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.
> 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...
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.