Another example: It used to be that telecom companies used to milk cross country calls and data within the EU. The competition to provide cheap calls between countries was basically not working. So EU made it a requirement that you should not pay any extra at all for international calls between EU countries, and whatever data package you bought at home works everywhere within the EU with no extra charges.

And this was such a good change! The degree to which companies get away with shenanigans outside of the EU is crazy.

> So EU made it a requirement that you should not pay any extra at all for international calls between EU countries, and whatever data package you bought at home works everywhere within the EU with no extra charges.

Arguably that's not a new requirement, but simply the EU enforcing the existing single market rules.

It wasn't considered a part of the single market rules until new legislation was passed. It came into effect in 2019.

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/intra-eu-c...

> Before Intra-EU communications were capped, the average standard price of a fixed or mobile intra-EU call tended to be three times higher than the standard price of a domestic call. While the standard price of an intra-EU SMS was more than twice as expensive as a domestic one. In some cases the standard price of an intra-EU call was up to ten times higher than the standard price for domestic calls.

I'd wager it's just going to take time, but the EU did successfully hamper Apple here. Give 'em some credit.

> Sadly I bet they will get away with it. Apple is very good at this sort of thing.

Which is why new iPhones still have Lighting connectors. Oh wait.

Just give it time to work its way out. We don't live in a cyberpunk dystopia yet.

For how long? EU is also pretty good at coming after companies. Remember when Apple dodged switching from Lightning when micro-USB was a thing and now they're forced into USB-C?

Which I think is a better outcome than if we’d gotten iPhones stuck on a local maxima of microUSB.

As a consumer, lightning is a more pleasant to use connector than micro and therefore, I’m glad Apple didn’t cave at that time.

But you could've got USB-C almost a decade earlier tho

What was the advantage to me as a consumer if a 2015 iPhone got USB-C? IMO, USB-C wasn’t an advantage over Lightning then. (USB-C was not yet a common connector and most Apple users already had Lightning cables or could get by with the one included with the phone. Apple users had 3 years of orientation-independent convenience before USB-C arrived.)

I still find plugging in the Lightning cable to be easier (less precise alignment needed) than a USB-C and by the time the iPhone 8 arrived with magnetic charging, any charging advantage to USB-C went away.

“Forced into”, as if apple hasn’t been producing literally every other items besides iphones with usb-c, based on their own choices.

Of course if there were a law like that, they will rather point their fingers at the EU, over their users blaming apple for the slight inconvenience of changing.