EU Passes Law to Switch iPhone to USB-C by End of 2024

Because the only balance the capitalism and free market introduce, is high balance on oligarchs' bank accounts.

And Apple has been cruelly blindsided, as the EU has only been pushing this issue since 2009, giving Apple a mere 13 years to prepare.

It just wasn't reasonable to expect them to conquer the massive challenge of USB charging in the iPhone 4, 4s, 5, 5c, 5s, 6, 6 plus, 6s, 6s plus, 7, 7 plus, 8, 8 plus, x, xr, xs, xs max, 11, 11 pro, 11 pro max, 12, 12 mini, 12 pro, 12 pro max, 13, 13 min, 13 pro, 13 pro max,13, 14 plus, 14 pro, or 14 pro max.

What proportion of phone consumers have an informed opinion on charging technology? Why would the electronics companies work in a way that benefits everyone/the environment instead of themselves.

> I guess you could make that argument for a lot of things

We do, we have standards for a ridiculous amount of things no one ever thinks about.

> There would be benefits if there was only one mobile operating system or if all mobiles used the same interchangeable batterie

Standardising the operating system would create a monopoly and have no obvious society wide benefits. Whereas cables can be made by anyone competent. It would be more prudent to mandate user replacable batteries before thinking about if such a specific battery standard could feasibly work. Something you can probably make a good argument for.

The standardization is good for a lot of purposes:

- cutting down on the number of cables and especially chargers. Seriously, it's amazing to have one single Anker 65W power supply and a single cable on vacation and it can charge everything - tablet, work phone, laptop, power bank, drones, Nintendo Switch. I 'member the dark times where each of these devices had their own cable and for some even own charger.

- car and in-flight entertainment systems can now be relatively secure that USB-C is here to stay and be used for connectivity, which means less effort for this kind of appliance

- if a cable gets lost or damaged, spare cables are cheap and plentiful, and they will also be available in a few years of time

- devices can now be shipped without a charger and cable, which reduces package size and weight (and thus shipping efficiency, as more packages fit into a single container) and as almost everyone has chargers and cables, there is no need to produce as many chargers and cables before, which reduces resource consumption and eventually waste

- when devices break down, chargers still can live on. Even a plain old 5W USB charger is enough to charge an e-cigarette.

- interoperability between devices gets increased. No more micro-USB-to-micro-USB or whatever rare cables to interface, say, a DSLR camera with a phone to transfer photos, a plain USB-C cable is sufficient.

> Feels like there's nothing to celebrate here. Just the EU using its influence to exert control over things that don't matter at all.

Well... Apple refused for years to implement USB-C on the iPhone on their own, while the rest of the market converged first on micro-USB and nowadays on USB-C. The regulation was only established to force the hands of the largest player, which didn't like USB-C because it would destroy its lucrative MFi licensing - basically, rent seeking by preventing competition with a closed solution instead of an open standard.

If there is one thing that drives EU legislation ideas, it is the convergence towards open and common, market-wide standards. This reduces the barriers to entry for small players and leads to more innovation as a result. Additionally, since the 500M citizens of the EU are a market bloc that no manufacturer can afford to ignore and for most things except automotive it isn't worth to set up different supply chains, our legislation can improve the lives of everyone on this planet - just take the RoHS directive, which led to lead solder being phased out worldwide and less lead ending up in the environment.