Bizarrely enough, this is actually a big boost to consider an iPhone for me. Having everything on USB-C is such a convenience that it was my no. 1 reason to stay in the other ecosystem.
It's the number one reason, why I am not upgrading and tell everyone who asks me, to not do it either. This law is so good, even its anticipation has environmental benefits.
The successful development & widespread use of USB-C afterwards, culminating in this updated directive standardizing it, is a very neat demonstration that it didn't stifle innovation at all.
There wasn't a mandate - the EU asked the manufactures to adopt a standard "or else we'll look at regulating it", and that worked great, everyone adopted microUSB and then switched to USB-C just fine. Except Apple. And since Apple continually refused to get in line, we're now getting that "or else". Apple is who got the whole industry in this situation.
hilarious that the people in favor can't even agree on the previous state of things... they just get high on "doing something" and forcing compliance - when in reality they've done nothing and have no concept of what creates innovation and progress
This is what I find most short-sighted about this. I swear the typical connectors I use for electronics have changed several times over the last decade alone (mini USB, micro USB, USB-C). The idea that innovation in this space is done seems optimistic to me. So now every few years do we just need to hope the EU will update it's laws in a timely manner so we can get better connectors for our electronics?
You do know that the reason we were using micro-USB for everything instead of a hodgepodge of proprietary connectors ie because of the same EU body bringing the hammer down that is now also mandating USB-C?
How is it a falsehood? The EU was threatening to enforce micro-usb unless the companies get their shit together. They did, so the EU didn't have to, then.
I'm European, I understand the good intentions at the root of such enforcement. But I believe such mandatory enforcements are liberticide, and against consumers in the long run.
Tell me. How many different kind of chargers and connectors did you have before the EU mandated everyone should use micro-usb (or something equally standardized)? And how many do you have now?
Personally I had 1 charger per device I had, each with their own weird connector, and each cable sold at $20+ a pop, and definitely more if you wanted a "data-cable". These days I only have 2: USB for almost everything, and Lighting for the Apple-thingies only.
With a move like this, I can be down to having only 1 type of charger and connector. It'll be great!
I have no real preference whatsoever in the Lightning vs USB-C battle but it seems strange to me that the EU's approach to supposedly reducing e-waste is by condemning 10 years of Lightning accessories to becoming e-waste. An iPhone 4 charger from 2012 will still charge an iPhone 14 today. That doesn't seem incredibly wasteful to me.
So what is the alternative? Should we stay on Lightning for the next 20 years? 30 years? 50 years? That'll only increase the cables globally to discard when something finally replaces Lightning
At least a shared standard connector cable will still be usable with other devices. I still have devices that take mini-USB, micro USB, and USB B. Give it 10 or 15 years after iPhone switches off Lightning, and no one will even have a lightning cable anymore, because no one is interested in using a 10 year old iPhone, and no other device uses Lightning.
It was mandatory in the sense that EU told manufacturers that they either agree on the standard or the EU will make the choice for them. No way in hell voluntary adoption would be of the scale that it was without the EU threat.
I don’t understand it. Apple has only changed their connector once since 2007. Where I have untold number of USB devices that are either A, Mini, Micro, or now C.
I imagine that the caterwauling around the change from 32-pin to Lightning somewhat plays into their decision not to move to USB-C. Obviously the overtly cynical will put it down to purely profiteering...
Since 2007 the de facto standard for other devices has only changed once too (micro to USB-C). Mini USB has been obsolete since 2007 and USB-A is the other end of the connector and not really comparable (Apple has actually since changed on their devices from type A to type C in that time).
For me Lightning is just another in your list of connectors that I wish would go away and standardise to USB-C.
As someone who is travelling right now, with a two port charger and two iPhones, an iPad, a laptop, a Switch, an Apple Watch and two sets of USB-C headphones between us, one connector would actually be a significant quality of life improvement (though an even better one would be hotels not killing power to the socket when I’m not in the room so I can charge my devices while I’m out!)
Did the current cable used by the iPhone have this problem too? If not, isn't this changing it to the worse?
edit to clarify: ... because while Apple might still include a working cable, but if you grab one of the 10 cables out of your cable box, you don't know if it will actually work.
It would be funny if this ruling strengthened Apple’s position because no one knows which off-brand cable will destroy their device by not limiting current draw.
Without strong regulations on the usb cables themselves, it almost seems like putting the cart before the horse.
Cables aren't the ones limiting current draw, they're cables. And the millions upon millions of USB-C devices in the world right now have no such issues with USB-C charging so where are you pulling these silly ideas from?
You think the rockstar engineers of Apple aren't capable of designing a charging circuit with reliability of a 80$ Chinese manufactured Android phone?
Incorrect. All USB-PD cables, whether their connectors are USB-A, -B, and/or USB-C, are responsible for honestly declaring their charging power limit to the charger and to the device, and in the USB-PD specifications are specifically responsible for limiting current draw to the rated capacity of the cable. Per USB PD spec:
> Sources Shall detect the type of Attached cable and limit the Capabilities they offer based on the current carrying capability of the cable determined by the Cable capabilities determined using the Discover Identity Command (see Section 6.4.4.2) sent using SOP’ Communication (see Section 2.4) to the Cable Plug.
> The Cable VDO returned as part of the Discover Identity Command details the maximum current and voltage values that Shall be negotiated for a given cable as part of an Explicit Contract.
Cheap, lying, uncertified USB cables that declare their ability to support higher charging rates — for example, 100W which is 5A at 20V in USB — have been known to short out and destroy chargers and devices in the process of doing so.
This was discussed in a couple hundred comments across multiple posts when a Google engineer had to pressure Amazon through product reviews to enforce USB-IF certification on all USB-C cables several years ago:
The cables are declaring their capability, but they're not LIMITING anything. That's on the charger and chargee side.
>Cheap, lying, uncertified USB cables that declare their ability to support higher charging rates — for example, 100W which is 5A at 20V in USB — have been known to short out and destroy chargers and devices in the process of doing so.
Yes, HN loves to discuss and gripe about it over and over again (quoting the same kind of unconfirmed posts that are out of date by years)... it just fails to prove that this is still any kind of widespread issue worse than any other cable connector issue.
Narrow roads aren’t limiting driver speed, and yet they’re used specifically by traffic planners to limit driver speed — with full knowledge that some drivers will disregard all limits.
Compliant USB-PD devices honor those cable limits. Non-compliant devices do not, but ignoring them does not negate their definition as limits.
The 2m one is “designed” to be used with MacBooks.
The 1m also supports 97W charging. I have the 2m (shipped with my MacBook Pro) and the 1m (shipped with my iPad Air) and I can confirm they charge my MacBook the same.
I don't get it. Isn't the point of the EU directive that the cables are interchangeable to reduce waste? Why do different cables behave differently then?
No, Lightning was great because if you saw a lightning cable, you could plug it in and know exactly what it's going to do. USB-C has been an absolute fucking mess, half my cables don't charge half my devices with USB-C ports, and you have no idea from looking what a cable is supposed to do. Everything plugs into everything, but it's a completely different story if they'll actually interop how you want.
I can't believe people are celebrating the government getting involved with the design process of the only tech company that actually holds themselves to a standard on design. And by forcing them to use a port where the spec is such a mess.
All I need from a lightning cable is for it to charge things, but USB-C doesn't even guarantee that. I bought a shower speaker last year that charges through USB-C, and for some reason the charging cable that came with my Google Pixel won't charge it, but the cable for my Nintendo Switch Pro controller does. That's been my general experience.
i have a vape battery that charges by USB-C but only the 6" long cable it came with. none of my other cables will charge it, and its cable won't charge anything else.
Also repeated below, but it applies here too: I don't get it. Isn't the point of the EU directive that the cables are interchangeable to reduce waste? Why do different cables behave differently then?
Amazon voluntarily requires all USB-C cables sold to be USB-IF certified, starting in 2016, after the majority of cables for sale were exposed as being noncompliant safety hazards.
There is no EU law requiring any retailers to care, so far as I know, as long as the unsafe cables don’t have USB-IF logos printed on the connectors.
This gives me some cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, having a common connector will reduce waste and be much more convenient (eg "Hey have you got an iPhone charger?") and make losing a charger a cheaper mistake. On the other hand I'm not sure I like the idea of government mandating electrical connectors on devices, which could stifle innovation, or be very shortsighted in the typical government-rules-on-tech way (eg "banning encryption").
I wouldn’t be too concerned. They did it before to standardise on micro USB, in such a way that didn’t stop manufacturers from moving to USB-C. This is really just an update of that same rule.
Traveling much of Europe (humble brag) the only places where I have seen some noticeable difference is Britain (of course) Italy and Malta. That being said, any remotely modern building or establishment expecting travelers on Malta or Italy has plugs with at least USB-A or the two prong "European" (with the round prongs, don't know the standard name).
Have you seen this outside Italy? Everywhere else in Europe I've always seen the Europlug, it's only Italy where sometimes you have the weird 3-in-a-line plug, at least in Western Europe
Denmark has the smiley face plug. It works fine if you don't need a grounded connection, but still.. they have a lot of sockets that don't follow the EU standard.
I think France has the one where the ground pin sticks out? That can be a problem depending on which cable you have.
And then there's UK of course, though they're not part of EU anymore.
We have the UK plugs in Ireland too and we’re in the EU. I wish it was feasible to switch to the europlug, I wouldn’t have to carry a handful of adapters around when travelling.
Your comment really got me thinking. Or actually continue thinking since I recently met some N.I. relatives in France and noticed their plethora of plug adapters. I almost forgot Ireland (the whole island) uses a UK style plug as I haven't been there in a while due to life and covid, and meanwhile have travelled a lot in Europe. Meanwhile, I grew up in Canada (US style plugs), recently lived in Japan for a decade (US style plugs), recently traveled a lot for work between Japan and Europe, but sometimes also UAE (UK style plugs). I just moved to mainland Europe and living in Ireland is a possibility someday.
In tech circles like HN, I have seen the UK style plug and its fuse and local power switch lauded for its superior safety, but it's really just belt and suspenders added to make up for old, cheap not forward-thinking design. I like US style plugs because they are small, and for portable stuff often have a folding design that saves space. But I'm biased because I have only lived in Canada and Japan until recently so naturally all my stuff uses this standard.
In addition to that I am a huge nerd about plugs, chargers and travel adapters. Anything I have that is remotely portable is usb-c powered. I've hacked every old wireless mouse, keyboard, headphones that I own to use usb-c to reduce the number of cables and adapters I need for life and travel to the minimum[1]. I don't recommend this to you or anyone else but when I do end up with a UK plug power source, I use a plastic pen lid to brute force my europlug adapter into a UK socket.
Changing to europlug in Ireland is an interesting topic. It would be so tough to phase-in europlugs given that one of the differences is the UK plug with fuse is possible to use with ring circuits. And changing existing ring circuits to radial (each circuit goes back to the breaker box on an independent wiring run) would be expensive enough in wood-framed houses/North America but incredibly expensive in Ireland. Ireland is famously mostly deforested, so old houses are usually stone and new ones are usually concrete. On top of that, Ireland didn't experience recent destruction and rebuilding/postwar-rebuilding like mainland Europe did. A lot of houses[2] are very old, and many are protected cultural assets even if privately owned so you couldn't just send any old contractor in to start drilling holes and carving out channels or adding wall-mounted conduit for new wiring. It wouldn't be popular to spend on this or to potentially scar a lot of historical or family homes.
On the other hand, post-brexit there could be enough will to align more to the single EU marketplace. I don't want to be that guy that speculates "just do this" on a topic I am not an expert in, but I didn't find any serious proposal or discussion by googling it. I think the solution would be to require local outlets or permanent adapters that assume the function of the fuse in UK plugs at each outlet, and provide both EU and UK plug compatibility. You wouldn't want to allow temporary adapters because any unqualified person could make a working but unsafe configuration. You wouldn't want to force EU plugs on everyone because that would also encourage unsafe modification/adapters, or be unpopular/expensive by requiring modification of an antique device.
[1] If you are comfortable with soldering, filing, 3d printing and taking things apart, you can find usb-c sockets with the appropriate resistors installed, and tiny dc-dc converter boards with usb-c input on aliexpress, and easily update old low-power, stuff from micro-usb, barrel connector, etc to usb-c. I even added usb-c power to my NES, SNES, gamecube, wii and wii-u.
[2] I say houses and not buildings because I want to highlight the considerations for the average person, and I also presume anything commercial or open to the public already mandates using the latest building codes and safety features above all considerations. This is evident when you visit a beautiful anc...
There are plenty of non governmental standards. Some like openGL or http are driven by industry consortiums. Others like keurig/Nespresso generic pods, x86 chips, or cup holder sizes are driven by compatibility with wildly successful products.
Edit: usb-c is both the former and the latter. Macbooks and ipads had already switched, it seems likely the next iphone would have been usb-c anyway, or perhaps portless.
I doubt we're changing the side of the road we drive on, but now it's much more expensive to import LHD used cars from the UK. I doubt that we're changing power plugs because there's hundreds of millions of them out there.
I'm not sure that other EU standards there would be that we don't have, being an EU member, except for decent cycling and mass transport infra, and that would be dramatic improvement.
Having travelled the EU with Irish/UK plugs on my electronics, it's a pain in the ass unless you have swapped the plug on several power strips.
Also, basically all of the adapters say not for long term use, and they're nowhere near as stout or secure as either type of plug alone.
Anyway, the UK plug is the best one out there, except for stepping on them. They're worse than legos, and that's saying something. (and maybe size, weight, and cost. But electrically, they're good)
The UK is not in the EU and use all kinds of weird units and other nonsense. If they had stayed in the EU long enough, they would have caught up eventually, as will Italy.
true but also false: italian, french and german standards (and the rest of smaller european countries) are different but compatible. and i'm glad for that.
This is a great example in that residential electrical systems evolve at a snails pace. There's almost no innovation and most houses are full of dangerous legacy systems because regulation makes updating difficult and expensive.
Also of note: you aren't required by national or state law to use any kind of electrical system in the U.S. The National Electric Code is not a binding document. It's up to individual municipalities to decide whether they want to adopt it (or some other standard, which they're free to do).
Except electricians and the companies that insure them for professional liability, or the companies that insure houses against electrical fires use that national code as a reference, same for building codes, etc.
It's interesting to read the comments here from people that have equipment and stuff in their houses and cars and workplaces that are constrained by regulations and laws all around them, but are worried about a connector on their phone.
A "free" market needs regulation otherwise it develops into monopolies. Setting standards is a way to regulate to ensure a level playing field for competition.
It's not like the EU has rushed this decision, or that anyone is proposing some other standard that wasn't considered.
You don't even know what else could have happened if there was no standardization. Maybe the industry must have progressed without the need of outlets in the first place.
Yeah, we would definitely use nuclear mini-reactors in our vacuum cleaners otherwise, if only it wasn’t for the damn EU!
These are very well understood areas, there is only so many ways you can transport electricity. Also, there is nothing stopping innovation “after” the plug. It’s like saying that HTTP somehow stifles innovation.
I am similarly of two minds. As an engineer, I can imagine how legal mandates for technology choices could stifle innovation and make the future of technology worse.
But at the same time, I think there may be a place for mandating interface compatibility.
To give some old-school examples, how differently might industrialization have gone if rail systems weren't mandated to operate under some shared standards? Or where would we be if every country had a handful of competing power grids with different voltages and outlet types?
So I am not sure the cable which plugs into our phones is the correct target for standardization, but in spirit I think it's worthwhile to consider how the public good of interoperability should be weighed against a handful of corporations' interest in building technological moats around themselves and their users.
I can “reassure” you: this is unambiguously a bad idea.
First, market forces already standardized on two main standards.
Second, the interop problem is a $10 cable between wall-wart and device.
So the problem solved is a small one. I think this idea got its momentum from years ago when practically every model of phone had a different charger and wall wart.
Meanwhile, think about what you lose.
Is USB-C really the end-game of charging connectors? It has existing issues with labeling and capabilities confusion. What about mag-safe-style connectors? Does a phone necessarily need a charging connector at all and might there not be advantages to not having one?
As an aside, ewaste will increase in the short term, of course, as people will have to throw out their lighting stuff and buy USB-C stuff. (Don’t worry, it’s not a lot — small problem, remember.)
But you're assuming this USB-C decision is eternal right? Couldn't the problems you raised be solved by having a standards organization which could monitor and update the status quo over time based on the technologies available?
> First, market forces already standardized on two main standards.
So, one standard too many. Especially when one of those standards is held hostage by one corporation.
> Is USB-C really the end-game of charging connectors?
It's close enough, we can already see that improvements have been incredibly incremental already. Hell, it would have been fine to stick to micro-B or even mini-B.
> What about mag-safe-style connectors?
You already have people building those as third-party dongles. Clearly it doesn't have to be part of the spec.
> Does a phone necessarily need a charging connector at all
Yes. Wireless charging is inherently far less efficient than wired charging.
> and might there not be advantages to not having one?
No. To steal a quote from yourself: this is unambiguously a bad idea.
Shit, did not know web devs are so bad so you get EU GDPR pops in US, the idiots are showing you what dirty thing they are doing without having to do it, or maybe the devs are smart and wanted you to see all those 100+ partners are giving the US citizens the option to opt out, if the later great from them to give you the option.
I'd be interested to see an actual proposed improvement that isn't just "we changed the plug so you have to buy new cables (from us)!" or "we made charging 80% less efficient!".
But so far there has been no meaningful improvement in the last… 20 years or so, and an awful lot of new incompatible standards.
Yes. The one improvement that has happened has been the advent of fast chargers… but that has always been rolled out as a backwards-compatible upgrade that is negotiated between the phone, charger, and cable.
> First, market forces already standardized on two main standards.
EU sat down the manufacturers and told them that if they don't come to an agreement the EU will make the choice for them. Most of them came to an agreement. So you are right, market forces did make manufacturers to standardize on two main standards. That force is named EU.
> Is USB-C really the end-game of charging connectors?
No, and EU has no illusions that it is.
> Does a phone necessarily need a charging connector at all and might there not be advantages to not having one?
No, and the EU doesn't think that it does.
> As an aside, ewaste will increase in the short term, of course, as people will have to throw out their lighting stuff and buy USB-C stuff. (Don’t worry, it’s not a lot — small problem, remember.)
This is just stupid fearmongering. People won't have to throw their lightning stuff.
Even if they throw them out, it's better to pull off the bandaid than to go on creating more and more redundant cables and e-waste for the next 30 years
I think that’s what weirds me out. In cases like rail, it’s necessary for interoperability and prevents anti competitive practices. There’s a clear state interest there.
But swapping a plug doesn’t buy us that. This is evidenced by the fact that no company is forced to use lightning to compete.
Almost everything uses USB-A at the outlet and choose your other end. We’re starting to see USB-C at the outlet, but same thing.
I also don’t see the e-waste argument. I haven’t had a cable outlive a device. My kids go through them every other month. No plug fixes that, it’s almost always where the cable joins the plug. (Except micro-USB, we shall never speak of that again).
My other biggest practical problem is that, despite appearances, USB-C != USB-C, and the off-the-shelf cables are awful, especially for normal humans.
In my dream world, I’d love to see clearly labeled device and cord capabilities, and USB-C all the things, and a reigned in USB-C spec.
I just think that government is a bad place to do it, and don’t see a necessary state interest case for their intervention.
> I also don’t see the e-waste argument. I haven’t had a cable outlive a device.
My old Nokia Micro-B cables outlived their bundled devices by a factor of… 3x or so? And I only took those out of use because I don't have a lot of stuff that still uses Micro-B.
Actually, I don't think I've ever managed to break a USB cable yet. What on earth are you doing to the things?!
Apple cables were notoriously shitty for many years, because they didn't build strain relief into them, until a couple generations ago, and they would fray with time.
I imagine this is what GP experienced, based on my experience with it on iphones and apple laptops.
Come to think of it, I don’t break them. It’s when I let my kids borrow/take them. Except micro, those connectors just wear out in a year or two.
My kids keep their tablets plugged in while using a lot of the time. I think it’s the stress on the joint from having the cable taut or yanking it around or something.
I did change to making them pay for replacements. That definitely slowed the rate :).
> To give some old-school examples, how differently might industrialization have gone if rail systems weren't mandated to operate under some shared standards?
I'm not sure that analogy holds particularly well. The UK did build rail systems without shared standards, and only standardised on gauge in 1846, which was very late in the industrial revolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Gauge_War - Standards for other things like signalling also came late, and broad gauge was still in use until 1892. (Notably though, this did happen just at the turn of Railway Mania, so affected a lot of the new lines.)
Effectively, the UK let (mainly by omission, not intentionally) the solutions compete and then selected the most broadly used solution to standardise on.
(I'd love to see any scholarly research on this though; I haven't seen a huge degree of it. Obviously things are different outside of the UK, but given it's where (uncoincidentally) both the industrial revolution and railways were born, that's the clear case to look at.)
> Effectively, the UK let (mainly by omission, not intentionally) the solutions compete and then selected the most broadly used solution to standardise on.
We're down to two connectors here, one of which is only used by a single vendor; do you think that hasn't already happened?
I’m not questioning that at all! I’m only responding to the question posed by the parent about railway standardisation in the context of industrialisation.
What happened is the worse more common standard was converged upon, so instead of the west coast main line having a comfortable, stable 7’ gauge, we ended up with the less comfortable standard gauge that requires longer trains to seat the same number of people.
It will end up with the terrible quality fake usb cables and chargers we have today, thanks for the usb organisation not being stricter. Seems hard to find specific types of USB 3/C cables. In some cases they have damaged the connected devices which should be considered a failure of the U part.
If anything this will increase the value of official apple chargers because at least those will be well designed.
Even if you're buying from Amazon or AliExpress, there have been very few cases over the last few years of them damaging your device compared to the first years of USB-C.
They might still have other issues, but nothing that damages your device.
We have plenty of free market examples of why "innovation" in the connector space almost always spawns lemons and makes everything worse in the meantime.
Do we? By the same token what are examples of where innovation in the connector space helped out?
I find laws like this problematic because measuring success or failure is super tricky. How do you know about innovation that hasn't happened? If in 5 years or 10 years we're using USB-C connectors is that great or does it mean there's some better idea that isn't being taken to market? I'm sure there are subject matter experts who might confidently weigh in on that but could they realistically get this law changed? Even if those experts agreed there was a better solution would the majority of the incumbent players in the space want that solution?
Laws like this create a situation where opposition depends upon people missing things they've never had and wanting things that they can't conceive of.
> On the other hand I'm not sure I like the idea of government mandating electrical connectors on devices, which could stifle innovation, or be very shortsighted in the typical government-rules-on-tech way (eg "banning encryption").
Forcing everyone to change cables creates waste. Apple is teh onyl company that might not have already been using USBC by the time this went into effect, and now all their customers that already had lightning cables and accessories will have to throw them out of get adapters. Not to mention that by then we will probably already be talking about USB-D or whatever is coming next. Maybe the USB counsel can just conglomerate everything under the usbc name so that companies can just use whatever they want. "Micro usbc, its just micro usb but with a new name!". Maybe that is why they have been renaming all their skews every 6 months.
I wonder if they will just be able to ship iphones with lightning cables and a usbc adapter and a usbc to lightning port adapter so the customers can just throw out the adapters and use the lightning cables.
At this point, I think even the average household in developing countries has USB-C. And that's probably due to entry-level android phone makers choosing to go with it.
> On the other hand I'm not sure I like the idea of government mandating electrical connectors on devices
Depends on the device.
Standards for EV fast charging are a very good thing. North America has two different plugs and protocols for DC fast charging (three if you count CHAdeMO) and it's a mess. The EU has standardized on CCS Type 2 Combo so any brand of CCS charging car can charge on any brand of CCS charging network. That's good common sense and it benefits everyone.
Incompatible charging infrastructure doesn't benefit any EV owner. It's a drag on the EV market. Closed networks like Tesla's and Rivian's are continuing to be part of the problem.
> Closed networks like Tesla's and Rivian's are continuing to be part of the problem.
All new Tesla stations in Europe use CCS and most of the older stations have been retrofitted with CCS connectors in addition to Type 2.
I have an adaptor for my 2017 Model S that allows it to use CCS instead of Type 2 and newer cars can be converted so that CCS connectors can be used without adaptors. All new EVs in Europe already use CCS and Tesla are slowly opening up their network to other brands of car.
> All new EVs in Europe already use CCS and Tesla are slowly opening up their network to other brands of car.
Yes. You're restating what I have said. Tesla should hurry up and open them all.
> So how is Tesla part of the problem?
Because Tesla chargers are not open to all brands everywhere.
A better question to ask is why is Tesla not the leader in multi-brand charging. Other charging networks have delivered chargers which support all brands of EV with longer cables for more vehicle types and are faster than Tesla's chargers to boot.
This so much. This era was defined by vendor lock-in. Getting e.g. a dedicated car phone audio setup was tough decision, since you could not just change the phone.
I still have a box of old phones with custom chargers, headsets and data cables. The Nokia barrel plug (different sizes), the Siemens comb style connector, the Ericsson break away type connector, the Motorola two prong, the Bosch connector and some really weird LG/NEC/SAGEM plugs.
Yes, exactly: The market could innovate and develop better connectors. For example Apples Lightning, which is older (and smaller/more robust) than USB-C. Imagine instead the EU mandating micro USB and how we would be forced till the end of times to have a 50% chance to plugging it in wrong.
Is USB-C the best connector or form factor we could ever do?
Maybe not, but it is good enough. "Perfect is the enemy of good" is a phrase I like to keep in mind while programming or making something and can also apply here. Should we wait around for a perfect connector? Or is USB-C as close as we can get as of now?
> On the other hand I'm not sure I like the idea of government mandating electrical connectors on devices, which could stifle innovation, or be very shortsighted in the typical government-rules-on-tech way
You seem unaware that the government regulate a LOT of things and while this has stiffed some innovation, the cost is probably worth it.
When was the last time a house burned down due to electrical issues? In the past, prior to standards this was rather common.
If you want a general understanding of what things were like prior to "regulation".
This is an awesome move in my opinion. While it's pretty much defactor making it universal and legally required will be with the cutter and waste that is created by often requiring a special charger or a different charge for a device.
Yes, a big finally! I love my Apple device (personal iPhone 12 mini, work iPhone 8, Apple TV 4K with new remote, iPad Air, ...) but the lightning connection should obviously have been retired a few years ago.
Except that it isn't obvious. You're essentially at the end of an extremely long and complicated supply chain for a multi-million device pipeline. You have no idea what a change, any change, involves. And because you don't know this (assuming you're not a supply chain engineer of design for manufacture specialist) you cannot state that it is obvious either.
What is obvious is that some people would have liked it sooner, and what is also obvious is that the manufacturer (Apple) has been moving in that direction for years (on other lower-volume lower-risk devices).
I'm obviously talking from a customer and consumer perspective, but can you provide any kind of explanation why implementing USB-C is problematic in the iPhone when it already is in the iPad and desktop and laptop Macs and Apple displays?
Tim Cook made himself a legendary leader in logistics and manufacturing before taking on the CEO role for being able to do just what you say he would have problem doing.
I would imagine that it has more to do with the existing ecosystem, the swap between trident and the custom USB-C controller they use in the other devices and mechanical changes in the form factor internal to the phone.
If you nuke lightning from iPhones, you have the same problem as with the 30-pin connectors: entire cars suddenly don't work with your phone anymore, many years worth of produced lightning devices no longer connect and everything from charging and data exchange to debugging and alternate output modes will no longer work. This is not a technical problem to solve, since they already wrote tools and created workflows for doing that on the less risky product lines (Macs, iPads etc.) where the impact of a bad port implementation is much lower. But phones are still carried around all day (in pockets no less), charged/plugged a lot etc. which while seemingly slightly different makes for additional risk when implementing.
Considering that seemingly insignificant changes (like that dumb antenna shorting problem when holding the phone in the iPhone 4 due to a small case change) can lead to huge and very expensive problems (like replacing all panels on the first white iPhones due to the paint not sticking well enough). If you have 70 million iPads and 1% has the issue, that's not great but also not too bad. If you have 200+ million iPhones and 1% has an issue, that's pretty bad, and you also get a lot more flak because people are very emotional about their phones, as well as phones they don't have and would never buy but still complain about.
Back to the supply chain and logistics, all fixtures, machining workflows, testing and component sourcing would have to change, which isn't too bad on its own, but because there are still many many years of supported phones out there, you have to keep the old method around as well. This problem doesn't exactly go away, regardless of how long you stall, but if you work on a method to make that less of a problem (i.e. make sure the next revision of test harnesses and repair fixtures account for it when they get cycled), while also growing your ecosystem (other devices with USB-C within your brand) you can build up knowledge and specialism in your workforce (i.e. the people that make the manuals for the people that work in the store can lean from inevitable mistakes they will make in the initial USB-C versions of iPads). That means that when you do finally make the seemingly tiny change (which for charging really is just a bunch of B.S. since it's not about the port on the device but the plug you stick in the charger) and get those internal USB-C models they probably have had for years up in the design for manufacture and retail phase, the risk is much lower.
It is however, just as likely that they will go full iPhone X again and make a portless phone instead. Going portless has the same ecosystem risk (mostly marketing risk) since they would be breaking compatibility with lighting anyway, but because there won't be a new port, there isn't going to be a change in material thickness, ingress points in general or new chips to add to the design. So perhaps that would be half the risk of another connector migration.
Yes, USB-C charging demands a supply chain of such incredible complexity that it has only been mastered by every other manufacturer of phones, tablets and laptops; and by apple themselves on the ipad and macbook.
And Apple has been cruelly blindsided, as the EU has only been pushing this issue since 2009, giving Apple a mere 13 years to prepare.
It just wasn't reasonable to expect them to conquer the massive challenge of USB charging in the iPhone 4, 4s, 5, 5c, 5s, 6, 6 plus, 6s, 6s plus, 7, 7 plus, 8, 8 plus, x, xr, xs, xs max, 11, 11 pro, 11 pro max, 12, 12 mini, 12 pro, 12 pro max, 13, 13 min, 13 pro, 13 pro max,13, 14 plus, 14 pro, or 14 pro max.
You seem to be shoehorned into believing that everything is just a technical problem and needs to be solved with a technical solution. You also seem to forget that so many of those USB-C implementations are so bad a lot of phones were better off on micro-B. It has also been reported on extensively, especially by your example of "other manufacturers".
- https://www.androidauthority.com/state-of-usb-c-870996/
- https://www.pcworld.com/article/424287/beware-bad-usb-c-cables-google-engineer-warnswhile-naming-names.html
- https://pocketnow.com/usb-c-compatibility-problems/
- https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/fix-usb-c-problems-in-windows-f4e0e529-74f5-cdae-3194-43743f30eed2
- https://hackaday.com/2021/03/22/cursed-usb-c-when-plug-orientation-matters/ (this one is for the USB2 compatibility pins which are orientation-specific)
So far, companies like HP, Dell, Microsoft, Xiaomi, Motorola, Google, OnePlus, Sony, Nintendo etc. have all made products with really bad implementations in cables, chargers, and devices like handhelds (gaming, phones etc.) and larger (laptops, TVs).
Also, suggesting someone was blindsided is just a dumb flame bait and you know it. If you can't properly discuss this, why are you even here?
With each release of iphones this creates a waste (they ship lightning cables with those phones/accessories) - now they can drop it because Apple users will use standard like the rest of the world.
The law itself. It is amending Directive 2014/53 which allowed dongles. The part which allowed dongles is made away by this new directive.
It's entire raison d'être of the law is to mandate that devices themselves and their charger share a common standard. So an example e.g. Annex 2a clarifies that:
> The requirements in points 2 and 3 below shall apply to the following categories or classes
of radio equipment [mobile phones, tablets, cameras, headsets, mice, etc, ...]
> [They shall] be equipped with the USB Type-C receptacle, as described in the standard EN IEC 62680-1-3:2021 ‘Universal serial bus interfaces for data and power - Part 1-3: Common components - USB Type-C® Cable and Connector Specification’, which should remain accessible and operational at all times;
How about not stubbornly staying with lightning when Apple had the option to switch to usb-c? They did that with malicious compliance to upsell their damn adapter.
Good decision, but bizarrely only after USB-C was established on almost every phone, except iPhones.
I hope this has an expiration date, or they have a provision for easily updating the law when somebody develops a better standard. Otherwise this could mean we would be stuck with USB-C forever.
(As a developer, writing "USB-C" in a law this seems to me like hardcoding a magic string in source code. Often, it is better to have your data separate from code. Maybe it would make more sense if the law would defer to some standards body, that could update the technical decision more easily.)
> As a developer, writing "USB-C" in a law this seems to me like hardcoding a magic string in source code
Between various generations of Qualcomm Quick Charge and USB PD at various wattages for charging alone, and then USB 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2 Gen 1, 3.2 Gen 2, 3.2 Gen 2 2x2, Thunderbolt 2, Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 for data, it seems like they have plenty of room for future movement/fragmentation.
Around five years or so ago, I had lots of gadgets, all using Micro-USB. Life was good, I had purchased a job lot of cables and made sure every location on my house, car and desk at work had more than enough cables so any gadget would be ready to be charged up.
Then I bought a new phone. I had a USB-C port. Suddenly, I couldn't charge it up just anywhere. If that phone had a Micro-USB version, I'd have chosen that one in a heartbeat.
Yes, USB-C is nice. Better than Micro-USB. So good that it compensates for the hassle? No.
Well, better in most ways. It's worse in a couple of minor ones. It's larger, so particularly tiny devices still come with microUSB charge ports. It also gets smooshed flat if you happen to step on it, which is a problem I had my first few months with a type-C phone.
I would argue it is good enough it compensates for the hassle.
I think USB-C is one of the first "good enough" connectors we have had for the arbitrary use-case. It's reversible. It's suitable for high-power and high-bandwidth use-cases. It's robust. micro-USB works ok for charging small devices, but would it really make sense to replace USB-A with it for plugging peripherals into your PC for example?
Fair point, but my lived experience of USB-C is that several of my Micro-USB cables dotted around now have little converter heads added. My tablets and battery packs (and other gizmos) still need the Micro-USB port so I can't just replace the cables.
Yes, being able to plug in the connector both ways around is nice, but it wasn't that inconvenient not to be able to do that, especially when put against the inconvenience of needing these extra heads.
I can certainly imagine someone having similar frustrations when Mini-USB gave way to Micro-USB. I can only hope that when USB-D connectors come around, there's more than only small incremental improvements to get me on board.
But again, this is if you think of USB-C as a replacement for Mini-USB and Micro-USB. USB-A remained an uncontested standard for roughly 30 years, and is now gradually being replaced by USB-C.
If USB-C has the same longevity, and can also replace small-form-factor connectors, that's a pretty big win right? It's not too bad to put up with a connector change 2-4 times in your life.
Regulation has always been a part of government, to increase the efficiency of the open market. But in regards to your first point:
> why should the committee put any effort into developing anything better?
The EU is absolutely not in the business of developing any connector whatsoever. They wanted _a_ standard (for eco/market reasons), and asked the industry to create one. This became USB and the USB Forum. Now they make it mandatory to follow that standard. In the act they passed, the power to set the specific standard is deferred to the European Commission, to make it easier to update it if necessary. These are called delegated acts [0].
If a new physical connector is ever necessary, the USB forum will write the standard, ask the EU if they can update the reference, which is easy since it's only a matter of pushing paperwork.
_Not_ hardcoding a feature like this, and following what industry wants is an explicit goal of the legislative process. It has worked extremely well in these sorts of circumstances.
The only risk I could see is a technical innovation for connectors, which the USB Forum refuses to implement for some reason. This could happen, but I don't see it as being any different then current industry practices.
Because they always did, and never needed Apple to compete.
USB comitee is filled with companies competing with each other, and Apple is one of these companies.
I am hoping for my next car to be chargeable through a USB-C port too! /s
I love the fact that there is a standardized port, and I can get devices of any type to charge with a single powerful charger. But connector and cables are wonky at best if you want to have a single cable for everything too (look up prices, thickness and lengths of USB-C PD 100W, alt-DP 1.4 capable, USB 3+ speeds cables, and then watch them break in a few months of "regular" use like in a car charger).
But I want a better, more robust standard than USB-C! Can that happen with the law in place? I don't know, but that scares me.
> I am hoping for my next car to be chargeable through a USB-C port too! /s
I’m aware of your sarcasm, but it did bother me that my Tesla used a proprietary port that made it more difficult to use other charging locations, such as the charger next to my apartment. Electric vehicle charging ports need standardization as well.
Perhaps having these laws standardizing ports will set the groundwork for a more robust standard in the future. I don’t think there’s ever going to be a perfect solution since there are so many differing opinions, but I do believe this is a good start.
> I’m aware of your sarcasm, but it did bother me that my Tesla used a proprietary port that made it more difficult to use other charging locations, such as the charger next to my apartment. Electric vehicle charging ports need standardization as well.
This is happening in europe, tesla is switching to type 2 connectors. I think these laws certainly play a role in motivating the company.
While I was obviously tongue in cheek, higher current requires thicker cables, and I think USB-C is already being pushed to over 200W. Can we make those tiny connectors robust enough for the weight of the cable?
Similarly for cars: as you push for faster charging, you'll need bigger connector pins, though I am sure (I hope?) standard EV ports are sufficiently over-engineered for the time being.
> Regardless of their manufacturer, all new mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones and headsets, handheld videogame consoles and portable speakers, e-readers, keyboards, mice, portable navigation systems, earbuds and laptops that are rechargeable via a wired cable, operating with a power delivery of up to 100 Watts, will have to be equipped with a USB Type-C port.
I like USB-C and would even be in favour of the iPhone using USB-C, but I really dislike the idea that EU regulators would know what's better for consumers than consumer electronics companies and the consumers themselves.
I do kind of get it though. It's probably better for a whole host of reasons if electronics all used the same cords, but I guess you could make that argument for a lot of things. There would be benefits if there was only one mobile operating system or if all mobiles used the same interchangeable batteries, for example.
When a standard makes sense companies will generally adopt it naturally. The fact so many manufacturers use USB-C today just proves that this probably doesn't need to be enforced. I suppose it's just strange to me this would even need to be a law or that there are people paid to pass laws like this.
Electronics companies decide what's best for them. Competition in the smart phone market is done, so consumers no longer have a say. These kinds of interoperability standards are great and would love to see more of them internationally.
Consumers still don't have a say. Now instead of companies choosing what hardware & features are best for their product, and you then choosing products based on your preferences, EU regulators are now forcing companies (and therefore you) to use whatever they think is best.
I think in the case of USB-C it's not too bad just because USB-C is widely agreed to be a good connector that's already widely adopted, but there have been plenty of bad connectors in the past which in theory the EU could now be deciding consumer electronics companies are forced to use.
This also assumes USB-C is always the best option which I doubt. I'm sure there are products which given the application, size or price point might suite a different cable better. Technology also moves on and connectors change for a reason. Now we're going to be stuck with outdated hardware until EU regulators update laws. At which companies and you as the consumer will be forced to adopt that new connector regardless of your preferences.
The idea this somehow limits consumer choice is nonsense. It opens up choice because now I don't have to pay insane markups for proprietary items.
Printer ink, razor blades, and so on are other examples besides connector cables where companies' `innovations' tend to make things worse for the consumer. Even if the new cable is technically slightly better, the other factors of price, availability, and lack of inter-operability ultimately make things worse for the consumer.
Also, you'd likely have more luck getting elected officials to change EU policies than you would have with mega company board members changing profit-maximizing strategies.
The EU consulted with phone producers before standardizing on micro-USB, then again before standardizing on USB-C, and it will do again when something better comes up.
They have explicitly called out not regulating wireless charging for this reason.
Yours is a valid concern, but it's not grounded in reality.
I think the point is that there's no clear consensus on a "winner" right now. USB-C (back then micro-USB) had vast backing, had been in use for a while in many places and was "good enough" for everyone (except Apple-only-on-iphones). It's unclear what is the equivalent for wireless right now.
> The following companies have signed the MoU: Apple, LG, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Qualcomm, Research in Motion (RIM), Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Texas Instruments.
That's when they moved to Micro-USB. This is the next step. But yeah, I'd imagine the same companies voiced their opinions this time around, along with others.
I can't find the exact names right now, but from the Impact Assessment report[1] they did stakeholder surveys, which included 121 stakeholders of which 23% were private companies. In addition to that they did targeted interviews with 7 manufacturers associations and 17 manufacturers.
Where are all the market players that sell phones with iOS with USB-C? I might have voted on them. Or, perhaps one that allows side-loading and has a removable battery and a fingerprint sensor?
Oh, capitalism makes all these choices possible for me, how wonderful!
Standardizing shit that doesn't need to be different, in order to let markets function better, is one of the oldest functions of the state as we know it, and a precursor to the development of capitalism.
Seeing the benefit to doing that kind of thing (which required developments in thought & practice in political economy) and being able to effectively enforce such decrees (which required various other developments in theory and technology, plus the right circumstances) on a large area is even seen as one of the hallmarks of the development of the nation-state, and a major stepping stone to our modern global economic system and the modern state.
> I really dislike the idea that EU regulators would know what's better for consumers than consumer electronics companies and the consumers themselves
What proportion of phone consumers have an informed opinion on charging technology? Why would the electronics companies work in a way that benefits everyone/the environment instead of themselves.
> I guess you could make that argument for a lot of things
We do, we have standards for a ridiculous amount of things no one ever thinks about.
> There would be benefits if there was only one mobile operating system or if all mobiles used the same interchangeable batterie
Standardising the operating system would create a monopoly and have no obvious society wide benefits. Whereas cables can be made by anyone competent. It would be more prudent to mandate user replacable batteries before thinking about if such a specific battery standard could feasibly work. Something you can probably make a good argument for.
That point maybe sounds smart, but doesn't actually make any sense to have added, as I can respond with "yes!!" and it doesn't contradict anything about the argument you are ostensibly trying to undermine. That (importantly) said, the new statement isn't even a true thing to be trying to note anyway in this context: unlike USB-C, which is an industry standard, Apple owns lightning and so if one were to imagine forcing the world to standardize on it it would actually CREATE a monopoly.
I think it was pretty obvious from context clues that they were talking about USB since it's standardized. If lightning were standardized then other companies would be able to produce the cables. I don't see what your point is.
> I really dislike the idea that EU regulators would know what's better for consumers than consumer electronics companies and the consumers themselves
This isn't something created by faceless bureaucrats behind closed doors.
The "regulators" are the EU Parliament, who are elected by residents in the various countries. The issue has been talked about for a few years, and was voted on 603 to 13, that's over 96% (including abstentions).
Are you old enough to remember the early 2000s when every phone and portable media player had it's own charger, which often wasn't even transferable between devices by the same manufacturer? It led to lots of old chargers when devices were replaced, which were useless for anything else (I remember having bags of cables and chargers). And if you wanted a second charger for whatever reason (this was before you needed to charge your device every 3 hours), you needed to find the specific charger for your device. If it was a few years old, it might not even be possible to purchase one.
Then almost by magic everyone switched to micro USB. You could charge different devices from different manufacturers with the same cable. This wasn't some feat of magic, it was because the European Commission worked to bring manufacturers to an agreement on a common charging standard.
Well, everyone except Apple, who did actually sign the agreement. They just decided to bundle a dongle to be compliant.
Mini-USB was introduced in 2000, so manufactures had plenty of time to choose a common interface themselves, but decided not to.
Even amongst Apple's own devices it is a mess. To charge an Apple Pencil with an iPad Pro you need not one, but two adapters.
> When a standard makes sense companies will generally adopt it naturally.
My point was that manufacturers could have done so (with Mini-USB) if they wanted to, but chose not to. Until smart phones came around, most phones were more than thick enough to have a Mini-USB port (and a lot did).
Worse, the Pencil 1 didn't have a lightning port, it insanely had a lightning plug - it had to be charged precariously sticking out of the bottom of the iPad like this:
Not entirely true. It came with a little female-female lightning adapter so you could charge it with whatever other lightning cable you have. The pencil end of the adapter is deeper than the other end, I think so you can't plug a lightning cable into each end.
> Are you old enough to remember the early 2000s when every […]
One does not have to be that old enough.
Look no further than personal care and small home appliances (electric shavers – yes, Braun, I am looking at you; electric toothbrushes – and you, too, Philips! As well as household and kitchen appliances) the vast majority of which still come with incompatible proprietary chargers that are so hard, expensive or inconvenient (usually all of the above) to procure to replace that the entire gadget oftentimes gets disposed of because of the failed charger.
Governments ought to crack down on those ones as well, and crack down real, real hard.
It would be nice if those same EU regulations where applied to all industries and not some specifically designated ones. For example my German Braun Shaver Charger will not be impacted by this regulation ...
Why? I got a new shaver recently and it has a 5V 1A charger. The old one had a 5V 0.5A charger. A common interface would make perfect sense, and the power range is within what the USB standard can provide.
I agree. What happens if companies want to make something better or technology improves? The way the legislation is written, will help consumers in the short-term but could stifle innovation in the long-term. Imagine if the EU had mandated DC power ports or CD-ROM drives two decades ago.
It took this long for the EU to pass common standard legislation after talking about it for years. I can't imagine they will be any faster in updating it if USB-C becomes outdated.
How fast can charging ports evolve even in theory, given that they have to be somewhat backwards compatible to begin with? I think the law can keep up with all these iterations of lightning cables apple invented during its free reign over their port.
Companies are now disincentived to innovate because there is no guarantee money spent developing a new standard will result in something allowed to be sold.
No one can predict new technology. Ideally the law should have an end date or require regular renewal.
The very Adam Smith even have said that capitalism only work in well-defined markets. I don’t see how a more-or-less democratically elected entity would have a negative effect on competition by upholding some consumer-centric rules.
> I really dislike the idea that EU regulators would know what's better for consumers than consumer electronics companies and the consumers themselves.
It's not that, it's that companies know what's good for them and consumers are a secondary consideration, if that.
Consider EU mobile phone roaming regulation: it's an unalloyed good. We've gone from expensive and inconvenient roaming charges and roaming add-ons to free roaming at almost no increase in prices. There was initially some increase in very low priced plans yet I have a 2.65 euro a month 1GB data only plan (with full roaming) which is a blindingly good deal.
Lightning had a good 10-year run. Let’s not forget that it was released a full 2 years before USB-C, and one of the first to being reversible connectors to the masses.
Also, here is the final report commissioned by the EU: “Impact Assessment Study to Assess Unbundling of Chargers (July 2021)” [0].
Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me.
I don't see any win besides a minor convenience. A lightning cable weighs almost nothing and it's not a big deal to have one around.
As to lightning port limitations, I question whether usb-c will give average iPhone users any other advantage other than charging their phone. What are people gonna do with it other than charge their phones or transfer files?
Feels like there's nothing to celebrate here. Just the EU using its influence to exert control over things that don't matter at all.
> Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me.
It's because consumers have rights too. Standardising something actually fosters competition (healthy capitalism), increases profit (as standardising something often leads to lower manufacturing costs) while reducing costs for consumers (due to increased competition). It also reduces waste which is good for the environment.
> I don't see any win besides a minor convenience.
You will, when you have to buy another USB-C cable for your iDevice. I recently had to, for an iPad Air, and I was able to buy a good quality replacement USB-C cable (of similar spec) from Samsung for Rs. 750 (around $10) rather than paying Apple an exorbitant Rs. 2000 (around $20+). (Past experience with Apple cables has taught me that the higher price charged by Apple is no guarantee of better quality, and other non-Apple cables from reputed companies are often cheaper, more durable and last longer than Apple's).
This I really don't get. It reads as though you're saying that non-apple cables are cheaper and better, and also that mandating USB-C is valuable because it means you don't have to buy cables from apple.
Most certainly there are cables that are much better than the ones Apple is selling. I’ve been an iPhone/iPad user for more than 10 years and I no longer use Apple cables because they are gone in 6-8 months. This is an issue they had from the very beginning and which they utterly ignored.
In contrast, I bought an usb-c cable from one plus 5 years ago, which is still in perfect condition. With the iPhones, I use cables from some company (forgot the name) that have lifetime warranty. I swear I could tow my car with those, _for the same price_
Lightening cables have currently seen a price fall as Apple introduced USB-C devices. Yes, it's an automatic win for us consumers when regulation creates industry standard and fosters competition as that gives us the option to buy a product from multiple vendor. When something is standardised it is better for the whole industry, and especially for us consumers as it means we are not forced to buy something whose design and manufacturing is dictated by a single company. With lightening cables, Apple dictated the design and manufacturing terms and thus had an influence on its price even for non-Apple branded cables. With USB-C as a standard it can no longer do so.
What exactly is your USB-C cable example meant to illustrate? You were successfully able to buy a cheaper cable without any laws being passed. Seems like things are working fine as-is.
I benefited only because I bought a USB-C iDevice. Apple introduced USB-C support in some of its devices not because they wanted to but only because they realised that regulation would force them to in the future. Now that the regulation is in effect, Apple will be forced to drop support for its proprietary lightening cable and switch to supporting USB-C standards for all its devices. That's a huge win for consumers and the industry too.
You can already buy non-Apple branded lightning cables.
Apart from the cable that came in my iPhone 7's box many years ago (which still works perfectly and, excluding a little dirt, looks like new), all my other lightning cables are off-brand ones that cost much less than $20 apiece. More like 10.
Some of them (Aukey brand) developed a wonky connection after a while, or only work on one side. The others (Amazon Basics) still work perfectly, after spending uncountable hours in the sun and rain powering my phone on my motorbike's handlebars.
> You can already buy non-Apple branded lightning cables.
Lightening cables are not a standard and thus Apple dictates terms even with non-Apple lightening cables. As lightening cables are not an industry standard the prices are influenced by Apple and artificially inflated (even for non-Apple ones). And they can only be used with Apple devices. (Lightening cables have seen a recent price fall only after Apple shifted to USB-C for some iDevices, as the market fears Apple is already preparing to switch to USB-C).
USB-C cables will be even cheaper in the future as they are standardised, and since they can be used with multiple devices (due to such regulations) you need to buy fewer of them too.
I don't particularly follow Apple's products, so I don't know when they started selling USB-C devices, and hence what "recently" means to you.
What I can say, is that in France on Amazon, USB-C cables and Lightning cables had similar prices when I last bought mine a few years ago. I usually compare Amazon Basics and Ugreen / Aukey brands.
> since they can be used with multiple devices (due to such regulations) you need to buy fewer of them too.
I’ve seen this argument a few times “yay now I only have to take one cable on holiday”. Sure, unless you want to charge two devices at once while you’re sleeping, perhaps… it’s an unrelated argument to which connector is better.
It is very inconvenient and a hassle to have 5 different cables for 5 different devices. It is a waste of space, materials... The economic gains by volume continent wide should not be underestimated.
It's OK to make decisions with long-term beneficial impacts that may come with short-term negatives. I'd also wager the majority of iPhone users have USB-C cables already.
Why would they? I can guarantee my parents don't. I guess I got one last year when I got an Xbox controller to connect to the PC, but I don't want to use that one for my phone, it stays with the controller.
I guess if I'm going to replace my phone I should do it soon while I can still use my existing cables with the new one.
...now, whether that's because it's that good of a connector or because we humans wipe ourselves out before we get around to inventing something better is another question altogether.
Most iPhone users are going to buy new iPhones though, eventually. And when they do the lightning cables they already have are going to be useless and they'll have to replace every single cable they own.
This literally just created a mountain of e-waste. We turned a hypothetical "what about when they switch" into a forced reality.
I don't think I've had any decent lightning cable wear out. The super thin and cheap ones have, but I haven't had any from Apple or Anker wear out yet.
I mean, I’m an iPhone user and have plenty of USB-C cables. And charging cables rarely last that long anyway, so I don’t think this is going to be a big deal.
Um... What portion of your budget are you going to have to spend to buy a couple USB-C cables? Like if you really need, I can probably send you one or two because otherwise I'd just throw them away.
Do you actually have data on that though? I see that kind of argument get thrown around but it is never substantiated.
How will usbc lead to less waste?
If you wanna make that argument, wouldn’t it be better to force companies to opt you out of getting chargers and cables unless you explicitly ask for them when you make the purchase?
> If you wanna make that argument, wouldn’t it be better to force companies to opt you out of getting chargers and cables unless you explicitly ask for them when you make the purchase?
That is a natural step forward after the cables are unified. Even today, 80% of the electronic devices I'm buying are coming without a charger and this is all due to the fact that the market stabilized to USB charging (mini and now USB-C).
I still remember we used to have drawers full of old phone chargers...
I still have a small sack of those old chargers. Can't put them in the generic waste, nobody would buy them, and I've been too lazy to take them to the electronic waste recycling.
Apple already does that with chargers, new iPhones no longer come with charging bricks, just the cables. I'd be fine with not including the cables if the phones were USB-C, but since they're Lightning the likelihood of a new iPhone user already having a cable that will work is very low.
Yes but do cables contribute a significant amount of waste in general, worthy of being specifically regulated? I actually don’t know either way, so it would be nice to see some data.
> Unbundling the sale of a charger from the sale of the electronic device
But without a universal charger that doesn't make sense: if I still need a specific charger for a device, I'm going to have to buy that with the device anyways.
The plug will be universal with usb-c, but not the cable specs, I read someone of someone that have a usb-c-jack dongle that came with the phone and worked, then when it broke he bought a new one but it didn't work, the dongle itself was not using a standard, also I read a lot that fast charging is kinda property with each manufacturer, so a cable that can fast charge one device might not be able to fast charge another, and the blame is on USB itself, it's like HDMI, everything is optional, so you can't be sure if you bought the correct usb-c cable.
At least with lightning you know what you are buying, and maybe the overpriced cables that Apple sells will work better than the most cheap ones, which brand give you the warranties for the cable specs? does belkin and co sell also cables?
This law might have actually encouraged more waste than would have otherwise existed.
Cables (generally) don't go bad in a year or two and can last for quite a few years. Most long-term iPhone users probably have at least a few spare cables throughout their desk, house, car that they've bought over time that they'd now have no substitutes for and would need to replace.
You might have dictated a situation where people now have to throw away a pile of perfectly usable cables/accessories and buy a bunch of new ones. While well intentioned, this law might have otherwise achieved the opposite of what it set out to do.
PS: Whether this law exists or not, I'd have bet on Apple working to go fully wireless soon and this might just accelerate that effort.
> You might have dictated a situation where people now have to throw away a pile of perfectly usable cables/accessories and buy a bunch of new ones.
I mean, or Apple could do the one thing they've done absolutely tons of recently (so it wouldn't be a surprising or unheard of move from them) and sell a dongle for lightning -> USB-C?
Now you don't have to do any of what you just said would be a guarantee.
You've somehow avoided USB-C cables? That's confusing to me since I have an iPhone and other Apple devices. My phone uses lighting but my Beats earbuds, My Macbook Pro, and my iPad pro use USB-C for charging. Plus plenty of other non-Apple devices.
Yes, I suppose if you want to charge your phone in a dozen locations, and you want a separate cable for every location, that will be what you need to do. It doesn't seem like a major hardship to me, having lived through a few connector changes, like the 30-pin to lightning switch, but I suppose it may be more of an issue for others.
It's just back to my point. This change will cause me to throw away a significant amount of cables (some over 5 years old). That's a decent amount of waste.
Really? I consider myself pretty economical, but I throw out much more than a few lightning cables worth of waste in a given week (probably more on any day even). Would they even really be noticeable in your trash can?
I don't know that I had an argument, more of a question of if a couple of cables would even be noticeable as trash.
I'd say my argument is purely logistical - one less cable type would be quite a boon to me personally. I have a few lightning cables that only work with exactly one device that I own - my iPhone 11. I'm quite happy with my phone, and perhaps ironically for Apple, the best way they'd have to get me to replace it would be to make a new one with a USB-C port; it's the feature I'd most like at this point.
I'd also love to see touchid make a return, but I don't see that happening.
I will definitely switch to iPhone as soon as they come with USB-C. It feels like they're just not doing it out of spite - I already have 20 USB-C chargers and power banks for all of my hardware. If you've been in the Apple ecosystem for years, no, it probably won't matter to you and will probably annoy you more than what it's worth because you now need separate cables to charge your mouse and your phone.
Out of spite? What about it feeling out of spite to make this change for the tens of millions of users who have one or two or four sets of AirPods, and several wireless Apple keyboards and mice and trackpads, and various other gear, all of which uses Lightning?
Some people need to remember that it's not all about them.
And your USB-C chargers and power banks were and are perfectly capable of charging Lightning devices.
I find this argument really funny since Apple already dropped lightning connectors on the newer IPADs in favor of USB C and already doesn't support lightning laptops.
I guess you'll have to figure out how to handle the slight inconvenience that Apple is putting their IPAD customers and laptop customers through.
It's a common misconception for the less tech savvy but you can just buy a USB-C to Lightning cable for a few bucks. In fact, here's a 3-pack for $7: https://a.co/d/1WFoRGZ
The constant dongle arguments are so funny, especially in this case.
1) You buy a USB-C to Lightning cable. Obviously.
2) Everyone bitches about Apple supposedly requiring all kinds of dongles, but of course, what caused that? Apple's insistence on putting only Thunderbolt ports on the Mac. Which of course use what connector? USB-C.
People need to figure out what they are bitching about before just mouthing words about dongles all the time.
Perhaps you can outline the many times that Apple dropped support for something to move to something new?
Phones no longer have "dock connectors" do they? What about anyone who had a dock port?
Having an iPhone and android phones, Lightening is ANNOYING. Almost nothing uses it. I can charge my Kindle via USB-C, my headphones via USB-C but need an ancient lightening to charge my phone?
Lastly, can you outline what devices people have which are dependent on Lightning? AirPods? they could have been released with USB-C from the start, allowing Apple to move away from lightning.
A 4 year old iPhone still works perfectly, but a $200 Android will find its way to a landfill way sooner. As a rule of thumb, appliances that last are better for the environment than cheap products. Apple is good at make devices that last.
Nowadays all laptops can charge over usb-c (including Apple laptops, mind you!). Did anybody have to force Apple to do this? No, because charging technology improved so much that what used to be a big brick is now a pocketable GAN charger. Even the new magsafe laptops still support usb-c charging. And iPhones support wireless qi charging as well as Apple's proprietary magnet based wireless charging solution. Thanks to cheaper chips all devices can now negotiate how much power they need from the power brick. That's a big win, and this just wasn't possible a decade ago.
We're in the final stretch of a 20 year trend towards universal chargers, and this EU mandate is totally unnecessary.
> A 4 year old iPhone still works perfectly, but a $200 Android will find its way to a landfill way sooner
Not really, though. I'm using one and it's just fine. Nonsense aside...
> Nowadays all laptops can charge over usb-c (including Apple laptops, mind you!). Did anybody have to force Apple to do this? No
Yes. That's what the EU has been doing by talking about forcing the standardization. Dollars to donuts that apple would still be on their proprietary connector if not for that.
> this EU mandate is totally unnecessary
Disagree. Just look at the iPhones apple is still manufacturing, which they'll now be forced to change.
Android uses RAM as planned obselesence when they stop giving security updates to your old OS. The updated OS always uses more RAM and slows the phone down because of swapping to disk
I don't know that any stock Android swaps to disk. They swap to zram, generally.
That said, the thing that seems to make old Android devices obsolete is Google Play Services. It takes up significantly more RAM over time, and it keeps getting updated even when your OS isn't. A degoogled older Android device stays about as useful as it ever was.
Why has apple bucked this 20 year trend for iPhone charging? Much progress has been made, but never at this place. For a long time, it has looked like they will, but they never did. The EU finally got impatient and decided this mandate was needed to get apple to do this.
Note that the threat of a law like this is what caused many other manufacturers to standardize. If Apple gets a pass, what does that signal to the manufacturers who caved, and to everyone else. I would wager it tells them "the eu makes empty threats". This was the result of Apple saying "bluff" to EU demands, and the EU deciding to follow through.
Apple could have prevented this. The EU sort of had its hands bound when it started the process of pushing everyone to one charging. That process was largely very valuable, for apple specifically it isn't that important. But leaving the process incomplete would send the wrong message.
Hence I think that Apple is at fault for this regrettable law as the EU is.
This is a bad law that is the result of a process that was, on balance, still very valuable. This law is a small element in the minus column, that does not weigh against the many elements in the plus column. The process I refer to is the EU push to get manufactures to use the same charging port.
>A 4 year old iPhone still works perfectly, but a $200 Android will find its way to a landfill way sooner. As a rule of thumb, appliances that last are better for the environment than cheap products. Apple is good at make devices that last.
Anecdotal, but my friend has been complaining for over a year that the updates are making his iPhone too slow. Otoh, my 6+ year old Android phone is still going strong (after 1 battery replacement).
Your friend's iPhone will go a lot faster after he also gets his battery replaced. Once the battery degrades too much the iPhone slows itself down in order to not crash by trying to use more power than the battery can provide.
iPhones don't have USB 3+ because the Lightning connector only has one differential pair for data. If iPhones had a connector with more pairs (USB-C), I doubt it would cost much of anything to add a USB 4 block to the SoC (which they already have on many Apple Silicon SoCs) and wire it up to the connector. Sure, there's more to it, but it's not rocket science.
This isn't an important reason. There's no technical reason that Lightning could not have been updated to support higher speeds, and there's also nothing in this legislation that forces USB-C to magically use a high data rate.
> Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me.
It's not, we're glad SOMEONE is forcing them to take this direction, but it's really sad (and potentially damaging) it had to come to this.
> As to lightning port limitations, I question whether usb-c will give average iPhone users any other advantage other than charging their phone. What are people gonna do with it other than charge their phones or transfer files?
Lightning itself is also used for audio (analog audio dongle) and video. The one benefit USB-C could bring to the table is higher transfer speed since Lightning is stuck on USB2 speeds, USB-C doesn't imply USB 3 but they might as well try.
The Lightning connector has 8 pins: 2 for power, 2 for ID/control, and 4 for 2 differential lanes of anything. Those 2 differential lines are used for all data transfer, and, IIRC, are bidirectional. So, in theory, the Lightning connector could carry USB 3.0's differential RX/TX lanes no problem.
My guess as to why Apple hasn't implemented that is a lack of demand. Syncing/backup is expected to be handled on the device now, and USB 2.0 gives enough bandwidth for the majority of the other cases. And on iPads where more bandwidth might be required (eg. external data storage), they already have USB-C connectors supporting the higher speeds.
It does seem petty. “I just paid for a $1000 phone with a massive markup and you mean I have to pay an extra $12 to get a decent amount of storage?” It’s not like the 99¢ gets you a terabyte; you only get 50 GB. They could just swallow the cost, but they don’t.
Continuous services are taxed and accounted differently from one-time costs.
They hook you in with the $1 option, you see how useful iCloud is and then you'll fork up even more. Then you notice that your whole family can share the subscription and soon you'll be paying $10 for the 2TB option and are an Apple One subscriber.
That's just good business nowadays. All companies _could_ just sell stuff with an one-time fee and provide a service forever, but it's not fiscally responsible in the long run.
That adapter acts like usb host IIRC. So does your computer. Connecting two hosts with a A-to-A cable is not going to do anything good (and might cause harm). This is why A-to-A cables aren't supposed to exist as per usb spec.
Apple wants to do away with all external connectors on that phone. My guess is that they won't have any ports once they get rid of the lightning connector.
Comparing a shared RF medium to a fairly guaranteed point to point connection is one of those things that in theory works great, but in practice, not so much...
God forbid you'd ever want to transfer to a non-Apple device amirite? Most of the people that I know that use iPhones don't have Macs. And those with Macs don't have iPhones lol.
Better transfer speed would be a benefit to USB-C. It comes up using an iPhone as a camera when wifi is congested or just not available, e.g. a college campus with device registration required. Dongles for phone to HDMI could work without needing compression as well.
> I don't see any win besides a minor convenience. A lightning cable weighs almost nothing and it's not a big deal to have one around.
The standardization is good for a lot of purposes:
- cutting down on the number of cables and especially chargers. Seriously, it's amazing to have one single Anker 65W power supply and a single cable on vacation and it can charge everything - tablet, work phone, laptop, power bank, drones, Nintendo Switch. I 'member the dark times where each of these devices had their own cable and for some even own charger.
- car and in-flight entertainment systems can now be relatively secure that USB-C is here to stay and be used for connectivity, which means less effort for this kind of appliance
- if a cable gets lost or damaged, spare cables are cheap and plentiful, and they will also be available in a few years of time
- devices can now be shipped without a charger and cable, which reduces package size and weight (and thus shipping efficiency, as more packages fit into a single container) and as almost everyone has chargers and cables, there is no need to produce as many chargers and cables before, which reduces resource consumption and eventually waste
- when devices break down, chargers still can live on. Even a plain old 5W USB charger is enough to charge an e-cigarette.
- interoperability between devices gets increased. No more micro-USB-to-micro-USB or whatever rare cables to interface, say, a DSLR camera with a phone to transfer photos, a plain USB-C cable is sufficient.
> Feels like there's nothing to celebrate here. Just the EU using its influence to exert control over things that don't matter at all.
Well... Apple refused for years to implement USB-C on the iPhone on their own, while the rest of the market converged first on micro-USB and nowadays on USB-C. The regulation was only established to force the hands of the largest player, which didn't like USB-C because it would destroy its lucrative MFi licensing - basically, rent seeking by preventing competition with a closed solution instead of an open standard.
If there is one thing that drives EU legislation ideas, it is the convergence towards open and common, market-wide standards. This reduces the barriers to entry for small players and leads to more innovation as a result. Additionally, since the 500M citizens of the EU are a market bloc that no manufacturer can afford to ignore and for most things except automotive it isn't worth to set up different supply chains, our legislation can improve the lives of everyone on this planet - just take the RoHS directive, which led to lead solder being phased out worldwide and less lead ending up in the environment.
> If there is one thing that drives EU legislation ideas, it is the convergence towards open and common, market-wide standards. This reduces the barriers to entry for small players and leads to more innovation as a result.
Too many people don't understand that trade agreements are about common standards and accountability.
There is a lot of noise about EU regulations made by people who are stuck in 18th century mindsets about trade and who fancy themselves as "free traders".
> Too many people don't understand that trade agreements are about common standards and accountability.
Unfortunately, trade agreements can also end up being abused to enable price dumping. Yes, consumers may enjoy lower prices for goods, but if the cost is domestic industry being completely devastated or human rights being violated at large scale (e.g. children being enslaved in questionably legal mining operations or factories), is it worth it?
Most trade agreements at the time have almost no "equal standards" clause for manufacturing. Stuff like toxic materials (e.g. RoHS) is regulated, but lower work standards - minimum wages, child labor prevention, slavery prevention, fire codes (e.g. the horrible fires that regularly happen in Bangladesh [1]), disposal of waste, CO2 emissions - are not.
The result of that non-regulation is that nations like China, India or Vietnam flood European and US markets with goods that are only cheap (compared to domestic products) because the environment and the workers get exploited. We outsource our dirty industry.
Eh? The iPhone charges over a USB-Lightning cable. There are USB-C and USB-A versions of the cable available. The charger was never the issue. In fact Apple stopped including (USB) chargers with the iPhone a while back.
I think if you're going to accuse Apple of rent seeking here you also pretty much have to accuse anyone who develops their own standard or plugin or similar of rent seeking as well.
When will the EU ban HDMI connections to monitors or force Apple to remove them from MacBooks? Why are dSLR cameras allowed to continue to use micro USB and SD cards when they could just use USB-C so we don't have to buy dongles and adapters?
The argument that Apple only provides one physical port (they also provide Magsafe and allow other wireless charging options) isn't sufficient with respect to your discussion point about market-wide standards. This really looks to me like the EU is just saying "we don't like lightning chargers and since nobody is going to defend it except Apple we'll ban it" while they also let plenty of other "standards" run amok in the market.
FWIW I much prefer USB-C and I want my next iPhone to include it (along with any other devices), but I really struggle with the logic of the decision to force it here.
> When will the EU ban HDMI connections to monitors or force Apple to remove them from MacBooks?
HDMI is a somewhat-open-ish, widespread standard and for what it's worth Apple MacBook models haven't carried HDMI ports for ages now.
> Why are dSLR cameras allowed to continue to use micro USB and SD cards when they could just use USB-C so we don't have to buy dongles and adapters?
Again, the market seems to converge towards USB-C already (almost all the models on [1] and other buying guides have USB-C), and for memory cards towards SD cards and CFexpress (on the pro segment). Both of these are somewhat-open-ish again.
The EU usually only steps in when the free market is either stuck somewhere along the road and needs a push towards a specific standard (=> USB-C), profit incentives need to be overruled (=> RoHS / leaded solder) or the free market suffers from oligopolies that need to be broken up for actual competition or the creation of an actual single market (=> EU-wide mobile roaming).
> The argument that Apple only provides one physical port (they also provide Magsafe and allow other wireless charging options) isn't sufficient with respect to your discussion point about market-wide standards.
Apple can provide a MagSafe port on MacBooks or a Lightning port on iDevices if they want. All Apple has to do is to support the mandated USB-C port as well!
> Why are dSLR cameras allowed to continue to use micro USB
Because DSLRs are dead. If you look at the new mirrorless cameras, they're either doing USB-C charging, or take batteries charged from a device that uses USB-C.
Why aren’t TV’s mandated to use USB-C? Why do I still need to connect via HDMI? Why does my TV remote still use double-A batteries instead of USB-C charging?
The cameras are just a random example.
As soon as you look at the EU’s decision (which is one I like the effects of) you can see that this was just a very arbitrary ruling.
> - cutting down on the number of cables and especially chargers. Seriously, it's amazing to have one single Anker 65W power supply and a single cable on vacation and it can charge everything - tablet, work phone, laptop, power bank, drones, Nintendo Switch. I 'member the dark times where each of these devices had their own cable and for some even own charger.
I have this now, except with 1 extra cable (which happens to charge my iPhone and AirPods).
> - if a cable gets lost or damaged, spare cables are cheap and plentiful, and they will also be available in a few years of time
Walk into any store or gas station today and you'll find all sorts of cable solutions for lightning. I was looking for a cable on vacation last year and had a harder time finding a usb-c to usb-c power cable. Everywhere had lightning though.
> - when devices break down, chargers still can live on.
Again, all my chargers have been usb-c for awhile.
Apple was clearly headed towards usb-c anyway, so I doubt this law changes much in their plans. But, a lot of the benefits were already there. Apple will need to include a lightning to usb-c dongle for a period of time as accessories shift over.
> Apple was clearly headed towards usb-c anyway, so I doubt this law changes much in their plans.
Highly doubt it. In any case, the aim of the EU was to create a standard or at least force the industry into coming up with one - and had Apple been allowed to keep their proprietary connector, the competition would be completely correct in claiming "why should we keep using the standard while Apple can get away with MFi licensing income?".
So, in order to actually keep the standard a standard, Apple now has to be openly forced. I doubt this regulation would have been done if Apple had signalled to be moving away from Lightning.
C'mon. Apple went all in on usb-c before anyone else. It hurt them with the laptop line and they reversed some. They have moved the iPad, include usb-c -> puck for the watch, and usb-c to lightning for the iPhone. They are transitioning.
>If there is one thing that drives EU legislation ideas, it is the convergence towards open and common, market-wide standards. This reduces the barriers to entry for small players and leads to more innovation as a result.
Can you provide some examples of innovation that the EU has made in this industry in the last 20 years?
- mobile phone and data roaming, the most notable user-facing innovation
- the single market itself with all the associated side legislation (GDPR, VAT OSS) that allows every tiny small business to serve the entire EU
- Schengen free-movement zone
- Euro currency
- SEPA instead of national schemes (ties in into the single market aspect as well) with everything from card payments over wire transfers to direct debit covered. Strong authentication required for opening bank accounts. No more paper cheques. (Directly compare all of this to the hot mess that the US is)
- EPD PS2 that forces banks to provide APIs to third parties, e.g. budget planners
- unified drone legislation that allows me without tons of paperwork and individual permits to fly my drone everywhere reasonable in Europe
I meant innovation in consumer electronics or even just software services as a result of legislation, not legislation itself. Payments and bank APIs count. Thanks for the examples.
> What are people gonna do with it other than charge their phones or transfer files?
It would at least save me from carrying one power brick + usb cable. Steam Deck (USB C), Switch (USB C), MacBook Pro (USB C) and iPhone is the only odd one out. This does make a significant difference to what I can take with me on holiday.
That's just you, of course. For hundreds of millions of others, this cuts the other way: over a decade's worth of Lightning accessories and cables and docks are out there.
Which is why the EU is just being dumb, here. They think they are accomplishing some amazing user-friendly enviro-friendly feat, but all they are really doing is making a lot of Lightning gear out there less useful.
And all this to switch to a port that is substantially larger, clunkier, and has no real advantages for iPhone users. Which is why Apple hasn't bothered changing up til now. That, plus Apple actually values what its customers REALLY need and what REALLY ACTUALLY benefits them.
How much time has to pass before the one-time cost of deprecating lightning is overtaken by the ongoing savings of having a single standard? Also consider that lightning would surely have eventually been deprecated one day even without this initiative.
How did lightning ever provide "ongoing savings"? It was simply an update of the 30-pin connector, it wasn't created to improve reusability or applicability to other kinds of devices.
Also, I don't really appreciate the snark. It's just a connector.
No on both counts. No, Lightning was not "simply an update" of the 30-pin connector; it was a creation of something entirely new, from scratch. And no, you don't have any idea about the motivations (or lack thereof) about why it was created, so let's just discard that.
The factual record, of course, shows us quite clearly that Apple did indeed design something that was highly "applicable to other kinds of devices", devices which Apple then went on to apply Lightning to. :) And of course we can also see quite clearly from the last ten years that Lightning has had a massive impact on the reusability of various chargers, docks, and cables. Why? Because Apple stuck with it for ten years and used it in all kinds of stuff.
As far as I'm aware, lightning was never used for any host device product line or use case that wasn't previously served by the 30 pin connector. So it clearly wasn't created with an intent to allow a broader range of devices to share it (or else they simply failed at achieving that). It covered the same use cases across the same product lines as the thing it replaced with no expansion upon that. Therefore there was never any "ongoing savings" by bringing together a greater range of use cases compared to the alternative.
Ignoring the fact that USB-C to Lightning cables exist, how in the world does a little power brick and cable make a "significant difference" to what you can take with you?
Can you tell me which standard does work with the switch? I have a few usb-c cables but only a few can charge it, while I can charge my iPad with every cable that I own, it a bit sad that ubs-c is a lie, I'd hope that at least a few things were not optional with usb-c standard, and also that it didn't have too much optional stuff that makes harder and harder to buy a cable, it the same with HDMI, that's why display port feels superior IMHO, less optional features.
The Switch USB-C connector is notorious for being non-complaint to the spec, making charging it finicky. However I did not encounter as much trouble as you, 9 out off 11 chargers I try work. This problem is unique to the Switch however.
It seems many are confused about what the iPhone Pro comes with today - a usb-c to lightning cable. So right now you only need to carry a single power brick and 2 cables. So after this law you can carry a single cable. A big win...I guess.
No, but the parent’s point is still valid - many people own more than one lightning cable and/or lightning-enabled accessory (charging docks, stereos, etc) and as soon as you own an iPhone with USB-C, they’ll immediately become either useless or require yet another adapter.
This already happened once when the iPhone switched from the iPod connector to Lightning, and people revolted for this exact reason.
> This already happened once when the iPhone switched from the iPod connector to Lightning, and people revolted for this exact reason.
That was before USB-C existed (and micro-USB didn't have the same sort of accessory ecosystem that the 30-pin connector had). In this day and age, those same charging docks and stereos and such typically already support USB-C (because that's what most modern phones use, and it's kind of silly in this day and age to run two separate manufacturing lines for two separate SKUs instead of simply supporting both connectors in the same device), so if anything this would be the opposite of a reason to revolt.
You missed their point. The EU "locked" devices into micro B but somehow they still managed to switch to USB-C when it became viable. How could they have switched if they were as "locked in" as you think?
I mean the simple fact that every phone manufacturer bar Apple moved to Micro-B indicates that the mandate works, and the fact that they then migrated to USB-C indicates that it doesn't lock manufacturers in forever.
In addition, Apple is known for making loads of dongles, so it wouldn't be remotely weird for them to sell/ship a lightning -> USB-C dongle. So the argument about mandating e-waste doesn't really hold up either.
So you have:
- It works
- It doesn't lock manufacturers in forever
- It doesn't mandate e-waste
Any other reasons you want to give? So far those are the only three I've seen and none of them hold water.
As someone else pointed out, the micro-b thing in the EU was a recommendation and not a mandate so the terms are a bit different here.
I would be happy to have Apple move to Type C, but I do question if an actual mandate (and not a recommendation) could prevent future USB connector adoption in the EU market.
You are broadly right about the last one not being a legal mandate.
It was basically a case of the EU saying "you need to choose one charging port that you all use, we _will_ create a mandate if you don't".
Importantly, the EU has already gone through a shift in charging standards, so they already understand how this stuff advances and have prepared for it in their own legislation (the EU tends to make laws with details on how those laws will be changed in the future etc. since they are at core still a large trade bloc). You can find a Q&A they gave here:
The Commission's proposal aims at providing consumers with an open and interoperable solution and, at the same time, enabling technological innovation. The proposal encourages innovation for wired and wireless technology charging.
Any technological developments in wired charging can be reflected in a timely adjustment of technical requirements/ specific standards under the Radio Equipment Directive. This would ensure that the technology used is not outdated.
At the same time, the implementation of any new standards in further revisions of Radio Equipment Directive would need to be developed in a harmonised manner, respecting the objectives of full interoperability. Industry is therefore expected to continue the work already undertaken on the standardised interface, led by the USB-IF organisation, in view of developing new interoperable, open and non-controversial solutions.
In addition, larger technological developments are expected in the area of wireless charging, which is still a developing technology with a low level of market fragmentation. In order to allow innovation in this field, the proposal does not set specific technical requirements for wireless charging. Therefore, manufacturers remain free to include any wireless charging solution in their products alongside the wired charging via the USB-C port.
To summarize, they'll work with the USB-IF (made up of a whole bunch of companies, including Apple) when the USB-IF makes a new standard in order to ensure that new connection innovations will be propagated to new devices. What they won't allow is a company like Apple having an "innovation" then diverging from how everyone expects devices to charge.
Interestingly they've also said that there's a set of standardized fast-charging capabilities that need to be clearly labelled on products that require/support them. So if you buy a tablet it'll have a label on the box saying "can charge at up to 50w" or whatever, and a charger would say "can charge at up to 50w", so you know it'll charge at full speed. That's a little better than the previous "it supports fast charging" umbrella.
> When would this mandate be changed? After the rest of the world has already moved on to Type D?
The EU has already passed multiple recommendations previously about mobile phone port standardization. They were all passed in a reasonable amount of time. Moreover, this mandate was also passed in a reasonable amount of time.
Therefore, I have reason to believe that future mandates regarding mobile phone port charging will also be passed in a reasonable amount of time.
Apple is part of the USB-IF. They also have pushed USB standards to consumers since the iMac. Hell, Apple participates of every single industrial forum they can benefit from.
Apple has moved on to USB-C for almost every other product they have. They know Lightning is old and insufficient, even for their iPad Air.
The only reason why Apple keeps Lightning around is for phones and some portable accessories, and the revenue from those, and their certifications, is not something they are willing to dismiss. Technically speaking, if you want something as simple as a cable, you have to go through Apple and their MFI program.
So here we are, with Apple holding the keys to every Lightning accessory, and also keeping a degree of control of USB-C.
If anything, the EU is trying to keep Apple honest.
> The only reason why Apple keeps Lightning around is for phones and some portable accessories, and the revenue from those, and their certifications, is not something they are willing to dismiss. Technically speaking, if you want something as simple as a cable, you have to go through Apple and their MFI program.
The other way of viewing this is that by not switching (yet) they haven't created instant e-waste out of every cable and accessory manufactured in the past decade. USB-C didn't exist when they released the lightning cable, and they have clearly been migrating every other product over the past several years.
Seriously, you don't need to invent a conspiracy for every single move Apple makes.
> The other way of viewing this is that by not switching (yet) they haven't created instant e-waste out of every cable and accessory manufactured in the past decade.
Well no time like the present since time is linear and unless they're going to stick with lightning _forever_ then they'll eventually have to create a bunch of e-waste.
> Seriously, you don't need to invent a conspiracy for every single move Apple makes.
How is this a “conspiracy”? It is literally what they are doing with the MFI program.
If anything, the e-waste theory is less credible, as Apple have changed the iPad and MacBook charging ports three or four times in the past 12 years. They have also a long history of preventing third parties from fixing their products, latest of which is software locking of replacement parts.
This is not the reason. The reason is, the last time they changed ports (from 30pin to lightning) it created huge blowback from consumers who had lots of 30pin accessories that were no longer compatible, and even though lightning is FAR better people don’t like switching.
USB-C is not much different than lightning for charging / connecting a phone, so the blowback from consumers will be huge when all their accessories are no longer compatible with the next phone.
You must not have been here for years that people whined about the MacBook getting rid of MagSafe and how it only had USB-C ports. How quickly we forget. "No blowback" is the completely opposite of the truth. Consumers aren't going to give a shit what some foreign government mandated, they're going to be pissed at Apple that they need to buy all new cables.
> Consumers aren't going to give a shit what some foreign government mandated, they're going to be pissed at Apple that they need to buy all new cables.
For sure, but only if Apple wouldn't provide such cables, which they do.
Currently, cables bundled with iPhones are Lightning to USB-C. It has been like this for several years.
I suspect that the kind of person who would buy a new $1,000+ phone with an USB-C to USB-C cable in the box, and bitch and moan about the $30 worth of Lightning cables about to end in the trash, is the same who vociferously complain on the Internet and then still buy the next years version.
My impression has always been that, at least online, there was quite a bit of criticism to Apple for switching to USB-C so soon. Or was it because now dongles were needed?
> USB-C is not much different than lightning for charging / connecting a phone...
As far as I understand, there are no Lightning cables that support anything over 18W. Data transfer tops at 480Mbps, or roughly USB 2.0 speeds.
These are specs many other companies have surpassed several years ago.
> ... so the blowback from consumers will be huge when all their accessories are no longer compatible with the next phone.
Apple is the same company that went through 4 different charging connectors for their MacBook line, in about 15 years: MagSafe, MagSafe 2, USB-C, and now MagSafe 3. Their iPad line is 12 years old and has gone through 3 different connectors: 30-pin, Lightning, and USB-C.
If the iPhone had an USB-C connector, I could pretty much carry a single cable and charger for my laptop, my tablet, and my phone. So unless there is zero overlap between iPhone users and users of anything else, the point is moot.
Even worse, Apple stopped bundling a charger with their phones over three years ago. Instead, they ship a Lightning to USB-C cable, but they bundle an USB-C charger only for a year after the release of the iPhone X, effectively forcing their customers to buy USB-C hardware anyway.
Sure, you can now carry 1 less cable. That's a win, but it's not some monumental change people try to make it out to be. When I travel I will still carry multiple cables since I need to usually charge more than one device at a time. But now they can be the same cable.
They can be, but in practice you’ll want a cable capable of at least 60 W for the laptop. So now you either have to carry all the same high power cable (more expensive and wasteful) or give up on the benefit of having one type of cable to begin with.
Except lightning also still operates at USB 2.0 speeds - so if you don't want to trust Apple with your data in iCloud backups (which as it's not E2EE encrypted is foolhardy, plus you have to pay for a higher tier for any phone with more than 5GB of personal data) it takes an absolute age.
Micro-USB was similarly enforced by law (but adapters were permitted with that regulation, thus allowing Apple to continue using proprietary ports) and that legislation had a clear and obvious positive impact for smartphone users. Don't you recall the days when every single manufacturer had a terrible proprietary connector? I think that enforcement was one of the best examples of a regulatory win in the technology sector in recent times. This is simply an attempt to strengthen that regulation and update it to a modern standard.
> Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me.
I'm sorry that we need a law to instil some common sense into some managers' thick skulls. But I'm happy that EU is showing that in, a sane democracy, no huge corporation can force its will on the people.
Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me.
Having unified, standard cables and power bricks means more reuse, which reduces waste and cost. It means someone switching from Android to iPhone or vice versa doesn't need to replicate all their cabling. It means users can buy a third party cable without paying Apple for a licence or a patent. These are all good things.
Imagine a World where your appliances just work in some sockets and not in others. Where the tires of your car can just be bought from one supplier because it was limited by the car manufacturer. Your toaster just accepts some kind of bread. Your pencil can't be sharpned except with one specific equipament. Your mechanical pencil can use just one kind of pencil lead because it has some specific size.
And now imagine a step further, where all cars, mechanical pencils, toasters, wall sockets... everything is disposable because some small detail or component has just one supplier.
Imagine how much you'll spend to have things, and how much you'll have to throw away when any small thing of it gets broken.
and literally none of that has happened with no mandates. What a dumb argument. Now the government (that creates no value) now gets credit for "preventing" fictional "horrors" like proprietary bread? statists guna state. seems like some of europe just looooves being told what to do like children
> Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me.
School shootings - why do we have to enforce not commiting school shootings with the stupid law, surely everyone can get together and agreee murdering a 10 year old for fun is evil and just not do it?
Kind of a ridiculous comparison. If you absolutely must compare this to school shootings, compare it this way:
Should a national government mandate only one method of security that every school must implement, or allow states/provinces/districts to experiment with what works for them? Even if the national government improves security in the short term, there is a strong possibility that the bureaucracy of national government's slowness to adapt will cause security to be worse in the long term.
>Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me
this idea that it is somehow a bad thing to force mega-corporations to do things that are good for society. it's so widespread and yet - short of actual communism - I have literally never seen any evidence of public action against mega-corporate interests resulting in damage to society as a whole, beyond the inevitable political lobbying and media corruption that ensues
is it any surprise that entities whose entire existence has been justified by clever storytelling (i.e. marketing) have been successful at convincing people that rules for them are a bad thing, while rules for you on the street are perfectly fine and actually good?
people act like these mega-corps are weak, soft little babies that need to be treated with kid gloves. "no, but what if this law could do that to them? but what if this law means they make 0.1% less profit this year?". I absolutely understand this kind of reticence with actual babies, or individual people, or small-to-medium-sized businesses, but it makes me angry that people are so reluctant to act against these unaccountable mega-entities. it is hamstringing society
A minor inconvenience multiplied by the number of smartphones (7.33 billion) is not a minor problem.
It's not that it's a problem on the individual level, it's that we're roughly doubling the number of cables needed and halving their utilization at the same time. Yes I know android is more popular, but the issue is the two different cables needed.
I'd certainly much rather type-c than lightning or, god forbid, micro usb, but it also has its own issues. Issues that one would hope would be solved by the usb-d, and so on. The problem with this law is that it makes it much more difficult to start using future usb standards.
The EU addressed this by saying that they'll keep up with technology as it moves, but one thing that technology is famous for, and the EU is infamous for, is the speed at which it moves. 5 years is a blink of an eye in politics, and a lifetime in tech.
Thats not to say we'll never see another USB version, I just worry this will considerably slow things down.
It seems to me the more future-proof way to do this would be to force companies to use an open-standard. We'd still be stuck with the dreaded micro-usb, and possibly lightning if apple let everyone else use it too, but it solves the proprietary issue without locking us in for another ~10 years of just type-c
Saying they’ll keep up doesn’t really make sense. The regulation will cause innovation to slow or stop in this area. So there won’t be a whole lot to keep up with.
After all, why invest money in improving your charging connector if you are going to be mandated to use USB-C anyway?
I said in another comment, its a chicken & egg problem. The EU will allow new standards as they're used, but nobody will use new standards until the EU allows it.
Seeing as the U in USB stands for Universal, there are plenty of incentives besides politics to /not/ change physical designs such as the connections.
USB-C's introduction was (and arguably still is) fairly disruptive because it invalidated the universal nature of USB-A (and to a lesser extent -B and Micro).
Personally, I hope USB-C will be here to stay for at least the better part of a decade going forward. Finding that what was once universal won't be universal tomorrow is annoying.
They could have addressed this by having a built in sunset on the law - say, in 5 years. That would get everyone (Apple) on the same page in the short term but it would allow for further innovation.
I'm eager to watch how Apple spins this as a voluntary decision in their product announcement. To see the specific wording they pick for how the timing is a coincidence and they really just care about their customers' best interests.
I didn't search _that_ hard, but I can't find the text of the EU directive; everything I did find does seem to mention USB-C explicitly. What is the procedure/convention for superseding this directive when something supersedes USB-C?
That said, even if the upgrade path is not expressly defined, I think on balance this is still a good thing. In a "best time to plant a tree was yesterday; second best time is today" kind of way, when it comes to reducing e-waste.
Hand-held mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones, headsets, handheld videogame consoles and portable speakers, in so far as they are capable of being recharged via wired charging, shall:
(a) be equipped with the USB Type-C receptacle, as described in the standard EN IEC 62680-1-3:2021 ‘Universal serial bus interfaces for data and power - Part 1-3: Common components - USB Type-CTM Cable and Connector Specification’, which should remain accessible and operational at all times;
> What is the procedure/convention for superseding this directive when something supersedes USB-C?
I believe the EU are saying they'll keep up with new standards as they come in. The problem I see is, how can a new standard come in if nobody is allowed to use it. Its a chicken & egg problem, the EU will allow new standards as they're used, but nobody is allowed to use new standards until the EU allows it. Thats aside from the obvious problem that the EU isnt exactly famous for its speed.
The only ways around it I can think of is either if new standards become popular in markets foreign to the EU, or if some company decides to add both USB-C and USB-D to their device, which in a world of needlessly removing the headphone jack I cant see happening.
The connector can still remain the same while the internal changes. USB-C is just the connector head. Look at USB4 that still uses the USB-C head.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB4
It's just like we have new modern electronics, but they are all able to plug into the same wall sockets. I don't have to remodel my home.
Ironically, thats one of the problems with USB-C. So many different standards for wildly different use cases and compatibilities, all visually identical. You pretty much just have to trust (and often times, decipher) the sellers description, and even then thats not always good enough.
> What is the procedure/convention for superseding this directive when something supersedes USB-C?
From the amended text:
> The Commission shall review the application of this Directive in relation to new charging technologies and, report thereon to the European Parliament and to the Council by ... [three years after the date entry into force of this Directive], and every three years thereafter. That report shall be accompanied, if appropriate, by a proposal to amend this Directive to introduce mandatory unbundling.
If the USB Implementor’s Forum want’s to change from USB-C or USB-PD it can speak with the European Commission. It’s an organization with telephones and mail and an address and – I fear – fax machines. Not some weird angels in the sky.
What happens if a constructor wants to push for full wireless charging?
I didn't read the texts, but wouldn't something like mandating companies to release a version of their products with USB-C better instead of only allowing USB-C? Say for example Apple wants to release iPhone 20 with Lightning, or full wireless, then force them to also release iPhone 20 with USB-C and leave the choice to consumers? Is this allowed by the texts?
Did the EU just forbid improving on USB-C? Are cables really creating such a waste compared with the amount of resources that goes into creating the devices themselves?
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 401 ms ] threadThe EU literally did mandate USB-A/plug + micro-USB (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply).
The successful development & widespread use of USB-C afterwards, culminating in this updated directive standardizing it, is a very neat demonstration that it didn't stifle innovation at all.
Surely there must be a difference between the old and the new law. And this difference can then still be stifling innovation.
Signed, happy iPhone owner.
Personally I had 1 charger per device I had, each with their own weird connector, and each cable sold at $20+ a pop, and definitely more if you wanted a "data-cable". These days I only have 2: USB for almost everything, and Lighting for the Apple-thingies only.
With a move like this, I can be down to having only 1 type of charger and connector. It'll be great!
And it will after this move too. You'll just need to use a regular USB-A -> USB-C cable instead of a USB-A -> Lightning cable.
At least a shared standard connector cable will still be usable with other devices. I still have devices that take mini-USB, micro USB, and USB B. Give it 10 or 15 years after iPhone switches off Lightning, and no one will even have a lightning cable anymore, because no one is interested in using a 10 year old iPhone, and no other device uses Lightning.
For me Lightning is just another in your list of connectors that I wish would go away and standardise to USB-C.
As someone who is travelling right now, with a two port charger and two iPhones, an iPad, a laptop, a Switch, an Apple Watch and two sets of USB-C headphones between us, one connector would actually be a significant quality of life improvement (though an even better one would be hotels not killing power to the socket when I’m not in the room so I can charge my devices while I’m out!)
Someone needs to build a simple device you connect a cable to that stress tests it and shows a green or red light.
edit to clarify: ... because while Apple might still include a working cable, but if you grab one of the 10 cables out of your cable box, you don't know if it will actually work.
It would be funny if this ruling strengthened Apple’s position because no one knows which off-brand cable will destroy their device by not limiting current draw.
Without strong regulations on the usb cables themselves, it almost seems like putting the cart before the horse.
Cables aren't the ones limiting current draw, they're cables. And the millions upon millions of USB-C devices in the world right now have no such issues with USB-C charging so where are you pulling these silly ideas from?
You think the rockstar engineers of Apple aren't capable of designing a charging circuit with reliability of a 80$ Chinese manufactured Android phone?
Incorrect. All USB-PD cables, whether their connectors are USB-A, -B, and/or USB-C, are responsible for honestly declaring their charging power limit to the charger and to the device, and in the USB-PD specifications are specifically responsible for limiting current draw to the rated capacity of the cable. Per USB PD spec:
> Sources Shall detect the type of Attached cable and limit the Capabilities they offer based on the current carrying capability of the cable determined by the Cable capabilities determined using the Discover Identity Command (see Section 6.4.4.2) sent using SOP’ Communication (see Section 2.4) to the Cable Plug.
> The Cable VDO returned as part of the Discover Identity Command details the maximum current and voltage values that Shall be negotiated for a given cable as part of an Explicit Contract.
Cheap, lying, uncertified USB cables that declare their ability to support higher charging rates — for example, 100W which is 5A at 20V in USB — have been known to short out and destroy chargers and devices in the process of doing so.
This was discussed in a couple hundred comments across multiple posts when a Google engineer had to pressure Amazon through product reviews to enforce USB-IF certification on all USB-C cables several years ago:
2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10508494
2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11387212
>Cheap, lying, uncertified USB cables that declare their ability to support higher charging rates — for example, 100W which is 5A at 20V in USB — have been known to short out and destroy chargers and devices in the process of doing so.
Yes, HN loves to discuss and gripe about it over and over again (quoting the same kind of unconfirmed posts that are out of date by years)... it just fails to prove that this is still any kind of widespread issue worse than any other cable connector issue.
Compliant USB-PD devices honor those cable limits. Non-compliant devices do not, but ignoring them does not negate their definition as limits.
Apple only has one other USB-C <-> USB-C cable and that's the "Thunderbolt 3 Cable" which supports everything in USB 3.1 Gen 2
The 1m also supports 97W charging. I have the 2m (shipped with my MacBook Pro) and the 1m (shipped with my iPad Air) and I can confirm they charge my MacBook the same.
I can't believe people are celebrating the government getting involved with the design process of the only tech company that actually holds themselves to a standard on design. And by forcing them to use a port where the spec is such a mess.
I have dollar store Lightning cables that only have pins on one side and only charge and don't do data.
Also Lightning cables suck because you know that literally none of them can even do even 1080p video.
There is no EU law requiring any retailers to care, so far as I know, as long as the unsafe cables don’t have USB-IF logos printed on the connectors.
https://www.totalphase.com/products/advanced-cable-tester-v2...
I don't know what to think.
Btw the same thing happened with the EV charging (SAE J1772).
I think France has the one where the ground pin sticks out? That can be a problem depending on which cable you have.
And then there's UK of course, though they're not part of EU anymore.
In tech circles like HN, I have seen the UK style plug and its fuse and local power switch lauded for its superior safety, but it's really just belt and suspenders added to make up for old, cheap not forward-thinking design. I like US style plugs because they are small, and for portable stuff often have a folding design that saves space. But I'm biased because I have only lived in Canada and Japan until recently so naturally all my stuff uses this standard.
In addition to that I am a huge nerd about plugs, chargers and travel adapters. Anything I have that is remotely portable is usb-c powered. I've hacked every old wireless mouse, keyboard, headphones that I own to use usb-c to reduce the number of cables and adapters I need for life and travel to the minimum[1]. I don't recommend this to you or anyone else but when I do end up with a UK plug power source, I use a plastic pen lid to brute force my europlug adapter into a UK socket.
Changing to europlug in Ireland is an interesting topic. It would be so tough to phase-in europlugs given that one of the differences is the UK plug with fuse is possible to use with ring circuits. And changing existing ring circuits to radial (each circuit goes back to the breaker box on an independent wiring run) would be expensive enough in wood-framed houses/North America but incredibly expensive in Ireland. Ireland is famously mostly deforested, so old houses are usually stone and new ones are usually concrete. On top of that, Ireland didn't experience recent destruction and rebuilding/postwar-rebuilding like mainland Europe did. A lot of houses[2] are very old, and many are protected cultural assets even if privately owned so you couldn't just send any old contractor in to start drilling holes and carving out channels or adding wall-mounted conduit for new wiring. It wouldn't be popular to spend on this or to potentially scar a lot of historical or family homes.
On the other hand, post-brexit there could be enough will to align more to the single EU marketplace. I don't want to be that guy that speculates "just do this" on a topic I am not an expert in, but I didn't find any serious proposal or discussion by googling it. I think the solution would be to require local outlets or permanent adapters that assume the function of the fuse in UK plugs at each outlet, and provide both EU and UK plug compatibility. You wouldn't want to allow temporary adapters because any unqualified person could make a working but unsafe configuration. You wouldn't want to force EU plugs on everyone because that would also encourage unsafe modification/adapters, or be unpopular/expensive by requiring modification of an antique device.
[1] If you are comfortable with soldering, filing, 3d printing and taking things apart, you can find usb-c sockets with the appropriate resistors installed, and tiny dc-dc converter boards with usb-c input on aliexpress, and easily update old low-power, stuff from micro-usb, barrel connector, etc to usb-c. I even added usb-c power to my NES, SNES, gamecube, wii and wii-u.
[2] I say houses and not buildings because I want to highlight the considerations for the average person, and I also presume anything commercial or open to the public already mandates using the latest building codes and safety features above all considerations. This is evident when you visit a beautiful anc...
Edit: usb-c is both the former and the latter. Macbooks and ipads had already switched, it seems likely the next iphone would have been usb-c anyway, or perhaps portless.
I'm not sure that other EU standards there would be that we don't have, being an EU member, except for decent cycling and mass transport infra, and that would be dramatic improvement.
Could be done, with adapters.
Also, basically all of the adapters say not for long term use, and they're nowhere near as stout or secure as either type of plug alone.
Anyway, the UK plug is the best one out there, except for stepping on them. They're worse than legos, and that's saying something. (and maybe size, weight, and cost. But electrically, they're good)
Also of note: you aren't required by national or state law to use any kind of electrical system in the U.S. The National Electric Code is not a binding document. It's up to individual municipalities to decide whether they want to adopt it (or some other standard, which they're free to do).
It's interesting to read the comments here from people that have equipment and stuff in their houses and cars and workplaces that are constrained by regulations and laws all around them, but are worried about a connector on their phone.
A "free" market needs regulation otherwise it develops into monopolies. Setting standards is a way to regulate to ensure a level playing field for competition.
It's not like the EU has rushed this decision, or that anyone is proposing some other standard that wasn't considered.
These are very well understood areas, there is only so many ways you can transport electricity. Also, there is nothing stopping innovation “after” the plug. It’s like saying that HTTP somehow stifles innovation.
Yes, I do. There would be no standard.
> Maybe the industry must have progressed without the need of outlets in the first place.
Wireless electricity? Maybe, maybe not. 99.999999% probability for the latter, though.
But at the same time, I think there may be a place for mandating interface compatibility.
To give some old-school examples, how differently might industrialization have gone if rail systems weren't mandated to operate under some shared standards? Or where would we be if every country had a handful of competing power grids with different voltages and outlet types?
So I am not sure the cable which plugs into our phones is the correct target for standardization, but in spirit I think it's worthwhile to consider how the public good of interoperability should be weighed against a handful of corporations' interest in building technological moats around themselves and their users.
First, market forces already standardized on two main standards.
Second, the interop problem is a $10 cable between wall-wart and device.
So the problem solved is a small one. I think this idea got its momentum from years ago when practically every model of phone had a different charger and wall wart.
Meanwhile, think about what you lose.
Is USB-C really the end-game of charging connectors? It has existing issues with labeling and capabilities confusion. What about mag-safe-style connectors? Does a phone necessarily need a charging connector at all and might there not be advantages to not having one?
As an aside, ewaste will increase in the short term, of course, as people will have to throw out their lighting stuff and buy USB-C stuff. (Don’t worry, it’s not a lot — small problem, remember.)
So, one standard too many. Especially when one of those standards is held hostage by one corporation.
> Is USB-C really the end-game of charging connectors?
It's close enough, we can already see that improvements have been incredibly incremental already. Hell, it would have been fine to stick to micro-B or even mini-B.
> What about mag-safe-style connectors?
You already have people building those as third-party dongles. Clearly it doesn't have to be part of the spec.
> Does a phone necessarily need a charging connector at all
Yes. Wireless charging is inherently far less efficient than wired charging.
> and might there not be advantages to not having one?
No. To steal a quote from yourself: this is unambiguously a bad idea.
Just like it’s super annoying getting a cookie bar on every single website I go to every single time. I just roll my eyes every time I see it.
I'd be interested to see an actual proposed improvement that isn't just "we changed the plug so you have to buy new cables (from us)!" or "we made charging 80% less efficient!".
But so far there has been no meaningful improvement in the last… 20 years or so, and an awful lot of new incompatible standards.
Do you really think there have been no meaningful improvements in charging connectors in the last 20 years?
EU sat down the manufacturers and told them that if they don't come to an agreement the EU will make the choice for them. Most of them came to an agreement. So you are right, market forces did make manufacturers to standardize on two main standards. That force is named EU.
> Is USB-C really the end-game of charging connectors?
No, and EU has no illusions that it is.
> Does a phone necessarily need a charging connector at all and might there not be advantages to not having one?
No, and the EU doesn't think that it does.
> As an aside, ewaste will increase in the short term, of course, as people will have to throw out their lighting stuff and buy USB-C stuff. (Don’t worry, it’s not a lot — small problem, remember.)
This is just stupid fearmongering. People won't have to throw their lightning stuff.
> This is just stupid fearmongering.
I guess if you can't make a good point, you can always hurl insults.
What do you think people who upgrade their iPhones in 2024 will do with their lightning cables which no longer connect to anything they have?
sell
But swapping a plug doesn’t buy us that. This is evidenced by the fact that no company is forced to use lightning to compete.
Almost everything uses USB-A at the outlet and choose your other end. We’re starting to see USB-C at the outlet, but same thing.
I also don’t see the e-waste argument. I haven’t had a cable outlive a device. My kids go through them every other month. No plug fixes that, it’s almost always where the cable joins the plug. (Except micro-USB, we shall never speak of that again).
My other biggest practical problem is that, despite appearances, USB-C != USB-C, and the off-the-shelf cables are awful, especially for normal humans.
In my dream world, I’d love to see clearly labeled device and cord capabilities, and USB-C all the things, and a reigned in USB-C spec.
I just think that government is a bad place to do it, and don’t see a necessary state interest case for their intervention.
My old Nokia Micro-B cables outlived their bundled devices by a factor of… 3x or so? And I only took those out of use because I don't have a lot of stuff that still uses Micro-B.
Actually, I don't think I've ever managed to break a USB cable yet. What on earth are you doing to the things?!
I imagine this is what GP experienced, based on my experience with it on iphones and apple laptops.
My kids keep their tablets plugged in while using a lot of the time. I think it’s the stress on the joint from having the cable taut or yanking it around or something.
I did change to making them pay for replacements. That definitely slowed the rate :).
I'm not sure that analogy holds particularly well. The UK did build rail systems without shared standards, and only standardised on gauge in 1846, which was very late in the industrial revolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Gauge_War - Standards for other things like signalling also came late, and broad gauge was still in use until 1892. (Notably though, this did happen just at the turn of Railway Mania, so affected a lot of the new lines.)
Effectively, the UK let (mainly by omission, not intentionally) the solutions compete and then selected the most broadly used solution to standardise on.
(I'd love to see any scholarly research on this though; I haven't seen a huge degree of it. Obviously things are different outside of the UK, but given it's where (uncoincidentally) both the industrial revolution and railways were born, that's the clear case to look at.)
We're down to two connectors here, one of which is only used by a single vendor; do you think that hasn't already happened?
If anything this will increase the value of official apple chargers because at least those will be well designed.
They might still have other issues, but nothing that damages your device.
We have plenty of free market examples of why "innovation" in the connector space almost always spawns lemons and makes everything worse in the meantime.
I find laws like this problematic because measuring success or failure is super tricky. How do you know about innovation that hasn't happened? If in 5 years or 10 years we're using USB-C connectors is that great or does it mean there's some better idea that isn't being taken to market? I'm sure there are subject matter experts who might confidently weigh in on that but could they realistically get this law changed? Even if those experts agreed there was a better solution would the majority of the incumbent players in the space want that solution?
Laws like this create a situation where opposition depends upon people missing things they've never had and wanting things that they can't conceive of.
Power plugs (per country), audio jacks, gas plugs.
Or do you miss the experience of being able to plug your GM car in GM-Approved™ gas stations?
Yes, EV charging in the states.
How can free sharing of ideas stifle innovation?
(Minus specialized sockets like 240v, 30A, etc.)
It would be ridiculous to have adapters and specialized plugs for everything for such a basic purpose.
I wonder if they will just be able to ship iphones with lightning cables and a usbc adapter and a usbc to lightning port adapter so the customers can just throw out the adapters and use the lightning cables.
Besides, existing phones are obviously going to stay Lightning. Cables aren't going to be thrown out any earlier than the phones themselves
Depends on the device.
Standards for EV fast charging are a very good thing. North America has two different plugs and protocols for DC fast charging (three if you count CHAdeMO) and it's a mess. The EU has standardized on CCS Type 2 Combo so any brand of CCS charging car can charge on any brand of CCS charging network. That's good common sense and it benefits everyone.
Incompatible charging infrastructure doesn't benefit any EV owner. It's a drag on the EV market. Closed networks like Tesla's and Rivian's are continuing to be part of the problem.
Tesla is (very) slowly changing in North America:
https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/28/22596337/tesla-supercharg...
Rivian still hasn't got the memo. Rivian's chargers are at least CCS but because they're brand exclusive they don't see much use:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbvW0nK38j8
Those chargers could be earning more revenue right now instead of sitting idle. All they have to do is unlock the software.
All new Tesla stations in Europe use CCS and most of the older stations have been retrofitted with CCS connectors in addition to Type 2.
I have an adaptor for my 2017 Model S that allows it to use CCS instead of Type 2 and newer cars can be converted so that CCS connectors can be used without adaptors. All new EVs in Europe already use CCS and Tesla are slowly opening up their network to other brands of car.
So how is Tesla part of the problem?
Yes. You're restating what I have said. Tesla should hurry up and open them all.
> So how is Tesla part of the problem?
Because Tesla chargers are not open to all brands everywhere.
A better question to ask is why is Tesla not the leader in multi-brand charging. Other charging networks have delivered chargers which support all brands of EV with longer cables for more vehicle types and are faster than Tesla's chargers to boot.
How can I charge my Volvo truck on Tesla's existing chargers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UAttTG03WA
What about my bus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lNTjJW7HEY
How do I charge my Porsche Taycan on Tesla's chargers at 800 volts instead of this 400 volt business: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0F42jY3dD8
How do I charge my BMW without blocking another charger due to Tesla's short-sighted charger design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y33AArvMUQ
Tesla's V4 chargers will apparently have longer cables, but Tesla is still no Alpitronic.
This is why we all (apart from Apple) settled on one standard
I still have a box of old phones with custom chargers, headsets and data cables. The Nokia barrel plug (different sizes), the Siemens comb style connector, the Ericsson break away type connector, the Motorola two prong, the Bosch connector and some really weird LG/NEC/SAGEM plugs.
Good riddance.
Is USB-C the best connector or form factor we could ever do?
You seem unaware that the government regulate a LOT of things and while this has stiffed some innovation, the cost is probably worth it.
When was the last time a house burned down due to electrical issues? In the past, prior to standards this was rather common.
If you want a general understanding of what things were like prior to "regulation".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knob-and-tube_wiring
Now ask how you would plug an appliance into this mess...
Except that it isn't obvious. You're essentially at the end of an extremely long and complicated supply chain for a multi-million device pipeline. You have no idea what a change, any change, involves. And because you don't know this (assuming you're not a supply chain engineer of design for manufacture specialist) you cannot state that it is obvious either.
What is obvious is that some people would have liked it sooner, and what is also obvious is that the manufacturer (Apple) has been moving in that direction for years (on other lower-volume lower-risk devices).
Tim Cook made himself a legendary leader in logistics and manufacturing before taking on the CEO role for being able to do just what you say he would have problem doing.
If you nuke lightning from iPhones, you have the same problem as with the 30-pin connectors: entire cars suddenly don't work with your phone anymore, many years worth of produced lightning devices no longer connect and everything from charging and data exchange to debugging and alternate output modes will no longer work. This is not a technical problem to solve, since they already wrote tools and created workflows for doing that on the less risky product lines (Macs, iPads etc.) where the impact of a bad port implementation is much lower. But phones are still carried around all day (in pockets no less), charged/plugged a lot etc. which while seemingly slightly different makes for additional risk when implementing.
Considering that seemingly insignificant changes (like that dumb antenna shorting problem when holding the phone in the iPhone 4 due to a small case change) can lead to huge and very expensive problems (like replacing all panels on the first white iPhones due to the paint not sticking well enough). If you have 70 million iPads and 1% has the issue, that's not great but also not too bad. If you have 200+ million iPhones and 1% has an issue, that's pretty bad, and you also get a lot more flak because people are very emotional about their phones, as well as phones they don't have and would never buy but still complain about.
Back to the supply chain and logistics, all fixtures, machining workflows, testing and component sourcing would have to change, which isn't too bad on its own, but because there are still many many years of supported phones out there, you have to keep the old method around as well. This problem doesn't exactly go away, regardless of how long you stall, but if you work on a method to make that less of a problem (i.e. make sure the next revision of test harnesses and repair fixtures account for it when they get cycled), while also growing your ecosystem (other devices with USB-C within your brand) you can build up knowledge and specialism in your workforce (i.e. the people that make the manuals for the people that work in the store can lean from inevitable mistakes they will make in the initial USB-C versions of iPads). That means that when you do finally make the seemingly tiny change (which for charging really is just a bunch of B.S. since it's not about the port on the device but the plug you stick in the charger) and get those internal USB-C models they probably have had for years up in the design for manufacture and retail phase, the risk is much lower.
It is however, just as likely that they will go full iPhone X again and make a portless phone instead. Going portless has the same ecosystem risk (mostly marketing risk) since they would be breaking compatibility with lighting anyway, but because there won't be a new port, there isn't going to be a change in material thickness, ingress points in general or new chips to add to the design. So perhaps that would be half the risk of another connector migration.
And Apple has been cruelly blindsided, as the EU has only been pushing this issue since 2009, giving Apple a mere 13 years to prepare.
It just wasn't reasonable to expect them to conquer the massive challenge of USB charging in the iPhone 4, 4s, 5, 5c, 5s, 6, 6 plus, 6s, 6s plus, 7, 7 plus, 8, 8 plus, x, xr, xs, xs max, 11, 11 pro, 11 pro max, 12, 12 mini, 12 pro, 12 pro max, 13, 13 min, 13 pro, 13 pro max,13, 14 plus, 14 pro, or 14 pro max.
Also, suggesting someone was blindsided is just a dumb flame bait and you know it. If you can't properly discuss this, why are you even here?
Can't replace old diesel trucks with green fuel trucks because the act of replacing them causes some pollution.
It's entire raison d'être of the law is to mandate that devices themselves and their charger share a common standard. So an example e.g. Annex 2a clarifies that:
> The requirements in points 2 and 3 below shall apply to the following categories or classes of radio equipment [mobile phones, tablets, cameras, headsets, mice, etc, ...]
> [They shall] be equipped with the USB Type-C receptacle, as described in the standard EN IEC 62680-1-3:2021 ‘Universal serial bus interfaces for data and power - Part 1-3: Common components - USB Type-C® Cable and Connector Specification’, which should remain accessible and operational at all times;
Now defactor I'd never seen before.
I assume it will take ten years or so.
Really I would just love a small usbc female to lighting male. Would solve all my cable problems basically.
I hope this has an expiration date, or they have a provision for easily updating the law when somebody develops a better standard. Otherwise this could mean we would be stuck with USB-C forever.
(As a developer, writing "USB-C" in a law this seems to me like hardcoding a magic string in source code. Often, it is better to have your data separate from code. Maybe it would make more sense if the law would defer to some standards body, that could update the technical decision more easily.)
Between various generations of Qualcomm Quick Charge and USB PD at various wattages for charging alone, and then USB 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2 Gen 1, 3.2 Gen 2, 3.2 Gen 2 2x2, Thunderbolt 2, Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 for data, it seems like they have plenty of room for future movement/fragmentation.
Then I bought a new phone. I had a USB-C port. Suddenly, I couldn't charge it up just anywhere. If that phone had a Micro-USB version, I'd have chosen that one in a heartbeat.
Yes, USB-C is nice. Better than Micro-USB. So good that it compensates for the hassle? No.
I think USB-C is one of the first "good enough" connectors we have had for the arbitrary use-case. It's reversible. It's suitable for high-power and high-bandwidth use-cases. It's robust. micro-USB works ok for charging small devices, but would it really make sense to replace USB-A with it for plugging peripherals into your PC for example?
Yes, being able to plug in the connector both ways around is nice, but it wasn't that inconvenient not to be able to do that, especially when put against the inconvenience of needing these extra heads.
I can certainly imagine someone having similar frustrations when Mini-USB gave way to Micro-USB. I can only hope that when USB-D connectors come around, there's more than only small incremental improvements to get me on board.
If USB-C has the same longevity, and can also replace small-form-factor connectors, that's a pretty big win right? It's not too bad to put up with a connector change 2-4 times in your life.
These headlines make me proud. Let's reach a global standard for charging stuff.
I wish everything that had to be charged sometimes had a USB-C plug. But also I hope that the USB standard gets less messy in the future.
Amazing that people still don’t get it.
That's not how USB works.
Tech history, and human history in general, is littered with examples. Especially in the old Warsaw Pact states.
> why should the committee put any effort into developing anything better?
The EU is absolutely not in the business of developing any connector whatsoever. They wanted _a_ standard (for eco/market reasons), and asked the industry to create one. This became USB and the USB Forum. Now they make it mandatory to follow that standard. In the act they passed, the power to set the specific standard is deferred to the European Commission, to make it easier to update it if necessary. These are called delegated acts [0]. If a new physical connector is ever necessary, the USB forum will write the standard, ask the EU if they can update the reference, which is easy since it's only a matter of pushing paperwork. _Not_ hardcoding a feature like this, and following what industry wants is an explicit goal of the legislative process. It has worked extremely well in these sorts of circumstances. The only risk I could see is a technical innovation for connectors, which the USB Forum refuses to implement for some reason. This could happen, but I don't see it as being any different then current industry practices.
[0]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM...
I love the fact that there is a standardized port, and I can get devices of any type to charge with a single powerful charger. But connector and cables are wonky at best if you want to have a single cable for everything too (look up prices, thickness and lengths of USB-C PD 100W, alt-DP 1.4 capable, USB 3+ speeds cables, and then watch them break in a few months of "regular" use like in a car charger).
But I want a better, more robust standard than USB-C! Can that happen with the law in place? I don't know, but that scares me.
I’m aware of your sarcasm, but it did bother me that my Tesla used a proprietary port that made it more difficult to use other charging locations, such as the charger next to my apartment. Electric vehicle charging ports need standardization as well.
Perhaps having these laws standardizing ports will set the groundwork for a more robust standard in the future. I don’t think there’s ever going to be a perfect solution since there are so many differing opinions, but I do believe this is a good start.
This is happening in europe, tesla is switching to type 2 connectors. I think these laws certainly play a role in motivating the company.
Similarly for cars: as you push for faster charging, you'll need bigger connector pins, though I am sure (I hope?) standard EV ports are sufficiently over-engineered for the time being.
> Regardless of their manufacturer, all new mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones and headsets, handheld videogame consoles and portable speakers, e-readers, keyboards, mice, portable navigation systems, earbuds and laptops that are rechargeable via a wired cable, operating with a power delivery of up to 100 Watts, will have to be equipped with a USB Type-C port.
I do kind of get it though. It's probably better for a whole host of reasons if electronics all used the same cords, but I guess you could make that argument for a lot of things. There would be benefits if there was only one mobile operating system or if all mobiles used the same interchangeable batteries, for example.
When a standard makes sense companies will generally adopt it naturally. The fact so many manufacturers use USB-C today just proves that this probably doesn't need to be enforced. I suppose it's just strange to me this would even need to be a law or that there are people paid to pass laws like this.
I think in the case of USB-C it's not too bad just because USB-C is widely agreed to be a good connector that's already widely adopted, but there have been plenty of bad connectors in the past which in theory the EU could now be deciding consumer electronics companies are forced to use.
This also assumes USB-C is always the best option which I doubt. I'm sure there are products which given the application, size or price point might suite a different cable better. Technology also moves on and connectors change for a reason. Now we're going to be stuck with outdated hardware until EU regulators update laws. At which companies and you as the consumer will be forced to adopt that new connector regardless of your preferences.
Printer ink, razor blades, and so on are other examples besides connector cables where companies' `innovations' tend to make things worse for the consumer. Even if the new cable is technically slightly better, the other factors of price, availability, and lack of inter-operability ultimately make things worse for the consumer.
Also, you'd likely have more luck getting elected officials to change EU policies than you would have with mega company board members changing profit-maximizing strategies.
They have explicitly called out not regulating wireless charging for this reason.
Yours is a valid concern, but it's not grounded in reality.
Doesn't wireless charging present even more problems, given the meager efficiency compared to using wires?
> The following companies have signed the MoU: Apple, LG, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Qualcomm, Research in Motion (RIM), Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Texas Instruments.
[1]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=SWD%3A20... (Annex 2)
Oh, capitalism makes all these choices possible for me, how wonderful!
All those shady un-elected EU regulators...
Oh wait, which ones do you not elect again? Was it government officials or company managers?
Seeing the benefit to doing that kind of thing (which required developments in thought & practice in political economy) and being able to effectively enforce such decrees (which required various other developments in theory and technology, plus the right circumstances) on a large area is even seen as one of the hallmarks of the development of the nation-state, and a major stepping stone to our modern global economic system and the modern state.
What proportion of phone consumers have an informed opinion on charging technology? Why would the electronics companies work in a way that benefits everyone/the environment instead of themselves.
> I guess you could make that argument for a lot of things
We do, we have standards for a ridiculous amount of things no one ever thinks about.
> There would be benefits if there was only one mobile operating system or if all mobiles used the same interchangeable batterie
Standardising the operating system would create a monopoly and have no obvious society wide benefits. Whereas cables can be made by anyone competent. It would be more prudent to mandate user replacable batteries before thinking about if such a specific battery standard could feasibly work. Something you can probably make a good argument for.
Like the myriad businesses already making lightning cables?
This isn't something created by faceless bureaucrats behind closed doors.
The "regulators" are the EU Parliament, who are elected by residents in the various countries. The issue has been talked about for a few years, and was voted on 603 to 13, that's over 96% (including abstentions).
Then almost by magic everyone switched to micro USB. You could charge different devices from different manufacturers with the same cable. This wasn't some feat of magic, it was because the European Commission worked to bring manufacturers to an agreement on a common charging standard.
Well, everyone except Apple, who did actually sign the agreement. They just decided to bundle a dongle to be compliant.
Mini-USB was introduced in 2000, so manufactures had plenty of time to choose a common interface themselves, but decided not to.
Even amongst Apple's own devices it is a mess. To charge an Apple Pencil with an iPad Pro you need not one, but two adapters.
> When a standard makes sense companies will generally adopt it naturally.
My point was that manufacturers could have done so (with Mini-USB) if they wanted to, but chose not to. Until smart phones came around, most phones were more than thick enough to have a Mini-USB port (and a lot did).
I’m curious what you’re referring to. I charge my Apple Pencil while connected to my iPad, and my iPad chargers via usb c. No adapters for me?
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0276/6463/files/How-to-Cha...
One does not have to be that old enough.
Look no further than personal care and small home appliances (electric shavers – yes, Braun, I am looking at you; electric toothbrushes – and you, too, Philips! As well as household and kitchen appliances) the vast majority of which still come with incompatible proprietary chargers that are so hard, expensive or inconvenient (usually all of the above) to procure to replace that the entire gadget oftentimes gets disposed of because of the failed charger.
Governments ought to crack down on those ones as well, and crack down real, real hard.
It took this long for the EU to pass common standard legislation after talking about it for years. I can't imagine they will be any faster in updating it if USB-C becomes outdated.
No one can predict new technology. Ideally the law should have an end date or require regular renewal.
It's not that, it's that companies know what's good for them and consumers are a secondary consideration, if that.
Consider EU mobile phone roaming regulation: it's an unalloyed good. We've gone from expensive and inconvenient roaming charges and roaming add-ons to free roaming at almost no increase in prices. There was initially some increase in very low priced plans yet I have a 2.65 euro a month 1GB data only plan (with full roaming) which is a blindingly good deal.
USB 4 on iPhones, and ideally Thunderbolt on the Pro iPhones that shoot large videos, would be amazing.
Also, here is the final report commissioned by the EU: “Impact Assessment Study to Assess Unbundling of Chargers (July 2021)” [0].
[0] https://op.europa.eu/o/opportal-service/download-handler?ide...
I don't see any win besides a minor convenience. A lightning cable weighs almost nothing and it's not a big deal to have one around.
As to lightning port limitations, I question whether usb-c will give average iPhone users any other advantage other than charging their phone. What are people gonna do with it other than charge their phones or transfer files?
Feels like there's nothing to celebrate here. Just the EU using its influence to exert control over things that don't matter at all.
It's because consumers have rights too. Standardising something actually fosters competition (healthy capitalism), increases profit (as standardising something often leads to lower manufacturing costs) while reducing costs for consumers (due to increased competition). It also reduces waste which is good for the environment.
> I don't see any win besides a minor convenience.
You will, when you have to buy another USB-C cable for your iDevice. I recently had to, for an iPad Air, and I was able to buy a good quality replacement USB-C cable (of similar spec) from Samsung for Rs. 750 (around $10) rather than paying Apple an exorbitant Rs. 2000 (around $20+). (Past experience with Apple cables has taught me that the higher price charged by Apple is no guarantee of better quality, and other non-Apple cables from reputed companies are often cheaper, more durable and last longer than Apple's).
In contrast, I bought an usb-c cable from one plus 5 years ago, which is still in perfect condition. With the iPhones, I use cables from some company (forgot the name) that have lifetime warranty. I swear I could tow my car with those, _for the same price_
Apart from the cable that came in my iPhone 7's box many years ago (which still works perfectly and, excluding a little dirt, looks like new), all my other lightning cables are off-brand ones that cost much less than $20 apiece. More like 10.
Some of them (Aukey brand) developed a wonky connection after a while, or only work on one side. The others (Amazon Basics) still work perfectly, after spending uncountable hours in the sun and rain powering my phone on my motorbike's handlebars.
All this without any kind of law (I'm in the EU).
Lightening cables are not a standard and thus Apple dictates terms even with non-Apple lightening cables. As lightening cables are not an industry standard the prices are influenced by Apple and artificially inflated (even for non-Apple ones). And they can only be used with Apple devices. (Lightening cables have seen a recent price fall only after Apple shifted to USB-C for some iDevices, as the market fears Apple is already preparing to switch to USB-C).
USB-C cables will be even cheaper in the future as they are standardised, and since they can be used with multiple devices (due to such regulations) you need to buy fewer of them too.
What I can say, is that in France on Amazon, USB-C cables and Lightning cables had similar prices when I last bought mine a few years ago. I usually compare Amazon Basics and Ugreen / Aukey brands.
I’ve seen this argument a few times “yay now I only have to take one cable on holiday”. Sure, unless you want to charge two devices at once while you’re sleeping, perhaps… it’s an unrelated argument to which connector is better.
It is very inconvenient and a hassle to have 5 different cables for 5 different devices. It is a waste of space, materials... The economic gains by volume continent wide should not be underestimated.
I guess if I'm going to replace my phone I should do it soon while I can still use my existing cables with the new one.
...now, whether that's because it's that good of a connector or because we humans wipe ourselves out before we get around to inventing something better is another question altogether.
This literally just created a mountain of e-waste. We turned a hypothetical "what about when they switch" into a forced reality.
How will usbc lead to less waste?
If you wanna make that argument, wouldn’t it be better to force companies to opt you out of getting chargers and cables unless you explicitly ask for them when you make the purchase?
That is a natural step forward after the cables are unified. Even today, 80% of the electronic devices I'm buying are coming without a charger and this is all due to the fact that the market stabilized to USB charging (mini and now USB-C).
I still remember we used to have drawers full of old phone chargers...
> Unbundling the sale of a charger from the sale of the electronic device
But without a universal charger that doesn't make sense: if I still need a specific charger for a device, I'm going to have to buy that with the device anyways.
At least with lightning you know what you are buying, and maybe the overpriced cables that Apple sells will work better than the most cheap ones, which brand give you the warranties for the cable specs? does belkin and co sell also cables?
Cables (generally) don't go bad in a year or two and can last for quite a few years. Most long-term iPhone users probably have at least a few spare cables throughout their desk, house, car that they've bought over time that they'd now have no substitutes for and would need to replace.
You might have dictated a situation where people now have to throw away a pile of perfectly usable cables/accessories and buy a bunch of new ones. While well intentioned, this law might have otherwise achieved the opposite of what it set out to do.
PS: Whether this law exists or not, I'd have bet on Apple working to go fully wireless soon and this might just accelerate that effort.
I mean, or Apple could do the one thing they've done absolutely tons of recently (so it wouldn't be a surprising or unheard of move from them) and sell a dongle for lightning -> USB-C?
Now you don't have to do any of what you just said would be a guarantee.
So, now I'll have to replace the one in my car (with, I guess, a usbA to usbC cable?), I'll have to replace the ones all around my house.
Unless you are suggesting that I should only charge my phone in the one room with my Mac?
I'd say my argument is purely logistical - one less cable type would be quite a boon to me personally. I have a few lightning cables that only work with exactly one device that I own - my iPhone 11. I'm quite happy with my phone, and perhaps ironically for Apple, the best way they'd have to get me to replace it would be to make a new one with a USB-C port; it's the feature I'd most like at this point.
I'd also love to see touchid make a return, but I don't see that happening.
Some people need to remember that it's not all about them.
And your USB-C chargers and power banks were and are perfectly capable of charging Lightning devices.
I guess you'll have to figure out how to handle the slight inconvenience that Apple is putting their IPAD customers and laptop customers through.
1) You buy a USB-C to Lightning cable. Obviously. 2) Everyone bitches about Apple supposedly requiring all kinds of dongles, but of course, what caused that? Apple's insistence on putting only Thunderbolt ports on the Mac. Which of course use what connector? USB-C.
People need to figure out what they are bitching about before just mouthing words about dongles all the time.
Phones no longer have "dock connectors" do they? What about anyone who had a dock port?
Having an iPhone and android phones, Lightening is ANNOYING. Almost nothing uses it. I can charge my Kindle via USB-C, my headphones via USB-C but need an ancient lightening to charge my phone?
Lastly, can you outline what devices people have which are dependent on Lightning? AirPods? they could have been released with USB-C from the start, allowing Apple to move away from lightning.
Nowadays all laptops can charge over usb-c (including Apple laptops, mind you!). Did anybody have to force Apple to do this? No, because charging technology improved so much that what used to be a big brick is now a pocketable GAN charger. Even the new magsafe laptops still support usb-c charging. And iPhones support wireless qi charging as well as Apple's proprietary magnet based wireless charging solution. Thanks to cheaper chips all devices can now negotiate how much power they need from the power brick. That's a big win, and this just wasn't possible a decade ago.
We're in the final stretch of a 20 year trend towards universal chargers, and this EU mandate is totally unnecessary.
Not really, though. I'm using one and it's just fine. Nonsense aside...
> Nowadays all laptops can charge over usb-c (including Apple laptops, mind you!). Did anybody have to force Apple to do this? No
Yes. That's what the EU has been doing by talking about forcing the standardization. Dollars to donuts that apple would still be on their proprietary connector if not for that.
> this EU mandate is totally unnecessary
Disagree. Just look at the iPhones apple is still manufacturing, which they'll now be forced to change.
That said, the thing that seems to make old Android devices obsolete is Google Play Services. It takes up significantly more RAM over time, and it keeps getting updated even when your OS isn't. A degoogled older Android device stays about as useful as it ever was.
Did you forget it was the EU that asked phone producers to standardize (on USB-micro)?
We'd still have one charger per producer without that, since there was no critical mass to adopt one connector or the other.
Note that the threat of a law like this is what caused many other manufacturers to standardize. If Apple gets a pass, what does that signal to the manufacturers who caved, and to everyone else. I would wager it tells them "the eu makes empty threats". This was the result of Apple saying "bluff" to EU demands, and the EU deciding to follow through.
Apple could have prevented this. The EU sort of had its hands bound when it started the process of pushing everyone to one charging. That process was largely very valuable, for apple specifically it isn't that important. But leaving the process incomplete would send the wrong message. Hence I think that Apple is at fault for this regrettable law as the EU is.
This is a bad law that is the result of a process that was, on balance, still very valuable. This law is a small element in the minus column, that does not weigh against the many elements in the plus column. The process I refer to is the EU push to get manufactures to use the same charging port.
Got any source for that?
For dedicated professionals I can see it making sense and nothing should prevent Apple from offering new iPhone Pros with usbc.
But that’s not useful for an average person
It's not, we're glad SOMEONE is forcing them to take this direction, but it's really sad (and potentially damaging) it had to come to this.
> As to lightning port limitations, I question whether usb-c will give average iPhone users any other advantage other than charging their phone. What are people gonna do with it other than charge their phones or transfer files?
Lightning itself is also used for audio (analog audio dongle) and video. The one benefit USB-C could bring to the table is higher transfer speed since Lightning is stuck on USB2 speeds, USB-C doesn't imply USB 3 but they might as well try.
Because if it's the latter, as you say, there's no guarantee we'll see improved speeds because of the port change.
My guess as to why Apple hasn't implemented that is a lack of demand. Syncing/backup is expected to be handled on the device now, and USB 2.0 gives enough bandwidth for the majority of the other cases. And on iPads where more bandwidth might be required (eg. external data storage), they already have USB-C connectors supporting the higher speeds.
Plus iCloud is stubbornly not E2EE.
They hook you in with the $1 option, you see how useful iCloud is and then you'll fork up even more. Then you notice that your whole family can share the subscription and soon you'll be paying $10 for the 2TB option and are an Apple One subscriber.
That's just good business nowadays. All companies _could_ just sell stuff with an one-time fee and provide a service forever, but it's not fiscally responsible in the long run.
Subscriptions are what guarantees quality, you are paying for the service so you can expect a certain level of quality.
https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MK0W2ZM/A/lightning-to...
Apple never made a USB3 to lightning cable.
https://amzn.eu/d/37zSB6e
I really need a cable to charge my phone while driving, for example.
Additionally, charging wirelessly is much slower, sometimes you just need to be able to charge quickly.
Am I to understand you're having issues with wireless charging while driving?
I was having high hopes for this for riding my motorbike because plugging everything in and routing cables is quite the pain...
Worse case you even have to make an access point which isn't a gui operation on most laptops.
https://old.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/un9rjb/airdrop_h...
It isn't. Even the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 will be a bottleneck for modern SSDs.
But the much bigger problem is interoperability between different devices and OSs for Wi-Fi transfers.
Wifi 6 bandwidth: 9.6 Gbit/s M1 SSD read speed: 6000 MB/s
So the read speed is about 6X faster than the Wifi 6 bandwidth.
This shouldn't be legislated. That's absurd.
Because the only balance the capitalism and free market introduce, is high balance on oligarchs' bank accounts.
The standardization is good for a lot of purposes:
- cutting down on the number of cables and especially chargers. Seriously, it's amazing to have one single Anker 65W power supply and a single cable on vacation and it can charge everything - tablet, work phone, laptop, power bank, drones, Nintendo Switch. I 'member the dark times where each of these devices had their own cable and for some even own charger.
- car and in-flight entertainment systems can now be relatively secure that USB-C is here to stay and be used for connectivity, which means less effort for this kind of appliance
- if a cable gets lost or damaged, spare cables are cheap and plentiful, and they will also be available in a few years of time
- devices can now be shipped without a charger and cable, which reduces package size and weight (and thus shipping efficiency, as more packages fit into a single container) and as almost everyone has chargers and cables, there is no need to produce as many chargers and cables before, which reduces resource consumption and eventually waste
- when devices break down, chargers still can live on. Even a plain old 5W USB charger is enough to charge an e-cigarette.
- interoperability between devices gets increased. No more micro-USB-to-micro-USB or whatever rare cables to interface, say, a DSLR camera with a phone to transfer photos, a plain USB-C cable is sufficient.
> Feels like there's nothing to celebrate here. Just the EU using its influence to exert control over things that don't matter at all.
Well... Apple refused for years to implement USB-C on the iPhone on their own, while the rest of the market converged first on micro-USB and nowadays on USB-C. The regulation was only established to force the hands of the largest player, which didn't like USB-C because it would destroy its lucrative MFi licensing - basically, rent seeking by preventing competition with a closed solution instead of an open standard.
If there is one thing that drives EU legislation ideas, it is the convergence towards open and common, market-wide standards. This reduces the barriers to entry for small players and leads to more innovation as a result. Additionally, since the 500M citizens of the EU are a market bloc that no manufacturer can afford to ignore and for most things except automotive it isn't worth to set up different supply chains, our legislation can improve the lives of everyone on this planet - just take the RoHS directive, which led to lead solder being phased out worldwide and less lead ending up in the environment.
Too many people don't understand that trade agreements are about common standards and accountability.
There is a lot of noise about EU regulations made by people who are stuck in 18th century mindsets about trade and who fancy themselves as "free traders".
Unfortunately, trade agreements can also end up being abused to enable price dumping. Yes, consumers may enjoy lower prices for goods, but if the cost is domestic industry being completely devastated or human rights being violated at large scale (e.g. children being enslaved in questionably legal mining operations or factories), is it worth it?
Most trade agreements at the time have almost no "equal standards" clause for manufacturing. Stuff like toxic materials (e.g. RoHS) is regulated, but lower work standards - minimum wages, child labor prevention, slavery prevention, fire codes (e.g. the horrible fires that regularly happen in Bangladesh [1]), disposal of waste, CO2 emissions - are not.
The result of that non-regulation is that nations like China, India or Vietnam flood European and US markets with goods that are only cheap (compared to domestic products) because the environment and the workers get exploited. We outsource our dirty industry.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Dhaka_garment_factory_fir...
And for what it's worth, even the iPhone could benefit from not having to include an USB-A-to-Lightning cable any more.
When will the EU ban HDMI connections to monitors or force Apple to remove them from MacBooks? Why are dSLR cameras allowed to continue to use micro USB and SD cards when they could just use USB-C so we don't have to buy dongles and adapters?
The argument that Apple only provides one physical port (they also provide Magsafe and allow other wireless charging options) isn't sufficient with respect to your discussion point about market-wide standards. This really looks to me like the EU is just saying "we don't like lightning chargers and since nobody is going to defend it except Apple we'll ban it" while they also let plenty of other "standards" run amok in the market.
FWIW I much prefer USB-C and I want my next iPhone to include it (along with any other devices), but I really struggle with the logic of the decision to force it here.
HDMI is a somewhat-open-ish, widespread standard and for what it's worth Apple MacBook models haven't carried HDMI ports for ages now.
> Why are dSLR cameras allowed to continue to use micro USB and SD cards when they could just use USB-C so we don't have to buy dongles and adapters?
Again, the market seems to converge towards USB-C already (almost all the models on [1] and other buying guides have USB-C), and for memory cards towards SD cards and CFexpress (on the pro segment). Both of these are somewhat-open-ish again.
The EU usually only steps in when the free market is either stuck somewhere along the road and needs a push towards a specific standard (=> USB-C), profit incentives need to be overruled (=> RoHS / leaded solder) or the free market suffers from oligopolies that need to be broken up for actual competition or the creation of an actual single market (=> EU-wide mobile roaming).
> The argument that Apple only provides one physical port (they also provide Magsafe and allow other wireless charging options) isn't sufficient with respect to your discussion point about market-wide standards.
Apple can provide a MagSafe port on MacBooks or a Lightning port on iDevices if they want. All Apple has to do is to support the mandated USB-C port as well!
[1] https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/buying-guides/the-best-mi...
These ones do as they were re-implemented per customer demand: https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-14-and-16/specs/
Because DSLRs are dead. If you look at the new mirrorless cameras, they're either doing USB-C charging, or take batteries charged from a device that uses USB-C.
The cameras are just a random example.
As soon as you look at the EU’s decision (which is one I like the effects of) you can see that this was just a very arbitrary ruling.
> The cameras are just a random example.
And you got your answer for it.
I have this now, except with 1 extra cable (which happens to charge my iPhone and AirPods).
> - if a cable gets lost or damaged, spare cables are cheap and plentiful, and they will also be available in a few years of time
Walk into any store or gas station today and you'll find all sorts of cable solutions for lightning. I was looking for a cable on vacation last year and had a harder time finding a usb-c to usb-c power cable. Everywhere had lightning though.
> - when devices break down, chargers still can live on.
Again, all my chargers have been usb-c for awhile.
Apple was clearly headed towards usb-c anyway, so I doubt this law changes much in their plans. But, a lot of the benefits were already there. Apple will need to include a lightning to usb-c dongle for a period of time as accessories shift over.
Highly doubt it. In any case, the aim of the EU was to create a standard or at least force the industry into coming up with one - and had Apple been allowed to keep their proprietary connector, the competition would be completely correct in claiming "why should we keep using the standard while Apple can get away with MFi licensing income?".
So, in order to actually keep the standard a standard, Apple now has to be openly forced. I doubt this regulation would have been done if Apple had signalled to be moving away from Lightning.
C'mon. Apple went all in on usb-c before anyone else. It hurt them with the laptop line and they reversed some. They have moved the iPad, include usb-c -> puck for the watch, and usb-c to lightning for the iPhone. They are transitioning.
Can you provide some examples of innovation that the EU has made in this industry in the last 20 years?
- mobile phone and data roaming, the most notable user-facing innovation
- the single market itself with all the associated side legislation (GDPR, VAT OSS) that allows every tiny small business to serve the entire EU
- Schengen free-movement zone
- Euro currency
- SEPA instead of national schemes (ties in into the single market aspect as well) with everything from card payments over wire transfers to direct debit covered. Strong authentication required for opening bank accounts. No more paper cheques. (Directly compare all of this to the hot mess that the US is)
- EPD PS2 that forces banks to provide APIs to third parties, e.g. budget planners
- unified drone legislation that allows me without tons of paperwork and individual permits to fly my drone everywhere reasonable in Europe
It would at least save me from carrying one power brick + usb cable. Steam Deck (USB C), Switch (USB C), MacBook Pro (USB C) and iPhone is the only odd one out. This does make a significant difference to what I can take with me on holiday.
Which is why the EU is just being dumb, here. They think they are accomplishing some amazing user-friendly enviro-friendly feat, but all they are really doing is making a lot of Lightning gear out there less useful.
And all this to switch to a port that is substantially larger, clunkier, and has no real advantages for iPhone users. Which is why Apple hasn't bothered changing up til now. That, plus Apple actually values what its customers REALLY need and what REALLY ACTUALLY benefits them.
Also, I don't really appreciate the snark. It's just a connector.
The factual record, of course, shows us quite clearly that Apple did indeed design something that was highly "applicable to other kinds of devices", devices which Apple then went on to apply Lightning to. :) And of course we can also see quite clearly from the last ten years that Lightning has had a massive impact on the reusability of various chargers, docks, and cables. Why? Because Apple stuck with it for ten years and used it in all kinds of stuff.
Personally, I am happy to see that some governments still care about consumer protection.
This won't apply retroactively, new iphones after X date will have to be shipped with USB-C
No, but the parent’s point is still valid - many people own more than one lightning cable and/or lightning-enabled accessory (charging docks, stereos, etc) and as soon as you own an iPhone with USB-C, they’ll immediately become either useless or require yet another adapter.
This already happened once when the iPhone switched from the iPod connector to Lightning, and people revolted for this exact reason.
That was before USB-C existed (and micro-USB didn't have the same sort of accessory ecosystem that the 30-pin connector had). In this day and age, those same charging docks and stereos and such typically already support USB-C (because that's what most modern phones use, and it's kind of silly in this day and age to run two separate manufacturing lines for two separate SKUs instead of simply supporting both connectors in the same device), so if anything this would be the opposite of a reason to revolt.
In terms of progression, my phones since 2004 have gone:
proprietary flip phone stuff, 30-pin iPhone, micro usb, usb-c, usb-c.
Time will tell if USB-C sticks around, I suppose.
Please think about what you're saying for a moment
If they were mandated to do so by law, what were the conditions that have presumably un-bound them now?
Or are they all violating the Micro-USB law but being allowed to do so because it's obviously the common-sense thing to do?
In addition, Apple is known for making loads of dongles, so it wouldn't be remotely weird for them to sell/ship a lightning -> USB-C dongle. So the argument about mandating e-waste doesn't really hold up either.
So you have:
- It works - It doesn't lock manufacturers in forever - It doesn't mandate e-waste
Any other reasons you want to give? So far those are the only three I've seen and none of them hold water.
I would be happy to have Apple move to Type C, but I do question if an actual mandate (and not a recommendation) could prevent future USB connector adoption in the EU market.
It was basically a case of the EU saying "you need to choose one charging port that you all use, we _will_ create a mandate if you don't".
Importantly, the EU has already gone through a shift in charging standards, so they already understand how this stuff advances and have prepared for it in their own legislation (the EU tends to make laws with details on how those laws will be changed in the future etc. since they are at core still a large trade bloc). You can find a Q&A they gave here:
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/QANDA_...
Where the following section applies:
> Will the proposal be an obstacle to innovation?
The Commission's proposal aims at providing consumers with an open and interoperable solution and, at the same time, enabling technological innovation. The proposal encourages innovation for wired and wireless technology charging.
Any technological developments in wired charging can be reflected in a timely adjustment of technical requirements/ specific standards under the Radio Equipment Directive. This would ensure that the technology used is not outdated.
At the same time, the implementation of any new standards in further revisions of Radio Equipment Directive would need to be developed in a harmonised manner, respecting the objectives of full interoperability. Industry is therefore expected to continue the work already undertaken on the standardised interface, led by the USB-IF organisation, in view of developing new interoperable, open and non-controversial solutions.
In addition, larger technological developments are expected in the area of wireless charging, which is still a developing technology with a low level of market fragmentation. In order to allow innovation in this field, the proposal does not set specific technical requirements for wireless charging. Therefore, manufacturers remain free to include any wireless charging solution in their products alongside the wired charging via the USB-C port.
To summarize, they'll work with the USB-IF (made up of a whole bunch of companies, including Apple) when the USB-IF makes a new standard in order to ensure that new connection innovations will be propagated to new devices. What they won't allow is a company like Apple having an "innovation" then diverging from how everyone expects devices to charge.
Interestingly they've also said that there's a set of standardized fast-charging capabilities that need to be clearly labelled on products that require/support them. So if you buy a tablet it'll have a label on the box saying "can charge at up to 50w" or whatever, and a charger would say "can charge at up to 50w", so you know it'll charge at full speed. That's a little better than the previous "it supports fast charging" umbrella.
For now. Why wouldn't the EU be able to just change the law? This mandate passed relatively quickly. Why can't they just repeat this?
When would this mandate be changed? After the rest of the world has already moved on to Type D?
There was never a Micro-USB mandate, I've been replying to a bunch of comments around here that claim that such a mandate existed.
You can check for yourself, it was just a recommendation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply
> When would this mandate be changed? After the rest of the world has already moved on to Type D?
The EU has already passed multiple recommendations previously about mobile phone port standardization. They were all passed in a reasonable amount of time. Moreover, this mandate was also passed in a reasonable amount of time.
Therefore, I have reason to believe that future mandates regarding mobile phone port charging will also be passed in a reasonable amount of time.
Apple has moved on to USB-C for almost every other product they have. They know Lightning is old and insufficient, even for their iPad Air.
The only reason why Apple keeps Lightning around is for phones and some portable accessories, and the revenue from those, and their certifications, is not something they are willing to dismiss. Technically speaking, if you want something as simple as a cable, you have to go through Apple and their MFI program.
So here we are, with Apple holding the keys to every Lightning accessory, and also keeping a degree of control of USB-C.
If anything, the EU is trying to keep Apple honest.
The other way of viewing this is that by not switching (yet) they haven't created instant e-waste out of every cable and accessory manufactured in the past decade. USB-C didn't exist when they released the lightning cable, and they have clearly been migrating every other product over the past several years.
Seriously, you don't need to invent a conspiracy for every single move Apple makes.
Well no time like the present since time is linear and unless they're going to stick with lightning _forever_ then they'll eventually have to create a bunch of e-waste.
How is this a “conspiracy”? It is literally what they are doing with the MFI program.
If anything, the e-waste theory is less credible, as Apple have changed the iPad and MacBook charging ports three or four times in the past 12 years. They have also a long history of preventing third parties from fixing their products, latest of which is software locking of replacement parts.
On the contrary, over-simplifying the motivations of a multi-trillion dollar corporation often leaves you as the fool.
USB-C is not much different than lightning for charging / connecting a phone, so the blowback from consumers will be huge when all their accessories are no longer compatible with the next phone.
Ironically enough, they come with a Lightning to USB-C cable. Users would need to buy their own USB-C chargers anyway.
And here we are, arguing about cables.
For sure, but only if Apple wouldn't provide such cables, which they do.
Currently, cables bundled with iPhones are Lightning to USB-C. It has been like this for several years.
I suspect that the kind of person who would buy a new $1,000+ phone with an USB-C to USB-C cable in the box, and bitch and moan about the $30 worth of Lightning cables about to end in the trash, is the same who vociferously complain on the Internet and then still buy the next years version.
As far as I understand, there are no Lightning cables that support anything over 18W. Data transfer tops at 480Mbps, or roughly USB 2.0 speeds.
These are specs many other companies have surpassed several years ago.
> ... so the blowback from consumers will be huge when all their accessories are no longer compatible with the next phone.
Apple is the same company that went through 4 different charging connectors for their MacBook line, in about 15 years: MagSafe, MagSafe 2, USB-C, and now MagSafe 3. Their iPad line is 12 years old and has gone through 3 different connectors: 30-pin, Lightning, and USB-C.
I fail to see how this one would be different.
If the iPhone had an USB-C connector, I could pretty much carry a single cable and charger for my laptop, my tablet, and my phone. So unless there is zero overlap between iPhone users and users of anything else, the point is moot.
Even worse, Apple stopped bundling a charger with their phones over three years ago. Instead, they ship a Lightning to USB-C cable, but they bundle an USB-C charger only for a year after the release of the iPhone X, effectively forcing their customers to buy USB-C hardware anyway.
If it doesn't matter at all, why is Apple still stubbornly refusing to adapt?
I'm sorry that we need a law to instil some common sense into some managers' thick skulls. But I'm happy that EU is showing that in, a sane democracy, no huge corporation can force its will on the people.
Having unified, standard cables and power bricks means more reuse, which reduces waste and cost. It means someone switching from Android to iPhone or vice versa doesn't need to replicate all their cabling. It means users can buy a third party cable without paying Apple for a licence or a patent. These are all good things.
And now imagine a step further, where all cars, mechanical pencils, toasters, wall sockets... everything is disposable because some small detail or component has just one supplier.
Imagine how much you'll spend to have things, and how much you'll have to throw away when any small thing of it gets broken.
School shootings - why do we have to enforce not commiting school shootings with the stupid law, surely everyone can get together and agreee murdering a 10 year old for fun is evil and just not do it?
Should a national government mandate only one method of security that every school must implement, or allow states/provinces/districts to experiment with what works for them? Even if the national government improves security in the short term, there is a strong possibility that the bureaucracy of national government's slowness to adapt will cause security to be worse in the long term.
this idea that it is somehow a bad thing to force mega-corporations to do things that are good for society. it's so widespread and yet - short of actual communism - I have literally never seen any evidence of public action against mega-corporate interests resulting in damage to society as a whole, beyond the inevitable political lobbying and media corruption that ensues
is it any surprise that entities whose entire existence has been justified by clever storytelling (i.e. marketing) have been successful at convincing people that rules for them are a bad thing, while rules for you on the street are perfectly fine and actually good?
people act like these mega-corps are weak, soft little babies that need to be treated with kid gloves. "no, but what if this law could do that to them? but what if this law means they make 0.1% less profit this year?". I absolutely understand this kind of reticence with actual babies, or individual people, or small-to-medium-sized businesses, but it makes me angry that people are so reluctant to act against these unaccountable mega-entities. it is hamstringing society
A minor inconvenience multiplied by the number of smartphones (7.33 billion) is not a minor problem.
It's not that it's a problem on the individual level, it's that we're roughly doubling the number of cables needed and halving their utilization at the same time. Yes I know android is more popular, but the issue is the two different cables needed.
https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-w...
The EU addressed this by saying that they'll keep up with technology as it moves, but one thing that technology is famous for, and the EU is infamous for, is the speed at which it moves. 5 years is a blink of an eye in politics, and a lifetime in tech.
Thats not to say we'll never see another USB version, I just worry this will considerably slow things down.
It seems to me the more future-proof way to do this would be to force companies to use an open-standard. We'd still be stuck with the dreaded micro-usb, and possibly lightning if apple let everyone else use it too, but it solves the proprietary issue without locking us in for another ~10 years of just type-c
After all, why invest money in improving your charging connector if you are going to be mandated to use USB-C anyway?
USB-C's introduction was (and arguably still is) fairly disruptive because it invalidated the universal nature of USB-A (and to a lesser extent -B and Micro).
Personally, I hope USB-C will be here to stay for at least the better part of a decade going forward. Finding that what was once universal won't be universal tomorrow is annoying.
The dongle should have the phone numbers of those who passed this law etched into it.
Just let me keep my Lightning port as an American.
That said, even if the upgrade path is not expressly defined, I think on balance this is still a good thing. In a "best time to plant a tree was yesterday; second best time is today" kind of way, when it comes to reducing e-waste.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-9-2022-0129_...
Hand-held mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones, headsets, handheld videogame consoles and portable speakers, in so far as they are capable of being recharged via wired charging, shall:
(a) be equipped with the USB Type-C receptacle, as described in the standard EN IEC 62680-1-3:2021 ‘Universal serial bus interfaces for data and power - Part 1-3: Common components - USB Type-CTM Cable and Connector Specification’, which should remain accessible and operational at all times;
I believe the EU are saying they'll keep up with new standards as they come in. The problem I see is, how can a new standard come in if nobody is allowed to use it. Its a chicken & egg problem, the EU will allow new standards as they're used, but nobody is allowed to use new standards until the EU allows it. Thats aside from the obvious problem that the EU isnt exactly famous for its speed.
The only ways around it I can think of is either if new standards become popular in markets foreign to the EU, or if some company decides to add both USB-C and USB-D to their device, which in a world of needlessly removing the headphone jack I cant see happening.
It's just like we have new modern electronics, but they are all able to plug into the same wall sockets. I don't have to remodel my home.
From the amended text:
> The Commission shall review the application of this Directive in relation to new charging technologies and, report thereon to the European Parliament and to the Council by ... [three years after the date entry into force of this Directive], and every three years thereafter. That report shall be accompanied, if appropriate, by a proposal to amend this Directive to introduce mandatory unbundling.
If the USB Implementor’s Forum want’s to change from USB-C or USB-PD it can speak with the European Commission. It’s an organization with telephones and mail and an address and – I fear – fax machines. Not some weird angels in the sky.
Pretty much like they should have done with computers and OSes in 2009.
Mind you, split sale = two items at checkout and the oppotunity to buy separately.
> Unbundling the sale of a charger from the sale of the electronic device
I didn't read the texts, but wouldn't something like mandating companies to release a version of their products with USB-C better instead of only allowing USB-C? Say for example Apple wants to release iPhone 20 with Lightning, or full wireless, then force them to also release iPhone 20 with USB-C and leave the choice to consumers? Is this allowed by the texts?
So pretty much nothing, a manufacturer can go straight to wireless charging.