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EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

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Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#831

Post by marssaxman »

least wrote: post #713
marssaxman wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please pardon my inadvertent US-centrism! If you live in a country with a functioning democracy, of course it would make sense to participate. Here in the US, average citizens have little to no influence on policy: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

This isn't the case in the US, either. How much influence do you think one person in the US, one of hundreds of millions of people, should normally have? Your power to influence policy is obviously going to dilute the further up the chain of government you go. You could involve yourself in local politics where the population of people is much smaller (and consequentially, your influence is much larger), or you could…

> This isn't the case in the US, either.

I was paraphrasing Gilens and Page, from the linked research article. In their words, they found that "economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence".

If there has been subsequent research which contradicts their findings, I would be happy to read it.

Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#832

Post by onphonenow »

mig39 wrote: post #547
onphonenow wrote: post #504

I thought they'd made Micro-USB a standard. Funny to see them go to a "new" standard based on market I like lighting better (audio latency on lighting is fantastic) than USB-C.

The funny thing is that when this was first proposed by the EU, the connector they proposed was the USB-Mini connector. Imagine if that had been successful.

Yowks! Bullet dodged.

I do remember a lot of companies had to include little adapters in the EU. So it'd be like lighting to some weird urb. Was this to the USB mini spec or Mico USB? I just ignored them and used the chargers and cables apple provided or my usb-a chargers

Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#833

Post by layer8 »

scarface74 wrote: post #792
layer8 wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are they also going to insist that Android manufactures support their phones for more than six months with operating system updates? Yes they are, with a directive from 2019. See for example https://grunecker.de/en/blog/sales-of-goods-directive-and-di... , search for “Update Obligations”.

I don’t speak German. But the best summary I found doesn’t say that manufacturers have to support cell phones for 7 years with operating system or security updates like Apple has been doing.

I changed the link, it displayed in English for me. The relevant quote is: “objective requirements […] are met only if the consumer is […] provided with updates for the usual period of the product's use and service life. The update obligation may regularly exceed the applicable warranty period.”

The courts will have to decide what “the usual period of the product's use and service life” means exactly, but certainly longer than the six months you originally mentioned.

Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#834

Post by layer8 »

paulmd wrote: post #777
layer8 wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…which wastes energy and reduces battery life. Great innovation.

it's always interesting to me that people ignore the ecological impact of cables. If you break four cables over the life of the phone from plugging/unplugging, and that results in 2 or 3 additional Amazon Prime trips to deliver your cables, how does that compare in terms of environmental impact to wasting 5 additional watts for the 1 hour a day you charge your phone? (and don't tell me everybody uses Amazon Prime day…

I personally never had a charging cable break in ~12 years, owning multiple mobile devices in parallel, so in my experience that isn’t a relevant consideration. That aside, I’m more concerned with the accelerated decrease in battery life that I experienced first-hand with MagSafe charging. I stopped using it because of that.

Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#835

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 »

ciupicri wrote: post #686
nocoolnametom wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to talk to my friends, family, and coworkers I need to have the following apps installed and running: Slack, Teams, Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp, Google Chat/Hangouts/Allo/Whatever, FB Messenger, Discord, Twitter, etc. It'd take a pretty strong argument to convince me that this is so much more productive and allows for more innovation than the old days when the spec for things like Email, HTTP, IRC, XMPP allow…

I'm willing to bet that your friends and family wouldn't be happy if the European Union would mandate using IRC everywhere. Heck, why not go further and stick to the good old ntalk [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_(software)

Interoperability of major chat software will be mandated by the EU in the coming years (around 2023 or 2024 hopefully).

Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#836

Post by ciupicri »

zaik wrote: post #815
ciupicri wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used XMPP around 2003 when it was still called Jabber. I can't say there's something major wrong with it (only XML verbosity comes to my head), it's just the idea of making it mandatory. By the way how come some EU officials use Zoom? [1] Where are those good open standards? [1]: https://meeteu.eu/events/

If you want to have provider choice for customers and interoperability between messaging apps, I don't think there is another way than making standards mandatory. Why do you think WhatsApp reached a billion dollar evaluation? Not because users have the freedom to move to a different provider and still be able to talk to all their friends... The only other possibility is that users start rejecting providers who do not…

Making something mandatory will definitely push things forward because what else are the providers going to do? Though I still have doubts about real progress being made. EU can't can even add VP9 and AV1 to the list of codecs used for Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB).

Instead maybe the government should start eating its own dog food and use an open standard for both internal and external use.

Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#837

Post by kanetw »

danhor wrote: post #821
kanetw wrote: post #796

As a user, I liked USB-C. Until I had to implement this ridiculously overcomplicated garbage. To be spec-conform, you need at least 1 IC. You can theoretically hack a solution together with some resistors, but it's not spec conform. If you need the high-speed lanes, add a mux/redriver to un-flip it. If you want power delivery (>15W), you need a PD controller and port protection (or a user will fry your data lines whe…

But the two CC line resistors are spec-conform? That's how 5V sinks are supposed to work. I agree that the whole USB PD stack is way over complicated, I still don't get why the electrical layer and the on-the-wire protocol is so complex. Wouldn't a 3.3 V bidir UART with a CRC at the end do a fine job?

Without CC line sensing, you don't know how much current you're allowed to draw.

Screenshot from the standard: https://i.kane.cx/EI4HtM

Specifically, the sink has to detect vRd to determine how much current it can actually draw.

E: sorry, to clarify: 2 resistors is fine, but you also need line sensing. So that's at least a few comparators or an ADC or whatever. Or a dedicated IC.

Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#838

Post by irrational »

lekevicius wrote: post #10
qalmakka wrote: post #2

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…

I don't think this is the right take. - We already have reliable rumors that next-next iPhone (not this Sept, but next) will have USB-C port. - Qi is not a standard they control like Lightning either way. - Portless phone would be very unpopular (no fast charging), USB-C would be very popular. Apple would not choose to be unpopular just to watch the world hate them.

> Portless phone would be very unpopular

Apple dropped the headphone port, despite wireless headphones still not being as good as wired (IMHO). This shows that they are perfectly willing to do that which is unpopular.

Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#839

Post by avar »

solarkraft wrote: post #657
robonerd wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why "What about innovation?" is taken seriously as an argument anyway. USB-C is more than adequate, we could coast with it for the next hundred years. Nobody is kept up at night by the lack of innovation in AC power plugs, the standards countries have settled on today, while not all equivalent, are all generally satisfactory in practice. Problem solved; stop fixing that which ain't broke and move on to ot…

> Nobody is kept up at night by the lack of innovation in AC power plugs Mandatory Tom Scott video about bri'ish power plugs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfP1OKKz_Q :-)

That's a good overview of the features of UK plugs, but a terrible one for establishing the supposed superiority of the UK design.

Much of what he describes is e.g. a feature of Schuko plugs/sockets.

The main distinguishing feature of the UK design is a technical workaround for a problem that no longer exists (WWII copper shortage requiring the embedded fuse).

Re: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices

#840

Post by bloppe »

burlesona wrote: post #828
bloppe wrote: post #485

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…

Just imagine if this had been done in the 90s, we’d be stuck on VGA cables for all video and wouldn’t have hi-def TV. Strict regulation causes ossification.

The regulation does not require devices to only support USB-C, just that they at least support USB-C for charging. They can always have multiple ports. If the 40Gbps offered by USB-C is really not enough for you, then your device is probably big enough that multiple ports does not mess up your device's form factor.

Also, the regulation does not require devices to support USB-C forever, just that all devices support the same open charging standard. That standard can and will evolve over time; maybe not as fast as it would if not regulated, but it's pretty contrived to think it would actually stifle innovation.

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