't see how this is relevant -- this is a statement of principle. The fact remains that to update the standard, the "timely adjustment" would be made by the legislative body. Don't let the passive voice fool you here; this is not some dynamic industry-led process, it's just a non-binding commitment to update the regulations if the technology advances.
Light bulb sockets are actually a great example for the downsides of standardization, because they’re super suboptimal for LED bulbs, and are a large part of the reason for the transformers on many of the new bulbs burning out way before their rated lifetime. A better LED socket would provide better heatsinking/dissipation opportunities.
MR16 is a 12V DC standard so it does not need a transformer, in theory it's much better for LEDs, and yet we hardly ever see it used even in new builds.
Every time I rented a place with MR16, like 1/3 of all sockets in the ceiling were dead, the power supply was inside the false ceiling and it was not possible to fix without making a hole. Needless to say lardlord need much motivating to fix anything.
Also, it;s not illegal to install random non-standard bulbs -> my last apartmentblock was built with some special, great, proprietary and patented LED-spesific socket. Guess what happened? 15 years on, the lamps started failing, and the manufacturere dropped production of anything for that socket!
Now they need to replace like a thousands light fittings across the entire block, there is no way to get replacements. Some of them are in awkward places and will require a special vehicle to reach.
Yeah, there’s a ton of inertia, with the standard socket so well entrenched. That’s pretty crazy about the proprietary socket. Seems like the big industry players should get a voluntary standards group together and make a big push.
If this standardization happened in 1999, would we now all be walking around with the original [large] USB-B or DC barrel jacks on our phones? (Those were the standardized connectors of the day.)
Do we believe given the track record of a new connector being introduced more frequently than once every 5 years just within the USB standardization process, that we've somehow reached the end of that road in practical terms? If we've reached the end of the road, by all means we could standardize and say "you have to use the pinnacle of USB connector type".
It has been working quite well in many electronic devices for decades...
I don't see the usefulness of discussing things that have not happened.
Is USB-C bad?
That's the question you should be interested in.
“The best is the enemy of the good.”
Saying that choices should never be made because we don't know what the future brings, is the same of saying that there's no point in living, because we are all going to die.
Of course they did not settle on USB-B in 1999 because there weren't billions of devices using it and it was relatively new technology.
Not all that many companies are doing work for cable standards to begin with, and personally - as a consumer - I very much welcome the standardization on usb-c.
The companies that are doing work on communication standards aren't normally selling the kind of devices covered here to consumers. It's more business to business and military applications. Further, charging in particular is a different beast than communication in general - you're not doing anything other than sending current down the line to fill a battery. there's only so many ways to do that, and I think it makes sense to consolidate them.
Finally - the requirement only states that the device must include a usb-c port for charging. It makes no limitations on manufacturers including additional ports. So even if a direct to consumer device wanted to include a new port - they absolutely could, they just still have to allow filling the battery from usb-c.
I hate to be snarky on HN, but are we from the same planet?
In the vast majority of devices you accept what the manufacture gives you or you are out of luck, especially when everything these days is protected by some kind of intellectual property.
This excuse is old and tired and tends to ignore that large manufactures purposefully make the customer experience worse for higher profits.
Or instead of that, people could use their legal and democratic rights to enforce a standardization.
If you don't like it, feel free to vote for something different. But apparently the people in the EU disagree with you, and believe that the world would be better off if they enforced a standard.
> Do you really need the government to make your choices for you?
A user does not have a choice to use USB-C with certain devices right now. That is why there is a law, that now allows users to choose that.
If Apple doesn't like it, then I guess they can of their own free choice, choose to leave the EU.
They do not own the EU. They can take the deal, follow the law, or shut down in the EU. Thats their choice to sell to that market.
A user is free to use a device with USB-C right now. A user is also not free to buy an iPhone that runs Android. Should the government also force all phones to support Android?
I’m also not free to buy an iPhone with pink polka dots. Should the EU force companies to make that? I want all cars to support CarPlay. Shouid that be legislated?
The “people” didn’t vote for this. The same lawmakers who thought that an 11 chapter 99 section law would solve privacy issues and all it did was force users to deal with cookie pop ups.
Yet one company made a 15 line rules change about tracking (Apple) and the entire ad industry had to do more to clean up their act and have admitted in their quarterly reports that it is impacting their business.
> A user is free to use a device with USB-C right now
No they cannot use it with certain devices. Which is what the legislation is for. Then they will have that ability with all devices in the EU.
Apple is also free to make devices doing whatever they want, and sell them in a different country.
> Should the EU force companies to make that?
Apple isn't forced to make anything. They can simply of their own choosing, leave that market. It is their choice to sell to that market, and they can feel free to leave if they don't like the official representatives of the EU using their official power to legislate.
All these arguments about choice are ignoring that it is the choice of the EU to control its own market, and it is Apple's choice to sell there. They are free to leave if they don't like the laws that the lawmakers create.
> I want all cars to support CarPlay. Should that be legislated?
If you can get enough support among lawmakers, feel free to talk about the benefits and cons of your proposal.
Well the biggest reason is because there are a much larger amount of people and law makers who would prefer simply stopping at cord compatibility, and cord compatibility is much easier to implement, and much less disruptive, than more extreme and absurd examples.
Society does not have to do the most extreme thing possible, in every situation.
Instead, society can pick and choose. We can look for easy wins, and do the things that are easy to implement and not do the things that are harder to implement.
In fact, apple is already planning on adding USB C to the next iPhone, if the rumors are true. So it sounds like even they agree that cord compatibility is at least possible for them to do with a reasonable effort.
So they help prevent e waste by preventing people from throwing away cords instead of helping people not to have to throw away phones.
Government at its best.
Next they are going to mandate pop up warnings every time I turn on my phone like the cookie banners.
I doubt people are complaining more about cord compatibility than having to replace an entire functioning phone because it no longer receives even security updates. Let alone operating system updates.
It's still not clear that having this be regulated is better.
We don't have a port problem. We used to have one, but it went away. It sure LOOKS like Apple will, eventually, transition away from Lightning on its own anyway.
So why have regulators weigh in here at all? What's the point? What value is added?
"I have no expectation, for example, that these same regulators will stay on top of this and revise it when USB-C stops being the preferred or best choice."
Why?
Everything is usb or lightning because people complained, and everyone but apple listened to people.
If USB-C is no longer the best thing, rather than complain to 10 companies, and hope they all agree, they will complain to regulators, and hope they agree.
What precisely is the difference you see?
The regulators are at least accountable in some sense to the people, the companies are not.
They aren't designing anything, they mandate an overall requirement - "You must all use the same charge port".
This is no different than any other customer - they are just representing the overall customers who would otherwise not have enough power or voice to achieve what they want.
Also - if you don't want your industry regulated, maybe don't make a mess of it?
Regulators rarely pay attention to things that are working super-well.
No, actually, you wouldn't. As has been explained many times in this thread, that isn't how this kind of regulation works. I do understand that doesn't fit your narrative though.
Rather than making lots of unfounded assertions about what "will" happen, as you keep doing, I would encourage you to actually read the details first.
You release the product with both ports. And then you tell the EU that you'd like your port to be approved as valid alternative. You'll probably have to explain why your connector is better as well as show that consumers won't suffer the cable problem due to the new port (ie, people won't have to buy adapters or chargers just for your device). Then the EU is probably happy to add your port to the directive (which as the directive explains, is a very lightweight process, it doesn't require relegislating anything), possibly even give other vendors a timeline to switch to it if USB-C is to be deprecated. Of course, you're likely going to have to license patents are low prices or risk the EU getting angry over exploitation of the market. Possibly even hand out patents for free and only charge a minor fee for the connector trademarks (like current USB).
I don't see how that's worse. If you make such a good connector that it should replace all currently used charger ports, there should be a requirement to allow users to give them the time to switch. To not cause untold costs to poor people who can't afford to switch. Interim solutions provide value to society. And laptops aren't bigger phones.
The device is going to come with at least one cord.
How many people can afford at minimum a $429 phone who can’t afford a couple of extra cables?
“poor people aren’t buying iPhones”. But they are buying Androids that are not being supported by their manufactures with even security updates shortly after they buy them.
Cheap Androids not being supported by manufacturers is a separated issue, I fail to see how that applies here. Atleast the cheap phones have a unified charger so poor people don't have to keep buying chargers for them.
Why do people suddenly need to buy a phone for 300$? Almost all current phones support USB C and within 10 years it's will be all of them. No need to buy a phone for a charger.
And if USB-C turns out to be bad, which I don't think'll happen for quite some time, the EU can make sure that legislation ensures poor people won't have to buy a new phone or a new charger until they want to.
Wow that’s a lot better solution. How long would that have taken Apple to change to lightning instead of using the 30 pin connector? What would they have used for the original iPod if they had to wait on the government to approve a connector?
If this same type of law had been in effect with computers back in the 90s Apple would have had to include PS/2 and ISA and add more ports.
That's the point though, there is no more 30 pin connector. And if there is a change, the government ensures consumers won't be wasting money because their old 30-pin chargers are now paperweights or their old phone has no more chargers available.
Also I don't see how this connects to PS2 or ISA, since back then such regulation wasn't in huge demand yet. The charger issue however is a demand and it seems to be backed by the general population. Having one charger for all devices is a big plus for everyone involved.
And if you somehow develop a new charger port that is much much better, then yes, it should have to go through the process of being approved, so that we don't start hopping into new charging ports every 10 years. That would make the entire regulation worthless. And yes that might mean your port has to be interoperable or you need to have both ports (USB AB is an example, which fit both A and B plugs, for micro and mini variants) or easily allow an adapter you can leave plugged into the phone (in-plug adapter).
We're much further into the development into computers and the future of USB-C is less uncertain as PS/2 and ISA. USB-C is a good-enough compromise that can most likely handle the next 30 years of computer needs. The market isn't as quickly evolving in that direction anymore, IMO.
The 30 pin adapter was better than all of the alternatives at the time. It took Apple 8 months to go from idea to shipping product. How much longer would it have taken if they had to wait for the government?
You really think consumers care more about replacing ten dollar cords for their phones than having to replace their phones because Android manufactures don’t provide support for their phones more than a year?
30 years ago, my computer had SCSI (which was a cross platform standard), ADB, and Nubus ports - all better than the industry standard. That would have never happened with government mandating standards. I used my own free will and voted with my dollars to choose to be incompatible- just like Apple users today.
Well, no you don't have to vote with your dollars, you can vote for free. Which I think is the better solution, especially for people who have no choice for voting with their dollars, ie poor people.
And the phone comes with one. They also might have to rebuy their apps. Should all phones now be forced to run the same apps?
Even decade+ old cars support the old iPod protocol for music (still supported by iPhones). Should the government force all phones to support the iPod protocol for the sake of “the poor people so they don’t have to buy new cars”?
It would also be inconvenient for former iPhone users who have AirPrint printers. Should we force all phone makers to support AirPrint? It’s based on an open source protocol.
Is there currently an issue with phones not working with cars?
There is an issue with a huge amount of waste and spent money relating to chargers, especially disadvantaging poor people. If everyone is on USB-C that stops being a problem. All chargers work with your device and all devices work with your charger. I fail to see how escalating the problem into extremes addresses the advantages of the EU decision...
People will always complain about a change, but Lightning was materially better than the Dock Connector in a whole bunch of ways so I think folks got won over pretty quickly.
It's faster, it handles power better, it's more durable, and it's symmetrical. Hell, that last one alone probably won over a bunch of folks.
Too many get caught up in the "USB-C" connector, and forget about the modes and power delivery. That said, AFAICT the May 2022 revision states (pg 6):
"the devices should incorporate the USB Power Delivery (USB PD) standard (as described in the European standard EN IEC 62680-1-2:2021) and ensure that any additional charging protocols allow for full USB PD functionality (new annex Ia, part I)."
Then the referenced: "EN IEC 62680-1-2:2021" standard specifies
"To facilitate optimum charging, the specification defines two mechanisms a USB Charger can advertise for the Device to use:
1. A list of fixed voltages each with a maximum current.
2. A list of programmable voltage ranges each with a maximum current (PPS). The Device requests a voltage (in 20 mV increments) that is within the advertised range and a maximum current."
But those regs get over my head quickly, so someone else may have better luck interpreting them.
This brings up an issue that Carl Malamud at public.resource.org has been fighting. The EU directive references a standard that costs $300 if you want a copy. You shouldn't have to pay to know your laws.
If the EU is going to reference a standard owned by somebody else, they should purchase a license that allows them to publicly post the entire standard (AFAIK, they haven't done that). Or they could pass laws that say any standards referenced by law lose their copyright status. This would be a type of eminent domain for intellectual property.
Sure, but better now than in 5 or 10 years when there's more lightning cables out in the wild. Otherwise should we still be using lightning in 100 years?
They will "periodically" check if there are better standards. The USB-C will only be fully introduced by 2027. I think it's probable that at least as soon as they're fully introduced we need a new standard.
Are standardised wall sockets planned economy?
Charging ports for cars?
This has been a push for more than a decade now and the reason everyone aside from apple converges because of the brussels effect.
From my perspective it has been great.
The alternative isn't just plain competitive designs. It's also anticompetitive practices.
It's bleak either way. If we don't regulate enough, companies will eat us alive, and if we overregulate, then the government will do the same. We're better off with some kind of balance between these two, and mandating the charging port like this worked out well so far in my opinion, and so, I welcome the upgrade too.
It's not a new thing. Car design has been dictated by regulations for decades and while I'm sure it has definitely stopped some novel designs from getting out there, I think we can be mostly thankful that we don't live in a sea of heterogeneous (let alone hazardous) designs. Cars can still look cool, but not to the point of being a detriment.
USB-C is a pretty lax standard (for good and bad) and at the end of the day, the ultimate reason regulators have to come into play is that the industry didn't deal with this issue internally.
Cars within a particular period mostly have the same overall design just like today. There will always be exceptions of course, however take a look at some models from 1966 (Ad heavy site, sorry)
> compare cars from 40s-70s to what came after, its a different world
Yeah. we understood that they not only pollute the environment and it's stupid to build cars the size of a starship, but also by 1973 the World (except the US) understood that oil is not for granted and fuel efficiency should be a thing.
Also safety while we are at it, doesn't sound so bad...
You need to distinguish design trends from what the regulation enforced.
The most obvious examples that come to mind:
- Small cars aren't that small anymore to stop them from being blatant death traps.
- A lot of the edges have been smoothed and curved to make impact with pedestrians less deadly (also killed pop-up lights and hood ornaments, which is kinda funny considering the Mercedes Benz hood ornament was sometimes jokingly described as a sight to aim for pedestrians)
- Thick A pillars due to crash tests regulations
While I can blame these for killing out novel or even trademark features of some vehicles lineups, I don't think alone they made everyone homogenize their design, it's just what the industry eventually converged on by themselves.
Look at phones, there's no regulation on what a phone should look like, yet today phones are just a fancy screen, nothing like the incredible variety that Nokia alone sported back in the late 90s/early 2000s.
Being that my modern car drives nearly 10 thousand miles before each oil change, gets at least 4x the gas mileage, easily drives over 200k miles before major maintenance, and won't turn me into hamburger if I get in a crash, I will argue its well worth it.
A 1964 Ford Galaxie 500 had a wheelbase of 119" and was 210" long.
A 2021 Mustang Mach E has a wheelbase of 107" and is 188.5" long.
Which one is humongous?
Even if you looked at the original 1964 Mustang, its not that much smaller than the Mach E which is a 5-door crossover. The '64 had a wheelbase of 108" and an overall length of 181.6", just 7 inches shorter for a coupe.
Older American cars were often land yachts. The old family sedan of the 1960s are often larger than crossovers of today, they just don't sit as high.
who cares what your car looks like. owning one is a hassle and a money sink and i resent that i've lived in 5 cities who have de-prioritized mass transit.
cars look boring is like saying it's a bummer cancer isn't cool.
They already do, in many ways. Specifically, they already mandate the type of power plug that electrical appliances must be sold with.
I don't know where I stand on this ruling philosophically, but I'm looking forward to having accessories all use USB-C instead of having some for Apple and some for everyone else.
Eh, Apple was moving devices over to USB-C already, they didn't need to be forced. The reason they've held out on the iPhone is because users will complain about new cables ;-). Either way they're going to get criticized.
Apple gets credit for creating Lightning to begin with while we waited for something better than micro-USB to come along. I'm glad for USB-C, but damn, it sure took a while.
Let's be honest here, the only reason why they "held out" is the MFi program and the sweet sweet money they receive for it. I'm happy to see EU put a stop to this practice.
Unless you have numbers to back it up, their MFi revenue is peanuts compared to the metric shitload of money they make directly from their customers blowing a grand or more on a phone. I guarantee they prioritize customer satisfaction way, way above MFi revenue.
What does work together mean in this case, it’s not like we’re talking Ethernet where these devices are communicating to each other. Like I can’t use an android charger? Lightning to usb-c cables are pretty much standard. It seems like in the short term anyways this increases e-waste as all my old Lightning chargers become deprecated.
I can just plug a usb-c dock and use my android phone with a keyboard and mouse if I wanted to. I could plug two android phones together with usb-c and transfer files from one to another.
Apple's phones are quite locked down, and I think a big reason why is that proprietary lightning connector. When you have a usb port for charging, there is no excuse for not implementing the full standard software-side.
The other day a coworker's iphone battery was nearly empty. He did not have his charger with me. I offered that he could use mine, an usbc charger that has worked for my past 3 phones and also works with my laptop.
He couldn't use it.
Of course, not being an iphone user, I did not have an adapter. Neither did he, considering he forgot his charger.
The iphone and the usbc charger did not work together.
This story would make more sense if you mentioned that he did not have a lightning cable with him. My iPhone X is currently plugged into a USB-C charger, no problem, but it's using a USB-C -> Lightning cable.
Are they also going to insist that Android manufactures support their phones for more than six months with operating system updates? Worrying about cables causing e-waste is instead of phones, is even more evidence of the technical ineptness of legislators.
I don’t speak German. But the best summary I found doesn’t say that manufacturers have to support cell phones for 7 years with operating system or security updates like Apple has been doing.
I changed the link, it displayed in English for me. The relevant quote is: “objective requirements […] are met only if the consumer is […] provided with updates for the usual period of the product's use and service life. The update obligation may regularly exceed the applicable warranty period.”
The courts will have to decide what “the usual period of the product's use and service life” means exactly, but certainly longer than the six months you originally mentioned.
I'm not sure they are clear what they are solving. The statement says:
"European consumers were frustrated long with multiple chargers piling up with every new device"
This was solved by companies no longer providing chargers with new devices. When you buy a new phone, you use your existing charger, only buying a new one when you actually need it.
If you buy a new iPhone, you get a cable that plugs into a USB-C charger.
If USB-C is mandated on the phone end:
* I'll spend the next 20 years realising I have the wrong white phone charging cable with me
* I still won't trust random USB-C cables
* I still won't trust random USB-C chargers
But - let's just do it. Maybe in 40 years it'll have seemed worth it.
> I'll spend the next 20 years realising I have the wrong white phone charging cable with me
> I still won't trust random USB-C cables
> I still won't trust random USB-C chargers
My answer to all three of these is the same: Why? My phone charges with every crappy USB cable and charger. Heck, my laptop will trickle charge [!] off a crappy cable on a crappy airline USB-C port.
There's one place where I'm very careful about USB-C: keeping the specific USB-C cables with my laptop with the chargers themselves, just in case I need the Thunderbolt capability. The TB monitor I bought has a specific cable that stays attached to it.
From looking on AliExpress the last few weeks, TB 100W cables appear to be getting commoditized. It's likely this worry I have about keeping laptop C cables straight won't be a big issue for much longer.
[!] Amusingly, my laptop won't actually charge off the _standard_ A/C plugs on most airplanes because the 100W charger blows a soft fuse that requires unplugging and replugging the A/C adapter!
> [!] Amusingly, my laptop won't actually charge off the _standard_ A/C plugs on most airplanes because the 100W charger blows a soft fuse that requires unplugging and replugging the A/C adapter!
To be fair, 100 W may not seem like a lot when you're used to plugging in to the national power grid, but it's a lot to ask for a non-essential system supplied by an off-grid generator shared by hundreds of passengers. And 100 W is the maximum allowance for In-Seat Power Support Systems according to the FAA, before any conversion losses in your power adapter; the actual amount available to you may be much less.
Oh yeah, that's totally fair. With a standard USB-C DC plug, however, the charger could negotiate a lower current and even provide power fairness across all seats to support the entire plane's load.
My point was really that even the most entrenched "standards" are all just leaky abstractions.
I’ll have the wrong cable with me because I’m just bad at having the right stuff with me anyway. Adding to my confusion is fine though. I’ll just buy particular colours or cable or put tags of them or something.
I don’t trust random cables to plug into my phone because I’m paranoid about getting hacked. I access some systems with sensitive data via my phone and I don’t want to be the route of compromise.
I don’t trust random chargers not to set my house on fire while I sleep, or - worse - fail to charge properly and I don’t have enough charge left to run the crossword app on my phone.
The EU threatening manufacturers with regulation unless they settled on a format led to the end of different chargers for every phone model. It definitely had a direct impact on my life. Getting rid of different cables as well will make me very happy.
"The EU" is not a singular entity. The tiny little parts of the EU doing most of the work on this combined with the tiny amount of time spent by larger parts of the EU seems well worth it to me.
The EU = the EU Commission. Aren't there much bigger issues impacting consumers such as right to repair, planned obsolescence, clean energy etc.? The law will not take effect until 2024, and in the meantime the industry has largely moved toward USB-C / wireless charging.
The EU Commission is still not a singular entity. The commissioners are not the ones doing the underlying work on these things, and so many things happens in parallel.
This was part of the EU Commission's 2020 work programme as one small sub-point among well over a hundred under one of the 43 main goals, as a secondary priority after a long list of climate and economic changes.
You're of course free to disagree with their prioritisation, but this has hardly been a major part of the Commissions work.
> The law will not take effect until 2024, and in the meantime the industry has largely moved toward USB-C / wireless charging.
Even with respect to mobile phones this excludes a certain notable holdout that accounts for a large proportion of the market, and which have kept resisting the EU push for over a decade, and a number of smaller holdouts still sticking with micro-USB.
But you'll note this extends way past phones, including to laptops where there's still a mess of different chargers.
With respect to wireless charging, it makes little difference as long as long as most people still have cables as backup (indeed I've yet to see someone use wireless charging; I'm sure a few more uses it at home, but I for one have zero devices capable of wireless charging; it will not reduce waste anytime soon)
I know for my own use, unnecessary cables and chargers still account for a large proportion of my electric waste because of the frequency of replacement, so for my part I welcome this.
This isn't about solving an existing problem. As you pointed out, pretty much everyone standardized around micro-usb almost a decade ago. That's mostly because Apple launched the iPhone with a proprietary but standard connector (the original iPod connector). So while all other phone makers had a special adapter and cable for every model, you could plug an iPhone on anything that worked with an iPod. Even the original firewire cable from 2003 would work with it.
What this is about is getting reelected and justifying to voters the usefulness of paying huge amounts of taxes to fund an EU-wide parliament. So they manufactured an (easy) problem to "fix". And it's going to be extremely popular since they'll be attacking and regulating "evil foreign tech giants".
> Now, pretty much everything is either USB or Lightning. This is good! What problem is the EU solving here?
It makes charging more user friendly.
e.g. just an hour ago my wife asked if she can charge her iPhone with the charger that I use for my laptop and Pixel 4. I had to say "no" - and that's the case even when Apple has USB-C in their laptops, why the odd iPhone (and airpods)?
It is quite pleasing to be able to charge laptop and mobile (and wireless headphones or ebooks) with the same charger.
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[ 0.29 ms ] story [ 472 ms ] threadTrust me when I say that Apple will NEVER submit to this legislation, they will find every sort of obscure or arcane tricks to comply with it without actually doing it. It would set a precedent that legislating can change Apple's behaviour, which they clearly do not want to give. If they show the EU Parliament it's pointless to go after them, maybe they will not try to dismantle their monopoly on the App Store, which is clearly the next thing they will go after this.
- We already have reliable rumors that next-next iPhone (not this Sept, but next) will have USB-C port.
- Qi is not a standard they control like Lightning either way.
- Portless phone would be very unpopular (no fast charging), USB-C would be very popular. Apple would not choose to be unpopular just to watch the world hate them.
The same Apple which removed headphone jack so they can sell more dongles and wireless headphones?
I can see them making portless phone just out of pure spite (maybe having cheaper version with port and not selling that in EU).
What kind of mindset is this? Sometimes Apple prefers aesthetics over practicality, but they are not a spiteful company (unless you are Nvidia), particularly when it hurts customers.
Apple dropped the headphone port, despite wireless headphones still not being as good as wired (IMHO). This shows that they are perfectly willing to do that which is unpopular.
What a complete waste of energy would that be
Do you have any vague idea how much money Apple makes from Lightning accessories? Every single thing that wants to use Lightning has to pay an Apple tax, and go through an incredibly cumbersome and expensive certification process. Letting that slip away from Apple's control means they lose a bit of control on their walled garden.
Meanwhile, MagSafe is also an environment for accessories they can control, and they can use as a way to extort fees from accessory developers. Apple has only one goal in mind - their margins. Everything they do must be seen in function of that. It's clear Apple is going to remove every single port from the iPhone, they only have to find how.
1. Macs have always had standard ports, such as USB-A and FireWire, and Lightning basically is never used in a master configuration anyway, so it would make no sense to put it on a Mac
2. iPads have just a tiny share of the overall market of iDevices, and they only put USB-C on the most expensive models with the selling point that the port could now be used also in a master configuration, and not only as a slave (and it's advertised as such on their website).
Firewire was also a technical standard but never became widespread; if I recall, it was Apple's attempt to push against the converging industry standards with what they saw as a technically superior solution. But only Apple and Sony ever bet on Firewire in a big way.
If Lightning is never used in a master configuration, how come you can use it to plug headphone into an iPhone? It wouldn't have made "no sense" to put Lightning connectors on Macs (although I definitely agree it wouldn't have been wise and I'm glad they didn't).
MagSafe is another non-standard Mac thing -- which was replaced with USB-C and then came back again, very unusually for Apple.
So, they certainly haven't always have standard ports, and Apple have not always been consistent.
2. You don't need USB-C to have your device act as a host, whatever the marketing material might say. USB On-The-Go has been around for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_On-The-Go The advantage of USB-C is that it gives you access to a wider market of third-party peripherals -- I'd say Apple saw the way the wind was blowing, and decided to sacrifice the control and fat margins you mentioned in favour of a better overall product.
Apple has only one goal in mind - their margins. Everything they do must be seen in function of that. It's clear Apple is going to remove every single port from the iPhone, they only have to find how.
I agree that they love a fat margin, and feel entitled to it, but I don't think that's quite the full story. Maybe I'm buying too much into the reality distortion field, but I think they genuinely believe they make better products due to their unique approach. That involves exercising strict control where they can (walled garden app store, proprietary connectors) and aggressively removing features that 10% of users rely on in order to give what they see as a better experience for the 90% (e.g. removing headphone jack); but sometimes also bending to market forces and embracing standards when they think it benefits users -- sometimes very early indeed. Think of the 2015 MacBook, which launched with just a single USB-C port for everything, when USB-C peripherals hadn't even become very widespread.
The test of all this will be whether iPhones continue using Lightning, or switch to USB-C. I'm very confident that they'll switch, in either the next revision or the one after.
It'll be a painful switch, but Apple is very good at powering through those (ADB to USB, 68K to PowerPC, removing floppy drive, removing CD drive, PowerPC to x86, 30-pin connector to Lightning, removing headphone jack, x86 to ARM). When they make up their mind to switch, they make it happen very quickly.
2. I was there when USB OTG on USB A/B was a thing, and it was _horrible_. The combo A/B micro ports were terrible, and it was rare to find the right cables, let alone accessories compatible with your devices. USB-C has been the first connector that made OTG really a thing, before it was just a crappy experience limited to a handful of devices (Samsung Galaxy, for instance)
> aggressively removing features that 10% of users rely on in order to give what they see as a better experience for the 90% (e.g. removing headphone jack)
I call bullshit on this point. That's simply not true. I do not know a single person that liked or benefited from the switch, except Apple shareholders of course. Everyone, myself included, hates the fact you can't use standard headphones with mobile phones anymore, it's arguably a crappy experience that was forced by Apple and the industry with moronic justifications to hide the end goal to cut their costs and push people to buy more expensive Bluetooth headphones. The fact Apple did that just before releasing the AirPods and after buying out Beats speaks volumes about what their true goal was. It's just as hypocritical and fake as their "green" push is, they are trying to paint their corporate greed as something beneficial for the world, which is outright despicable. I'd rather buy my products from a company that's unapologetically honest with their customers than one that tries to gaslight you.
None of my friends or colleagues care. They use AirPods or wireless headphones on the latest iPhones and are happy with them. Your circles are not representative of the whole population.
I remember using wired earbuds and hating it every time. I don't miss the headphone jack that much. Why would you want to mess with entangled cables when you can just turn your headphones on and have them connect over the air?
Apple would argue that they force users to accept these changes because it makes the product better. You can counter that it's purely to make extra money out of peripherals, but if that's all there is to it, why are Apple products popular? Why do competitors (notably Samsung) keep following their lead on this kind of thing? Is it entirely down to their marketing, or could it be that their products actually are better, at least for some people?
Apple reacting in a petty way not only shows that the legislators were right on the money (while adapting shows they were forced, whether for good or bad) but gives them even more reason to push the buttons further.
Digital Markets Act is definitely getting more fuel and attention after Apple's petty response to ACM's complaints in the Netherlands. [1]
1. https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-entitl...
But it doesn't.
Regulators may "win" a battle. But consumers lose big time. And I don't think bureaucrats should take precedence versus consumers.
I do agree that legislating technology this way is a big mistake on EU's part. This is basically South Korea's ActiveX law all over again, and like South Korea, the EU will eventually be left behind.
Nothing prevailed. Apple and Google dictated the API and the EU countries submitted, because they did not have time to enforce their will.
It is not Apple's, Google's, or America's fault that the EU has become so little innovative, rather hostile towards software developers and entrepreneurs, that they have no power in the digital world. And for the EU it is easier to blame american companies, instead of admitting failure and working towards creating an more enterprise-friendly hub in Europe.
I mean, as others have noted, why isn't the EU regulating the other side of the connector? Why are there 3+ power plugs in the EU? Shouldn't this be regulated first, if the EU's argument of reducing electronic waste be considered? No, those aren't created by american companies.
I'm sick of the EU, its constant attempts to circumvent privacy (such as the current legislation of ending end to end encryption for chats), while obviously lacking in the democracy department (why is the comission not elected?).
Apple may well do what they please but there will be fines, and even prohibition of sales. Because the EU “knows” that it can be done without much burden and “sees” it as a benefit for the citizens. I agree in this case on both things.
As far as I am aware, all the big tech companies that were used as the primary reason for creating GDPR are still doing the exact same things (that people were upset about) they were doing back then (just in a legally compliant™ way now according to "the intent of the law").
Not trying to take a dig at GDPR with this, it definitely made some tech companies to make some small concessions, like being able to export your data easier. But it would be difficult to argue that companies comply with GDPR according to the intent of the law, and not according to the letter of the law instead.
IMO, the only clean solution here is to go with USB-C across the board. But I also have no faith that will happen.
The annex says "Hand-held mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones, headsets, handheld videogame consoles and portable speakers"
Apple doesn't control Qi.
I charge my phone with a random $5 charger and it works quite alright.
There's a reason they've transitioned most of the iPads to USB-C.
All that's left is the physical form factor and I'm not sure there's a lot of room for improvement there, especially enough to justify the tons of electronic waste.
They're both equally easy to use, lightning is just slower. Seems like it's just your personal case, I have 0 lightning cables and maybe 5 usb-c, it would be equally a waste to throw them away.
Also, nothing forbids evolution, usb-c evolved a lot already, you just have to make it backward compatible. I haven't bought a usb cable since I got my pixel 3 and everything works just fine
As for evolution/innovation, sure, that's a real downside. Seems like a quite small price to pay though because it is just about charging. And if I understand this correctly, you can still innovate and add Super Charge 3000 to your device, it just needs to have USB C charging as well, and you need to be able to opt out of getting yet another charger with your new device.
As for working on actual stuff: They can do both - Regulating mining would be great, but this is also good.
Anecdotally, while I've had usb-c connectors break off about as often as lightening ones, the lightening cables seem to just stop working sometimes, and I've never had that with even cheap usb-c cables.
We are not most people. Most people get yet another lightning cable with every Apple device when they could just use the cables we all already have for other devices. I also have a bunch of lightning cables because each device came with one, but, at least, they stopped coming with power bricks.
> I am livid that they’d do something like that instead of working on actual stuff like forbidding mining
This is not an either/or thing. Other groups are working on doing that without causing supply chain collapses and crashing economies. It's a very complicated and chaotic system with tons of interesting emerging behaviors.
[0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/EFISH-Multifunctional-Transformer-2...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16706803
Compare that with USB-A where even cheap Chinese cables from the lowest bidder usually work (work well enough at least - you might get voltage drop but it will still charge if you leave it on long enough) because the spec is so simple that even the worst manufacturers manage to do a good enough job, and it's something you can trivially DIY if you need to.
Now compare that with USB-C. So many moving parts that can go wrong and so much corners that can be cut by unscrupulous manufacturers. Not to mention that even the most expensive devices (Apple) don't give you any visibility on what type of cable/charger/etc you have even though that information is technically available to the device (that's how it negotiates power delivery) which is extremely confusing even to tech-savvy people.
Should complex things not have a spec?
Compare USB-C power delivery and the 12-pin cable & connector with USB-A's 4 pins and a resistor on the data lines to communicate allowed current draw, or even a barrel jack with the standard 19V ~3A PSU and no negotiation at all. Which one is the easiest to build (hint: one is easy enough to DIY) and which one is more reliable?
In USB-A this was accomplished through a hodge-podge of different resistances applied across data lines, not officially part of the standard but just done by manufacturers. USB-C is a huge improvement on this.
I do agree however that the cable-labelling situation is awful. Maybe some kinda tier system could help. Every charger, cable and device could have a class. The charging rate is the lowest of the three. E.g. a "Class 5 cable will charge up to 200 watts and has a pink end". If you pair that with a Class 2 charger (say, 50 watts) and a class 3 laptop (100 watts) you'll be limited to charging your laptop at 50 watts.
The new rules mention that and aim to fix it by demanding clear labels.
People and companies can screw thing up royally regardless of spec complexity when there's no review/oversight involved. That's not a valid argument.
If you want to force and check adherence to a spec you need to involve certification authorities (TÜV, SGS, UL, etc.) but then widget prices would increase dramatically.
Edit: to address the child comments below: who gets to be the judge of the complexity of the spec? If Nintendo fucked it up but some EE students can get it right through side projects on github, does that make the spec complex or does that make Nintendo incompetent (lacks a HW review/qualification process)?
The spec could be as simple as "white wire goes to positive terminal, black wire goes to negative terminal" and there's still the chance of an implementation fuckup in the design pipeline, especially in large projects/companies with distributed siloed teams like Nintendo due to poor internal communication, if there is no proper internal review/qualification process in the design loop.
Edit 2: I looked at the USB-C charging specs and they're easy enough to understand for any graduate EE and for any company who's had some basic experience with USB as a whole, let alone 100 year old multi-billion HW conglomerates like Nintendo.
IMHO, Nintendo's USB-C charging fuckup is 100% on them. I wish people would stop needlessly defending them here.
Edit 3: Also, what if Nintendo intentionally chose not to follow the spec in order to force the users to use and buy only original parts from them? Either way, incompetence or malice, you really can't blame the spec here.
1) How is it the spec's fault that random OEMs go to extreme cost cutting measures in order to price dump themselves to the bottom by not following the spec? Of course they won't work properly.
But again, for the 100th time, that's not the specs fault that manufacturers actively choose to ignore it.
If a driver chooses to knowingly run a red light, is it automatically the fault of the spec (the highway code) ?
2) You're moving the goalposts. We are talking about USB-C charging spec here that's super easy to follow, and Nintendo didn't, not USB-C docs with display-port and other fluff. So this dock example doesn't apply to Nintendos' refusal to follow the charging spec.
https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb_type-c_cable_pow...
(for an older example without cable ratings: https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb-if_logo_usage_gu...)
It's just that no one cares.
Some vendors now let the USB-IF compliance test most products (Amazon Basics, Apple), but no consumer cares. Even amongst the ones which do certify their product, no one uses the logo.
What is the point of anything then? Most pieces of tech we take for granted are an unregulated bundle of specs that more or less work together with one another most of the time well enough to be valued at several trillions and be in every household.
If you want to regulate and certify every USB-C cable in your household then increase prices would stop the adoption of any such tech and you would then complain about the costs and over-regulation.
The EU is already regulating USB-C into place. How much more regulation do you want?
Let's not let 'perfect' be the enemy of 'good'. Remember 20 years ago when every phone and electronic widget in your house came with its own proprietary cable and proprietary interface and included CD with proprietary Windows-only software to work? Yeah! Lost the original cable/dock with the proprietary 20-pin connector? Good luck with that mate.
Yes, USB-C still has teething problems due to manufacturers cutting costs and fighting tooth and nail against standardization so they can keep their walled garden rent seeking models of the past (remember Sony shoving their proprietary Memory-Stick everywhere despite SD cards having won?), but despite these issues, we've never had it so good in terms of cross-compatibility as we have it today and this push for USB-C everything is a step in the right direction.
And now with the addition of the 48volt high power charging mode it is even longer with more requirements.
The minimum requirements are that you have to support the USB 2.0 protocol:
> While BC1.2 is still supported over USB Type-C because it depends on the USB2.0 lane, a significantly simplified and higher power current capability mechanism is also implemented. This simplified approach involves resistor pull-down/ pull-up relationships. These pull-down/pull-up resistors are connected to the CC wire and the upstream facing port (UFP) must monitor the voltage on the CC1 and CC2 pins in order to detect the current sourcing capability of the down- stream facing port (DFP) it is connected to. This is a substantial improvement over the complicated handshake mech- anisms involved with USB BC1.2.
> The basic USB Type-C current capabilities are Default USB (500mA for USB2.0 and 900mA for USB3.0), 1.5A@5V, and 3A@5V.
* https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/appnotes/00001953a.pd...
(This is distinct from the "fast charging" mode(s?), which does seem to have compatibility problems. But in that case, the failure mode is that device charges slowly, which is probably not a big issue for the kind of small phones/gadgets that the EU regulation targets. The previous standard was micro-USB, which can't do fast-charging anyway.)
[0] https://store.nintendo.co.uk/en_gb/-nintendo-switch-power-ad...
With the switch it's the screwed up USB-C implementation and the fact that you can't use bluetooth headphones (it has BT support, but only for the controllers)
With the DS, the wifi only supported WEP, not WPA, even though WPA2 had been released by the time the DS came out
The Wii famously didn't support HD output.
Multiple devices on one Bluetooth controller have to timeslice in 4 millisecond (iirc) chunks. Audio devices in a high quality mode consume a substantial amount of the overall bandwidth. It also doesn't matter if your packet consumes the full size of a chunk of not, all of them are equally sized. You'd have to do two audio chunks and one controller chunk * 2 controllers to maintain a 60 Hz sample rate on the controllers.
> the EU simply said that "consumers will be provided with clear information on the charging characteristics of new devices, making it easier for them to see whether their existing chargers are compatible.
Which is super disappointing, as the person who wrote TFA clearly didn't read anything other than the press release. The actual supporting documentation is here [0] and says:
> on the packaging or a label, manufacturers would have to provide information on specifications relating to charging capabilities, in line with annex Ia (amended Article 10(8) RED). This includes a description of the wired chargers' power requirements (the text displayed should read: 'The minimum power delivered by charger shall be equal or higher than [xx] watts') and specifications on charging capabilities ('USB PD fast charging' and an indication of any other supported charging protocols).
Which is still not great - this doesn't cover cables for example, and it doesn't guarantee that it will be printed on the device. Here [1] are apples chargers in the UK - unless they're side by side it's impossible to tell which one of those chargers is which, and even at that unless you know for sure one of the devices is X, its' really quite difficult to tell.
[0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EPRS_BR... [1] https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/accessories/all/made-by-apple?...
Nintendo will have to get its crap together and properly support Power Delivery, the burden is not on you.
- New, more secure boot sequence
- Updated Nvidia Tegra board
- ~20% better battery life
- Reinforced chassis design
It seems likely that they took the opportunity with Mariko to redesign their charging ICs to be more tolerant. I heartily recommend looking up some of the more subtle differences between the models too, it's really interesting to see how Nintendo updated a mass-market product without anyone really noticing.
As another poster mentioned, however, they will only dock with the OEM charger.
Seems like whatever is happening with the OG switch USB-C implementation it’s not straightforward.
[1] https://switchchargers.com/how-nintendo-switch-charging-work... -- scroll down to "Nintendo Switch Dock"
[2] e.g. https://skullnco.com/collections/nintendo-switch/products/ju... and https://www.gulikit.com/productinfo/506086.html
I don’t recall ever seeing prior USB devices fail at adherence.
The problem is that USB C is a massive spec with a lot of things that aren’t always needed in it (display, pd, high data speeds etc). You can either design your product to implement a lot more things (eg Macs) or skimp out and cause confusion (Switch). By breaking the standard, people effectively have to buy your charger or cables to know it’ll work. If I have to either buy a high end product or buy cables and chargers only from the original brand, we aren’t really any better off with this.
Really? You've never seen a power only micro-usb cable (missing 2 bus lines)? I have dozens from all types of devices that use USB as a charging only connector.
This has been a problem with every USB iteration (hard to have the U in USB if you aren't able to handle a wide variety of applications), but I vastly prefer it to the early 00s when you might have 5 different cables to each "specialty" application.
Afaik if you don't need these you can just implement the parts you need e.g. charging.
I'm sure that's not it. I'm sure it was
"Hey product manager. We can launch in 6 weeks if this port accepts power and connects to a dock, or 36 weeks if we need to conform to standards in section 17, subsection 5 part 41.2B of standard 1120 on European code B7"
"what does <standards> get us"
"Nothing, we don't need those features. Also it'll add $25 to the bill of materials"
"ignore it then, we want to launch sooner and increase our margin."
Maybe apple had it right originally to have “thunderbolt” as a super powerful all-in-one cable (except add power) and we needed a simple “reversible micro usb” for everything else.
Which means 1 spec is not sufficient for interoperability
We clearly need more regulation.
Enforcing USB pd as a standard would be another acceptable one.
I never understood this sentiment. That would be even more true if USB-C wasn't the standard so I don't really understand the complaint. Obviously "same shape" isn't an indicator that it will "just work" for USB-C, so why would we expect that to be the case for anything else with modern complexity?
It would be nice if fits == works but that's just not a world we live in, USB-C or not.
Basically, things that require extra ICs are now being shoved into "one connector for all" thing with no way of telling them apart.
No, that was already not the case with USB 3 devices not working when plugged in a USB 1 slot. Not made easy when some computer or hub have both USB 3 and USB 1 port on the same machine and you must remember the color code.
I recall that one time when I tried to configure the bios of a computer and the keyboard wouldn't work in the bios because it was connected to the "wrong" usb port that was not powered in that stage of the boot
The regulation (I hope) is about actually adhering to USB-C, not merely shipping with USB-C connectors. And the bar to pass should be to be able to use a large stack of USB-C chargers and work.
That's not quite correct. The Nintendo Switch and the Switch Dock works with some Macbook chargers, and all you need to do is read the small print on the devices.
The Macbook chargers list the supported voltages & currents on the outside (in very small light grey text, but it is there), and the Switch has the supported voltages and required currents printed on the back. It's confusing because the Switch Dock needs a different voltage & current than just the Switch itself, but if you read the fine print on the devices you can see if they are compatible.
This is a positive example of the EU influencing American technology companies.
(I say that as someone considering getting an EU passport though, so I might be biased.)
USB-A has been with us for over 20 years. It's only disappearing because of USB-C, and USB-C seems to have room to grow. I wouldn't be surprised if it will still be the most popular connector in 2035, and not just because "legislation stops innovation".
Making sure there are no weird exceptions to a very good port is reasonable and good.
In any case, you can just stick tiny plug adapters on all your chargers. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G54XXZZ/
Your chargers are USB-A, and you can make them usable with an A-to-C cable.
There are no chargers with micro-USB output port (USB never specified such thing). Micro-USB has been designed to make cables essentially disposable (and not meant to be hardwired into any device), because the more robust side of the connector is in the device's port, and the fragile side is in the cable.
In my experience, this wasn't true. I had both a tablet and a phone that had the charging port fail. If I didn't apply a constant sideways force on the cable, it wouldn't charge. Tried other cables to make sure it wasn't a bad cable, but still had the same problem.
https://www.amazon.com/CanaKit-Raspberry-Supply-Adapter-List...
I have several chargers with a brick and a permanently attached micro-USB cable that came with devices. One from Samsung; a couple from Grandcentral; a few for Raspberry Pis.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=microusb+AC+adapter&t=ffab&iar=ima...
https://www.androidauthority.com/fast-charging-explained-2-8...
So in the end we still have to have multiple chargers, but now we can roll the dice on which one works with or damages which device because they all use the same connector.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'unreasonably non-zero', but I've been sharing chargers between Macbook, XPS 13 and Thinkpad with no concern, + a charger from amazon.
Some charger are less powerful than others, so charge is not always as quick, but in real life it does not matter : it's still charging fast enough in any combination, and for the last year the only reason I have multiple chargers is to have one at home and one at work, but any laptop works well on all chargers.
I have trouble finding relevant information that is not some random dude on a forum speaking very confidently one way or another without much data to back it up, and I don't see why that would cause any harm other than charging more slowly, eventually to the point of discharging if you consume a lot of power (which is a pretty tolerable downside).
I've fried at least one USB-C device, a high-end wireless headset, seemingly by connecting it to a name-brand USB-C charger that had some kind of incompatibility with the headset.
Plus, even among Apple chargers, some USB-C chargers will support fast charging, and some won't, regardless of their rated wattage. Plus some will and will not support fast charging via a wireless charger (either a MagSafe wireless charger or an Apple Watch charger). There are a lot of charging incompatibilities in the current state of USB-C, even among devices from a single manufacturer.
Doesn't really matter. Just charge with any charger that's USB-C compatible. If it breaks the machine just RMA it. It didn't adhere to the spec so file a complain to the EU commission in charge of these charging standards as well.
Wait what was the point again? Ohh E-Waste reduction.
And all I gained from this is that I will have to buy a cable separately from the device itself now.
But hey, at least I'll only get 5 new cables in a decade instead of 10! Such incredible savings.
I think avoiding "innovation" in the form of yet another connector is USB C's mission.
Apple just released a USB C to MagSafe cable, where is the problem?
Lightning isn't innovation it's pure vendor lock in complete with embedded cable chips to enforce it.
Any improperly designed device can damage other devices, suggesting it's somehow particular to USB C is specious.
These issues have evaporated for me in the past couple of years. The only devices that I have in use that are still finicky are Nintendo Switch, and it's my understanding that newer models have fixed these problems, too.
My only complaints are that I wish my MBP would draw 10W from non-PD USB, instead of 5W (not really a USB-C problem), and my kids' laptops that have USB-C ports but don't support USB-PD and only charge from coaxial power adapters.
Whilst important, we have done much better to FORCE the industry to provide security support and updates as part of the sale of devices for a minimum of 5 years on all products. This is one of the biggest insurmountable reasons I see for people who don't even want to, to have to upgrade because of the locked down nature of phones/watches/washing-machines/hoovers/etc...
Although I doubt it'll be the EU project to push through something so bold that will have enough of an impact.
Headphones, thermal printer, neck-cooler, rechargable screwdriver - all USB-C.
What's weird are the few things which don't. Amazon Alexa use a barrel charger. Brand new HP printer has the old square style USB plug. Pulse Oximeter user micro-USB.
So C is certainly getting there. Appearing in cheap and expensive products. And, I'm happy to say, works well. Just needs a few laggards to update!
I've started noticing this recently. It's taken longer than I thought but the only devices remaining I have that I need to search for cables for are my iPhone/Apple Watch/old iPod. Everything else, including laptops, I usually have a USB-C charger already plugged in and ready to go no matter what room I'm in.
It makes sense that there should be a standard for this, just like we do (although it varies by country) for our plugs.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60320
I've personally destroyed VGA, PS/2, and ADB adapters by stepping on them in the past. (I've since gotten somewhat more careful, and haven't yet destroyed any USB or Lightning adapters the same way.)
How, exactly, do you propose that they design a port that you can't accidentally crush, aside from something dirt-simple like an 8mm headphone jack...?
UK power plugs want a word with you. Not that there won't be damage, but it's your foot that will be completely destroyed.
Yeah, those things are tanks.
USB-C is a bunch of specifications that may can be combined or may not. USB-C is only the physical connector. USB-C PD (Power delivery) does support many different modes. There are at least 11 different modes with at least 4 of them are optional. I haven't read the latest version of the specification, but I would bet that there are optionally also some implementation-specific options aka manufacturer-specific. All that combined with the many different cable definitions for the different use cases, makes it for the average consumer a nightmare.
I think this will make cables interchangeable in most cases. Fast charging and fast transfers are nice to have but rarely vital.
I have such cables, which can't be really used for charging as well as for fast data transfer. They are good for my development hardware kits, I have. Because those kits don't have any high power requirements. But I cannot use them to power my notebook.
Do you expect them to follow standards while being impossibly cheap to pay for the licensing of said standards?
No, it doesn't. Almost all my devices (macbook, camera, speaker, phone, headphones...) use usb c pd and I am using the same three cables interchangeably for all of them, no issues.
If Apple choses to intentionally break this compatibility it's a user hostile company.
All passive USB-C cables support PD 2.0 or 3.0, all charging features. The only things a cable needs to need to support PD are:
Vbus wire Gnd wire CC wire Therefore, all USB cables, even the lowest end USB 2.0 cable support USB PD. You don't need an identifier chip to support basic USB PD charging.
Literally it's just the CC wire that goes end to end that enables USB PD charging from one end to the other.
USB PD is supposed to be backward and forward compatible, and a USB 2.0 cable can't actually differentiate itself as a USB PD 2.0 or PD 3.0 cable, since chances are it doesn't actually have an identifier chip. Your basic cable (which the Anker is) should work all the way up to 60W with PPS.
PPS also doesn't matter. A USB 2.0 C-to-C cable is supposed to support PPS.
----- In other words as long as you have any proper usb c cable (spec compliant) and a usb c Pd charger with sufficient power output, everything will work.
Supporting this is tantamount to believing that there will never need to be a USB-D that improves upon USB-C, and I just can’t believe that.
This is the part that wears out, and when it does, the port will need to be replaced, not the cable.
My 6 year-old iPhone that I plug and unplug a bunch of times a day still keeps the plugs in very snuggly. They basically don't move. And I've pulled on the connector many, many times, by stepping on the cord and pulling the phone up.
Contrast this with my 2 month-old laptop in which the usb-c cables move around, even though it spends 90% on the time plugged in.
---
Edit: I did have connection issues at one point, but it was due to pocket lint that had accumulated inside the port. It was easily removable with a toothpick, and the connector went back to working like new.
What's so great about it? USB-C is just as easy to plug in and these cables usually last longer. The only difference for me is that Lightning eventually ends up with black pins and I have to buy another cable.
Also, is it really worth the few technical advantages if the alternative is a good-enough plug that works with absolutely everything?
1. I stepped on it. 2. The junction between wire and head broken.
I have more that probably 5 micro b wire failed on the head since I use cellphone. But for type c, it's literally 0.
I've never had a phone with USB-C to compare, but I've had rotten luck with Lightning. I always get that one power pin that blackens and makes the cable unreliable.
I'm just glad USB-C has come along so we didn't do something foolish like standardize on Micro USB - I hate those ports! I recently bought two brand-new BT speakers and guess how they're charged? Micro USB! Grrrrrrr!!!
Basically there will never be a usb-d.
The EU seems perfectly willing to adopt new standards if you look at what has been happening in mobile standards (e.g. despite 3G being standardized we got 4G, despite 4G being standardized we got 5G)
Who will build the spec and research and then lobby Europe to change the law when no device uses it? The marketing of saying “this new spec is better… throw out EVERYTHING” won’t happen.
What will happen is that the hot mess of a market that is the Asian market will grow and change and develop… and throw out cables. And it’ll get better over time while the availability in Europe stagnates.
PS you can clean the blackened pin so it works again.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-why-your-iphone-lightnin...
Except that's basically what happened with USB-C. Micro-B was the standard for the EU, USB-C was developed and got approved, and now it's replacing micro-b as the standard.
Any technological developments in wired charging can be reflected in a timely adjustment of technical requirements/ specific standards under the Radio Equipment Directive. This would ensure that the technology used is not outdated.
At the same time, the implementation of any new standards in further revisions of Radio Equipment Directive would need to be developed in a harmonised manner, respecting the objectives of full interoperability. Industry is therefore expected to continue the work already undertaken on the standardised interface, led by the USB-IF organisation, in view of developing new interoperable, open and non-controversial solutions.
Sure, but it's not. So this is not smart.
Get a Thunderbolt 4 cable, they can carry Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4, every USB protocol up to and including 4, DP alt-mode, and 100W power delivery. Moreover, most of them are clearly marked. The Apple cables are expensive, but some other good brands (like CalDigit) offer them at reasonable prices.
I just returned 3 USB-C hubs in a row, one almost fried my computer.
Most USB USB-C hubs (USB-C is only the connector) are terrible. Even many premium brands (like Satechi) often use cheap Chinese reference designs that will fry themselves pretty quickly, cause a lot of interference, and have all kinds of annoying limitations (mostly because they use 5 or 10 GBit/s USB 3 standards).
Since I have switched to quality Thunderbolt Docks, I haven't had any issues.
Do you have a list of quality docks? Or how you determine what a quality dock is?
I think the biggest thing is how much power the dock provides and how much attached devices need.
One thing to watch out for (when you are using a Mac) is to avoid Docks with a Realtek NIC. They use a generic USB driver on macOS that adds CPU load and usually only reaches 700-900MBit. Intel I210 NICs are great, they use PCIe over Thunderbolt and have a native driver.
They can do the same for iPhone: one USB-C connector for charging and one innovation connector.
"Any technological developments in wired charging can be reflected in a timely adjustment of technical requirements/ specific standards under the Radio Equipment Directive. This would ensure that the technology used is not outdated.
At the same time, the implementation of any new standards in further revisions of Radio Equipment Directive would need to be developed in a harmonised manner, respecting the objectives of full interoperability. Industry is therefore expected to continue the work already undertaken on the standardised interface, led by the USB-IF organisation, in view of developing new interoperable, open and non-controversial solutions."
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/QANDA_...
1. All iPhones get USB-C
2. Only EU iPhones get USB-C, US sticks with lightning
3. iPhones become portless with wireless charging only
1. Apple
2. Users
3. Developers
so they'll sacrifice developer experience with not a second thought.
https://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=...
Didn't USB-C already do that to itself? I suppose that depends on how narrow the definition of "physically incompatible" is. But IIRC you can't buy a perfect do-everything USB-C cable today, because some USB-C use cases are flat out incompatible with others.
The Nintendo switch is a pile of shit though.
Currently they sell the SE, 11, 12 and 13
By 2024 they will be selling a SE, 13, 14 and 15. Will they rework the SE, 13 and 14 to get USB-C? Will they stop selling them just in Europe?
That's potentially a lot of money left on the table.
The phasing in happens by first requiring it for permits for new models. The manufacturers can still build and sell older models. A few years later, the rule also applies to all first registration of new cars, to prevent car manufacturers to avoid the new rules by keeping to produce an older model.
IDK if something similar exists for electric household devices. For the famous light bulb ban, they introduced it via import and manufacturing restrictions, so you could still sell the light bulbs, and still can today, but you can't either build new light bulbs or (legally) get light bulbs from outside of the EU into the EU.
You could do the same for phones, just ban the imports at a specified date in the future so that the hardware can be readjusted in time.
Anyways, this only affects one manufacturer (Apple) and they don't have as much of a market share here as in the US.
Imagine if their revenue drops by 20%...
> "With respect to radio equipment capable of being recharged via wired charging, the Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 44 to amend Annex Ia in the light of technical progress, and to ensure the minimum common interoperability between radio equipment and their charging devices, by: (a) modifying, adding or removing categories or classes of radio equipment; (b) modifying, adding or removing technical specifications, including references and descriptions, in relation to the charging receptacle(s) and charging communication protocol(s), for each category or class of radio equipment concerned."
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/46755
Your point isn't wrong, but is is several years out of date: USB-C is already well past the few models to gain experience point and now moving to the late adopter part of the cycle. A phone without USB-C charging is as quaint as a phone with a rotary dial at this point.
It would be a separate port next to the micro-USB port.
The point is that we don't need a new connector every few years for charging a device. This saves e-waste, since the chargers can stay the same. For data, you might want to have a new connector, though.
Right now, the charging speed of iPhone is way less than Android phone sold in China. Here most phones charge at 50W+, some at 120W, several times faster than iPhone. While the limitation is not because of Lightning, it is hard to maintain a straight face when Apple insists that they use Lightning because of technical advantage.
USB C, like micro USB has that "tongue" piece that has to fit inside the end of the cable which always looks like it could snap off. The Apple connector is just a solid piece that goes in the end of the phone. No fiddly interlock pieces.
Mind you my 7 year old broke the USB C connector on his Switch in much the same way. There's only so strong you can make something that small and dense with contacts.
The reason USB-C has the tab on the device is to have the springs, which are the bits which can go wrong the most, on the cable instead of the device. When they start to become loose, you only have to replace an inexpensive cable, instead of having to replace or repair the device. It also better protects the contacts on both the cable and the device (the contacts on Apple's lightning cable are exposed).
Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is what happens if better solutions are found. Will EU block innovation?
That question is addressed in the Q&A: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/QANDA_...
In essence, they seem to believe that wired charging is mature enough for standardisation but further technologies can be implemented through "Radio Equipment Directive". In the same time, it appears that the wireless charging is unaffected because the tech is new and fast changing, therefore the manufacturers can include whatever wireless charging they see fit.
It really boils down to "No funny cables, why don't you try wireless charging of your liking if USB-C doesn't cut it for you?".
Not only aren't these strict readings, they aren't even sensible.
For example, NIST Weights and Measures division regulates the nozzle on the dispenser used for gasoline in the US.
> Each retail dispensing device from which fuel products are sold shall be equipped with a nozzle spout having a diameter that conforms with the latest version of SAE J285, “Dispenser Nozzle Spouts for Liquid Fuel Intended for Use with Spark-Ignition and Compression Ignition Engines.”
https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/2019/12/06/00-20...
A metering devices that dispenses electrical power is no different. https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/legal-metrolog...
These are very fundamental consumer protection regulations that have been solidly cemented in western civilization for many centuries now.
>not extend to regulation of [...] what measures are permitted.
That was exactly the point of that clause. The colonies all had their own system of measurement and it was a mess trying to do business. Now, congress did very little about it, but the founders intentionally reserved the right for them to fix that problem.
As dpratt remarked earlier[0], any interpretation which would deem nozzle size—or the specific form of an electrical connector—to be covered by the Weights and Measures clause of the Constitution would effectively cede unlimited power to the federal government. What couldn't they regulate under such broad rules?
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31654558
So you're saying it's quite reasonable when you look at what actually happened?
The law defined a handful of categories. "fish" is actually "fish and miscellaneous". Invertebrates are explicitly part of that miscellaneous.
Society claiming this is wrong and being correct is exactly balanced by society claiming whales aren't fish and being incorrect.
(Whales are fish because they're descendants of fish and are more closely related to salmon than sharks are. The same goes for you. You're also a fish.)
I’m not sure how the legal power to say “the unit of mass called the ‘gram’ shall be defined as the mass of a cube of pure water, one centimeter on each side” allows you to say “anybody that manufactures a phone must include the following physical and logical features.” If you go off that definition, you’re basically ceding pretty much unlimited power to the government.
For cars, we have public metering devices that measure units of stuff and charge money. This makes it fall into the category of metering devices used in trade. And we do regulate those almost universally. You can’t just put a different shape nozzle on a gas pump, for instance.
You can't possibly believe what you typed.
So if you really want I believe you could issue a double port
Clunky for smartphones maybe, but should be trivial for larger devices
So Macbook Air 2022 with MagSafe charging will be completely legal as long as the USB-C can be used for charging.
For charging your car at Tesla chargers that haven't been upgraded to the standard yet there are adaptors available from Tesla plugs to standard fast charging plugs.
Older cars may need their weird custom connections but everything else has been pretty much been standardised. I don't know how much the EU decision has affected this, but it's not an EU exclusive feat.
EU don't like the idea of manufacturers locking down their users through different standards. EU is a densely populated place with limited natural resources and free space, therefore cables piling up or 10 different types of charging stations are problems that EU cannot afford. EU trash being shipped to poorer countries is already a serious problem for example.
Good to hear that in the US only Tesla was the outlier and the industry acted responsibly but unless regulated you can't guarantee that it will be like that or stay like that.
Businesses love to lock down their users, Tesla chargers are a major selling point for Tesla and from EU perspective having multiple charging networks that cannot be made interoperable without a substantial modifications is a no-no.
This sentence seems to imply that one cannot charge their non-Tesla car with the Tesla charging network without substantial modifications.
What do you mean by substantial modification? It is already possible for non-Tesla cars, in the United States, to charge at Tesla destination chargers with an adapter: https://qccharge.com/collections/jdapter-stub™-tesla-station...
There isn’t anything particular magic about Tesla Superchargers, either. A simple adapter+some API for the app will open it right up.
I’m not against standardization, btw.
Sadly, the US standard (CCS1) was heavily influenced by a desire for backward compatibility with J1772. Its not a great standard in itself.
Interoperability sure.
I would think ‘mass’ is a better metric to use than ‘volume’. Also, it’s not only the waste, but also the work needed to make it, and I would guess that’s a lot harder for electric chargers than for, say, the plastic bags that take up the bulk of the volume of trash.
Also, “Others are worse” isn’t a strong argument. Some of the large contributors to trash may not be completely unavoidable (example: plastic packaging). Because of that, it’s not possible to significantly reduce the amount of waste by making a few cuts on the largest contributors of trash. You have to do it by making lots of small cuts. This is one of them, and also a relatively easy gain.
If you wanted to save trash you'd probably go after packaging. Ban disposable water bottles (or something less drastic like taxing them extra) and there's 50 lifetimes of wall warts per person per annum.
This just isn't really an enviromental problem. Or if it is, it's so far down the scale as to be pointless to prioritize over almost anything. It's really about competition.
Most EU countries have actually outlawed landfills in favor of waste-to-energy systems. [1] Of course waste-to-energy only works for stuff like plastics, not for electronics which you'd rather want to disassemble carefully to recover the precious metals.
> If you wanted to save trash you'd probably go after packaging.
Which the EU does too. There is legislation underway (or possibly already passed) to outlaw many types of single-use plastic items. Everyone switching from plastic straws to paper straws may actually be another case of Brussels effect.
> it's so far down the scale as to be pointless to prioritize over almost anything
The thing is, from experience we know that these legislations take so long to enact and enforce that you cannot just start with the biggest items, wait for it to be done, and then move to the next biggest item. You need to tackle many possible avenues for waste reduction at once.
[1] https://www.cewep.eu/landfill-taxes-and-restrictions/
it boils down to "as long as the USB-C is provided"
anyway electric plugs have been a standard for decades, better options to supply energy have come out, the plugs have stayed the same.
I don't understand the FOMO.
Can you provide a source? AFAIK you can have a device without USB-C and only wireless charging.
in so far as they are capable of being recharged via wired charging, shall:
so you can have all the funny cables you want, as long as you provide the USB-C plug
If there is no wired charging, there is no problem of funny cables.
but companies are free to experiment all the kinds of wired charging they want, it's just more convenient to have a standard and they'll comply happily I guess, now that they are forced by the law and can stop competing on stupid stuff like charging cables.
It already has. Tesla's connector is nicer (you can call that subjective but it isn't) and the supercharging network in the US is deploying the clunky standard sort of connector as well.
If EU legislation were universal, that would preclude any future where the superior connector is licensed and takes over from the crappy designed-by-committee alternative, because Tesla would be forced to stop manufacturing it.
Legislators deciding who gets to be VHS and who has to be Betamax is bad, actually.
The EU plug locks into the car while charging. Not sure why you think it doesn't.
There's also no obligation to have an extra flap, my Model 3 does not.
1. At a public charger, one should have to authenticate to _either_ the car or the charger to interrupt an active charging session.
2. When using a portable charger of the sort that is owned by the car’s owner, one should not be able to unplug the charger and thus steal it if one cannot authenticate to the car.
And that’s it. You should be able to unplug someone else from a public charger that can reach multiple parking spaces once it finishes charging.
The CCS1 standard locks the cable using a little flap that folds down on top of the CCS1 latch to hold it in place. Its every bit as clumsy as it sounds, but it does mean there is a locked cable.
Example CCS1 inlet: http://www.wind-works.org/cms/index.php?id=84&tx_ttnews%5Btt...
What do you tell your children?
When you are not happy with decisions the governments make, it usually means that you should be involved in the process of making the decisions.
Europeans don't trust that the industry will always come up with the best solutions for the user, Americans usually don't trust the government doing something well unless it's the military. Let's agree to disagree.
I like that the car plugs are the same everywhere in EU and want it to stay that way and enjoy the Tesla plugs on a trip to USA.
In the short term, yes. In the long term however competition between these different standards will cause consolidation and overall technology improvement. The next step will be regulating wireless charging so that all devices have to use/do the same thing, rinse-wash-repeat.
> Europeans don't trust that the industry will always come up with the best solutions for the user, Americans usually don't trust the government doing something well unless it's the military. Let's agree to disagree.
A better way to think about this is that both "groups" can learn from one another. For example you could say that Europeans should be suspicious about USB-C manufacturers and advocates effectively being granted a monopoly in the name of convenience. Americans should better trust that certainly in the case of infrastructure it makes sense to have a single standard "plug" for electric vehicles because we really need as many people driving them as possible in the most convenient way.
I guess In Europe we kind of like the idea of being able to overthrow the people in power if they screw us too much. It's much more socially acceptable to burn cars and occupy streets and decapitate politicians than shooting CEO's when you are really not happy with the way things work. It feels like you have control over the stuff going on in your country.
Europe is very old, we are used to have old stuff laying around. Old building that definitely don't meet the modern requirements are everywhere. Besides, the states with Cable Freedom will also have all the obsolate cables when the industry finally comes up with the perfect cable.
So what's the problem with allowing lightning to exist, since as a standard it predated USB-C (and in fact was the impetus for the creation of the latter)? If we allow neighborhoods to keep their old power connectors without retrofit... why not allow lightning to continue to exist?
If you think that’s a superior solution, then the regulation should actually support it: require that all EV charging connectors have a free published specification, disallow patents on them, and require that interoperability be permitted without cost or other penalty. (e.g. anyone should be able to implement both ends of the Tesla supercharging protocol such that Tesla’s chargers would charge a competing car at the same prices that they charge Tesla’s; similarly, a competing charger should be able to charge a Tesla.)
There should be some common ground. Regulations that encourage innovation (perhaps even with timed financial incentives) while also ensuring that the best ideas are eventually freely adoptable across the board.
Seems like, as with most issues, people take one extreme or the other, when a common sense middle ground could be found with proper planning and forethought.
Disallowing patents is the libertarian solution, though it would be up to the customers to demand published specifications and official support for interoperability.
That is how it was sold to the public. Unfortunately the system was never designed with the proper structure and incentives to ensure that patents were only granted when doing so actually resulted in the publication of accurate details about useful inventions which would not have become known to the public anyway well before the patent period expired.
In practice, if you think you can keep something a trade secret for more than 20 years without it being independently reinvented you'll do that and not file for a patent. Patents are thus useful only in those cases where a patent is expected to be worse for the public than a trade secret, as they inhibit independent reinvention and reverse engineering for the duration of the patent.
One nitpick would be:
> e.g. anyone should be able to implement both ends of the Tesla supercharging protocol such that Tesla’s chargers would charge a competing car at the same prices that they charge Tesla’s; similarly, a competing chargers should be able to charge a Tesla.
I think this sounds good, but one of the details here is ensuring that other manufacturers are able to actually build the products correctly so a supercharger doesn't light a car on fire or something due to faulty equipment. Who is at fault? How is it prevented? What are the legal agreements? Etc.
On the pricing side though I'd have to strongly disagree. Tesla (or whoever) builds the infrastructure so they should be able to charge what they want. It's about the plug and interoperability of that standard, not infringing on the business model which I think goes too far. If they charge too much money, people won't use them and competitors will continue to emerge (I see new charging stations in Meijer parking lots being put next to Tesla infrastructure). There's no reason in my view to mandate pricing here and I think it would set back EV adoption to do so.
Anyone can produce USB-C chargers. That's not a monopoly. This will effectively enable competition on the charging market, since the big players can't bind their products to their own proprietary chargers anymore.
Have you ever felt the Apple/Microsoft charger to be lacking in some way? Breaking easily, too long cords, too short, wrong color, too expensive? Congratulations now you can make and sell those better chargers. Before, this was not possible.
"What if we created a charging cable that did X,Y,Z?"
"That would be cool but we have to use USB-C"
> Have you ever felt the Apple/Microsoft charger to be lacking in some way? Breaking easily, too long cords, too short, wrong color, too expensive?
No not really. In fact I’ve found most third-party products to be godawful. Good luck not buying something fraudulent on Amazon.com. But also, I’m not really sure what you are talking about. Companies sell charging equipment and cords now anyway.
Everything has trade-offs. I’m skeptical of the necessity of this regulation, especially given that the only holdout that anyone cares about is Apple and they’ve been adopting USB-C in all of their products over time. One benefit though will be manufacturers won’t include charging cables with new devices anymore. So that will further reduce waste. Wouldn’t be surprised to see lobbying behind the scenes from companies such as Apple to implement regulations like this so they can save money. I kind of like this as an investor because now you can save money by not including a cable (or maybe you still do and it’s just some cheap one for now) and then you go and up sell wireless chargers instead.
It leaves me hoping your economy becomes much smaller so Asia can start ignoring it. Or reform I guess, the vote is yours, not mine.
Also I'm not sure why you hold Asia so dear. You may soon get some centrally planned standards from China in the EV market and not only(i.e online services such tiktok)
> (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).
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/40/80.22
Edit: fixed formatting
I appreciate the find.
Still though, having the same “regular” gas at every single gas station is an underrated benefit!
cries in Italian...
Should Europeans start hoping the US economy fails so that then FAA has less influence?[3]
Really I don't think this is something that really matters in the grand scheme of things. USB-C is a good enough standard and I don't see Apple coming out with some great new alternative.
From my perspective I have loads of broken Lightning cables but no broken USB-C ones. Also if something is going to break I'd rather the springs be in the cheap cable than the expensive phone socket as with Lightning.
1. Now you might think it's for people who break the smoking rule to have somewhere to put out their fags[2] but the "innovative" solution to that would be the sink.
2. You know that I know you know that's slang for cigarette, so stick to the point at hand please. :P
3. Just in case that's not blindingly obvious, the answer is NO, that would be terrible for everyone involved including both Europeans and Americans.
We live in a global economy, you are constantly affected by things happening thousand of miles away (e.g. Ukraine invasion bumped the price of gas across the world). Not sure why you're conflating that with the fact that these actions are "centrally-planned".
On the other hand, you're absolutely right that it doesn't help anyone if your car is incompatible with half of the chargers out there. Are adapter cables an option, perhaps?
The Tesla passive solution to the locking mechanism on their CCS1 passive adapter is as brilliant as it is simple. Just a little springloaded bar that locks the cable onto the adapter if and only if the adapter is inserted into the car. Then the car uses its regular adapter. This works well with CCS1 locking.
The other end of the spectrum are things like the setec adapter or the evhub adapter. Both of those don't have vehicle side locking with CCS1, which is a violation and a potential hazard.
The CCS adapter that allows you to supercharge a Tesla at non-Tesla DC superchargers is not (yet) available in the US [0]. Tesla does make them and you can buy them in South Korea, but not in the US.
[0] Except for a dodgy Chinese gizmo which I won't link to because it's reputed not to work reliably.
I was referring to the CCS adapter that is currently available in South Korea. Its a little heavier, but its also fairly easy to use (well, as easy as CCS usually is). It has become really easy to import them too, thanks to Harumio and other importers. The speeds are 150+kw, and close to 200kw on the newer Model S/X[1]. I expect that official availability will happen sometime this year, but if it doesn't, then presumably a third party will make a suitable passive adapter. Its a ridiculously simple device.
[1] I know officially S/X isn't even supported, but it has been demonstrated to work. Higher speeds are because of the newer 450V battery pack.
Most of us are not billionaires.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
National politics in the US is certainly perverse, though it's probably just your US-centrism at work again if you think it's exceptional in this regard.
I was paraphrasing Gilens and Page, from the linked research article. In their words, they found that "economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence".
If there has been subsequent research which contradicts their findings, I would be happy to read it.
This implies that you think that the reason the person believes that they should participate in government is because they don't live in the US and as such, have a functioning democracy and can have an impact on policy. I am asserting that people can have an effect on policy, just that you are more likely to have an effect when you are dealing with local government. This doesn't require a research paper to figure out; There are approximately 334 million Americans. The "average citizen" in this case would have almost no influence whatsoever on policy even in a "functioning democracy" and this is how it is designed. However, if you narrow that down to your state, there is a much lower population and the policies implemented will have a more direct impact on you. If you go even further and look at it from a county, township, or city level, you, by the virtue of their being a small fraction of the people potentially involved in governance, have a much larger effect on policy. The issue is that it seems that people don't want to affect how their town is governed, they want to make mass impact with big changes in policies at a national level.
Special interest groups and economic elites affecting national policy isn't a unique trait to the United States and they are not a valid reason to encourage people against participating in government. You are teaching helplessness which just perpetuates the issue.
https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-...
Since the US is education-polarized, rich people are also more left wing than average, as are people who donate to political campaigns, and the more they donate the more left wing they are. (This is called "being Shor pilled".)
Consider the opposite of a sparsely-populated region, where the next charging point may be 50 miles away. In that case, having a random hodge-podge of competing connectors could have actual consequences.
In practice though, there is not much of an effect either way. All parties have an interest in interoperability: car owners would have adapter to hand if this was a common problem, and charging stations would make themselves available to as many paying customers as possible.
As a result, this will create artificial limits on where people can travel. EU is that much into standardisation because we want to remove these artificial limits created through the thousands years of history.
If 35% of ICE had square gas sockets and we had to keep around square-to-circle adapters the situation would not be better.
An EV charging port is handful of metal rods with a handle.
There's a single neighborhood in Rome where that happens and car chargers don't work. The "solution" is to request a three-phase 400V connection: the utility company can't deny it and it must be 220V to neutral.
Democracy is a very blunt tool. Very important when needed, but not good for fine tuning on any reasonable timescale.
Democracy is the freedom and right of involvement for the stakeholders (among other things)
> Democracy is a very blunt tool. Very important when needed, but not good for fine tuning on any reasonable time scale.
Very good for fine tuning at human time scales.
How does that work by voting or any other democratic activity?
Others will be unconvinced that it's really better, for the same reason people are skeptical of startup ideas until they become mainstream. So nobody will want to update the standard. So I couldn't release it in the market to prove that it's better, because that would be "lock-in". And the idea would die.
Whatever internal research that these companies made, to make them want to change their multi billion dollar market like this, they can go public with it first.
The EU will obviously be happy to include your better connector, provided that old cars can use it too via an adapter and new cars can use old connectors via an adapter. Then they can without issue transition to the new connector without wasting everyone's time and money.
And GDPR? Really?
I'll add to kukx's reason the fact that I can't access some websites anymore because who wants to spend time with bureaucracy so that the website is 100% compliant with GDPR?
Besides, the websites could have chosen not to have that cookie window.
Outside of high tech places like HackerNews, mention the tracking and you’ll get a shrug, mention the cookie banners and you’ll get a “yeah I hate that crap“
Imagine a world where Ford cars use a different gas nozzle from a GM product in the US. The average person would have to pick and choose stations and if one were to go out of business, the lesser standard would encounter mass disposal and retrofit, all on the backs of consumers. The intent with these products is generally not innovation...it is lock in and licensing fees. The EU law in case here has a committee that reviews the standard yearly and accepts proposals.
Stations would just have two nozzles on their pumps.
(see: Tesla superchargers)
Of course, that's not quite the same as the laptop charger question where the fragmentation is between companies and less entrenched. But still.
I can say that, because Brexit happened, I have no clue what those were thinking when designing their own gigantic plug.
As I understand it, EU moves to standardise plugs failed in the 90s.
But Italy has the "normal" (schuko or French) plug. The old one (three holes in line) are in older houses mostly.
My previous data was based on my travel in EU. Now I'm corrected.
But there is a standardized plug that fits both schuko and French style sockets. That was probably why I didn't notice it earlier.
That's a bit of an oversimplification. I was in Italy on Thursday and also early in May. My very modern hotel rooms mostly had Italian three-hole sockets, with a single token 'standard' euro socket provided at the table, that nevertheless didn't always accept my (French-style) laptop cable because the prongs were too thick.
Also, flashy modern hotels aside, I'd say most houses in Italy are "older houses". The three-hole socket is definitely extremely common in Italy in my experience. In fact, there's two incompatible three-hole Italian sockets - a larger one for most appliances, and a smaller one for lights.
Regardless, I meant, physically within the borders of the EU, not during the time of the EU.
Those are 240V plugs, which are also standardized.
Its not like there's a plug for Samsung TVs, a different plug for Sonos sound bars, a different plug for a Sony alarm clock, a different plug for a Singer sewing machine, etc. They're all going to be a NEMA 5-15 plug since all of these things are ~120V and use less than 15A.
- All Teslas have their charging ports at the rear left side. This means that charging cables can be very short. Longer cables would cause tangles, cost more, and be harder to cool.
- Tesla's protocol has built-in payment. You plug in and charge. With CCS it varies. Sometimes you use a credit card. Sometimes you download a mobile app and sign up for some account. Sometimes the planets align and CCS's plug-and-charge works.
- The CCS plug is much bigger. If you look at the connector sizes[1] or adapters[2], the CSS plug is comically huge. Tesla had to redesign the tail lights on the Model S/X to fit CCS Combo 2 ports.
- Every exposed contact is a potential failure point, and CCS exposes more contacts than Tesla's charging port.
- CCS has two different plug dimensions which are used in different regions, so a European CCS vehicle brought to North America will need an adapter (and vice-versa).
- If your vehicle only supports AC charging, you cannot charge with CCS Combo plugs. They won't fit. Since some Teslas were made before the CCS Combo standard took off, older Model S/X's used a CCS Type 2 port. So now every Supercharger in Europe has two plugs: CCS Type 2 & Combo 2.[3]
1. https://teslatap.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/connector_co...
2. https://www.notateslaapp.com/images/news/2021/ccs-adapter.jp...
3. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eu-tesla-supercharge...
- Older X/S were never that numerous and shouldn't hold up the vast majority of the population. First movers disadvantage if you like.
- Moving vehicles across the Atlantic is also a tiny tiny use case and already difficult as is.
They didn't make the decision. It's more like legislators observing that Betamax is failing and deciding that it's in everyone's best interests to tell Sony that they have to adopt VHS instead of creating confusion in the marketplace.
> Tesla's connector is nicer
Tesla's system only goes up to 400 volts. CCS goes up to 800 volts. The higher voltage supports faster charging.
(This is similar to Betamax's critical flaw. The smaller, more elegant Betamax tape compared to the clunky VHS tape meant that VHS could record 6 hours on a tape when Betamax was limited to about 3.5 hours on a tape. It also meant that feature length films were often recorded at slower tape speeds, thus meaning that prerecorded VHS tapes were often a better quality than the Betamax version.)
DC Fast charging has to match pack voltage, so with 400ish volt pack voltage Tesla gets big charging speed by providing extreme amperage. CCS is limited to 500A, so the best way to provide really fast charging is higher pack voltages.
Higher voltage does have some benefits around heat and losses, but also has downsides like cost of electronics and installations over 600V generally require special electrical licensing.
It's hard to deny the tesla connector is a lot nicer to work with (especially V3 with thin, liquid cooled cables), but I still wish my model 3 sr+ had CCS like euro cars. I'd love to be able to have more charging options.
Tesla doesn't have a similar limitation and can do 250-300kw on the existing 400-450V cars.
Or like 1996 when Apple was failing and everyone should have been forced to standardize on Windows.
If Apple believes USB-C is really that bad (which I don't think they do) - then they have the option of creating a handset only for sale in Europe or they can remove all charging ports and go wireless charging. I bet they go with USB-C charging and wireless charging.
Interesting example. Betamax was technologically superior, but lost out due to marginally higher costs. What makes you think Tesla's connector wouldn't suffer the same fate?
I like the Tesla connector in the US, but in Europe, I'd argue that CCS2 is objectively superior. They need 3-phase power support and the Tesla connector doesn't support that. They also use a different CCS connector from the US. The CCS2 connector uses a latching mechanism that is similar to the proprietary Tesla one. Its simple and very reliable.
The US CCS1 system uses a dual latching mechanism. The cable and the car each have moving parts that are somewhat complicated. The cable side latch is a common failure point. It makes sense, given the desire to retain backward compatiblity with J1772 L1/L2 chargers, but I don't really think that was worth the tradeoff, tbh.
If every company thought like Tesla/Apple, we'd quickly go down a very untenable road.
On the other hand, this requirement to have an USB-C connector is pretty useless to downright counter-productive as it will indeed prevent innovation. It's just political hand-waving.
Standardizing against Tesla at any earlier point would have been a gift on a silver platter for legacy auto by slowing EV adoption, and it's Tesla's freedom to innovate that is why we're even having this discussion instead of theoretical questions about what EVs might be like in the future.
I usually tell them to let Tesla solve the remaining edge cases (semis, trailer hauling, and charge speeds comparable to ICE fill-ups) before we start regulating. Setting things in stone now would be like standardizing on DSL as the only last-mile broadband in 2004. We don't want to do that.
That's just impossible. Filling a 100 kWh "tank" in one minute requires 6 MW of power, plus all the power that goes into heat. The only solution would be replacing batteries on the fly but Tesla discontinued it.
Moving stuff is inherently faster than chemical reactions (unless you're talking about explosions).
Getting it down to five minutes to fill to 80% may be sufficient. Right now it's 15-20 minutes.
First, if a car takes five times longer to charge, you need a lot more space to cover the needs for peak days. This may not be a problem on highways (or in the US) but space in Europe is much more limited.
Second, a smallish 6-pump filling station serves 150-200 cars per hour. An equivalent charging station would need 12-15 MW which means working at 40 kV.
Dealing with peak days is easy for filling stations, you just request gasoline trucks more frequently. For charging stations you need to build infrastructure that might hardly exist in more rural places, it's the same as sneakernet vs broadband.
1. https://imgur.com/a/vd4dStk
Your crystal ball seems broken. You could have said the exact same thing about micro-usb for phone chargers, yet somehow we ended up in the present.
Hint: Your supposed critical flaw is incredibly obvious. So either everyone but you is an idiot or just maybe the people making laws have thought of that too...
But it's also true that USB-C with PD is better than the alternatives in its space so occasionally the committees get things right.
Currently working at a company that makes CCS chargers. Can confirm the standard is an absolute shit show, the cables are heavy, and the plugs are a giant pain in the ass. But hey, it's the standard so that's what we make. Oh, and why TF do we have a PowerLine Communication chip to talk to the vehicle over (non-power) signal wires? A few CAN messages would have done the job. One of the stupidest communication standards ever.
you know what's even nicer? Being able to charge your car at any charging station and not just the ones built by your manufacturer.
Imagine if you could only fill up your gas tank at specific gas stations that support your tank opening.
Didn’t the EU previously mandate micro USB A? I believe Apple included an adapter in the box for all EU SKUs.
Edit: it was not compulsory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply
Previously the EU had a (non-compulsory) rule on micro A as the charging standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply
Plus they leave the door open for a wireless alternative.
Tim Cook has his own PR team, haha.
Anyway, I like USB-C more, I have to carry them anyway, so it’d eliminate one cable when I travel. We’re as close as I’ve ever seen to having the one cable to rule them all, which is pretty cool.
Frankly, I’m expecting the lightning port to be replaced with a purely inductive/magnetic solution eventually, there probably will not even be a receptacle for it, just a wireless contact to the phone from the wire like how the Apple Watch can only charged.
I’m guessing in that case, they would be exempt from providing a usb-c port since the phones would be technically purely wireless by that point. At that point, other vendors will follow and the EU will mandate Qi as the standard wireless charging solution since the USB-C mandate will be obsolete.
Innovation is overrated. And standardising is not blocking.
What we need more urgently than innovation is to stop creating so much waste, extracting so much stuff from the earth, and in general reduce consumption. Standardisation accomplishes at least some of that.
Hard disagree? Both lightning and USB C were massive improvements in durability compared to Micro USB - I'd argue lightning is still better in that regard, because there's no thin piece inside the phone that can break (did phone repair, and 99% of the time a "broken" iphone port was just stuck lint).
USB C is not universally better then then Micro, namely it has a much larger footprint both on the connector side and the PCB.
> Will EU block innovation?
So my question is - if there's a new USB standard connector that's smaller, or is inside-out for better durability - is it now prevented from being used?
But that's precisely my problem with this - if we're forcing every device to merely adopt a USB-C port, that does nothing to ensure they're actually using USB-C specifications or interoperable. Game System X and Phone Y may only work with USB-C cables/chargers X and Y, which satisfy the requirement without fixing the compatibility problem.
You certainly need more than just the physical port. IMHO the minimum reasonable requirement would be that the device must charge at near the maximum supported rate (minimum of the device's, cable's, and charger's advertised rates) with any combination of compliant charger & cable. There wouldn't be much point in mandating the use of USB-C ports otherwise.
Then I guess you got one from the first hardware revision. I have a 2018 Switch (second hardware revision as far as I understand), and I have in the past charged it successfully with Apple chargers and Lenovo chargers.
I'd be fine with a new USB-D that fixed all these issues. USB-C is just mostly better than the other alternatives for Android and charging laptops. Its far from perfect.
I just wanted to point out that it's not universally superior to micro USB or lightning, and there are places it could be improved.
How about non-removable batteries and unrepairable phones? Many phones would be still ok, but the non-removable (cheaply) battery means that they get replaced prematurely, because the cost of replacement is overlapping the price of a low/mid tear phones. Back in the day, you pulled the back cover off, put a new batter in, and the phone was as good as new. Same with other types of repair, especially the kinds where manufacturer just replaces the whole assembly just because of one small part malfunctioning.
It’s ok to let USB-C live for another 60-100 years.
Probably until someday that 24 physical wire isn't enough for a phone. (but the iPhone don't even use the usb3 yet, why did it even need these bandwidth?)
You could imagine if we had formed such a standard around USB A in the 90s and how it might have blocked the already high friction establishment of USB C and thunderbolt 3 standards.
USB C currently seems more mature than USB A, so I can see where things ar ea bit subjective here, but it's not really possible to see where unrestricted development would have put us.
I think I would have been more comfortable with simply banning lightning and micro USB than restricting to only USB C.
As for suggestions for improvements: it should not be able to spin, because spinning wears it down. Second, maybe some kind of latch to lock it into place.
The EU has no problem with updating to improved standards. First there was USB-Mini-B, then USB-Micro-B, now USB-C. I would expect some different connector to replace it in a about a decade and 100% wireless in two decades roughly.
I have a hard time imagining much advantage beyond USB-C. It's pretty mechanically fit & reliable, it has huge bandwidth (I think DisplayPort alt-modes can do 80Gbps?), it can transmit 240W in Extended Power Range variants. Someday perhaps. But I also think this might be here to stay for a long long time.
Side note, there's some really really cheap fiber optic DisplayPort cables out there. They work, they're whatever length you want, mine were ~$0.60/foot. My monitors are 4k60 & 2k170; all resolutions run great. I feel like we're not too far off from fiber maybe happening for real.
Usb typec wire from 65A(non e-marked wire) to 240A(the latest standardized e-marked wire) uses literally the same plug.
Typec is the header but not the protocol. Even China phone vendor's proprietary high speed charging protocol use typec wire. And Intel's tb4 wire also use a type c wire. (the bandwidth of tb4 is definitely overkill for every phone ever made on the world for now)
Force use of typec header and baseline charging protocol prevent innovation is just bs consider this didn't even prevent apple from making a MFA e-marked typec cable.(Or they don't want this to pass because they actually want to do this again?)
That depends on what you're doing with it. It would not be very strange to power a VR headset with a phone, which could easily get into that bandwidth range.
For reference, we need 2-4 lanes of DP HBR3 (depending on compression) + PCIe Gen3x4 for the camera passthrough. TBT3/4 could do it over a single cable.
Feeds into the nightmare that is implementing that entire ecosystem though...
no... we also had the Micro USB standard because of Europe...
I have no expectation, for example, that these same regulators will stay on top of this and revise it when USB-C stops being the preferred or best choice.
Twenty years ago, we really DID have a snarl of competing and proprietary phone ports. It was a mess -- Blackberry chargers didn't work with Palm; most WinMo devices had their own ports; etc. It was ugly.
Now, pretty much everything is either USB or Lightning. This is good! What problem is the EU solving here?
Plus Apple Watches have always been only charged via conductive, so it’s likely phones could have gone that way too within a short space of time if the lack of a data cable was deemed acceptable.
Only devices charged by cable need to have USB-C.
To be clear, wireless charging with "magsafe" is still slower than using a cable.
I think this is a step over the line for regulators but so is apples behavior for the last decade or two when it comes to repairability.
Fuck em.
That's a bit over the top, don't you think? When Apple created the Lightning connector, the accepted alternative was micro-USB. And micro-USB is terrible, awful, no-good, crap. Many millions of people are happy Lightning existed to bridge the time before the rest of the world could design a slightly better small USB connector. Which, of course, might still not be as durable as Lightning, but it's good enough.
But at this point, USBC is the better mousetrap, they're now just using their market dominance to force a worse mouse trap on everyone to keep milking lucrative patent fees outside of what an efficient market would allow.
So again, fuck em.
Side note, this is why I really hate IP law (or at least the over the top term lengths of it). If they didn't have a monopoly on lightening connectors this wouldn't be a problem and the market would resolve this "problem" on it's own.
You don't get to act like they're just behaving like a free market participant should when they're actively exploiting a different market regulation.
I wonder what the fix here is. Would it be choosing a patent term length that optimises for spurring innovation?
Too short and you make it not worth while. Too long and things stagnate like this. Why does society put up with such suboptimal market parameters?
You seem to be leaving out all the ways in which it's better for Apple's customers to have, and to keep, Lightning, so, let's review so you can argue in good faith and from an informed perspective next time:
1) Lightning is significantly more compact than the USB-C port, enabling a more durable case in the vulnerable area surrounding the port 2) Lightning is more durable as well 3) Lightning even FEELS better to plug in and to use 4) Lightning has superior ability to be waterproofed 5) Billions of Lightning cables and accessories have already been manufactured and are in use and it'd be nice to not replace them all until that's actually necessary
But the EU pushing this for the past decades is responsible for almost everything being interoperable.
I hope this regulation will finally kill their lightning port.
> I have no expectation, for example, that these same regulators will stay on top of this and revise it when USB-C stops being the preferred or best choice.
They didn't write the law as "you must use USB-C" They wrote the law as "The industry experts need to pick A standard for charging, and all manufacturers should respect that choice"
They are welcome to change it going forward, they just have to agree and consolidate.
https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/46755
> With respect to radio equipment capable of being recharged via means other than wired charging, the Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 44 in order to amend Annex Ia in the light of technical progress, and to ensure the minimum common interoperability between radio equipment and their charging devices, by: (a) introducing, modifying, adding or removing categories or classes of radio equipment; (b) introducing, modifying, adding or removing technical specifications, including references and descriptions, in relation to charging interface(s) and charging communication protocol(s), for each category or class of radio equipment concerned.’;
So the commission can adopt new standards trough a much lighter executive process. It does not require new legislation to update the standard.
> Hand-held mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones, headsets, handheld videogame consoles and portable speakers, in so far as they are capable of being recharged via wired charging, shall:
> (a) be equipped with the USB Type-C receptacle, as described in the standard EN IEC 62680-1-3:2021 ‘Universal serial bus interfaces for data and power - Part 1-3: Common components - USB Type-C TM Cable and Connector Specification’, which should remain accessible and operational at all times;
To switch to a new charger type would require legislative action, not just industry experts changing their mind. That said, I actually strongly prefer this approach to allowing an industry self-regulating group to make these decision.
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/46755/attachments/4/...
It seems like wireless charging still falls into that category (they require some form of interoperability by 2026, but do not state the exact form).
Why? No idea. It's a much slower standard, and puts the wearing parts in the port instead of the cable. USB-C is designed by committee, sure, but the port itself is better than lightning in nearly every consumer metric there is.
Beyond that, the springloaded contacts are on the cable end with type-c, with lightning it's inside the phone. I don't think it's a particularly common failure mode, but having less moving parts in the expensive bit is generally a good idea.
USB-C exists because Apple was in the process of creating Lightning. Also, in my experience, you seem to have the fragility point backward: the nub on lightning cables may break, but the port is fine, while the reverse is true for USB-C, where the fragile bit is in the port.
"Any technological developments in wired charging can be reflected in a timely adjustment of technical requirements/ specific standards under the Radio Equipment Directive. This would ensure that the technology used is not outdated."
"At the same time, the implementation of any new standards in further revisions of Radio Equipment Directive would need to be developed in a harmonised manner, respecting the objectives of full interoperability. Industry is therefore expected to continue the work already undertaken on the standardised interface, led by the USB-IF organisation, in view of developing new interoperable, open and non-controversial solutions."
That's not how innovation works. What motivation would they have to change it if all your competitors will change it step? This only hurts consumers.
Yes, exactly, this is how standardization works.
Who cares about innovation in charging plugs form factor?
Innovations should be innovative enough to get around the plug.
Light bulbs have been the same for at least 80 years and it didn't stop innovation.
Why do people are so scared about things that are only hypothetical, while this solves a real issue?
But it was pretty good for many decades.
Having a retro compatible socket drove the adoption of more energy efficient bulbs.
Every time I rented a place with MR16, like 1/3 of all sockets in the ceiling were dead, the power supply was inside the false ceiling and it was not possible to fix without making a hole. Needless to say lardlord need much motivating to fix anything.
Also, it;s not illegal to install random non-standard bulbs -> my last apartmentblock was built with some special, great, proprietary and patented LED-spesific socket. Guess what happened? 15 years on, the lamps started failing, and the manufacturere dropped production of anything for that socket!
Now they need to replace like a thousands light fittings across the entire block, there is no way to get replacements. Some of them are in awkward places and will require a special vehicle to reach.
Do we believe given the track record of a new connector being introduced more frequently than once every 5 years just within the USB standardization process, that we've somehow reached the end of that road in practical terms? If we've reached the end of the road, by all means we could standardize and say "you have to use the pinnacle of USB connector type".
I still use Ethernet at work, it's connected to the thunderbolt port through an adaptor.
https://www.mouser.it/images/qualtek/hd/703W-00_SPL.jpg
It has been working quite well in many electronic devices for decades...
I don't see the usefulness of discussing things that have not happened.
Is USB-C bad?
That's the question you should be interested in.
“The best is the enemy of the good.”
Saying that choices should never be made because we don't know what the future brings, is the same of saying that there's no point in living, because we are all going to die.
Of course they did not settle on USB-B in 1999 because there weren't billions of devices using it and it was relatively new technology.
Now it's a de facto standard already.
Perhaps I'm at least equally interested in "when something better than USB-C is available, do I think that should be allowed instead?"
> Now it's a de facto standard already.
That’s all the more reason to not make it a de jure standard.
what about "USB C is here to stay so why bother to worry about something that will change in a distant future, if it will change at all?"
Cui prodest?
> That’s all the more reason to not make it a de jure standard.
on the contrary
that's all the more reason to do it.
imagine if we used your mentality where we would be now
hundreds of different de facto standards for light bulb sockets, power plugs, gas pumps, road size, traffic light colors. etc etc
basically the definition of hell
Not all that many companies are doing work for cable standards to begin with, and personally - as a consumer - I very much welcome the standardization on usb-c.
The companies that are doing work on communication standards aren't normally selling the kind of devices covered here to consumers. It's more business to business and military applications. Further, charging in particular is a different beast than communication in general - you're not doing anything other than sending current down the line to fill a battery. there's only so many ways to do that, and I think it makes sense to consolidate them.
Finally - the requirement only states that the device must include a usb-c port for charging. It makes no limitations on manufacturers including additional ports. So even if a direct to consumer device wanted to include a new port - they absolutely could, they just still have to allow filling the battery from usb-c.
In the vast majority of devices you accept what the manufacture gives you or you are out of luck, especially when everything these days is protected by some kind of intellectual property.
This excuse is old and tired and tends to ignore that large manufactures purposefully make the customer experience worse for higher profits.
If you don't like it, feel free to vote for something different. But apparently the people in the EU disagree with you, and believe that the world would be better off if they enforced a standard.
> Do you really need the government to make your choices for you?
A user does not have a choice to use USB-C with certain devices right now. That is why there is a law, that now allows users to choose that.
If Apple doesn't like it, then I guess they can of their own free choice, choose to leave the EU.
They do not own the EU. They can take the deal, follow the law, or shut down in the EU. Thats their choice to sell to that market.
I’m also not free to buy an iPhone with pink polka dots. Should the EU force companies to make that? I want all cars to support CarPlay. Shouid that be legislated?
The “people” didn’t vote for this. The same lawmakers who thought that an 11 chapter 99 section law would solve privacy issues and all it did was force users to deal with cookie pop ups.
Yet one company made a 15 line rules change about tracking (Apple) and the entire ad industry had to do more to clean up their act and have admitted in their quarterly reports that it is impacting their business.
No they cannot use it with certain devices. Which is what the legislation is for. Then they will have that ability with all devices in the EU.
Apple is also free to make devices doing whatever they want, and sell them in a different country.
> Should the EU force companies to make that?
Apple isn't forced to make anything. They can simply of their own choosing, leave that market. It is their choice to sell to that market, and they can feel free to leave if they don't like the official representatives of the EU using their official power to legislate.
All these arguments about choice are ignoring that it is the choice of the EU to control its own market, and it is Apple's choice to sell there. They are free to leave if they don't like the laws that the lawmakers create.
> I want all cars to support CarPlay. Should that be legislated?
If you can get enough support among lawmakers, feel free to talk about the benefits and cons of your proposal.
Well the biggest reason is because there are a much larger amount of people and law makers who would prefer simply stopping at cord compatibility, and cord compatibility is much easier to implement, and much less disruptive, than more extreme and absurd examples.
Society does not have to do the most extreme thing possible, in every situation.
Instead, society can pick and choose. We can look for easy wins, and do the things that are easy to implement and not do the things that are harder to implement.
In fact, apple is already planning on adding USB C to the next iPhone, if the rumors are true. So it sounds like even they agree that cord compatibility is at least possible for them to do with a reasonable effort.
Government at its best.
Next they are going to mandate pop up warnings every time I turn on my phone like the cookie banners.
I doubt people are complaining more about cord compatibility than having to replace an entire functioning phone because it no longer receives even security updates. Let alone operating system updates.
The point here is that solving the cord compatibility problem is much easier.
Do you understand how we as a society are not forced to do the most extreme action in every circumstance?
B: "You should buy a phone with USB-C charging."
A: "But I don't want anyone else to be able to buy a phone that doesn't have USB-C charging."
B: "You should petition the government to make that illegal, I guess."
It's still not clear that having this be regulated is better.
We don't have a port problem. We used to have one, but it went away. It sure LOOKS like Apple will, eventually, transition away from Lightning on its own anyway.
So why have regulators weigh in here at all? What's the point? What value is added?
Why? Everything is usb or lightning because people complained, and everyone but apple listened to people. If USB-C is no longer the best thing, rather than complain to 10 companies, and hope they all agree, they will complain to regulators, and hope they agree.
What precisely is the difference you see?
The regulators are at least accountable in some sense to the people, the companies are not.
This is no different than any other customer - they are just representing the overall customers who would otherwise not have enough power or voice to achieve what they want.
Also - if you don't want your industry regulated, maybe don't make a mess of it?
Regulators rarely pay attention to things that are working super-well.
Customers can choose to buy Android phones.
Beyond that, this is the magical free market will fix everything. Despite all evidence to the contrary.
Yes, you are very free to choose an Android phone with USB-C if that’s what you want - just like over 65% of the EU does.
Rather than making lots of unfounded assertions about what "will" happen, as you keep doing, I would encourage you to actually read the details first.
If this had happened with computers, Apple would have been forced to include PS/2 slots and ISA instead of the much better ADB and Nubus slots.
This requirement kills the new port in its crib.
I was more thinking of application like Laptops, where you can have multiple different ports already without issue.
How many people can afford at minimum a $429 phone who can’t afford a couple of extra cables?
“poor people aren’t buying iPhones”. But they are buying Androids that are not being supported by their manufactures with even security updates shortly after they buy them.
And if USB-C turns out to be bad, which I don't think'll happen for quite some time, the EU can make sure that legislation ensures poor people won't have to buy a new phone or a new charger until they want to.
If this same type of law had been in effect with computers back in the 90s Apple would have had to include PS/2 and ISA and add more ports.
Also I don't see how this connects to PS2 or ISA, since back then such regulation wasn't in huge demand yet. The charger issue however is a demand and it seems to be backed by the general population. Having one charger for all devices is a big plus for everyone involved.
And if you somehow develop a new charger port that is much much better, then yes, it should have to go through the process of being approved, so that we don't start hopping into new charging ports every 10 years. That would make the entire regulation worthless. And yes that might mean your port has to be interoperable or you need to have both ports (USB AB is an example, which fit both A and B plugs, for micro and mini variants) or easily allow an adapter you can leave plugged into the phone (in-plug adapter).
We're much further into the development into computers and the future of USB-C is less uncertain as PS/2 and ISA. USB-C is a good-enough compromise that can most likely handle the next 30 years of computer needs. The market isn't as quickly evolving in that direction anymore, IMO.
You really think consumers care more about replacing ten dollar cords for their phones than having to replace their phones because Android manufactures don’t provide support for their phones more than a year?
30 years ago, my computer had SCSI (which was a cross platform standard), ADB, and Nubus ports - all better than the industry standard. That would have never happened with government mandating standards. I used my own free will and voted with my dollars to choose to be incompatible- just like Apple users today.
Even decade+ old cars support the old iPod protocol for music (still supported by iPhones). Should the government force all phones to support the iPod protocol for the sake of “the poor people so they don’t have to buy new cars”?
It would also be inconvenient for former iPhone users who have AirPrint printers. Should we force all phone makers to support AirPrint? It’s based on an open source protocol.
There is an issue with a huge amount of waste and spent money relating to chargers, especially disadvantaging poor people. If everyone is on USB-C that stops being a problem. All chargers work with your device and all devices work with your charger. I fail to see how escalating the problem into extremes addresses the advantages of the EU decision...
I don't see a consumer win here, basically. I see overreach.
It's faster, it handles power better, it's more durable, and it's symmetrical. Hell, that last one alone probably won over a bunch of folks.
We have to talk about the ewaste issue, which is massive score on the earth. The particular village in China where all our waste get recycled is just a horrible scene. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_waste_in_Guiyu
This is a small step, but standardization is a great thing towards less waste.
Does the EU mandate say which USB-C modes and variations have to be supported?
"the devices should incorporate the USB Power Delivery (USB PD) standard (as described in the European standard EN IEC 62680-1-2:2021) and ensure that any additional charging protocols allow for full USB PD functionality (new annex Ia, part I)."
Then the referenced: "EN IEC 62680-1-2:2021" standard specifies
"To facilitate optimum charging, the specification defines two mechanisms a USB Charger can advertise for the Device to use: 1. A list of fixed voltages each with a maximum current. 2. A list of programmable voltage ranges each with a maximum current (PPS). The Device requests a voltage (in 20 mV increments) that is within the advertised range and a maximum current."
But those regs get over my head quickly, so someone else may have better luck interpreting them.
If the EU is going to reference a standard owned by somebody else, they should purchase a license that allows them to publicly post the entire standard (AFAIK, they haven't done that). Or they could pass laws that say any standards referenced by law lose their copyright status. This would be a type of eminent domain for intellectual property.
And we have always been at war with EastAsia.
Is not design per se, but essential functionality. Radio is also regulated.
And this happens in many other industries as well, see cars and all the mandatory devices included in them.
The alternative isn't just plain competitive designs. It's also anticompetitive practices.
USB-C is a pretty lax standard (for good and bad) and at the end of the day, the ultimate reason regulators have to come into play is that the industry didn't deal with this issue internally.
compare cars from 40s-70s to what came after, its a different world
you can argue it was worth it, but you can’t argue cars didn’t get homogeneous and boring in the process
https://www.ranker.com/list/list-of-all-cars-made-in-1966/re...
I feel like you see one car from 1966 then notice how most cars today are similar, and use that difference.
Yeah. we understood that they not only pollute the environment and it's stupid to build cars the size of a starship, but also by 1973 the World (except the US) understood that oil is not for granted and fuel efficiency should be a thing.
Also safety while we are at it, doesn't sound so bad...
The most obvious examples that come to mind:
- Small cars aren't that small anymore to stop them from being blatant death traps.
- A lot of the edges have been smoothed and curved to make impact with pedestrians less deadly (also killed pop-up lights and hood ornaments, which is kinda funny considering the Mercedes Benz hood ornament was sometimes jokingly described as a sight to aim for pedestrians)
- Thick A pillars due to crash tests regulations
While I can blame these for killing out novel or even trademark features of some vehicles lineups, I don't think alone they made everyone homogenize their design, it's just what the industry eventually converged on by themselves.
Look at phones, there's no regulation on what a phone should look like, yet today phones are just a fancy screen, nothing like the incredible variety that Nokia alone sported back in the late 90s/early 2000s.
A 2021 Mustang Mach E has a wheelbase of 107" and is 188.5" long.
Which one is humongous?
Even if you looked at the original 1964 Mustang, its not that much smaller than the Mach E which is a 5-door crossover. The '64 had a wheelbase of 108" and an overall length of 181.6", just 7 inches shorter for a coupe.
Older American cars were often land yachts. The old family sedan of the 1960s are often larger than crossovers of today, they just don't sit as high.
cars look boring is like saying it's a bummer cancer isn't cool.
I don't know where I stand on this ruling philosophically, but I'm looking forward to having accessories all use USB-C instead of having some for Apple and some for everyone else.
This problem
Apple gets credit for creating Lightning to begin with while we waited for something better than micro-USB to come along. I'm glad for USB-C, but damn, it sure took a while.
Everything works together, except Apple stuff.
Apple's phones are quite locked down, and I think a big reason why is that proprietary lightning connector. When you have a usb port for charging, there is no excuse for not implementing the full standard software-side.
He couldn't use it.
Of course, not being an iphone user, I did not have an adapter. Neither did he, considering he forgot his charger.
The iphone and the usbc charger did not work together.
It's the cable that's the issue.
Yes they are, with a directive from 2019. See for example https://grunecker.de/en/blog/sales-of-goods-directive-and-di..., search for “Update Obligations”.
The courts will have to decide what “the usual period of the product's use and service life” means exactly, but certainly longer than the six months you originally mentioned.
For reference, the iPhone 6S released in 2015 will lose operating system updates this year. The 2013 iPhone 5s got a security update this year.
What are the chances that any Android manufactures will support their phones that long?
Seat belts, air bags, maximum vehicle weight, maximum vehicle width... It's a very large part of what they do.
"European consumers were frustrated long with multiple chargers piling up with every new device"
This was solved by companies no longer providing chargers with new devices. When you buy a new phone, you use your existing charger, only buying a new one when you actually need it.
If you buy a new iPhone, you get a cable that plugs into a USB-C charger.
If USB-C is mandated on the phone end:
But - let's just do it. Maybe in 40 years it'll have seemed worth it.ever heard of adaptors?
apple loves them and loves charging 29 dollars for them!
> I still won't trust random USB-C cables
> I still won't trust random USB-C chargers
My answer to all three of these is the same: Why? My phone charges with every crappy USB cable and charger. Heck, my laptop will trickle charge [!] off a crappy cable on a crappy airline USB-C port.
There's one place where I'm very careful about USB-C: keeping the specific USB-C cables with my laptop with the chargers themselves, just in case I need the Thunderbolt capability. The TB monitor I bought has a specific cable that stays attached to it.
From looking on AliExpress the last few weeks, TB 100W cables appear to be getting commoditized. It's likely this worry I have about keeping laptop C cables straight won't be a big issue for much longer.
[!] Amusingly, my laptop won't actually charge off the _standard_ A/C plugs on most airplanes because the 100W charger blows a soft fuse that requires unplugging and replugging the A/C adapter!
To be fair, 100 W may not seem like a lot when you're used to plugging in to the national power grid, but it's a lot to ask for a non-essential system supplied by an off-grid generator shared by hundreds of passengers. And 100 W is the maximum allowance for In-Seat Power Support Systems according to the FAA, before any conversion losses in your power adapter; the actual amount available to you may be much less.
My point was really that even the most entrenched "standards" are all just leaky abstractions.
I don’t trust random cables to plug into my phone because I’m paranoid about getting hacked. I access some systems with sensitive data via my phone and I don’t want to be the route of compromise.
I don’t trust random chargers not to set my house on fire while I sleep, or - worse - fail to charge properly and I don’t have enough charge left to run the crossword app on my phone.
The new legislation is the type of feel-good lawmaking that sounds good on paper but has no real impact on society.
"The EU" is not a singular entity. The tiny little parts of the EU doing most of the work on this combined with the tiny amount of time spent by larger parts of the EU seems well worth it to me.
This was part of the EU Commission's 2020 work programme as one small sub-point among well over a hundred under one of the 43 main goals, as a secondary priority after a long list of climate and economic changes.
You're of course free to disagree with their prioritisation, but this has hardly been a major part of the Commissions work.
> The law will not take effect until 2024, and in the meantime the industry has largely moved toward USB-C / wireless charging.
Even with respect to mobile phones this excludes a certain notable holdout that accounts for a large proportion of the market, and which have kept resisting the EU push for over a decade, and a number of smaller holdouts still sticking with micro-USB.
But you'll note this extends way past phones, including to laptops where there's still a mess of different chargers.
With respect to wireless charging, it makes little difference as long as long as most people still have cables as backup (indeed I've yet to see someone use wireless charging; I'm sure a few more uses it at home, but I for one have zero devices capable of wireless charging; it will not reduce waste anytime soon)
I know for my own use, unnecessary cables and chargers still account for a large proportion of my electric waste because of the frequency of replacement, so for my part I welcome this.
This isn't about solving an existing problem. As you pointed out, pretty much everyone standardized around micro-usb almost a decade ago. That's mostly because Apple launched the iPhone with a proprietary but standard connector (the original iPod connector). So while all other phone makers had a special adapter and cable for every model, you could plug an iPhone on anything that worked with an iPod. Even the original firewire cable from 2003 would work with it.
What this is about is getting reelected and justifying to voters the usefulness of paying huge amounts of taxes to fund an EU-wide parliament. So they manufactured an (easy) problem to "fix". And it's going to be extremely popular since they'll be attacking and regulating "evil foreign tech giants".
It makes charging more user friendly. e.g. just an hour ago my wife asked if she can charge her iPhone with the charger that I use for my laptop and Pixel 4. I had to say "no" - and that's the case even when Apple has USB-C in their laptops, why the odd iPhone (and airpods)?
It is quite pleasing to be able to charge laptop and mobile (and wireless headphones or ebooks) with the same charger.