2024? There's still plenty of time for them to remove the port altogether and go with just MagSafe/Qi. Which they control, and they still can get fees from. Trust me when I say that Apple will NEVER submit to this legislation, they will find every sort of obscure or arcane tricks to comply with it without actually doing it. It would set a precedent that legislating can change Apple's behaviour, which they clearly do…
Basically what I'm assuming is that Apple will adopt USB-C on the iPhone Pro models (since they need faster file transfer for the huge 4K ProRes video files anyway, and they were happy to adopt USB-C on the iPad "Pro" models early) and drop the ports completely on the non-Pro models.
2024? There's still plenty of time for them to remove the port altogether and go with just MagSafe/Qi. Which they control, and they still can get fees from. Trust me when I say that Apple will NEVER submit to this legislation, they will find every sort of obscure or arcane tricks to comply with it without actually doing it. It would set a precedent that legislating can change Apple's behaviour, which they clearly do…
> MagSafe/Qi. Which they control, and they still can get fees from
Apple doesn't control Qi.
I charge my phone with a random $5 charger and it works quite alright.
I want to like this, but I charge my iPhone with a cable that has lightning on one end and USB-C on the other, and I know from extensive direct experience that the lightning end is the better physical design. Supporting this is tantamount to believing that there will never need to be a USB-D that improves upon USB-C, and I just can’t believe that.
If there's a better standard in the future the law can be changed, they didn't put this in the constitution. I've never had a phone with USB-C to compare, but I've had rotten luck with Lightning. I always get that one power pin that blackens and makes the cable unreliable.
> If there's a better standard in the future the law can be changed, they didn't put this in the constitution.
Who will build the spec and research and then lobby Europe to change the law when no device uses it? The marketing of saying “this new spec is better… throw out EVERYTHING” won’t happen.
What will happen is that the hot mess of a market that is the Asian market will grow and change and develop… and throw out cables. And it’ll get better over time while the availability in Europe stagnates.
PS you can clean the blackened pin so it works again.
Alright, so before more folks freak out even more at this, there are a number of knee-jerk reactions that could be mitigated by reading up on this a bit before tossing thunderbolts. The main reasoning for this is to cut down on waste from incompatible chargers. This will bring charging more in line with other standardized products such as AC power cords, twisted pair networking, SD cards, M.2 SSDs, and all of those w…
I think your analogy isn’t right. None of those standards are mandatory. Would M.2 have come out when it did if you needed to change the law to permit it to be used over SATA? USB-C is already a standard just like all your other examples. This law forbids using other standards. > New innovations can be brought forth in the same way they are with the other standards mentioned above: developed in a harmonised manner I…
This is an unrealistic view of how current standards are introduced, approved and adopted. Interesting that you mentioned Apple, when they are using their significant market share to push lightning down their customers throats.
The standards mentioned, are approved mostly by consortiums of big enterprises. So in a sense, there’s already a committee that evaluates and passes them. You also find the usual suspects among them i.e. Apple, IBM, HP, Google, etc. there’s no small startup there.
A lot of people saying "USB-C cables aren't even compatible with each other!" (Nintendo switch etc.) Guess what: that's exactly the problem this regulation is intended to solve. Fake USB-C cables like Nintendo's that have the right shape but do not adhere to spec should gradually disappear along with lightning cables. The regulation actually says that cables can no longer be bundled with the devices themselves, so Ni…
> Let's say the USB consortium releases USB-D with input from Apple, Google, and many other stakeholders [...]
If you have to make such an argument, you've already lost.
Innovation, particularly disruptive and / or breakthrough innovation, does not happen by committee, no matter how many times over history people tried deluding themselves into thinking that it does.
My Macbook Pro charger charges Nintendo Switch, so maybe this was fixed later? Switch is 2017 device.
I have a launch-model Switch, and it still has trouble charging even on latest firmware. It's very possible that this is one of the "Mariko" fixes; Nintendo silently released a refresh of the Nintendo Switch before the OLED model was announced, dubbed the Mariko models. These had a number of changes, including but not limited to: - New, more secure boot sequence - Updated Nvidia Tegra board - ~20% better battery life…
Just to make this thread a bit more aggravating, I have two pre-Mariko switches — at least they both have the Nvidia Tegra vulnerability, anyway — and I have yet to see either fail to charge on random USB-C cables and chargers.
As another poster mentioned, however, they will only dock with the OEM charger.
Seems like whatever is happening with the OG switch USB-C implementation it’s not straightforward.
By the way, that's also how Tesla and all other cars have the same electric plug in EU(not the USB mandate but the car plug standardisation mandate). Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is what happens if better solutions are found. Will EU block innovation? That question is addressed in the Q&A: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/QANDA_... In essence, they seem to believe that wired char…
> Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is what happens if better solutions are found. Will EU block innovation? The EU has no problem with updating to improved standards. First there was USB-Mini-B, then USB-Micro-B, now USB-C. I would expect some different connector to replace it in a about a decade and 100% wireless in two decades roughly.
Mini-B (2000) had serious reliability problems, and would often damage the device rather than the cable. Micro-B (2007) was a pretty smart & necessary response. USB-C (2014) elegantly encompassed the additional high-speed data-connectivity that the hideous huge SuperSpeed USB Micro-B (2008) tacked on, & added significant future-proofing/adaptability (alt-modes).
I have a hard time imagining much advantage beyond USB-C. It's pretty mechanically fit & reliable, it has huge bandwidth (I think DisplayPort alt-modes can do 80Gbps?), it can transmit 240W in Extended Power Range variants. Someday perhaps. But I also think this might be here to stay for a long long time.
Reading charging standards as "weights and measures" is on par with classifying bumblebees as fish. Not only aren't these strict readings, they aren't even sensible.
Standardization of metering devices used in commerce is directly in the purview of Weights and Measures regulation. For example, NIST Weights and Measures division regulates the nozzle on the dispenser used for gasoline in the US. > Each retail dispensing device from which fuel products are sold shall be equipped with a nozzle spout having a diameter that conforms with the latest version of SAE J285, “Dispenser Nozzl…
Ensuring accurate metering in the context of commerce is within the scope of "To … fix the Standard of Weights and Measures". The specific form of the nozzle clearly is not, but they might justify it on the basis of some other enumerated power—the interstate commerce clause is frequently (ab)used for this sort of thing. Nothing technically requires every regulation produced by the NIST Weights and Measures division to be grounded exclusively in the Weights and Measures clause, though one could be forgiven for making that assumption.
As dpratt remarked earlier[0], any interpretation which would deem nozzle size—or the specific form of an electrical connector—to be covered by the Weights and Measures clause of the Constitution would effectively cede unlimited power to the federal government. What couldn't they regulate under such broad rules?
Alright, so before more folks freak out even more at this, there are a number of knee-jerk reactions that could be mitigated by reading up on this a bit before tossing thunderbolts. The main reasoning for this is to cut down on waste from incompatible chargers. This will bring charging more in line with other standardized products such as AC power cords, twisted pair networking, SD cards, M.2 SSDs, and all of those w…
I think your analogy isn’t right. None of those standards are mandatory. Would M.2 have come out when it did if you needed to change the law to permit it to be used over SATA? USB-C is already a standard just like all your other examples. This law forbids using other standards. > New innovations can be brought forth in the same way they are with the other standards mentioned above: developed in a harmonised manner I…
>But it’s not credible to deny that this will have a negative effect on innovation.
Why? What consumer friendly innovations in charging have we had since USB C came out that this law would have made illegal if it were introduced from the start?
>That is always the impact of regulation like this.
I think it would be fair to say that if we could point to examples of useful innovation in the past that would have been killed by this legislation. But can we?