441–450 of 868 posts
USB-C could have used the lightening but we can thank Apple for that. USB should have never existed, it was a scam by Intel (and Microsoft) to put the PC at the center of everything. In a non-dumb world, we would be using Firewire over something like a lightening connector. Jobs was too greedy with Firewire for it to be successful.
You know that FireWire was a Sony standard right?
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For me it’s the opposite, it ashames me to be an EU citizen. The problem with the EU is that it forces this kind of stuff on everyone instead of letting countries compete for the best policies. There is little/no feedback control hence it will drift down the usual decline of increasingly authoritarian systems. It‘s a shame because of the opportunity costs.
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In Europe those times are indeed gone now. If that's the natural way of things, why force anyone in the first place? Forcing a company to throw away their battle-tested technology? And all the equipment and cables with it? What kind of a huge bureaucratic fuck-up is this? This is not helping anyone, not the environment, not people. Well, it is helping some bureaucrats to justify their existence.
You'll find the answers to most of your questions here https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/46755/attachments/3/...
So the reasons are:
1. We want everyone to do the same, no exceptions. In particular, we don't like Apple and the lightning standard.
2. It's better for the environment.
Now, 2. is clearly wrong, as now just all the people already in the Apple ecosystem need to switch their lightning equipment to USB-C equipment, adding tons of waste.
And 1., well, is no reason at all. It's how you successfully stop innovation.
I don't understand why Apple are dragging their heels on this so much
Apple supposedly has the superior technology of the elite people, as opposed to the unwashed masses who use Android. So it's embarrassing for them to adopt pleb technology.
I just realised I rarely plug a cable into my phone at all these days. Genuinely I think the last time I did was in a hire car that only had cable CarPlay. At my desk I got a wireless charger as well as my bed side. Data is over the cloud now etc Serious question how long until they drop the port full stop? Like what if they achieve serious wireless charging speeds And actually does anyone know if that’s allowed with…
> And actually does anyone know if that’s allowed with these new regulations? Like what if the iPhone 16 they drop it entirely??? Yes the wording of the law is: > In so far as they are capable of being recharged by means of wired charging, the categories or classes of radio equipment referred to in point 1 of this Part shall: [ Legalese way of saying USB-C charging ] So if a device has no power ports it's fine Wirele…
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> Because you can't have different ports on a smartphone? You expect a space constrained device like a smartphone to have multiple ports?
There was a time where they had a least two, and the screen size and the phones got bigger since then.
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To be clear, I am pro USB-C, but I do get the arguments from the other side. If I have a lightning cable and a device with a lightning port, I can plug it in and not really think much about it. If I have a device with a USB-C port and a USB-C cable, I have no idea whether I can charge at full speed or even charge at all. As an example, I plug my Xbox controller into my PC via USB-C. It keeps it fully charged. Recentl…
USB-C is so frustrating. I have different cables to charge headphones, keyboard, switch, iPad. Cos they don’t “just work”. And I’ve had more lightening cables break in the last 2 years than I have had lightening cables in the last 7 years.
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I agree that switching creates waste, not switching creates other waste. If they wanted to minimize waste, they should have released lighting and usb-c iphones years ago and slowly phased out the lighting. Maybe even just update lightning to support USBC speeds. But alas we are stuck with this local optimum when there was a better global optimum that we missed for profit.
If they wanted to minimize waste they would have contributed to developing USB-C, which would have been in the pipeline when they were working on Lightning. Or failing that, making Lightning an open standard that other gadget makers could adopt. But that doesn't make as much money as vendor lock-in.
I get people want to do the whole “ is evil” but at least get the basics of the argument right.
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Usually I like reading the HN comment section as it is one of the few places (I know of) where people communicate in a respectful manner. Unfortunately, conjecturing about someones IQ in this manner because his view differs, makes me reconsider this.
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Couple of years? The only mention I can find of a review is every 5, per[1]. I assumed the directive had some "go with the flow" upgrade path, but after reading the directive I can't see any wording to that effect. If the USB-IF depreciated USB-C in favor of a USB-X the EU's directive wouldn't change, the only "upgrade path" appears to be that the commission will "asses" whether the directive should be changed every…
Looking at the USB connector history, it actually looks like most plausible "what if this was adopted X years ago" would have resulted in USB-C being adopted even earlier. The USB-C spec was finalized in 2014, and I had my first phone with USB-C in 2016. It's hard to come up with a timeline where a requirement for Micro doesn't get replaced by C in that time window, while not getting us ahead of where we are now. htt…
The law would then have been reassessed in 2020, at which point some EU bureaucrats would have had to weigh "reversible connector" etc. on one hand, and "take the career fall for forcing half a billion people to buy new chargers" on the other.
I'm pretty sure that in this scenario I'd still be using micro -USB in 2050.
I live in the EU, and I can't even drive two countries over without encountering incomparable electric sockets, and that's 19th century technology.
I think that says something about how willing the EU is to standardize, v.s. rocking the boat.