EU sends Apple stark warning over USB-C charging on new iPhones • Hacker News Board

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

#811

Post by Pamar » Mon, May 08, 2023, 10:10 AM UTC

Pamar wrote: post #789

commoner wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LibreOffice and other free and open source alternatives to Microsoft Office are definitely not a "wasted effort". LibreOffice is able to handle just about all of the home and small business use cases of Microsoft Office, and many people are able to skip buying Microsoft Office licenses because this free alternative is available to them. Also, Microsoft Office still does not support Linux outside its feature-limited w…

In my experience, the moment you bring a non-MS Office document to a meeting with people who pay you for the content of your document you are always risking to have problems/complains about one or more images going missing, the fonts acting strange, the print (either on paper or as a PDF) coming out wrong. Granted, the latest episode was more than 5 years ago, but at 75USD for a local (i.e. non-cloud) licence I prefe…

Too late for edit: "cost of a licence is not really low" should have been "of a licence is NOW really low".

I do not really disagree with the points that were posted in response, anyway.

I just stated that "working in a country where MS Office is the de facto standard", all the other free alternatives (including Apple products - so it's not a dig against non-commercial products) are "not viable alternatives FOR ME" (special emphasis on the last two words).

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

#812

Post by Longhanks » Mon, May 08, 2023, 10:15 AM UTC

mmmmmbop wrote: post #734

Longhanks wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God, sometimes I really wish they would do just that. Just a week ago, Germany launched a public transport ticket that can only be acquired via an app. Imagine the outrage if suddenly every iOS owner could not use that service (paid with tax money of course) that entirely depends on US software services because the companies decided the EU bullying is just enough for now (just like Google did with China). If the EU w…

The ticket you are talking about can be purchased via website. [0] Apart from that, I'm not sure I see your point. If Apple left the EU market, their stock would tank, and Google would be delighted to pick up the market share. Your framing is interesting, by the way. When Apple puts restrictions on its users, that's corporate freedom. When the democratic legislative process of the EU results in restrictions on Apple,…

Enacting laws is not bullying. Enacting laws and then issueing "warnings" about an undefined "spirit of the law" that was intended to have been followed, that's bullying. Either there is a clear law or there isn't, if your law allows behavior that you don't want, don't blame the player, blame your law and change it.

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

#813

Post by jasonm23 » Mon, May 08, 2023, 10:17 AM UTC

reustle wrote: post #714

brundolf wrote: post #695

I was going to upgrade my iPhone when the 14 came out, but when I found out about this I decided I could wait another year It's insulting that I can charge my MacBook and iPad with a USB-C cable, but still have to carry an extra cable just for my phone (and meanwhile my partner with an Android phone doesn't). I'm so excited to be done with all that

I wouldn't go as far as saying its "insulting", but agree that needing lightning for only my phone, magic keyboard, trackpad, and airpods, while everything else is using USB-C, is frustrating.

You're right, it's the pricing of genuine Apple cables which is insulting.

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

#814

Post by jasonm23 » Mon, May 08, 2023, 10:21 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #503

lelanthran wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Then it's very childish. It's the responsibility of legislators and regulators to be clear and precise -- to mean what they say and say what they mean. To "punish" a company for following a law, because of something the law doesn't actually say, is not what rule of law means, and would be a shameful thing. No company should have to intuit or guess what the government "really" meant, over and above what the law actual…

>Then it's very childish.

Indeed, it is, reacting to legislation, by trying to circumvent it. Say making "Apple Certified USB-C" connectors / cables which do nothing other than force consumers to pay $50~ for a cable which costs under $1 to make.

Then FUDding the community about _dangerous unauthorized cables_ from CHYNA!!!. Yeah it's childish, unethical and anti-consumer.

So ya, know, Apple's SOP for quite a number of years.

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

#815

Post by troad » Mon, May 08, 2023, 10:32 AM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #743

troad wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The EU tried the soft approach for many years, and Apple stubbornly refused to play. "We tried giving you an option, but you kept picking wrong, so we're taking your right to choose away."

Yes, a completely reasonable choice when they made the goal clear (reducing waste) and literally everyone else managed to work together and Apple was the only one who decided to play stupid games. We may tolerate the fiction of corporate personhood in some circumstances, but companies are not people, and their "rights" should be strictly limited - especially when they purposefully ignore the wishes of elected represe…

From the fact you've spontaneously brought up corporate personhood as a bit of a strawman to pummel, it seems like your disagreements with the operation of the modern economy may go beyond mere cable standardisation.

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

#816

Post by vidarh » Mon, May 08, 2023, 11:11 AM UTC

troad wrote: post #815

vidarh wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a completely reasonable choice when they made the goal clear (reducing waste) and literally everyone else managed to work together and Apple was the only one who decided to play stupid games. We may tolerate the fiction of corporate personhood in some circumstances, but companies are not people, and their "rights" should be strictly limited - especially when they purposefully ignore the wishes of elected represe…

From the fact you've spontaneously brought up corporate personhood as a bit of a strawman to pummel, it seems like your disagreements with the operation of the modern economy may go beyond mere cable standardisation.

I didn't bring it up. You brought it up when you talked about "taking away rights" from a corporation.

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

#817

Post by aetherson » Mon, May 08, 2023, 11:51 AM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #792

aetherson wrote: post #773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever, like, actually interacted with a bureaucracy? I don't mean a governmental one, necessarily. An even mid-sized company's HR department, let's say. I was just trying to get a medical evaluation for my son: I called them and they spent 10 minutes on the phone with me explaining that they were going to send me four emails before they had a 30 minute call with me before they were going to do the actual eval…

Of course. Some of them are awful and some of them are fine. You might as well reason that 'Apple is a corporation; corporations are essentially large bureaucracies; therefore anything produced by Apple will embody all the flaws of bureaucracy.' And indeed many people make arguments like this here on HN daily, arguing that large companies can't innovate because they're simply not agile enough. It's not that bureaucra…

Apple is a bureaucracy and I'm sure they make lots of bad decisions. But they're a much smaller bureaucracy then the EU, operating on a much smaller range of decisions.

What I actually said was that a very large bureaucracy operating over a gigantic domain and trying to make rules at very fine levels of detail across that domain would make bad decisions. Like, say, "we're regulating the entire economic system of half a billion people in very diverse economic circumstances down to the level of exactly what heads should be in what phone chargers."

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

#818

Post by themaninthedark » Mon, May 08, 2023, 1:13 PM UTC

Multicomp wrote: post #660

themaninthedark wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the Georgia problem is that our laws are the same way! The legislators would vote to adopt case law that had added notes/ guidance by a third party, the third party would change fees to view what is then now the law!

https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/after-supreme-court-... The Supreme Court in 2020 ruled that OGCA is not copyrightable, this in 2022 indicates that it has been made available to the public for free.

Nice, I missed that! Glad to hear that some sanity was injected back into the system!

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

#819

Post by oasisbob » Mon, May 08, 2023, 2:26 PM UTC

wskinner wrote: post #562

oasisbob wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Why? Standards harmonization has big upsides too. For example, the EU PPE safety standards are so good that there aren't even North American equivalents for many products. If you buy a climbing carabiner in the US, it's being tested according to a test procedure…

If the standards are so good, they shouldn’t need to force companies to use them.

American companies voluntarily manufacture products to these standards.

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

#820

Post by adrr » Mon, May 08, 2023, 2:36 PM UTC

midoridensha wrote: post #783

phkahler wrote: post #762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> And we are stuck on AC which is a terrible and wasteful way to move electricity. That's a really strange thing to see here on HN. Where did you get this idea? BTW Europe having 3-phase AC to the home is brilliant. Wish we had that in the U.S.

>That's a really strange thing to see here on HN. Where did you get this idea? Why is this strange? I see this kind of ignorant nonsense here all the time. This site is absolutely full of software people who, because of Dunning-Kruger, think they're experts at everything technical. Electrical engineering isn't that far from the software world (computers are electrical, and their design is within the EE world), so sof…

I guess you never been in a data center in the last 10 years. All modern DCs run on DC power because stepping down voltage is easy and 95%+ efficient. Why do we backhaul electricity across the country by DC and convert into AC to our house and then back into DC for our stuff? Add renewable energy generation like solar cells and battery storage and AC makes no sense.

Theres a reason why china is spinning up DC power grids while posts like mine get bashed on.