EU laws are not like physics laws, you can change them. That's why so many people are employed in policy and law making.
So if it happens that in the land of cable freedoms they come up with something much better, it would be adopted.
EU laws have worldwide effects, there's no land of cable freedom anymore.
If Apple "only" ends up offering a certification mark for USB-C chargers that have been tested with the iPhone and makes that easily accessible, they might well be in the clear. If they try to add power delivery profiles that are unavailable to everyone else, chances are the EU will react.
Also, you are not banned from engineering other solutions. The police isn't going to knock on the doors of engineers who are suspected to develop better charging cables :)
> Also, you are not banned from engineering other solutions. The police isn't going to knock on the doors of engineers who are suspected to develop better charging cables :)
We are discussing under an article where the regulator has sent a "stern warning" to a company. I don't think what you're saying makes sense. If I tried to sell my better plug in my home market, the police would come knocking.
We are talking about new innovations, not something used for 100 years.
Not everything has to be sold in EU, there are plenty of things not available across all markets.
Not betting on your ability to come up with a new type of charging cable is not as big deal as you imagining it is. Maybe you should come up with a prototype before demanding all type of charging cables be allowed?
In fact, USB-C and magsafe are complementary. USB-C is commonly used by displays to provide docking station functionality, so I can buy any display and use it with any computer (instead of having to buy a proprietary docking station that is different for each model). If I'm travelling, I can enjoy the more robust magsafe connector but I can also use USB-C if needed.
In reality if you come up with some kind of better plug, you will sell to a specialist market that would recognize the benefits (dentists or musicians for example) and then expand into other markets. You could try selling direct to consumers but guess what, nobody would buy it unless it had connectivity with other devices, and manufacturers wouldn't go out of their way to adopt it unless it delivered overwhelming advantages at low additional cost.
I'm familiar with the narrative but I don't know any examples.
There is a clear push from European elites for a halt in progress, aiming to maintain a status quo and preserve their existing advantages. As progressives, it is crucial that we fight this to ensure that Europe continues to advance and we don't have all to emigrate to the US.
It is O.K. to have two or more different societies, those feeling like they need more freedom for business can go to the US. It definitely makes the US much more competitive but a lot of people like Europe the way it is.
EU is not some company in Belgium, it is made of elected and appointed people from all the EU countries. It's not like EU making up things that members didn't ask for. EU creating a regulation is not like Twitter forcing a new policy over its users.
The EU does opinion polls to find out what people's top concerns are. Guess what: mobile phone connectors, cookie popups, GDPR and all the other crap the EU engages in never gets anywhere even close to the top of the pile.
We saw what the EU does when a member asks for changes requested by their "EU citizens". It told the UK to fuck off and then threw a hissy fit when the Brits actually did so.
If UK wants to block travel and resident rights of EU citizens and keep access into EU markets, that's obviously where the EU has to say fuck off. Non-British have opinions too and the opinions are overweeningly that if you want to be in EU you have to have the same rights and obligations like everybody else. No one is obligated to provide others with privileges just because they threaten to leave, they are free to leave and enjoy not being in the club. Which is silly because all those "EU rules" are put in place together with the British anyway.
Speaking if opinion polls, here are some of the latest opinions polls of the British public on Brexit: https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/joining-or-staying-o...
Even if you pretend the distance between voters and decision makers doesn't matter, here's a simple test: did your countries elected official vote for von der Leyen? You don't know the answer because the process by which she was selected is totally opaque by design. We don't even know if there was a vote at all. We don't know why she was selected. The MEPs were given a choice of her or nobody else. So please don't tell people that the EU is democratic or made up of "officials appointed by elected officials".
"If UK wants to block travel and resident rights of EU citizens and keep access into EU markets"
The EU granted residency rights automatically to everyone from the EU who was living there, and the EU still told everyone in the country to fuck off - including millions of those so-called "EU citizens" whose so-called rights suddenly stopped mattering.
But this is really a sideshow. The fact is, nobody in Europe was going on protest marches about USB-C or kettle speeds. The EU spends time on this stuff because it's made up of powerful but bubble-living bureaucrats who don't care and don't have to care about what matters to everyone else.
Anyway, you are entitled to believe in alternative facts. You are also entitled to believe that all EU does is regulating USB-C, that's fine. You are also free to believe that EU officials do things that no one cares or wants and keep getting elected.
> You are also free to believe that EU officials do things that no one cares or wants and keep getting elected.
The EU officials who create regulations are the Commissioners, who are not elected. That isn't an alternative fact, it's just a fact. I continue to be amazed at how EU supporters keep pretending this isn't the case. Can't tell if it's ignorance about their own political system or just too embarrassing to admit.
It's kinda hard to believe you seriously believe you might end up living in an Amish village. Perhaps you should visit the US and be surprised at how mediocre a lot of stuff is.
I lived in the US and while Europe (where I live now) has pretty old towns and manicured lawns I know that nothing modern and innovative comes from here: iPhone, software, SpaceX, even Tesla. Largest European company is a luxury brand and the most powerful economy in the EU turned out to be an empty shell controlled by and built on on cheap Russian energy. California alone dwarfs the largest EU countries put together.
No idea what corrosion you are talking about as I never encountered it. I don't need 240W to charge my iPhone, is't not a freaking Tesla and I prefer to prolong the battery life. I will give you the data bandwidth but I for laptops MagSafe is an even better charging port, and I hope someday for iPads too.
Choice is exactly what we had before the usb-c authoritarian mandate. Now it's only that for devices that are size-limited.
I am glad you are happy about your connector - but please understand I am not. I was happy with lightning and now I have to throw a bunch of cables away and replace them with an inferior (for me) alternative.
What EU wants to avoid is Apple giving "unfair" advantages to their own chargers (which could either come from Apple making better chargers or artificially slowing third party ones).
I’m not even sure people understand that Apple also contributed heavily to the development of USB-C along with other companies, some of them European.
The irony is that I believe the Lightning Connector, the iPhone connector, has been the longest standing standard connector (11 years now) and the introduction of the Qi “wireless charging” is also a good argument against this narrow sighted EU authoritarian/communist mentality that some apparatchiks can make better decisions than those who actually do and create things.
Has someone actually asked Apple to lay out its reasons for not adopting the larger and bulkier USB-C? Could it be that it has something to do with trying to engage in economic warfare against Apple because it’s harder to compete?
TLDR: The EU wanted less e-waste. Apple refused to engage, so the EU forced them to engage or leave.
I’m not even a fan of Apple look e for different reasons, but the very same reason Apple is likely not even engaging the EU clowns and their attempt at making Apple products worse with Micro USB (what a horrible design and technology because of it), it’s also the very same reason that the EU cannot ban Apple, because Apple is to god and the market leader in design and creating good products that people actually want.
I can assure you that Apple’s lightning connector has caused there to be less waste than any other manufacturer.
Case in point too; I just bought a temporary Nokia phone. And here it is, 2023, and they’re still using that horrible MicroUSB design plug that you have to look at every single time to make sure you get the plug in correctly. OUSD also discriminatory against the blind who have to feel they plug itself to figure out which way is up, whereas I can plug the lightning connector into any of the Apple devices in pitch black darkness because they go in the same every time.
"We tried giving you an option, but you kept picking wrong, so we're taking your right to choose away."
We may tolerate the fiction of corporate personhood in some circumstances, but companies are not people, and their "rights" should be strictly limited - especially when they purposefully ignore the wishes of elected representatives for a decade.
There is no "unfair advantage" to USB-C patent holders, it's a standard that the industry settled on in a cooperative fashion in which Apple was itself a major player.
No one prevented the industry from working on a "patent-free" different standard.
Point is, you can't and shouldn't promote _different brands of connectors_ as it defeats the purpose of having less waste if in a household iPhone users are gonna use a different charger from the others.
The reason is extremely obvious: cementing user lock-in to the Apple ecosystem.
https://panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-surp...
https://panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-surp...
USB-C is perfectly good for the moment in time we live in.
Imagine if goddamn power plugs in your wall were starting to be different because some company thinks a different format is better.
Or if they started to pull some "you can only charge your car with this very specific type of connector, but not others" and cars are much more impacted and sensitive by arguments like yours.
As for longevity, dunno; Micro-USB was around since 2007 and is still in use. And the European preference of Micro-USB does not seem to have prevented other standards. And of course, 3.5mm connector has been around for way way longer (until Apple decided to murder it in cold blood:). There's Ethernet of course. IEEE and various C-series cables?
Communist states centrally plan the economy. Everything is specified by government committees down to tiny details like the production levels of individual factories, what they produce, how, and what does or does not get researched.
The EU has developed a penchant for micromanaging the details of private industry to an extraordinary degree. The similarities to communist central planning are clear to see:
1. There is no democracy. The Commission does what it wants. The EU proclaims itself to have a parliament, but the body that uses that name isn't the same as a normal parliament.
2. They love to specify the details of trivial things like exactly how fast kettles operate, the exact way the curvature of bananas are classified, how browsers display cookie UI, and now the way phones plug into chargers.
3. All the above is justified via the usual terms ideologically left wing people like to use such as "fairness", "cooperation" etc.
None of this is a surprise because the EU traces its roots to a document written by communists called the Ventotene Manifesto, and prior Commission presidents have even celebrated Marx.
https://www.euronews.com/2018/05/04/juncker-opens-exhibition...
None of what you listed I see as a defining feature of Communism. It feels like some people have heard that "Communism is a bad thing that Russians did", and then they apply it to anything and everything they disagree with or may have centrally-planned authoritarian approaches.
"Centrally planned undemocratic / authoritarian" has so many wonderful implementations and versions, and communism is barely one of them :)
I remain unconvinced to see "USB-C Standard" as a "left-wing communist conspiracy" :-/
The USB-C standard is fine. Nobody is attacking USB-C in this thread. The left wing quasi-communist stuff comes from the absurd assumption that it is the last word in cable design and therefore it should be illegal to use anything else. That is the sort of planning error that led communist states to poverty.
You do need to pay them a (very reasonable) yearly fee if you wish to use the USB logo on your product though, and this includes agreeing to subject your product to compliance testing. As far as standards bodies go, USB is just about the furthest from "authoritarian" you can get.
Not sure how that's irony, since the connector is proprietary and not an open standard, resulting in e-waste and expensive chargers.
Your argument would have more weight if they opened it up. Do you think Apple should have done that?
I can charge basically all (dozens) of my gadgets using usb-c cable, but I still need to carry additional outdated lightning with me to charge the damn phone.
Rent to high? No problem, make increasing rent illegal. Got a homeless problem? Make it illegal to be homeless. Don't like changing your power cord? No problem: illegal. All these ideas would be like playing chess with the ability to only think one move ahead. It would be like having a 12 year old king pronounce today is ice cream day [all while facing certain thermonuclear war].
Isn't there a chicken and egg problem there - no one will release products with new power interfaces, because they aren't releasable in Europe.
I suppose such products might get released first in the US, but which large tech company if going to ignore the EU market when releasing important products?
Yes, that's the point. Instead of anyone releasing products with new power interfaces the goal is to have industry-wide discussion on adopting new standards for everyone.
I think it's reasonable and only a positive thing. If the industry will decide that USB-C isn't enough they will revise the standard.
That’s not part of the regulation whatsoever
> If the industry will decide that USB-C isn't enough they will revise the standard.
But the industry doesn’t come together and pick a standard. The EU did. The closest industries came to picking a standard were freely choosing from many different formats that emerged.
Imagine what it would take for the executives at Apple, Samsung, Motorola, etc. to come together and all agree on some new format that perhaps one of them developed. Now consider that the EU would still have to approve it. The conclusion made from that Herculean effort might just be null and void. Also consider that this sounds a lot like is collusion. These companies would never get as far as sitting down with each other and are even less likely with this EU regulation.
What’s worse is this all completely subjugates new players, who may be more likely to innovate and which can’t abuse any existing user base, to the current phone market. They would never have a seat at the table.
The EU does not really care on the standard and does not judge the technical decision - it cares about that there is one standard.
So if Samsung, Apple and co come together for the next improved standard, then this is exactly the purpose of this legislation and no one has to fear if the EU is in a good mood afterwards.
It is specifically Apple that has been the plays-badly-with-others child in this domain; the industry as a whole doesn't seem to have had much of a problem with the general idea.
No, the EU told the industry to come to a consensus, and everyone except Apple agreed on USB-C.
You mean exactly what happened when the USB standard was created by 7 tech companies?
Standardization works to turn already existing solution into a widespread commodity. Standardization does not work efficiently to invent new better ways of doing things.
The only viable driver for innovation is experimentation, not making new ‘better’ standards on paper inside some walled “industry” committee.
Yes - seems plainly obvious to me.
What’s more, the more countries to implement this makes it more unlikely to see different chargers. Maybe a better charger is released in the US. Now what if the US bans it? Are they going to innovate for the Brazilian market? The regulation scales very poorly.
The very corruptible EU?
The concept was iirc that industry will be reevaluating what needs to be standard
However, there is very little chance for that to happen now, considering most of innovation comes from small startups who don't have the resources or disposition to research something that is illegal to put on the market. So we are stuck with USB-C and committee-driven "innovation" for the foreseeable future.
Hopefully Apple will not adopt this forced mandate on other markets and maybe they can innovate there and back port the improvements to the EU. Most of tech innovation currently happens in the US anyway. We'll see, but I am not optimistic. Large companies always benefit from regulations since they have the resources to comply while denying a possible differentiator for small companies.
Right, just like how USB-C was invented by small startups like AMD, Intel, Apple, and Google. Before standardization the only "innovation" we were seeing was how many obscure connector shapes people could come up, all using the same voltages and currents.
> something that is illegal to put on the market
It is not. You can 100% put something on the market which has both your MagicConnector 3000 and USB-C.
The EU previously issued a Memorandum of Understanding, which basically just asked phone manufacturer nicely to please use USB micro-B. There was no mandate or enforcement (obviously, because Apple never released a phone with micro-B).
The USB-C law is an actual law which can't be ignored. The law will need to be updated when USB-D comes out.
Being "locked" on a a few not awful standard connectors is a good thing.
The Edison screw bulb is very simple, reliable, still used today even if I am sure that many companies would have invented more sophisticated standards over the years, I am glad they did not.
I still use audio jack connectors as much as possible, and I think that the world would be a slightly better place if we had universal AC power plugs.
The Edison screw works quite badly for LED bulbs commonly used today. The electronics are all buried in the base part, which has very limited cooling, so they get extra hot and kills the lightbulbs prematurely when the LEDs themselves last much longer. It is also not standardized w.r.t. voltages, power limits, etc, making it prone to user error.
The European and British plugs both have noticeable advantages compared to the American one, in that it is much harder to get shocked by them or cause arcing. Also, a universal plug would be much more helpful in a world with the same electric power systems everywhere, which is not the case.
I see pump dimensions in the law here but don't know if there was traditional regulation on fuel pumps being compatible.
This is definitely not the case. As an example, the Official Standard way to encode data structures in the 90s was ASN.1 from the ITU. Problem is, ASN.1 kinda sucked and so nobody uses it anymore outside of cryptography. Then the Official Standard became XML. Eventually people decided that also wasn't that great and switched to JSON, which is a totally unofficial standard defined by one guy.
Your approach / the EU approach would mean REST APIs would all need to be encoded with ASN.1 or XML.
JSON is still an odd one. 90% of that standard is "javascript, but only numbers and strings are allowed." With some extra shitty rules around comments and no real specification for what numbers do in the host language.
1. The "locking in" is not universal, it mostly concerns portable devices and has exceptions for higher wattage requirements 2. USB-C is a very flexible format, at the moment I think Thunderbolt 4 is the maximum commercially and that can deliver 40Gbs and 240W 3. What's locked in is a minimum, you can have two different charging ports on any device as long as one of them is USB-C
So as far as I can see you would incur into problems if you: 1. Want less than 100W of power 2. Need more than 40Gbs (I think thunderbolt 5 will bring this to 80?) 3. Don't care about compatibility with headphones, mice, keyboards, external hard drives etc which more and more are going to switch to usb-c 5. Can't physically put more than one charging port on the device 6. They can't afford to make the case for an exception from the commission
This is certainly a possibility but I think it's a minor one, and personally it's worth it if it means I can bring less chargers around (it's less highlighted but for devices with certain capabilities this law also mandates compliance with power delivery standard)
My approach to the whole thing is that I more or less see USB-C as a parallel to electrical sockets, we might be missing out on some theoretical improvements but I'll take that chance
> means in 50 years the EU is still stuck The commission can adapt the law through implementing regulations and it can still be adapted or repealed through the standard process, I can see as realistic us in the EU missing out on some fancy new port for 2-3 years (which I grant would suck) but doubt it'd be more than that
It's not like the EU standardizes emergent and rapidly evolving things, it's a freaking plug and "stuck in the past" isn't exactly how I describe the EU.
- GDPR, e-privacy and such only led to us having to click away cookie banners. Someone should make a study how much of the GDP is wasted because of those micro-interactions maneuvering around dark ui patterns. Still, Big Tech is just collecting the data in different ways and the regulations will never be able to catch up.
- Over time, we saw many smaller companies were put under pressure by some lawyers to also "obey the law". It massively incentivized legal uncertainty for many local companies. We will see the same pattern with generative AI and the obligation to make transparent where the data it's trained on is coming from.
- We have lately seen regulations being misused by some governments to stop things they didn't like (see Italy's government and their take on ChatGPT).
I am not so sure that regulating power plugs isn't just another iteration of stupidity of doing the opposite of what they claim.
If you have an iPhone and basically any other device like a MacBook, Sony headphones, Nintendo Switch, Sony PS5 controller, the list goes on and on, then you actually need two plugs.
The fear for a "lock-in" is completely unfounded, as the EU previously quasi-mandated Micro USB and switching to USB-C was no issue whatsoever. Besides, nothing is stopping manufacturers from including both USB-C and another charging connector.
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing— just that it’s not without consequences.
Imagine you didnt have law on shape and voltage of ordinsry power plugs in a house, and if you buy a samsung power socket to ibstall in your house, you mist buy samsung fridge and samsung washing machine and samsung hair dryer
And then there is the voltage conversion, which traditionally happened on the AC side (inexpensive and simple AC transformers are generally why the transmission and distribution systems are AC). Modern power supplies allow for buck/boost on the DC side.
USB-C power supplies are above 90% efficient. [1]
[0] https://eepower.com/new-industry-products/huawei-claims-most... [1] https://www.ti.com/lit/ug/tidudw2c/tidudw2c.pdf?ts=168350042...
That's a really strange thing to see here on HN. Where did you get this idea?
BTW Europe having 3-phase AC to the home is brilliant. Wish we had that in the U.S.
Are there three phase sockets available? I'd think you could build things like high power audio amplifiers or power supplies at radically better price points, if this were actually usable from the wall in places.
3 phase is 120 degrees out of phase. Wall power only has a single phase, 360 degrees. Via +/- rectification the situation gets more complex. The key thing, as the other commenter points out, is that there is always always power available. Where-as with wall-power you literally drop to zero voltage as you go + to - & back.
Why is this strange? I see this kind of ignorant nonsense here all the time.
This site is absolutely full of software people who, because of Dunning-Kruger, think they're experts at everything technical. Electrical engineering isn't that far from the software world (computers are electrical, and their design is within the EE world), so software people frequently think they're experts at anything EE when in fact they don't even understand Kirchoff's Laws, much less the realities of modern-day AC and DC power transmission.
There's been multiple discussions here in recent months with these people advocating absolutely idiotic stuff like a whole-house 5V DC supply, showing they don't even understand Ohm's Law.
On a side note, it's very frequent that I see posts here from people who apparently have never heard of an ad-blocker, yet are complaining about ads.
Theres a reason why china is spinning up DC power grids while posts like mine get bashed on.
If you're AC all the way, there's never a need to rectify your generator, either.
However it's not uncommon for this to be enforced by law, for example it is a legal requirement that in the UK all goods sold must adhere to the BS 1363-1 standard.
Every few years the National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA)--which is a non-governmental nonprofit--publishes an updated standard and then it's up to all the state legislatures to update the laws to require the new standard.
The problem is that the NFPA doesn't just post the NEC for free on the Internet. You have to pay for it (which is ridiculous) and it's copyrighted and as such, illegal to just give away. There was a lawsuit in Georgia that was supposed to determine whether or not that situation was OK (having laws that require expensive fees to view may be unconstitutional since that's like having secret laws). I don't know what the outcome was of that though.
The Supreme Court in 2020 ruled that OGCA is not copyrightable, this in 2022 indicates that it has been made available to the public for free.
There are four states who have not adopted the NEC on a statewide basis, leaving any such decision to the local authorities having jurisdiction: Arizona, Illinois, Mississippi, and Missouri.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply
The current authoritarian power play for pushing usb-c on Apple is completely unwarranted by the market conditions. It's pure politics.
Therefore, regulation is actually only impacting one player, and is extremely likely to reduce electronics waste, which makes it quite a nice political move. The claim of "authoritarianism" makes no sense, because governments are regulatory bodies and this regulatory move has clear motivations and positive expected outcomes, plus is incredibly easy to enforce.
Nice try though.
And yet, actually ever improving the power plug design is probably never going to happen.
Generally, something larger like a microwave or TV would come with an alternative power cord. Something smaller comes with a 2-prong European plug and a semi-permanent UK/Ireland adapter.
(Incidentally, the EU considered changing to a single mains plug, but wisely decided it wasn't worth the hassle.)
The EU seriously considered unifying wall sockets, but in the end it turned out to not really be worth the effort. Most devices have either a Europlug or CEE 7/7 plug, which are compatible with virtually all wall sockets in the EU.
Italy and Denmark are slowly switching their proprietary wall sockets to the more common Schuko variant, if I recall correctly, so improving it isn't impossible!
You seem to be conflating the wall socket with the on-device socket.
I have several devices that use the same wall socket plug but have different on-device sockets - some with very different shapes. Each one requires a different power cable.
As I understand it, every iPhone already comes with a charging cable in the box that plugs into a standard USB C port.
And the intent of the law is to bring the uniformity that exists in wall sockets to the on-device sockets.
1. There are currently several kinds of wall power voltages and plugs/receptacles commonly in use the US. Notable examples are the various 220-240V NEMA receptacles and the various 110-120V receptacles such as polarized 2-prong, unpolarized 2-prong, and 3-prong/grounded.
2. Although there are code requirements (e.g requiring that new outlets be grounded and polarized, or requiring ground fault protection in bathrooms) it doesn't appear that they mandate a particular plug or receptacle design (?) Though the NEMA (trade association) developed plugs can and do conform to the code requirements.
3. Power cords and on-device sockets aren't entirely standardized, but it's not nearly as big a deal as if there were dozens of 110-120V wall socket types rather than the three in common use.
> Sure, I don't think we see the same reality.
Possibly exposure to different governments acting different ways.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture#:~:text=Reg......
You’ll also need the various players on the other side to invest in development for something new with absolutely no guarantee that the EU will approve it. Honestly, if they wanted to mandate this they should have at least just said it’s in effect for ___ number of years and no longer.
I'd really hope that if something new is proposed it will be only once every player have decided to put their weight behind it to propose and push for a change.
On the topic of whether they will or not, I don't see a point in speculating: we'll find out soon enough.
In my opinion, this actually promotes the development of technology to be shared for the benefit of everyone, not just to help with vendor lock-in.
Granted, the latest episode was more than 5 years ago, but at 75USD for a local (i.e. non-cloud) licence I prefer not to take any chances.
Maybe "wasted" is too harsh a word, but I cannot say that in more than 30 years of work I ever found any real use case for non-MS documents.
If I am writing personal letters or putting together a few slides for, I dunno, my TTRPG campaign, everything goes, even Google or Apple stuff (both are free, the latter is free because it comes with the HW itself, if you use a Mac).
But when I know that there is a chance to get money for my document, the expectation on the customer's side is to get something that works with their Microsoft stuff, and I will comply.
YMMV of course, and I have surely missed any advance in Libre/Free Office for years. But as I said, I prefer to play it safe, and the cost of a licence is not really low.
Sure, if your employer or client expects you to use a particular piece of software, you're more than likely going to use that software to meet their expectations whether it's Microsoft Office or LibreOffice. However, many people use office suites outside of these specific business arrangements and LibreOffice is there for them if they don't want to pay that $75 to $150.
Tying this back to the original discussion about device connectors, if Microsoft ever neglects Microsoft Office like it once did with Internet Explorer, I can see alternatives eventually overtaking Microsoft Office in the office suite market just as Chrome overtook Internet Explorer in the web browser market. In the USB-C vs. Lightning situation, Lightning is the Internet Explorer of connectors, the proprietary connector that has a much lower maximum data transfer speed and much more limited device compatibility than USB-C. Although USB-C is now the de facto standard for device connectors, just as Microsoft Office is for certain business use cases, neither is guaranteed to stay that way forever. If the design of the USB-C connector is unable to incorporate some important technological advancement, it will certainly be replaced by an alternative just like Internet Explorer was replaced by Chrome and just like Lightning is being replaced by USB-C now.
I do not really disagree with the points that were posted in response, anyway.
I just stated that "working in a country where MS Office is the de facto standard", all the other free alternatives (including Apple products - so it's not a dig against non-commercial products) are "not viable alternatives FOR ME" (special emphasis on the last two words).
The amount of waste produced because companies are incentivized to produce incompatible devices like charger cables is staggering. The additional cost burden on users is unnecessary. The theoretical benefit of a better cable is not worth it.
1) Companies are not incentivized to produce incompatible cables, the industry has done a remarkably good job of settling on basically a single standard, so the incentives seem to run counter to what you say. The major hold out introduced their own cable standard 2 years _before_ USB-C even existed, and even they were rumored to be moving to USB-C anyways. (I'm sure people will credit the law with this even if it had nothing to do with it.) Would it have been good if they had switched to USB-C earlier? Sure, but that would mean... people throwing out their old cables that worked perfectly fine.
2.) Would the amount of charging cables you have purchased in your lifetime even fill up one regular-sized (13 gallon-ish) trash bag? I don't know how many charging cables you are buying or what your uses are, but I'm struggling to see how it's a "staggering" amount of waste. I'm a somewhat avid electronic geek, I own multiple Raspberry Pis and other hobbyist electronics. No way would I even come close. When I do buy new cables, 90% of the time it's for reasons like the old ones have worn out, or I have a new device that needs to be permanently plugged in.
~~~Edited to add~~~ All my consumer electronics devices have stopped needing their own charger for years now. I use the same charger and swap out a cord.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply
Lightning is a more durable design (in terms of plug/unplug cycles), had higher power capacity originally, and was reversible.
Hope you don't do anything involving tiny particles like sand or wood or cloth (like is found inside of pocket in the form of lint)!
The port can't directly drive all the weird miscellaneous pins that USB-C because it only has 16 pins, but it does have four high speed lanes, the same as USB-C. On a physical level it can reach the same speeds.
Before that, everyone had their own variant of the barrel plug. A few crappy low price vendors just used micro usb instead, since they couldn't possibly have a proprietary moat to speak of anyway.
It's one of the examples where consumer legislation worked.
You will note everyone except Apple did what the EU wanted early in this process.
There is no way to combine Micro USB, USBC, Thunderbolt and whatever Microsoft was doing with Surface devices into one adapter without separate electronics for each port.
> 1) Companies are not incentivized to produce incompatible cables
They absolutely are. I figure, it's not even greed (most of the adapters were included with the devices) but simply "designer convenience". It's certainly easier to design a device if you can choose an arbitrary input voltage and max power for your device.
It'll also certainly make your life as a manufacturer easier if you only have to provide warranty for devices that are run with your own power adapter.
Also, Apple in particular seems to have an aversion to follow any kind of standard not set by themselves if they can in any way avoid it. See Lightning, Thunderbolt, MagSafe, etc.
Doesn't mean this is better for anyone else except from the manufacturer.
> 2.) Would the amount of charging cables you have purchased in your lifetime even fill up one regular-sized (13 gallon-ish) trash bag?
I haven't measured but this isn't the point for me. But it used to be that the amount of adapters that you had to take with you were increasing: I.e. if laptop, phone and ipod all had different adapers and you were travelling, you had to take three of them with you.
> All my consumer electronics devices have stopped needing their own charger for years now.
Yes, so have mine, thanks to the EU regulation.
Right now I can design a product that uses one of the USB standards and pick from literally thousands of different pre-made parts that handle all the silly things for me. If I'm fine with 5v/2a power, I can just drop a $.0292 (that's the prototype price, it drops drastically at higher volumes) piece into the design and know that any cable and charger will work with it.
If I need more power than 10 watts I can spend $.50 on a usb-c plug and PD controller.
I truly don't understand why companies would fight this for most devices.
The one thing I'm worried about is what happens when someone comes up with something truly innovative (say, a phone battery that can charge at faster than 100 watts). Does that mean they will be penalized if they have to use a proprietary connector since usb-c is unable to meet that?
We already have, though, a glut of the pre-made components you talk about that cut every corner as close as they can-hopefully not so far as to start a fire, because you can’t sell to dead customers, but up to then? Go for it.
The number of implementations of PD has been a mess, with various chunks of a particular profile unavailable, inconsistently, along with no meaningful distinction between various versions of PD on most devices. Cables are often trash, and there is no certification for them required at all, until you get up to the point that Intel will smack you with a folder of lawyers if you try to call something a Thunderbolt cable without getting it certified. So we can all go out and buy just Thunderbolt cables and be sure it’ll work with everything else, and it’s all well and good until our wallet notices the hit.
Surely it can’t be that hard to just … check that stuff meets the standard, as in cGMP-style adapted to electronics (to the extent it isn’t already). Right?
If constrained to cell phones and tablets only I might sort-of agree with you, but right now the rest of the industry is fragmented to the point that it's not advantageous for any vendor to have its own weird cable except for Apple.
Even still, laptops can charge and dock via USB-C but they still often have their own weird-ass connectors and chargers.
But this also ignores the pre-Android years of every cell phone manufacturer having their own chargers, etc.
"Would the amount of charging cables you have purchased in your lifetime even fill up one regular-sized (13 gallon-ish) trash bag?"
If we're only talking about cell phones, close but no. But if we include similar devices that have used similar chargers and now use USB-C (ebook readers, MP3 players, tablets, handheld gaming devices) then yes. Easily.
Starting in the late 90s, I've owned something like 15 cell phones, and I think ~10 of them had unique chargers. Several MP3 players starting with the Creative Nomad and ending with a Fiio X5 (I think? I lost it on a plane). Three or four handheld gaming devices including a Sony PSP, IIRC.
And that doesn't include things like smart speakers (Amazon Echo devices now use USB-C I think? But the first few didn't), and a slew of other devices that could've used the prevailing standard (USB micro or mini or now USB-C) but didn't.
And that doesn't even include the parade of assorted data connection cables...
And, finally, that is only my personal use. I have a family, so when I say a "staggering" amount of waste I'm taking into account all of the various unique and now dead-end devices/connectors/cables that my wife and kids have churned through.
So - would I trade the potential for innovation on the off chance someone is going to come up with a super-duper nifty new cable vs. having a legislated standard? Yep. Happily.
Event if they double the speed, it can wait ten years and who knows in the speed may have quadruple by that next window.
I notice my phone getting hot on normal qi chargers, but not on a MagSafe charger.
Where are you getting the manufacturing carbon savings to offset the loss of efficiency?
Phones don't use much power.
Or the other way around, that will mandate it’s adoption.
Also to keep in mind that this regulation is a consequence of how the market developed in the last 20 years. The EU gave the industry a chance to sort out the situation before regulation, to which it mostly did with USB-C, but Apple refused to play along, also, cables haven't improved since USB-C, 9 years ago. So with a lack of substantial progress both in terms of standardization and technical improvement, the EU took the decision to regulate.
Not to distract from your point, which I agree with, but that is just plainly untrue. A USB-C cable from 9 years ago almost certainly doesn’t support current standards for power delivery and data transfer.
Neither do most of the current chargers or devices :-(
Actually, the only incentive left is to make significantly better cables; the incentive to make marginal "improvements" in order to achieve vendor lock-in is removed.
E.g. USB power delivery has already been ramped up several times to the point where it can deliver up to 240W (USDB PD 3.1)
That doesn't require any regulatory body to agree, just the USB Implementers Forum.
While there may well eventually be a reason to upgrade the actual plug, there should be resistance to that to encourage people to try to find ways to make it work that's backwards compatible with current equipment first.
But under these rules, wouldn’t that necessitate that a new standard develops and becomes the more popular one despite not being used because it can’t be sold in all the places that ban non USB C? How would you imagine that happening? It seems like in order for a new standard to catch on you can’t ban non USB C.
The more places that implement this non usb c ban the less a new standard can emerge. The regulation scales poorly in that regard.
The same way it happened for microusb->usb-C. Think of the law as more of a "get along shirt" applied to misbehaving kids/companies than a specific ban/enforcement. The big players can still decide on a new standard and start using it.
The process would be something like this: someone has a need that usb-C connector can't solve, some working group makes a new connector, large phone producers agree to start using it, they start using it.
Also, just like with usb-C, we'd most likely see the new connector on the laptops before the phones. If some new capability is needed, phones are unlikely to be the initial devices to need it (given low power / small size)
> What if Apple now comes out with a new standard much better than usb-c for their newest iPhone?
Then they go to other manufacturers and say "we have a new, much better idea. we should collaborate on it, so that it's standardised and we can all use it next year". Then they all ship it in Europe and we all have a much better connector. Win win win unless you want very proprietary connectors.
Reality check: this approach means the rest of the world will have better tech whilst what's sold in the EU remains frozen in time.
So the reasons are:
1. We want everyone to do the same, no exceptions. In particular, we don't like Apple and the lightning standard.
2. It's better for the environment.
Now, 2. is clearly wrong, as now just all the people already in the Apple ecosystem need to switch their lightning equipment to USB-C equipment, adding tons of waste.
And 1., well, is no reason at all. It's how you successfully stop innovation.
As opposed to now, when I buy twice as many cables on their own wear lifecycles because my phone doesn't connect to the same thing as my Switch or my Laptop?
This is literal FUD.
They brought back MagSafe because customers weren’t satisfied with USB-C charging.
They’re supporting both standard and proprietary. My MacBook Pro is connected to a multi port USB-C charger 99% of the time, which also charges my phone and my headset. MagSafe sits in the backpack when I need to work somewhere else than my desk, which doesn’t happen much. I’d argue it’s the best of both worlds.
If it only supported MagSafe I’d be seriously annoyed.
The problem with nonstandard connectors is when they get in the way of standard operation, not merely existing.
Magsafe delivers 140 watts compared to 100 watts for usb-c. That difference is not insignificant for people who aren't plugged in all day.
"Companies won't invest R&D into making freely available standards because if it's freely available it's not a competitive advantage" is clearly not something which bears out in the real world.
You somehow smoothly glossed over the part where Apple (and friends) have to convince a bureaucrat to allow them to do any of this. Where political imperatives ('we're gonna crack down on [foreign] big tech companies!') might incentivise a regulator to say no. Where the new cable no longer uses metal X, and all the manufacturers of metal X successfully lobby to 'save jobs' by protecting the old standard. And so on and so forth.
And no, innovation usually does not come from a bunch of companies sitting down to cooperate on a new version. First there is individual innovation, then there is consolidation, even if these come with changes from the original.
There's still an incentive to be the company that replaces the technology.
FUD.
That may be the case. But the innovation won't be deployed to Europe first.
Technologies and standards need adoption first before they'll be taken seriously by bureaucrats. And you're going to have a hard time getting adoption if it's literally against the law to do so.
This has been enforced since late 2012 (in draft since 2008) and is the reason why Apple had to include the micro-USB adapter in order to sell in the EU.
There is no reason for speculation since facts are available on your friendly neighborhood wiki. What we're seeing now is that the law is updated to enforce USB-C, which has been accommodated for a while.
The intent is not to standardize on an implementation forever, but to make the industry agree on a standard.
Obviously HN readers are the exception.
Anyways, USB-C is obviously technically more advanced - but it doesn't really matter for phones much, does it? Most people only ever transfer data on their phones from/to the cloud.
Maybe because it takes an eternity to do so?
I assumed the directive had some "go with the flow" upgrade path, but after reading the directive I can't see any wording to that effect.
If the USB-IF depreciated USB-C in favor of a USB-X the EU's directive wouldn't change, the only "upgrade path" appears to be that the commission will "asses" whether the directive should be changed every 5 years, starting in 2025.
1. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv%...
It's easy to do if there are regions in the world that aren't so tightly regulated. Then they can just look at what works elsewhere. If USB-D comes out and the rest of the world moves to it, it's a no-brainer for bureaucrats to get behind the switch.
It's much more complicated if the rest of the world fragments into say... 3 different standards that are all better than USB-3, but are mutually incompatible.
The law would then have been reassessed in 2020, at which point some EU bureaucrats would have had to weigh "reversible connector" etc. on one hand, and "take the career fall for forcing half a billion people to buy new chargers" on the other.
Actually, I think (but I'm no lawyer) that if the USB-IF wants to standardize a new connector, they'd want to call it USB-C v2.0.
The law seems to implicitly defer to them to define "USB-C". If the consortium wants a new standard they could either reuse the name, or wait 2.5 years on average for EU approval or rejection.
On a handheld device with limited space? Come on now.
How long until wireless charging is the default? Particularly combined with the iPhone's magsafe that allows charging to occur while the device is at any orientation?
No manufacturer is going to waste space that could be use for battery and further compromise water/dust proofing to add another port, for a total of 2, even if it's better than USB-C because the opportunity cost is too high.
The EU will supposedly upgrade the mandate when a better standard comes along … but who gets to determine if the new standard is “better” enough to trigger a replacement.
Some will want it replaced while some will demand that we keep the current standard. Can the EU really speak for everyone when people can have conflicting needs and wants?
Ever thought what would happen if there are competing standards next round that are quite close in capability but are nonetheless significantly different - with pros and cons that are important to various people.
I wonder how that’s going to play out in the EU and how ugly things could get - especially with lots of money on the line.
Also who watches the watchmen? The EU is clearly not immune to corruption given recent scandals.
None of these would be issues if there wasn’t a stupid mandate. People will just use what they want and what is best for their needs.
I am not sure if this other issue would be better: https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Mobile-Charger/dp/B00D1759A...
Given how inefficient wireless charging inherently is... ideally never, by legal force if required.
How a better alternative will created if you can't put it on any device to make it popular.
If micro-USB was mandated, it would have prevent the use of the Lightning connector that I have quite enjoyed for the last 10 years or so, instead I would be stuck with the IMHO inferior micro-USB.
You aren't forced to use only USB-C but to provide at least USB-C without artificial disadvantages.
Without those standards the users are stuck or need to rebuy all accessories.
I understand standards and think many are great.
I understand the lightening standard show it's age and is in need of an upgrade. Why the EU is involved in the decision making process is lost to me.
Having one gate keeper (for example "Made for iPhone" USDx per device / cable) profiting off this isn't good and isn't conscionable from a public policy perspective; it would amount to a private benefit imposed tax.
So the EU are, in effect, voting in their own self interest. And again it's not just the cables, but the chargers as well; the EU forced mobile phone companies to stop packaging chargers with phones as well.
Apple just blocks to lock you in their ecosystem.
Can I use a USB stick over lighting port? Last time I tried it was quite a hussle.
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iph95baac91f/io...
It never occurred to me to do that but it's nice to have the option.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?id=pcat17071&st=...
That, or you could accept that USBC is fine and that there is absolutely no needed improvement that cannot be done in the form of USB-C. Slapping magnets on USBC is not prohibited if that's what your heart desires. In the mean time, you'll live with charging your phone with 100W, I promise.
The fact that you see a port simply as way to charge instead of study in usability is why I dismiss this argument.
There.
By your own logic, you couldn't oppose the government forcing every GPU to have a VGA port, or every NVMe drive to have a sata port because hey do you also oppose standardizing 240v???
Just slap in a USBC too.
The lightning cable has whatever Apple wants on the other end.
These apple fanatics are so funny when they keep insisting that their shitty 2010 tech is bleeding edge.
OK, just buy phones with one port. I think you're just experiencing FOMO because it's possible that you could end up with a port that's not The Best or having to buy a less aesthetic phone.
You expect a space constrained device like a smartphone to have multiple ports?
How about making phones thicker again? More place for a battery, less risk of the next bend gate.
That's a bogus debate because there are more than enough possibilities.
I don't think any port is 100% water/dust proof. The more "openings" you add, the worse the water/dust proofing of the device.
Adding more and more cameras doesn't seem to be a problem and camera parts are more sensitive than ports.
If you look at ebay for phones with a defect, how often is it one of the ports?
The regulations take this into account.
We've already been through this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply
Unfortunately I fear even asking this question probably angers some
Please don't post like this. It's not a new or original insight and you're moving the discussion toward emotionalism rather than facts.
Probably something similar to what happened when the EU mandated mini-USB B and USB-C was rolled out.
Just in case: every phone used to have its own proprietary charging port. Typically but not always models of the same brand had the same port, but that was it. This led tp a ton of chargers - and e-waste, because 2 years layer the charging port had, of course, changed.
The EU came and legislated this nonsense out of existence - and good riddance to that!
That was mini-usb-b. We've moved on to usb-c nowadays, and the EU is expanding the legislation to cover most chargeable items.
Your worry is relevant, but the EU's track record in this particular field is absolutely stellar and more than sufficient to assuage me.
Unfortunately I fear even asking this question probably angers some, but I think it's an interesting question because unlike other things in history we're seeing such rapid iteration. Maybe the laws in the EU have accounted for this - it just seems like a short term good thing that could be not so great in a few years down the road... thoughts?