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European Lawmakers Want to Force All Smartphones to Have Same Charging Port, Apple Defends Lightning

Abazigal said:
It just seems very short-sighted to assume that USB-C is going to be the be-all-and-end-all of charging standards. In time, a new port / standard is going to appear, and we are going to have the same problem all over again. Will this ruling potentially stifle innovation by limiting how readily new charging standards can be adopted because no one is allowed to break rank?
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Different folks have different opinions on the efficacy of government and expectation of competing companies to work together. In your scenario, the proponents of such laws believe the government and market will easily adopt new standards when they are viable. The opponents believe otherwise.

In any event, it's effectively moot given the article update/clarification from the 17th; it is the charger that is in question, not the device connector.

Update Jan 17: The Verge notes that additional information released in relation to this week's debate clarifies that the proposed regulations relate to power adapters rather than the devices themselves, with Apple already in line with the industry by providing USB-A and USB-C chargers.
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deeddawg said:
Different folks have different opinions on the efficacy of government and expectation of competing companies to work together. In your scenario, the proponents of such laws believe the government and market will easily adopt new standards when they are viable. The opponents believe otherwise.

In any event, it's effectively moot given the article update/clarification from the 17th; it is the charger that is in question, not the device connector.
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Bah, that's what I get for not rereading the article. In which case, that begs the question - what's the point of the legislation even? A lot of ado over something with relatively minor impact overall.
 
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Abazigal said:
I just feel that the move, while probably well-intentioned, is quite misguided and the government is not really equipped to make judgement calls when it comes to dealing with technology.
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The EU has lots of experts that take care of analyzing technical issues.
 
cube said:
No, real experts.

Stop talking nonsense about what you know nothing about.
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You have some citations for that?

At any rate it seems to be the charger in question not the connector. For me, a usb-c on one end and lightning on the other works fine. Sounds like dongle-gate.
 
USB charging ports are everywhere. The last thing the world needs is one charging cable standard - because USB is it not USB-C. There aren’t many publicly available phone charging cables. Electronic products (phones, tablets, cameras, speakers, etc) have numerous variations on charging ports on devices, usb alone has a truckload. EU MEPs are crazy.

Big cause of ewaste is people throwing out functional phones because they get a new one on a new contract.
 
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Apple currently uses USB-C charging on the new phones. So what's the big deal?
 
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