591–600 of 868 posts
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I am genuinely surprised Apple doesn’t just go portless in the EU out the gate.
I think there are still some potential obstacles like diagnostic devices (how to diagnose phone that doesn't boot without a cable?) and pricing - adding magsafe by default would probably raise costs
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> Besides, nothing is stopping manufacturers from including both USB-C and another charging connector. On a handheld device with limited space? Come on now.
My iPhone has a lightning port and wireless charging. That's two. How long until wireless charging is the default? Particularly combined with the iPhone's magsafe that allows charging to occur while the device is at any orientation?
Given how inefficient wireless charging inherently is... ideally never, by legal force if required.
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…
I remember the world before micro USB chargers and it was a disaster only mitigated by regulation. Calling it trivial is missing the forest from the trees. It was a good decision and it's good to finally see an end to this madness after 15 years of 'Who has a Nokia/Samsung/Sony charger?' to 'Who has the USB a/b/c/iPhone cable?' to hopefully 'who has a charger?' in five years. Humanity does not have an alternative to…
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…
This is a truism, but does it have any basis in reality? Certainly, if every manufacturer were forced to use USB-C for everything it could lead to an innovation problem, but I don't think makers of new products are forbidden from offering innovative kinds of connectivity, which the market might or might not decide to adopt. Nor is the issue trivial just because it's physically small, any more than the design of electrical wall sockets is of low importance.
They're making Apple do it because they have huge market share, a long history of foisting different physical connectors on their customers and generating a significant amount of electronic waste as older models are abandoned. Crucially, the charging devices end up being unwanted because they don't work with anything else including other iphones. Sure, they could enjoy a longer life with the use of adapters, but physical adapters are Not Great.
It's a pity, because Apple does innovate and some of their innovations are very cool, eg the magnetized charging ports on Macbooks was an Apple first iirc. But they also have a reputation for stiffing their own customers by ignoring backward compatibility , assuming that most of their customers will grumble but keep paying for the new model because they like the ecosystem.
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It is not the charging cables, but the actual chargers itself. They are eye watering expensive if you buy them from Apple directly. Amazon and eBay are flooded with fakes that can be life threateningly dangerous. I can see why some people prefer to buy from Apple rather than figuring out what brands are actually not going to burn your house down.
Good point re dangerous fakes, but I wonder how persuasive it is in practice. Ive occasionally seen teardowns of fire-risk power blocks on hn, but (genuine question, because idk) is that a mainstream concern?
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It is not the charging cables, but the actual chargers itself. They are eye watering expensive if you buy them from Apple directly. Amazon and eBay are flooded with fakes that can be life threateningly dangerous. I can see why some people prefer to buy from Apple rather than figuring out what brands are actually not going to burn your house down.
I just had a look. The charging bricks they use are USB-C (the phones come with a lightning to C cable now) and cost $30 AUD. That seems very cheap.
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Looks like it was lead by Apple with considerable input by Sony. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1394
And there are 10 different patent holders according to the article and Sony had the most
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I was going to eat salad this evening, but since I ate pizza for dinner last week, I realised there’s no point in me eating healthily tonight. Of course the EU can make bad decisions in one area without precluding them making good ones in others.
That's the whole point: they cannot. You guys are missing the problem here. The exact same systems and people who made the bad decisions about masks and vaccines are the ones making the decisions about phone chargers.
You can't say well obviously that decision was bad, but this one is good. Some of us recall that when the EU was writing blank cheques to Pfizer as part of a collective scheme to do purchasing for all of Europe it was being widely hailed as a genius move. So much money saved! So efficient, to do bulk purchasing. Now every single reply to my post admits that the decisions were terrible but this time it'll be different because this time the decision is obviously right.
Give it some years and people will be pointing to the USB-C decision as an example of EU dysfunction and HNs will be replying, "just because that decision was bad doesn't mean this one is!".
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…
Where are you getting this figure? It's below 450M AFAIK.
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> do you think Apple intended to stick with Lightning forever? What?? Of course they did. Why do you think they are even considering USBC? Apple has zero incentive to use a common cable format; I'm sure they rake in money with their proprietary apple-only connectors. Look at magsafe. Changed it twice so everyone had to get a whole new set of chargers. Sure, they changed it to C now, but I'm guessing that's just becau…
> Look at magsafe. Changed it twice so everyone had to get a whole new set of chargers. You can still use USB-C for charging macbooks that have the new Magsafe, just like you could with any macbooks since their introduction of USB-C. Not sure what you were trying to say about everyone suddenly needing to get a new set of chargers either. I have two different M1 macbooks in my household (one from my workplace, one per…
They are talking about the original MagSafe (2006) and MagSafe 2 (2012). These versions of MagSafe had incompatible connectors and the cable couldn't be detached from the adapter like you can do with MagSafe 3. So, if you bought an additional MagSafe adapter, it was useless with a MagSafe 2 MacBook.