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EU Moves One Step Closer to Mandating Apple to Switch iPhone, iPad, and AirPods to USB-C

bcortens said:
And governments are free to regulate those companies and force a common standard if those governments decide that the common good outweighs those companies business decisions.
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Again, I’d call what’s happening here overreach.

The idea that the “common good” can be distilled down to the specific type of data/charging port on a phone makes the term meaningless, IMO.
 
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Macintosh TV said:
The goals of each are different. In this case the government is doing to reduce waste. That means a better standard that's faster or offers better advantages (for instance, USB-C isn't overly robust and does break more than other connection types), they won't be able to move to it. It'll take getting everyone together and pushing for a new standard. More red tape holding technology back.
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Generally, government responds to things like this because they were pressured to by some constituency... ;)
 
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azentropy said:
Then that in itself is odd. So if a device is wireless it doesn't have to have a USB-C port but if a device is wireless and does also happen to have a port it must be USB-C? That is just silly.
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Uhm, how? If it has a port, make it USB C. If it doesn’t, don’t. What’s so silly about that?
 
Macintosh TV said:
Now but not when the standard was created. The government wasn't involved in companies choosing to standardize.
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That’s fair, but the EU is getting involved now only because companies haven’t all chosen to standardize even after a decade or so.
 
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Even though I would personally like to see Apple adopt USB-C on the iPhone, this mandate by the EU is wrong on so many levels. If the government usurps the power to dictate something like this innovation will be stifled. No company will take the chance of developing something better for fear of the government saying it doesn't like or approve of the change. Or conversely and more likely, the government might force the innovator's competitors to adopt the new technology thereby reducing the incentive to offer something different and better. The free market is the only solution to this "problem." Meaning if consumers want a phone with USB-C they should buy something other than an iPhone. It's that simple. Remember a government that is powerful enough to give you everything you want must also be powerful enough to take away everything you have...
 
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heystu said:
It's beyond me why the EU isn't directing the use of kettle plugs. I'm sick and tired of having to have one cable to charge my iPhone, and yet another one for my kettle :mad:
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Not the best analogy, kettles use the type E and F wall socket standards.
 
deannnnn said:
You've got to remember that non-tech people don't think like us. 99% of people will be furious when Apple switches the iPhone to USB-C because now all of their accessories and 800 lightning cables they have accumulated will all be worthless. And the EU claims this will REDUCE ewaste??? It's creating tons of it!
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My thoughts exactly, though I wonder if long term a switch to USB-C will make up for all the short term ewaste. No need for separate cables for different devices, times how ever many millions if not billions of devices worldwide. Hard to calculate.
 
hcherry said:
Again, I’d call what’s happening here overreach.

The idea that the “common good” can be distilled down to the specific type of data/charging port on a phone makes the term meaningless, IMO.
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“The idea that the ‘common good’ can be distilled down to [a standard] makes the term useless”
Like DIN or the metric system?
Not the same, but I don’t get your problem.
 
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deannnnn said:
You've got to remember that non-tech people don't think like us. 99% of people will be furious when Apple switches the iPhone to USB-C because now all of their accessories and 800 lightning cables they have accumulated will all be worthless. And the EU claims this will REDUCE ewaste??? It's creating tons of it!
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So instead of putting an end to this nonsense we should continue?
You don’t get it. The waste isn’t being created by this directive. It has been created and this will stop it from becoming more. The moment a lightning cable got made for an iPhone it was bound to be more wasteful then a C cable that can be used for more than an iPhone.
 
frostbit3 said:
What if this would have been in place when MicroUSB was dominant? That would have limited Apple's ability to develop and launch Lightning which they adopted years before USB-C was finalized.
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In fact, MicroUSB was already required in the EU and used by all other manufacturers - and Apple supplied MicroUSB to Lightning adapters. (Remember the times before 2010, when every single device required it's own fancy charger?)

Now we have a newer standard (USB-C) - superior (maybe not mechanically) to Lightning - a standard that will be sufficient for some time to come and is used in all of Apple's more powerful devices (Lightning is reserved for the weaker, smaller devices now). USB-C can drive multiple high resolution displays and supply around 100 Watts of power - enough for powerful notebooks - how much more data or power are we likely to require on a mobile phone in the years to come?

If USB-C is really not sufficient anymore, device-makers are free to implement an additional port - keeping the device backwards compatible with other hardware (chargers, displays, storage, networking, ...) and easy to charge in any place - unless the device is too small for squeezing in a USB-C charging port.

So, where's the problem? (Or is just another way for blaming the EU - which has helped bringing peace, wealth, justice, freedom and civil liberties to European countries like never before?)
 
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MacLawyer said:
The EU engineers will no doubt offer their excellent technical advice to manufacturers on how to make the transition.

Oh, wait......
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Well at large Steve Jobs operated by giving feature demands, without caring about engineers whining about the technical difficulty. Apple has solved more difficult engineering problems than changing a port.
 
I just think we are doing it again. It’s happening again.

Some very vocal people got very angry when the transition from 30-pin to Lightning happened. And some very vocal people got very angry when the 3.5mm headphone jack was removed. But... none of those very vocal people care anymore, lol. Or if those very vocal people still do care for some reason, none of us care to listen to them anymore, lol.

Eventually (whether it is the EU mandating it or Apple-itself just deciding on it’s own), the Lightning port will go away. Apple isn’t going to use the Lightning port forever. There will be something else (or there will be nothing else — port-less iPhones). Some very vocal people will get very angry when that does happen. The rest of us will just move on because that’s what you do with technology.

And I understand some people are very angry specifically about a government mandating the change. I understand that. But also understand that some people just like to be very angry about things, lol.
 
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headlessmike said:
But even the cable will be an extra accessory when everything uses USB-C.
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Don't pretend every USB-C cable is the same.

Just in my own collection, I have the following USB-C cables, that do things "differently"
  • Supports USB 2.0 data, only about 20w charging
  • Supports USB 2.0 data, 60w charging
  • Supports USB 2.0 data, 100w charging
  • Supports USB 3.1 Gen 1 5Gbps and 60w charging
  • Supports USB 3.1 Gen 2 10Gbps and 60w charging
  • Supports TB3 20Gbps and 60w charging
  • Supports TB3 40Gbps and 60w charging, but only up to 0.8m and not >USB 2.0
  • Supports TB4 40Gbs and 100w charging
Honestly that's all I have time to type out, but I'm sure I have another 3+ variations.
 
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akempf said:
In fact, MicroUSB was already required in the EU and used by all other manufacturers - and Apple supplied MicroUSB to Lightning adapters. (Remember the times before 2010, when every single device required it's own fancy charger?)

Now we have a newer standard (USB-C) - superior (maybe not mechanically) to Lightning - a standard that will be sufficient for some time to come and is used in all of Apple's more powerful devices (Lightning is reserved for the weaker, smaller devices now). USB-C can drive multiple high resolution displays and supply around 100 Watts of power - enough for powerful notebooks - how much more data or power are we likely to require on a mobile phone in the years to come?

If USB-C is really not sufficient anymore, device-makers are free to implement an additional port - keeping the device backwards compatible with other hardware (chargers, displays, storage, networking, ...) and easy to charge in any place - unless the device is too small for squeezing in a USB-C charging port.

So, where's the problem? (Or is just another way for blaming the EU - which has helped bringing peace, wealth, justice, freedom and civil liberties to European countries like never before?)
Click to expand...
The problem is that this is requiring the physical port on the device, whereas previously it needed to be an adapter. So if the MicroUSB was forced to be on it previously, then how could USB-C ever get created and adopted? We going to wait 5 years for politicians to have to be persuaded to "alllow" tech companies to adopt a newer and better connector?

Not arguing that USB-C isn't a better connector; it is. The issue is that it shouldn't be forced. An adapter should be sufficient. If they want to make Apple provide a USB-C adapter to lightning in all phones, cool. No issues there. But forcing the physical connector on the phone? Hell no
 
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