Apple intially exploited the loophole, which was ironically created to help them. But it was the EU that dropped the ball by letting them get away with it for so long. The entire saga is documented in the link below, which is probably best explained by this excerpt.

The EU's failure to regulate, in essence, provides Apple with an argument to keep their own solution.

For Apple, the common charger is a success story – of regulation avoided. For the next commission, it could serve as a cautioning tale on the limits of self-regulation.

https://euobserver.com/science/144538

The iPad is already moving to USB-C; it's very likely that Apple was already planning to move to USB-C for iPhone chargers within the next year or so (whether because they foresaw a change like this coming, because they felt it was the right thing to do, or just because they, too, want to reduce the number of different connections they have to deal with on the manufacturing side).

There are problems with USB-C, however—one of those being that some USB-C charger and cable combinations will simply fry your phone due to being wildly out of spec.

This potential for frying devices is a good indication that USB has become far too complex in the latest iteration. Maybe there is a net gain in splitting power and signaling into two separate connectors? Like, move power supply to a separate USB-A like port. USB-A has larger contact pads, anyway. The data lines on the port could then be used to negotiate a power profile.

I don't think this is a technical problem so much as it is a political one, on two levels: First, that the spec for USB-C was allowed to have so many variations that it's very hard to know what you're going to get if you plug a connector in (is it USB 3.1? 2.0? Does it support power delivery? At what amperage? Is it actually Thunderbolt 3? etc.), and second, that a fair number of just totally out-of-spec—and thus, essentially counterfeit—products are being (or at least have been) sold on Amazon and similar places for some time.

The EU simply told the manufacturers to agree on a single port or else they would have to regulate one. Apple ruined the party for everyone.

Well the rest of the phone manufacturers settled on mini usb followed by micro usb. Prior to that there were a ton of proprietary phone charger/data cables, so it did help some

The EU luckily didn't put their foot down so phones were allowed to progress from mini-usb over micro-usb to USB-C.

It definitely helped a lot (but Apple still kinda ruined it).

Yeah, I was thinking that getting stuck on micro-USB for an years or decades would have been a less than happy outcome.

Not quite sure what to think of USB-C yet. Certainly feels more mechanically solid than micro-USB, but subjectively, the plug connection seems a bit slippery. Cables seem to disconnect spontaneously more than they do with e.f. Lightning.

> Yeah, I was thinking that getting stuck on micro-USB for an years or decades would have been a less than happy outcome.

It would have been wonderful.

It seems like every time a connector starts to reach the critical mass of adoption where I actually have a reasonable ecosystem of chargers and cables and devices, they go ahead and change it - usually for the worse. mini-USB was great - I had phones, accessories, the lot with it. Then they changed it for the weaker and more symmetrical looking (but still not symmetrical) micro-USB and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth - but it was was still simple and functional and is now ubiquitous again. If we had stayed there I could have dealt with it, despite the odd annoyance - for a brief, shining moment, I could charge my phone at my friend's house and vice versa. Now with USB-C it's all gone to shit again:

- I have a new phone that charges over USB-C - but only fast charges with the included adapter, which looks like a regular USB-A wall adapter + A->C plug but actually has some proprietary magic in it. Something about "unusual fast charging standards".

- My laptop came with a USB-C charger but the plug failed after some months, its microscopic contacts losing their spring.

- Needing a new charger because soldering a USB-C connector is quite daunting, I bought an Apple wall charger because it uses a replaceable cable. I discovered later that the cable is apparently nonstandard and incredibly expensive. I bought an unbranded one, at no small cost.

- The unbranded USB-C to USB-C cable failed again after some months. I bought an official Apple cable, to even more considerable expense. That worked, until the port on the laptop died. The laptop sits dead for now.

- Since I now have a 85W USB-C charger lying around, I thought I'd try it on my new phone. But if I plug the Apple adapter into the phone it makes very loud and alarming capacitor noises, especially when full - enough to wake me up in the middle of the night when it gets to 100% (and it takes until the middle of the night, because it doesn't fast charge).

This is a shitshow. Give me back my micro-USB. Yes it's annoying to insert, but at least they last more than a few months, have a single standard, can be soldered, and don't fry devices.

>- I have a new phone that charges over USB-C - but only fast charges with the included adapter, which looks like a regular USB-A wall adapter + A->C plug but actually has some proprietary magic in it. Something about "unusual fast charging standards".

USB-PD is standardized. Don't blame USB if the manufacturer decides to not implement it.

>- Since I now have a 85W USB-C charger lying around, I thought I'd try it on my new phone. But if I plug the Apple adapter into the phone it makes very loud and alarming capacitor noises, especially when full - enough to wake me up in the middle of the night when it gets to 100% (and it takes until the middle of the night, because it doesn't fast charge).

It#s not entirely unusual that cheaper charging circuits start to humm in the audible range if far under their designed output power.

In my experience, it depends on the cable. Some cables feel much better and don't come off as easily as others.

Also ports. First MacBook Pro ports sucked and weren't firm at all. New ones are great. Some connectors are actually too hard to push in.

More than slippery, I think simply some ports (ie the Pixels) are looser than others.

Why does the EU actually have a say here? Is this really that important that government should be involved? Don’t like Apple chargers, don’t buy them.

A government is involved, because it is fairly obvious that Apple and others are not going to take the initiative themselves. A revamp of the regulation on a common charger will help reduce considerable amount of electronic waste, which will ultimately have a positive impact on the environment.

How is having a government-mandated charging port going to have a positive environmental impact, other than by having a mandate which forces everyone to stick with their current connectors and stop adopting new ones?

There is likely to be a grace period involving a pragmatic discussion, before any regulation is passed. It will revolve around adoption of USB-C as a common standard moving forward, rather than the knee-jerk reaction you are proposing. The Commission's powers are subject to strict limits when adopting 'Delegated acts' which cannot change the essential elements of the law and must define objectives, content, scope and duration of the delegation of power. In any event, the Parliament and Council may revoke the delegation or express their objections.

Thanks for the feedback, didn't intend to come across as knee-jerk. Its just that the idea of obsoleting every existing charger doesn't seem very environmentally friendly.

Because these businesses are doing business in the EU, hence they are under EU jurisdiction when doing so. We're not all the US.

>Apple really dropped the ball on this and the argument they make (thing about all of the old accessories!) is pretty moot for the consumer.

Not entirely moot. A billion people (1-2 hundreds of millions in Europe) have at least an old accessory with lightning interface). When the old style interface was deprecated many people were angrt (but at least the new one had some benefits - size, reversibility, etc).

That said, USB-C is where Apple's going as well (e.g. the new laptops, iPad Pro, 2019's USB-C iPhone rumors, which were probably confused with a future model, etc.).

Besides, thanks god Apple didn't move on to the same spec as the other phone manufactures. Instead of USB-C we'd have what they settled-in to: mini USB and then micro USB, two equally horrible designs (the only worse probably being the Micro B USB style, mostly used by external hard disks).

Also people seem to forget that Apple was heavily involved in the design of USB-C, all the way back to thunderbort from when it was an Intel-Apple initiative known as LightPeak. The modern USB-C, as a cable with adaptable "logic", includes support for several interfacing protocols from old-school USB to Thunderbolt. The "speedy" part of USB-C is Thunderbolt:

Thunderbolt is the brand name of a hardware interface developed by Intel (in collaboration with Apple) that allows the connection of external peripherals to a computer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)

> The "speedy" part of USB-C is Thunderbolt

Sadly, it is (to the best of my understanding) not quite that simple.

The same physical port and cable that support USB-C can also support Thunderbolt 3. However, both ports and cables can support either just TB3, just USB v3.1, or even older versions of USB, with a dizzying variety of different capabilities and power-delivery levels supported.

Yes, hence the "speedy part". USB-C ports can handle different protocols over the same wires.

Since last years iOS 13, with the updates to the Files app, it's no longer impossible to connect an off-the-shelf USB drive to an iPhone and dump pictures to it.

You will need a lightning to usb adaptor, (and probably the powered lightning to usb3 adaptor to work with most drives), but it does pretty much work the way you would expect now.

Presumably if you have a fancy iPad Pro with built-in USB-C then you can also connect a standard usb-C compatible thumbdrive directly to it.