Because we already know what happens when a common port is not mandated.

Seriously, before this law was put in place, Europe had been asking companies to agree on a common charging port for more than a decade.

The first Memorandum of Understanding on the subject was signed in 2009. Amusingly Apple did sign it before deciding to simply ignore it. That was followed by a directive in 2014 and an impact assessment in 2018.

Despite these repeated warnings, Apple spent the decade lobbying against a common port while collecting a tidy sum with the Made For Iphone initiative.

The EU didn’t mandate by hubris. It just had to. We need a law because if we don’t have one there will always be companies reverting to proprietary ports. They just can’t resist the easy money.

In its first incarnation the industry proposed micro USB as a charging standard. I think we can agree that's a pretty poor choice, connectors that break easily, only go in one way, and low power. So Apple was right to ignore it.

We would have been stuck with micro USB for eternity if it wasn't for Apple. I realise they may not have objected out of the kindness of their hart, but good thing they did.

> We would have been stuck with micro USB for eternity if it wasn't for Apple

Amending laws takes much less time than eternity. Lawmakers are people, they can process information and make changes when appropriate. You can be sure that the industry will not forget to remind them when a change seems sensible.

true, but what you then loose is “natural selection”.

Why?

Because either a new standard is not allowed. Or it is allowed, but then highly probably just one… and the central planning way. One standard/product is worked on, one is accepted as the successo.

No selection in the wild of the one that survives (depending of what we talk about, the survivor is sometimes the one that is technically better, sometimes it is the one that is cheaper, or faster in bandwith or latency or prettier, or …).

This sometimes work ok for 1-2 successors, but the more times pass by, the more central planing (or lack of free market) fails.

If one is very honest it has to see both sides of it.

Both has their pros and cons (not equally weighted though).

The regulated way has to be done as rarely as possible (very hard to decide when it is a good idea…)

There are no “natural selection” of charging ports. It’s simply not part of what people consider when they buy appliances. Customers are mostly at the whim of manufacturers when it comes to these technical details.

They European Union still does not have a single 230V power plug, decades after being founded. The industry has been asking for it since forever. You, sir, are an optimist.

Ripping every single plug socket and outlet out in 80% of the living spaces in the EU is neither cheap nor popular, so "industry asking for it" will not be enough. Your comparison is a bad one.

The parent suggests that bureaucrats could simply change this unified charging port after a while. By that time there will be just as many USB-C ports as there are 230V outlets.

Most of Europe already has a standard 230V plug (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schuko). It would probably be easier to get a unified 230V power plug than to change the USB-C port again after a decade.

The life cycle of cell phones is a bit less than for buildings and nearly all of the electrical devices that plug into them - the primary exception being rechargable electronic devices. So changing the charging port standard is WAY different than changing the outlet standard.

Many electrical outlets now have USB ports... And now it's supposed to be USB-C... And then something else - it's going to be just as hard.

But there is progress; it has standardized on frequency and (sort-of) voltage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity#Standardizat...:

“Until 1987, mains voltage in large parts of Europe, including Germany, Austria and Switzerland, was 220(±22)V while the UK used 240(±24)V. Standard ISO IEC 60038:1983 defined the new standard European voltage to be 230(±23)V.”

I reckon it takes the market power of an Apple to introduce new proprietary charging ports. Only reason they held out is 1) keep their accessory licensing revenue stream and 2) introduce friction with Android users (see iMessage). Almost no one else has the kind of market power to do that without pissing users off to their detriment.

Aside from Apple, the voluntary standards process was working. No one else was still resisting USB-C. Can you name some examples?

There are still laptops with various charger types not to mention digital cameras and other electronics that could use usb-c pd but refuse to adopt it. I think the law should be expanded to any kind of electronic device that whose power requirements can be satisfied by the usb-c specifications.

Laptops are also covered, but by 2026.

Isn’t USB-C at high power kind of expensive per watt?

USB-C is not royalty-free, either.

>> Isn’t USB-C at high power kind of expensive per watt?

I don't think it's too expensive if you consider the environment impact not to mention the bad user experience caused by multiple chargers. I also believe at certain point the economies of scale should make it less expensive.

Actually there were some solid arguments against USB-C, most importantly that it's not IP rated and therefore is not allowed to be used in kitchen or bathroom equipment.

It would be so much nicer if we got one standard that covers everything.

How so? I can find IP67 micro-USB and USB-C connectors on digi-key. Is it a matter of USB-C not having the IP rating as part of its spec?

And my latest trimmer is actually using micro-USB, though with an additional plastic plug preventing the use of the charger on another device. But I can charge the trimmer with any other Micro-USB charger.

To piggyback on this excellent response: USB C is very good. There is no foreseeable reason to have to change anything for a long long time.

Implemented with durable materials and good machining practices, USB C can last a lifetime of plug cycles. The standard lends itself to extremely durable design relative even to the tank that is USB A. The C standard is for 10,000 cycles, but this is only technically a minimum. USB A only specifies 1,500 technically, but A connectors have been manufactured that last 20,000. This all alludes to the idea that USB C is just a standard, and it doesn’t indicate exactly how the connector is designed.

The situation with bandwidth is similar. Bandwidth has many other bottlenecks. The speed with which data is written to a flash drive, for example, has nothing to do with the port itself anymore. Similarly to the durability issue, it’s going to be a long long time before the functionality of USB C is associated with more than 80 GB/s.

Why is this “have to pass through bureaucrats” narrative pushed on every single discussion about this topic ?

One one hand getting approval for a specific justifiable situation doesn’t seem like an issue for any company with enough means to design a better universal connector.

On the other hand these “bureaucrats” are presently updating these laws as the previous one became obsolete and the situation isn’t improving organically. Here the bad player is Apple, why are we pointing the finger at the orgs actually making things move and keeping up to date with technology ?

Because anyone with experience with the political process knows it’s an absolute nightmare and prone to being extremely slow to react to changes.

Is charging port technology something we want to be the wild wild west and have companies quickly push random designs ?

Up until now the real nightmare has been every company coming up with their own crappy connector and sticking with it for decades.

USB-C is not the final form of charger ports. I’d rather the debate on the next evolution happen within industry, and maybe even play out competitively in the market. If a clear victor emerged and there’s another large, abusive hold out like Apple, then just pass a similar time-limited law.

This is way too dismissive of the govs attitude, which is to reevaluate the situation every X years, and way too optimistic toward the industry, which couldn’t converge to anything without getting forced to do it. The “clear victor” only emerged because of the law passed.

For crying out loud, USB-C was created by Apple and look at the situation we’re still in.

What? USB-C won aside from one holdout. Apple wasn’t even trying to get other companies to adopt Lightning.

It won because the legislative interfered. Apple just couldn't be bothered to play ball while it wasn't outright mandated, which is why we're now in this shitty situation.

And as mkbhd said a while ago, it's extremely unlikely that apple will introduce USB-C now as well. They'll likely pivot to wireless charging exclusively and get rid of all external connectors.

Apple have already said they’ll introduce it

You’re misinformed. they said they’ll adhere to the regulation, and the regulation only requires usb-c if a physical charging port is available.

A lot of news outlets took that as confirmation, but it was never explicitly stated.

We’ll see in 2024 if Apple chooses to remove the connector altogether or switch to usb-c. My money is on the removal.

Apparently Apple is even slower than the slow bureaucrats

Your comment misses the point of the entire discussion. No one has even claimed that Apple was merely slow. It was pure profit motive.

Isn’t it worse ?

How do you suggest to have some control over pure profit motives then?

By eventually doing what the EU is doing when there’s a clear hold out. But instead of carving it in stone, letting it expire in 5 to 10 years. i.e. exactly what my original comment said.

Outside wartime, being slow is an advantage. It means citizens can trust rules won’t be changed rapidly, increasing trust in the government. If properly taxes often change citizens wouldn’t know whether they can afford to buy a house, for example, or whether they be able to pay for their kids to go to school.

I think the EU is a great example of politics that’s slow, but not too slow, and not a nightmare. Yes, this took years, and the discussions probably weren’t all good, but the end result is decent, and that’s what counts.

Other examples are RoHS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Subst...), the GDPR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...), and roaming regulations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_roaming_regulat...)

Slow is good for deciding to prohibit. Slow is bad for deciding to allow.

> one bad player, Apple, to do the right thing

very strange reading this since i still buy electrical devices produced in 2022 with micro-usb, custom plugs, or whatever was cheapest when they assembled the device.

The law does not apply to all electronic devices. The law only applies to consumer handhelds. That’s mobile phones, tablets, e-readers, earbuds, digital cameras, headphones and headsets, handheld videogame consoles and portable speakers. And at a later date, laptops. It’s hard to think of any popular devices in those categories, aside from Apple’s phones and earbuds, that don’t ship with standard USB chargers.

Laptops still ship with various power bricks/connectors.

For high power laptops, the relevant USB-PD versions with sufficient wattage are too recent to have penetrated all product lines. But I haven’t seen a new laptop without usb-c charging in a long time. Even laptops that ship with their own bricks support usb-c charging as well (this will still be allowed by the EU law). Maybe you can identify a couple that don’t. I wonder how much market share they have and if they even matter.

It won’t be permanent just like the old school usb micro one didn’t prevent usb-c from coming to be

They are not remotely similar. The old micro usb policy could be complied with by shipping a little adapter with your product. This one cannot be.

And thank goodness for that. Nobody wants to deal with dongles everywhere

Okay but that doesn’t address my point or defend yours.

Mostly because I can’t tell what you’re trying to say

My whole point is that this requirement could suffocate innovation on ports by turning it into a mother-may-I regime in perpetuity. You said, but we had the regime before with micro usb yet still innovated to usb-c. My response was that the old requirement didn’t stifle innovation since it was satisfied by an adapter [requiring a minor logical step by the reader:] because you could still invent new ports as long as you bundled a micro USB adapter. Your response was, adapters bad. Do you see how that doesn’t address the argument at all?

Because legislatures are incredibly short sighted and ignorant when it comes to technology. ("Would you like to accept cookies on this site you chose to visit, if not it won't work and you should probably leave")

Don't blame the legislators for malicious compliance. Don't set cookies (which is the perfectly reasonable thing to do for read-only visitors of many sites) and no consent is required.

And if the user registers for an account then they can be informed as part of the signup because it's a technical necessity to maintain a login, again no banner needed.

You can set cookies. You can store data that's required for your site to function. You are not required to ask anything when doing that.

For storing more than that and especially for handing user data off to greedy advertisement leeches you must ask for user consent.

When asking user for consent, opting out must be as easy as opting in. If the user opted out, the site must continue to provide functionality.

> Would you like to accept cookies on this site you chose to visit, if not it won't work and you should probably leave")

Literally not what the law says.

I wasn't attempting to be literal. The observed effect "in the wild" though is pretty obvious, and the overall experience of the internet is worse off for it.

There are two norms about two very different things. (IANAL.)

- The ePrivacy Directive from 2002 (!) is (in its opt-in part) about sites storing stuff by whatever mechanism on the user’s computer (not just cookies, despite its nickname of “cookie law”). The explanatory text allows the “storage or GTFO” approach you are referring to. No mention is made of deletion of data, as the directive is purely about client-side storage, and the user can presumably delete that. Any storage technically required for the site to operate (e.g. login cookies) is specifically exempted, it need not even be mentioned.

I would not say this turned out particularly useful, but, well, in 2002 Microsoft was publishing books on .NET thick clients with chapters on interoperability with COM+ distributed transactions and SOAP was the hot new thing not even in Recommendation status yet. Nobody can see the future all that well, large organizations especially.

(I understand a more useful update to that has been stalled by GAFAM lobbying efforts for years now.)

- The General Data Protection Regulation from 2016 (not a typo, there was a generous grace period) is about organizations tracking people through whatever means. The “tracking or GTFO” choice (or its close relative, “tracking, money, or GTFO”, as seen e.g. on French newspaper sites even today) is specifically illegal, though of course showing ads with no tracking is not in scope. As the tracking data is stored by the organization, the user can demand that it be deleted. Any tracking technically required for the organization to operate (e.g. lists of customers who have used their free trial) is specifically exempted to the extent that the requirement exists (e.g. as long as the free trial is offered).

This one is working out better, although there seem to be tricky international law issues (“directive” vs “regulation”, jurisdiction etc) that mean that enforcement is less efficient that it could have been (e.g. Google and Facebook have mainly been prosecuted via ePD, as the GDPR complaints have to be routed through the Irish authorities, who have jammed their fingers into their ears and gone “lalala can’t hear you”).

> why not sunset these laws in five to ten years?

Because manufacturers would immediately resort to proprietary ones to squeeze some more money from customers for cables, chargers, adapters etc. If you look at them more as consumables than part of the product, just like printer cartridges, that makes more sense. Nobody is preventing future innovators from adding their own port with more features where space and cost would permit that.