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EU sends Apple stark warning over USB-C charging on new iPhones

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Re: EU sends Apple stark warning over USB-C charging on new iPhones

#471

Post by skeletal88 »

sharedbeans wrote: post #387
jzb wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the whole world adopted this stance maybe I wouldn’t an overflowing box of useless, obsolete cables. Maybe I wouldn’t need separate chargers and cables for my phone, tablet, ebook reader, and other assorted devices. The amount of waste produced because companies are incentivized to produce incompatible devices like charger cables is staggering. The additional cost burden on users is unnecessary. The theoretical be…

Can you help me understand what you're saying? It comes off as so over the top that I find it absurd, but maybe we just have different backgrounds/experience. 1) Companies are not incentivized to produce incompatible cables, the industry has done a remarkably good job of settling on basically a single standard, so the incentives seem to run counter to what you say. The major hold out introduced their own cable standa…

This happened because the EU forced them to agree on a single charger/cable standard and it happened to be micro-usb for a while. Before this every mobile manufacturer had their own version of a charging AND data cable, separately..

Re: EU sends Apple stark warning over USB-C charging on new iPhones

#472

Post by seanmcdirmid »

eastbound wrote: post #462
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Connectors are dying anyways. I rarely plug my iPhone in to anything, since I’ve moved to wireless charging. I wouldn’t be surprised if an iPhone is released eventually with no port at all.

Wireless charging loses 30% of the energy. It looks bad on the carbon sheets of the products, and Europe is also moving towards regulating carbon a lot.

Depending on the source you read, wireless charging is 75% efficient while wired charging is 85% efficient. MagSafe (the phone kind) should be even more efficient since the magnet focuses charging and so doesn’t create as much heat.

I notice my phone getting hot on normal qi chargers, but not on a MagSafe charger.

Re: EU sends Apple stark warning over USB-C charging on new iPhones

#473

Post by riskable »

CydeWeys wrote: post #435
dijit wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you can have receptacles of any shape in the USA, at least at the federal level. However it's not uncommon for this to be enforced by law, for example it is a legal requirement that in the UK all goods sold must adhere to the BS 1363-1 standard.

Ok, how about at most state levels then? I seriously doubt you could wire up new construction in a completely nonstandard way and then expect to pass inspection.

I'm pretty sore 100% of all US states mandate that all new construction adhere to the National Electrical Code (NEC). Specifically, NFPA 70. They just delegate the authority as to what's "standard" to that non-governmental body.

Every few years the National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA)--which is a non-governmental nonprofit--publishes an updated standard and then it's up to all the state legislatures to update the laws to require the new standard.

The problem is that the NFPA doesn't just post the NEC for free on the Internet. You have to pay for it (which is ridiculous) and it's copyrighted and as such, illegal to just give away. There was a lawsuit in Georgia that was supposed to determine whether or not that situation was OK (having laws that require expensive fees to view may be unconstitutional since that's like having secret laws). I don't know what the outcome was of that though.

Re: EU sends Apple stark warning over USB-C charging on new iPhones

#474

Post by krzyk »

crazygringo wrote: post #402

I'm confused. Either Apple is following the letter of the law or it isn't. I don't know what a "warning" from EU Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton is supposed to mean. Either the law says USB-C charging is required but doesn't say anything about charging speeds, or it does say something about charging speeds. In any case, Apple has a lot of lawyers and presumably they're following the law as written . I would assu…

The warning is "don't fool around", just provide usb-c without any conditions, don't make "better" and worse cables just because one has to pay the funny MFI.

Re: EU sends Apple stark warning over USB-C charging on new iPhones

#475

Post by taeric »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #243
stephc_int13 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standards are good for everyone, even when very old and seemingly outdated. Being "locked" on a a few not awful standard connectors is a good thing. The Edison screw bulb is very simple, reliable, still used today even if I am sure that many companies would have invented more sophisticated standards over the years, I am glad they did not. I still use audio jack connectors as much as possible, and I think that the wor…

I agree with the importance of standards, but.. The Edison screw works quite badly for LED bulbs commonly used today. The electronics are all buried in the base part, which has very limited cooling, so they get extra hot and kills the lightbulbs prematurely when the LEDs themselves last much longer. It is also not standardized w.r.t. voltages, power limits, etc, making it prone to user error. The European and British…

Though, it isn't the screw connector that makes led bulbs a bad fit. It is the AC power delivery. And, yes, hvdc is likely better, but only in recent times with modern equipment. And even then, probably more debatable than makes sense.

Re: EU sends Apple stark warning over USB-C charging on new iPhones

#476

Post by chrisandchris »

lelanthran wrote: post #418
crazygringo wrote: post #402

I'm confused. Either Apple is following the letter of the law or it isn't. I don't know what a "warning" from EU Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton is supposed to mean. Either the law says USB-C charging is required but doesn't say anything about charging speeds, or it does say something about charging speeds. In any case, Apple has a lot of lawyers and presumably they're following the law as written . I would assu…

> So what exactly is his "warning" about? Not sure about this particular one, but in general, this sort of warning is along the lines of "If you continue expending effort in subverting the spirit of the law, we shall tighten the regulations to such an extent that it will hurt you" . The world and their dog knew what the goal of the regulations were: if the goal is not met because "Apple has a lot of lawyers and presu…

Probably, yes. But that will take another 5 to 10 years, so nothing to fear about. It took the EU 9 years from "advocating for a common charger" [1] until they regulated it. There's enough reason to believe that it'll take them a couple of years to adjust the law.

[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20210920IP...

Re: EU sends Apple stark warning over USB-C charging on new iPhones

#477

Post by aetherson »

I think Apple should just make USB-C the norm for iPhones.

But the idea that a trans-national government over 750M people should be trying to regulate in this level of detail is just obviously a recipe for disaster. For every one time they successfully push a company to do something correct -- but ultimately trivial, like this thing -- there are going to be 10 cases where some bureaucrat makes a bad decision and they're like fifteen steps removed from any kind of oversight, or where no uniform rule-making makes sense over the vastly diverse areas of the EU. Humanity is just not capable of making a bureaucracy of this size that makes decisions at this level of detail in a on-average-good way.

Re: EU sends Apple stark warning over USB-C charging on new iPhones

#478

Post by oittaa »

taf2 wrote: post #118

What happens when there is a better USB-C plug - isn't there a concern that locking into the current standard means in 50 years the EU is still stuck. I imagine we're in uncharted territory given in less then my lifetime USB was invented and has gone through at least 14 iterations e.g. it's been changing very fast. Unfortunately I fear even asking this question probably angers some, but I think it's an interesting qu…

Why this question appears every time with this topic? It has already been answered at least one thousand times. Are these just trumpists jaqing off[0]?

[0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/JAQ_off

Re: EU sends Apple stark warning over USB-C charging on new iPhones

#479

Post by taeric »

revelio wrote: post #335
stephc_int13 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standards are good for everyone, even when very old and seemingly outdated. Being "locked" on a a few not awful standard connectors is a good thing. The Edison screw bulb is very simple, reliable, still used today even if I am sure that many companies would have invented more sophisticated standards over the years, I am glad they did not. I still use audio jack connectors as much as possible, and I think that the wor…

> Standards are good for everyone, even when very old and seemingly outdated. This is definitely not the case. As an example, the Official Standard way to encode data structures in the 90s was ASN.1 from the ITU. Problem is, ASN.1 kinda sucked and so nobody uses it anymore outside of cryptography. Then the Official Standard became XML. Eventually people decided that also wasn't that great and switched to JSON, which…

This is more evidence that engineering for every complicated case will give you a complicated standard. And note that most of the complaints are often retread with arguable advances later.

JSON is still an odd one. 90% of that standard is "javascript, but only numbers and strings are allowed." With some extra shitty rules around comments and no real specification for what numbers do in the host language.

Re: EU sends Apple stark warning over USB-C charging on new iPhones

#480

Post by viraptor »

auggierose wrote: post #443
viraptor wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll find the answers to most of your questions here https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/46755/attachments/3/...

> However, the MoU also allowed for the use of proprietary charging interfaces, and one such solution continued to be used (and still is) by a major mobile phone manufacturer, thus preventing full interoperability. In addition, the MoU never addressed the environmental issues arising from the continued existence of those different charging interfaces and charging communication protocols. So the reasons are: 1. We wan…

If you say 2. is clearly wrong, what are your numbers specifically that disagree with the research summarised in the "Impact" section? Or do you disagree with some part of the linked study? (Which does already take the forced replacement into account)
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