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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

#521

Post by mardifoufs »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #370
detourdog wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lightning cable has whatever you want on the other end. The only thing needed is a cable. I only want 1 port on my phone. I don't really care what that port is. I'm very uncomfortable with government mandated ports.

In keeping in line with your stance, I hope that you are also uncomfortable with the government mandating your power sockets, your lightbulb plugs, the 120V/240 running through your power lines, the pipings running through your house, the bands used by phones, and much more. That, or you could accept that USBC is fine and that there is absolutely no needed improvement that cannot be done in the form of USB-C. Slappin…

Ah the good old "if you are in favor of a government regulation, you ought to be in favor of all government regulations!" fallacy

By your own logic, you couldn't oppose the government forcing every GPU to have a VGA port, or every NVMe drive to have a sata port because hey do you also oppose standardizing 240v???

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

#522

Post by DangitBobby »

revelio wrote: post #513
aetherson wrote: post #477

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…

[flagged]

As everyone knows, if you do something dumb and wasteful you must always do dumb and wasteful things or risk being derided as a hypocrite!

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

#523

Post by mardifoufs »

mrtksn wrote: post #460
revelio wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In democracies opinion polls are regarded as important because people's opinions matter. The EU doesn't care about them because the EU is not a democracy. Even if you pretend the distance between voters and decision makers doesn't matter, here's a simple test: did your countries elected official vote for von der Leyen? You don't know the answer because the process by which she was selected is totally opaque by design…

I was in UK when the Brexit referandum was held, it wasn't about EU granting residency rights or anything like it. After UK let EU, nothing was done that couldn't have been done when EU. That's also why UK's public opinion changed. Anyway, you are entitled to believe in alternative facts. You are also entitled to believe that all EU does is regulating USB-C, that's fine. You are also free to believe that EU officials…

Can you highlight which alternative facts were in the comment you replied to? Are you saying you know how she was elected/chosen?

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

#524

Post by karaterobot »

viraptor wrote: post #423
revelio wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words the regulatory bodies decide. They might, if they feel like it, ask some people who actually know something in the process of making that decision, but that doesn't mean they'll listen or care. Why are you denying this basic reality?

If you have a jaded view of the EU out to get you by (checking notes) ignoring the directive and not consulting with the experts so that they can force you to use a specific connector even when better options get created... Sure, I don't think we see the same reality.

I didn't read the person you responded to as saying the EU was out to get anybody, I think that's an unfair characterization. They were just saying regulatory bodies move slowly, which is a completely reasonable statement, and indeed may be considered a feature of regulatory bodies.

On the topic of whether they will or not, I don't see a point in speculating: we'll find out soon enough.

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

#525

Post by perryizgr8 »

DJHenk wrote: post #219
perryizgr8 wrote: post #151

I don't understand the rationale. Does the EU not have a free market where consumers can choose what they pay for? If lightning connector is an important enough issue for someone they can choose not to buy an iPhone. There are n number of alternatives available in the market, unlike the software ecosystem situation.

Having lots of alternatives is not always beneficial for society as a whole.

Why not? I'm surprised to read this assertion. In any market, I don't see how greater diversity of choice can be a bad thing.

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

#526

Post by robertoandred »

Jochim wrote: post #235
sbuk wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing ports is ironic as, other than headphone jacks from phones, USB type A being dropped from MacBooks (iMacs and Minis have always had USB Type A) in favour of USB-C is the port HN loves to moan about, and here we are, arguing for USB-C on an Apple device. The money, as others point out is a rounding error.

> USB type A being dropped from MacBooks (iMacs and Minis have always had USB Type A) in favour of USB-C is the port HN loves to moan about. The switch to USB C wasn't the primary issue. The main complaint was that the laptop only had two ports: a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a single USB C for everything else. The previous iteration had 6. People were angry that they were being forced to buy a hub if they fell into the…

There was no previous iteration of that laptop.

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

#528

Post by perryizgr8 »

Moldoteck wrote: post #420
perryizgr8 wrote: post #151

I don't understand the rationale. Does the EU not have a free market where consumers can choose what they pay for? If lightning connector is an important enough issue for someone they can choose not to buy an iPhone. There are n number of alternatives available in the market, unlike the software ecosystem situation.

You know, there is a word, called standard and govs sometimes mandate those standards to help consumers...

I'm all for standards bodies. But government should not force anybody to follow a particular one. It's not like apple is advertising USB C and not delivering it.

If lightning is so inferior to USB C, consumers will vote with their money and iPhones will either die out or apple will start offering it with USB C. The fact is that it hardly matters. This is a non issue for most users.

But due to some bureaucrats who have sold zero dollars worth of high tech products, Apple (a trillion dollar company who knows a thing or two about business and technology) has to modify their offering.

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

#529

Post by fbdab103 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #306
christophilus wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if the whole world adopted this kind of regulatory stance, there would be much less incentive to invent that better cable because you now have huge regulatory bodies that may block its adoption and thus mean most of that work was money and time wasted. This kind of thing may tilt the risk / reward of research towards the riskier end of the spectrum. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing— just that it’s not without cons…

> if the whole world adopted this kind of regulatory stance, there would be much less incentive to invent that better cable because you now have huge regulatory bodies Imagine you didnt have law on shape and voltage of ordinsry power plugs in a house, and if you buy a samsung power socket to ibstall in your house, you mist buy samsung fridge and samsung washing machine and samsung hair dryer

This was exactly the phone charging situation before the EU made a similar proposal[0]. Previously every phone brand and model used a bespoke charger so that you were forced to buy a spare charger from the vendor. Of course Apple continued to do its own thing by skirting the intent of the law.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply

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

#530

Post by delecti »

avar wrote: post #450
delecti wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We can imagine that micro-USB got standardized in 2015, so in anticipation of that the first USB-C phone I bought that year came with micro-USB instead. 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…

If the law had been passed in 2015, they probably would have picked USB-C as the newly finalized, and increasingly adopted, standard. Micro had already started to show its flaws by that point. Also, it's not like everyone in the EU needs to buy a new charger overnight; plenty of people would have a while before their next replacement, and plenty of others would have already gotten some other peripheral with the new port.
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