501–510 of 751 posts
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Thank god they didn’t comply. Micro usb is appalling compared to lightening, but if Apple had complied we would probably be stuck with it.
Yeah, odd to me that people point to microUSB as a victory. That connector is absolutely terrible! I’ve had to fix microUSB ports multiple times. It’s super fragile.
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The government already mandates the electricity interconnect one step back at the wall socket. This is just extending that to modern devices.
Just to be clear, power sockets are not standardized in the EU. Italy has different ones (Type L), France as well (Type E), and the UK too (but they are no longer ... you know) ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity_by_country
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I find it interesting that our main hope for forcing the big tech to follow ethical/environment_friendly/user_friendly procedures is not the US, but the EU. I'm not European, but can anyone tell me how does the political system in the EU let (or even motivate) law-makers and governments to support such mandates and laws that are in favor of consumers?
I'm not an expert by any means, but my impression is that, while they certainly still have some influence, lobbyists and big companies hold a lot less sway in European politics than in the US. Part of that may be tighter rules around campaign finance, part of it may be cultural.
To claim their future existence, the EU government really has to prove their usefulness for the EU citizens.
Does anyone feel it is a little strange to have a government entity mandating a physical interconnect? I guess it has worked out well enough for receptacles. But on a phone it acts as a data connection as well. I guess I just wonder if in 20 years will every device still have a USB-C port on it in some odd location? No one is using it anymore, but it is still mandatory on everything.
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So, it's the latter. They will have another excuse to increase the prices further. "We had to spend $BILLIONS to change the design of the iPhone, so this is why the new iPhone EU Edition is going to be 1400€". This is the kind of thing that really makes me understand Brexit.
> They will have another excuse to increase the prices further. This sounds like a very poorly thought out slippery slope argument, specially taking into account that iPhones' manufacturing cost is already a fraction of the huge price they sell it to consumers (i.e., $200 vs $1200)
From the announcement https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_... (linked in article) > Today, the Commission is proposing: > A harmonised charging port for electronic devices: USB-C will be the common port. > Harmonised fast charging technology will help prevent that different producers unjustifiably limit the charging speed and will help to ensure that charging speed is the same when using any c…
Wait isn't unbundling the sale of the charger the thing everyone got mad at Apple for? And now they are legislating it?
They sold the iPhone with a USB-A charging brick for like 12 years. Then when the iPhone 11 came out in 2019, it came with a USB-C charging brick and a USB-C to Lightning cable, which would not work with any of the chargers they bundled for the past decade and some. And then, one year after changing the cable, they took away the USB-C charging brick.
"Just use the ones you already have" when you'd only have a wall charger that could take the cable that came in the box if you bought the iPhone 11 as well, or bought a separate charger.
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Presumably unbundled chargers will be fine with USB-C on everything. It's not proprietary like Apple's chargers and easy to find.
What is proprietary about Apples chargers? They sell USB-A and USB-C wall warts, and their devices happily charge on non-Apple chargers. Their laptop chargers are USB-C and have been for some time. I charge my MBP from a Lenovo power brick. The only proprietary part is the lightning connector.
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The ones who still own their data? If data is money, they can also afford to buy new phones. iXpand USB-Lightning drives are supported by some iOS apps which process large files, e.g. media playback and editing. There's no need for everything to be lowest-common-denominator. Product management is not statistics, it is aspirational leadership for upward mobility in human values, including but not limited to function,…
iPhone can backup to a PC or NAS wirelessly, no reason for a cable other than charging.
How do you backup iPhone to NAS? Do you mean mounting a NAS drive on a PC/Mac and then using WiFi for iTunes backup?
Does anyone feel it is a little strange to have a government entity mandating a physical interconnect? I guess it has worked out well enough for receptacles. But on a phone it acts as a data connection as well. I guess I just wonder if in 20 years will every device still have a USB-C port on it in some odd location? No one is using it anymore, but it is still mandatory on everything.
Nevertheless I am excited about the rumors Apple is going to bring MagSafe back in the upcoming model of MacBooks. Perhaps they could do the way it's done in HP EliteBook - it can be charged both through a barrel adapter (could be MagSafe in case of Apple) and through USB-C (i.e. by a Thunderbolt dock).
The only flaw of MagSafe I have to acknowledge is their ultra-thin cable is extremely vulnerable and you can't easily put a heat-shrink tube on it because the receptacle is so many times bigger.
They need to mandate the presence of a physical cable, otherwise Apple will drop the port and move to wireless charging. Wired cable remains important for high-quality audio and secure data transfers. Both WiFi and Bluetooth have a long and storied history of vulnerabilities. While they are at it, can we please have a dedicated physical cable port for audio? It doesn't have to be TRRS 3.5mm, but it must be possible t…
For the love of God, we do not want a government to be in charge of the innovation. When government declares specifically what technology is mandated then we can be quite certain that there will be no more progress in this area. For example why bother working on a better port than USB-C, if there is this new risk of not being able to even use it.