321–330 of 525 posts
Still, the irony of Apple complaining about being forced to adopt a standard when they’ve been at the vanguard of aggressively dropping older ports is amusing.
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That is an order of magnitude exaggeration. Lightning appeared in 2012. USB-C appeared in 2014. 20 years means we'd apparently still be waiting for another 12 years for USB-C. Hardly helps your argument.
USB-C is a complete mess. The physical appearance of the connector is nice, but the design by committee that resulted in invisible but critical differences is horrible. You cannot tell by looking at a cable or devices you are trying to connect or charge of the cable will provide the needed bandwidth or voltage. Two cables might look identical but one won't work at all for what you need and you have no way to tell.
At the office, this was solved by giving me two cables - one for charge and one for data which connect to the DisplayPort.
The only thing as painful is the box of unlabelled hdmi cables I have that all works to varying degrees.
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Seeing that Apple is always bragging about their 90%+ retention rate, not many people are switching from iOS devices and throwing away cables. But is “think about the environment” the new “think about the children” and “terrorism” war cry for more regulation and big government?
But if I switch to apple I have to throw out my cables, too. Maybe try to look at this differently: is your life better for the fact that when you travel you need to bring power plug adapters? If cars had different gas plugs that required different gas stations, would that be nice?
My iPad and Mac are usb-c. My iPhone isn’t. We all know this and have to carry two cables or more. However, I already use a common charger as it’s only the charger End that needs to be considered. We could save on cables, however. Still, the irony of Apple complaining about being forced to adopt a standard when they’ve been at the vanguard of aggressively dropping older ports is amusing.
Is it? Nearly every big industry player hates being regulated to make a decision they didn’t make.
I thought all these EU tech regulations might do some good But now when I arrive at any website I have to accept cookie policy, then I have to accept that they will invade my privacy and log my data (or waste half an hour un-checking boxes) and only then can I get down to the business of not signing up to their newsletter and not downloading their app. Maybe this is simpler but tech companies seem to find loopholes f…
You don't have to accept that, and if you waste half an hour unchecking boxes that site is doing malicious compliance. In my experience it's three clicks or so to turn off data gathering. I could not be happier with the GDPR.
Hopefully this behaviour will change once the ongoing cases make their way through the court system.
I'm not someone who's shy about regulation, but even I think this is totally unnecessary. As an Apple user, I should be the first to complain about their own internal (inexplicable) lack of a standard (Lightning for phones, USB-C for everything else). It's annoying, sure, but it's far from a material burden on my quality of life. Is this really the problem we need to be spending our regulatory energies on in 2020?
> It's annoying, sure, but it's far from a material burden on my quality of life. It's a material burden on the rest of us though. Every home has a dozen cables where 2 would do. The reduction of eWaste is a noble goal.
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The vast majority have USB C cables? Why would I own any USB C chargers as an iPhone user? Not even most Android phones support USB C.
> Why would I own any USB C chargers as an iPhone user? Maybe you own a USB-C laptop or tablet? Maybe even from the same company?
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Macs come with usb-c. Why can’t iPhones be also usb-c? I’m not sure I fully understand why everything in the world can’t be usb-c?
Because not everything should be USBC, and not everything needs to be USBC. USB C won’t be the standard forever, and it’s a standard that takes many forms and has caused lots of confusion, so it’s not exactly the gold standard. USB C isn’t forever, eventually USB D will come around, and what’ll happen? The EU and their (often targeted anti-American-tech) laws will hold phones back, or leave themselves out of the mark…
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The thing that plugs into the wall is already regulated (for every electronic device, not just chargers). That is why you don't have to rewire your house when you buy a new phone. This directive is specifically for the bit that connects to your phone.
And every single Apple phone I've owned so far uses a cable that plugs into USB A. Which is a standard. I'm still using the wall warts I got for my original iPhone. Which have international wall plug kits. Solid, long-lived electronics. Meanwhile, the burner phones I've bought for when I'm in the EU have these shitty all-in-one wall-to-micro-USB, and I ended up eventually throwing them out. So there's your e-waste.
What does this mean in practice? Are Android phone makers going to have to license the Lightning port from Apple? Or is the EU going to declare that USB-C is the be all end all of phone plugs? It sounds like they're trying to standardize the actual chargers, I wonder how that will work USB-PDs many different modes? What about proprietary fast charging schemes? (maybe those already died out after the move to USB-c?).…
”I'm guessing that whatever comes after USB-C will exist in the US and Asia for years before its allowed in the EU” Looking at what happened with RoHS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Subst... ; the EU forbid the use of lead-based solder, and the world mostly followed because, if they didn’t, the logistics and lower economies of scale would cost more than using the cheaper processes), it will…
Heavy handed laws will only increase how fast they get left behind as a targeted market.