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

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

#401

Post by hesarenu »

scarface74 wrote: post #377
Lio wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t buy iPhones for the cables. I don’t like the needlessly proprietary cable and I actually put that on the list of reasons not to upgrade to a newer iPhone. When I look at switching to Android I weigh the crappy Apple cable against the loss of privacy of moving to Android. The iPhone wins. Just.

Amazing how free will works isn’t it? You as a competent adult are able to judge products and make decisions about tradeoffs and you didn’t need the government to help you do it. If Apple saw that enough customers switch to Android because of the cable they would change - free markets are amazing.

Apple forces everyone to use their own browser engine , their own marketplace no free will there. Competent adult can not judge products on their own, they can only install Apple approved ones!.

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

#402

Post by lallysingh »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #364
michaelt wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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] ht…

> $4 per cable That seems high considering that Anker (chosen as a cheap but good company presumably not dodging Apple's licensing scheme) is selling lightning cables on Amazon for 8 bucks [1] Amazon Basics has them for 6.50 [2] I don't think they are sending 50% and 75% of their gross to Apple. 1> https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Powerline-Lightning-Probably-Ce... 2> https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Lightning-USB-Cab…

Why not? The cables are probably purchased from a few bulk vendors and sold after the license fees are paid. That's still 10+% margin on a low risk product.

Apple charges 30% for the app store, and that's very little overhead for then.

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

#403

Post by ajmurmann »

Can_Not wrote: post #397
ajmurmann wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is an easy solution to this, either require all cables be the same specs or require that cables have their specs labeled. It's already an improvement over the past where every device had a different cable, I can at least slow charge instead of no charge.

I don't know, I find out much worse that I might go to a store to buy a cable and then find out that it only charges very slowly and might not do data at all. I'd rather spend $15 bucks on a cable (or just carry the one that the devise came with anyway) and know it does what it's supposed to. Even after this legislation, I still need more cables anyways, since this only covers cellphones. My Kindle still uses micro-usb. Who carries around multiple phones by different vendors anyways which is the only issues this would solve. I'm generally neutral on regulation, but this is just completely pointless regulation that solves no real problem.

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

#404

Post by scarface74 »

hesarenu wrote: post #401
scarface74 wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing how free will works isn’t it? You as a competent adult are able to judge products and make decisions about tradeoffs and you didn’t need the government to help you do it. If Apple saw that enough customers switch to Android because of the cable they would change - free markets are amazing.

Apple forces everyone to use their own browser engine , their own marketplace no free will there. Competent adult can not judge products on their own, they can only install Apple approved ones!.

If only people had another choice of mobile phone operating systems....

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

#405

Post by Twixes »

scarface74 wrote: post #359
Twixes wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making life convenient is kind of one of the things that governments should do for their citizens. And intervention is the only way to make that XKCD strip about standards not true.

The last thing I want is government passing laws to make life “convenient”.

OK, so do you want them to make life harder? Or just sit around? Because I prefer it when they actually do something for the ordinary citizen. Fortunately we didn't have Reagan here in Europe, so we still care about ordinary citizens.

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

#406

Post by ern »

signal11 wrote: post #350
GeekyBear wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-product…

The Lightning port has been around for a long time and getting rid of that will cause significant e-waste.

From personal experience, Lightning already produces significant e-waste. The lack of strain relief means that my family experiences many broken Lightning cables each year.

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

#407

Post by HelloNurse »

signal11 wrote: post #350
GeekyBear wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-product…

We are talking about new devices, and possibly fines about old ones. Making iPhones with USB-C ports doesn't mean "throwing away" anything.

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

#408

Post by kalleboo »

scarface74 wrote: post #399
kalleboo wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would debate that. They have 40% 1-star reviews like "BUYER BEWARE", "Doesn't work", "Absolute garbage", "Trash", "Stopped working after a week"

So now are you saying that you are in favor of Apple’s “Walled garden” to ensure quality? If you are worried about quality cables that must pass some type of certifications doesn’t that argue for proprietary cables where Apple ensures the quality? Shouldn’t in that case Apple lock down cables more?

I'm not saying I'm in favor of anything, just that you bought some cheap unlicensed chinese garbage off of Amazon doesn't prove that Apple doesn't charge a $4/connector license fee. Amazon is well known for selling piles of counterfeit crap

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

#409

Post by greglindahl »

viraptor wrote: post #329
greglindahl wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Compare the price of an Apple phone to a burner phone and you'll know why they're not great quality. Apple chargers at that price would also suck.

The problem with the burner chargers was that they were inflexible. The wall plug couldn't be changed for other countries, and there was no USB A between the wall wart and the cable so I couldn't use it to charge all of my other gadgets.

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

#410

Post by jacobush »

stefan_ wrote: post #220
veeralpatel979 wrote: post #127

I'm with Apple on this one. Apple has kept working on improving the charging experience for its phones over time. The original iPhone cable, then lightning, then wireless charging. This stifles innovation. Also: doesn't the government have more pressing concerns to worry about? I doubt Apple's lobbying against this for some nefarious reason, like locking users into their proprietary technology.

Lightning is best remembered for being such ancient technology that already in the year of its release, the connector was incapable of providing enough bandwidth for even a modest 1080p video signal. This eventually forced Apple into creating a lossy Lightning-to-HDMI adapter that would receive low bitrate h264 from your professional use iPad and decode it into its final artifact riddled form for output on HDMI.

The adapter running BSD Unix, no less.
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