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EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

appleinsider.com

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Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#341

Post by georgespencer »

jakobegger wrote: post #311
djannzjkzxn wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has worked on wireless proximity charging where the device merely needs to be within a few feet of the charger. I hear there are serious engineering challenges that make this hard to achieve but I don’t think they will remove the port with the current QI charging experience. Maybe there will be a charging battery you can just throw in the same bag as the phone and the phone will charge.

> ... serious engineering challenges ... I'd say there are serious physical challenges with this problem. Wireless power transfer over distances of more than an inch without big parabolic antennas is about as realistic as hoverboards.

uBeam is the canonical example of this. Their own VP Engineering left and publicly stated that the technology simply doesn't work. ELI5 is that you need an impractically large phased array to transmit, and the attenuation is precipitous even at short distances. The commentary I've read (by no means exhaustive) treats it as if it's a "laws of physics" problem, but I would assume the company had some reasonably compelling answers to this challenge given that they raised $40m USD from some bright investors.

Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#342

Post by georgespencer »

lallysingh wrote: post #197
wyattpeak wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Apple genuinely believe that they can provide a better product, and I believe they can too. I just don't care. The inability to borrow cables or swap them between devices in the past was a not insignificant hassle. Keeping boxes of cables, not being able to borrow a friend's charger when visiting, not being able to replace cables except by ordering a new one from the manufacturer half a world away. Constant m…

Agreed. Also let's remember that Apple makes a pretty penny off of all those cables and chargers.

Folks keep asserting this. Do you have any evidence to support this view?

Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#343

Post by dimman »

Lio wrote: post #296
lallysingh wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Also let's remember that Apple makes a pretty penny off of all those cables and chargers.

More worrying to me, the charging port on this iPhone is wearing out. Simply buying a new cable does nothing to fix that because the springs are in the phone. Lightning is a crap proprietary design from my point of view. If it was USB-C I could just change the cable.

Your statement would make more sense if USB-C somehow magically would be immune to wear, but it’s not.

Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#344

Post by eurleif »

dimman wrote: post #343
Lio wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More worrying to me, the charging port on this iPhone is wearing out. Simply buying a new cable does nothing to fix that because the springs are in the phone. Lightning is a crap proprietary design from my point of view. If it was USB-C I could just change the cable.

Your statement would make more sense if USB-C somehow magically would be immune to wear, but it’s not.

You didn't understand this sentence: "Simply buying a new cable does nothing to fix that because the springs are in the phone." With Lightning, the springs are in the phone. With USB-C, the springs are in the cable. Springs are a moving part, and thus especially vulnerable to wear. Replacing a cable is cheaper than replacing a phone.

Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#345

Post by dijit »

thu2111 wrote: post #338
dijit wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t mean to imply that you’re young, but to say what you just said implies that you didn’t live the life of mobile phones pre-2004 (when the EU charging directive came in). Not only was every phone manufacturer having their own charger, often they would have different charging ports between models or product categories within the same brand! The landscape you’re describing now exists precisely because of this dir…

No it doesn't. The industry was developing USB and standardized it for power before the EU Commission started caring about this. What happened would have happened anyway due to economies of scale.

Development of a standard does not nearly equate to deployment of a standard.

There are open standards for instant communication. How many proprietary protocols and implementations exist? How many are so widely adopted?

Contrast that with open ones.

There’s quite a lot of money in peripherals; it’s also a neat way of obsoleting older phones. Broken custom chargers were usually the reason I stopped using a phone; meaning I bought a new one.

Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#346

Post by m0zg »

Pretty easy: just don't include charger in the box at all. Make Europeans pay for the idiocy of their politicians. Apple, BTW, makes the best power supplies in the industry, as confirmed by many teardowns.

If there's anything that needs to be standardized it's the port which is used to charge the device. That port, today, should be USB-C. But the law doesn't do that.

Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#347

Post by sneak »

lallysingh wrote: post #197
wyattpeak wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Apple genuinely believe that they can provide a better product, and I believe they can too. I just don't care. The inability to borrow cables or swap them between devices in the past was a not insignificant hassle. Keeping boxes of cables, not being able to borrow a friend's charger when visiting, not being able to replace cables except by ordering a new one from the manufacturer half a world away. Constant m…

Agreed. Also let's remember that Apple makes a pretty penny off of all those cables and chargers.

https://sneak.berlin/20190330/apple-is-not-trying-to-screw-y...

Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#348

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

defnotashton2 wrote: post #293
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #6

This is a good move. Finally my partner and I, with apple and android devices respectively, can share chargers if need be. it's a pity that Apple didn't play ball voluntarily, and had to be ordered to be nice.

Ahh yes an expensive legislative bill is how we solve that problem, instead of a 5$, breakout cable from Amazon or most corner convince stores.

Exactly. Less hassle, less wasteful, disposable electronic junk.

Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#349

Post by michaelt »

georgespencer wrote: post #342
lallysingh wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Also let's remember that Apple makes a pretty penny off of all those cables and chargers.

Folks keep asserting this. Do you have any evidence to support this view?

It's quite well documented that manufacturers have to pay Apple to use lightning connectors, under the MFi scheme. While Apple doesn't issue a price sheet publicly it's been widely reported [1] as $4 per lightning connector - and that in the past it's been as much as $10 per device.

$4 per cable in licensing fees for every single cable sold sounds pretty nice to me. I can understand Apple wanting to keep that.

[1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/14/02/07/apple-lowers-mfi-...

Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#350

Post by signal11 »

GeekyBear wrote: post #84
SiempreViernes wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the text only speaks of a "common charger" without specifying further, so I'm somewhat surprised you make the claim the directive speaks only about one sub-part of the charger. To me things appear thus: the EP passed a directive that states mobile radio equipment should have a "common charger", sensibly letting manufacturers decide how to solve the interoperability problem. Apple then argued "well, it's not e…

Apple's charger already had a standard USB-A port and has moved to having a standard USB-C port. It's the cable that they include with the iPhone that has a USB connector on the charger end and a lightning port on the phone end. That included cable allows you to charge with any manufacturer's USB-C charger in the same way that the previous version of the cable worked with any USB-A charging port. So, in summary, the…

> If they want to force Apple's hand specifically, they should be focusing on the port on the phone, not the charger.

It's worth remembering that the backers of the EU legislation started with the idea of reducing e-waste, not punishing a particular manufacturer. Nor is it a Lightning vs USB-C squabble.

Getting people to throw their lightning cables, charging ports, docking stations, etc away would be counter-productive to their aims. The Lightning port has been around for a long time and getting rid of that will cause significant e-waste.

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