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EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

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Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#361

Post by pas »

sandov wrote: post #161
dTal wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why draw the line at physical well-being? Why should it be fine to waste someone's time, cost them money, even destroy them emotionally, so long as you don't directly physically harm them? Your scope is absurdly narrow.

Because physicality is what defines if people are free or not, and freedom is the only moral principle that a reasonable, moral society can be based upon. If you forsake freedom, you might as well forget about morality altogether. Regulating emotions is arbitrary. Maybe it makes me sad that you post comments on HN. Should your comments be regulated?. Physical harm is where you draw the line, because it's the only lin…

People starve, while they could have just photosynthesize physically all they want. smh!

/s ... but seriously, yes, somehow claiming physical stuff is clean got popular, probably because of our intuition about the world, but it wasn't the case since people stsrted engaging in politics, trade, rituals, shaming each other for various reasons, invented organized religion, and so on.

Though of course regulating emotions is a silly reductio ad absurdum, but there are a lot of steps between physical harm and woke feels. Such as monetary damages as determined by a court for things like discrimination, abuse of market position, libel/slander.

Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#362

Post by pas »

defnotashton2 wrote: post #292
dTal wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, to be clear, your position is that the very concept of regulation is illegitimate? "I know what is best for you, so I'll force you to make the car safety features I want".

Also whats best for me is rarely ever universal. People really love to jump on the wagon for things like universal Healthcare in the states. You don't need Healthcare in your 20s. Most people don't, they need something like a disaster insurance with high deductables so that if it turns out they are in the statistical minority and get cancer in their 20s they do t get fucked. They don't need regular subsidized hospita…

I live in a country with universal health care. I haven't seen my doctor in 3-4 years. And last time I saw him it was because the flu or a particularly nasty cold.

People pay a fixed percent of their income into the HC system.

Furthermore, while you are attending school (university, college, whatever), you are automatically covered.

There was a small token copay system for a few years about 10 years ago, that helped to cut down wait queues. (It was something like 2USD for each visit, because there was a sentiment, that too many people went to the doctor unnecessarily.)

There are of course possible ways to optimize it a lot more by incentivizing healthy lifestyle choices (eg. risk weighted additional premium to counter obesity, smoking, drinking, etc).

The effect on mobility is nothing since it's a percentage "tax".

Autonomy is nice, but cleaning up uninsured carcasses also has a cost, so autonomous folks should at least prepay that.

Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#363

Post by Gravityloss »

veeralpatel979 wrote: post #175
markdown wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also: doesn't the government have more pressing concerns to worry about? Sounds like "why spend money on NASA when we have poverty here on earth?". Governments have a lot of people and a lot of resources and can work on more than one thing at a time. > Apple has kept working on improving the charging experience for its phones over time And it will continue to do so. Except it now has to convince others to adopt its…

Yes but why is it so bad to let companies choose what charging cables they provide? You get a free charging cable usually when you purchase a new phone and charging cables are cheap. I get the environment argument but I don't see how this moves the needle on protecting the environment. If anything it could scare off tech companies from developing charging cables that are better for the environment.

It probably makes the European economic area more effective and reduces waste.

A more obvious analogy: Why are governments spending effort on standardize the meter, or screw sizes?

Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#364

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

michaelt wrote: post #349
georgespencer wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folks keep asserting this. Do you have any evidence to support this view?

It's quite well documented that manufacturers have to pay Apple to use lightning connectors, under the MFi scheme. While Apple doesn't issue a price sheet publicly it's been widely reported [1] as $4 per lightning connector - and that in the past it's been as much as $10 per device. $4 per cable in licensing fees for every single cable sold sounds pretty nice to me. I can understand Apple wanting to keep that. [1] ht…

> $4 per cable

That seems high considering that Anker (chosen as a cheap but good company presumably not dodging Apple's licensing scheme) is selling lightning cables on Amazon for 8 bucks [1]

Amazon Basics has them for 6.50 [2]

I don't think they are sending 50% and 75% of their gross to Apple.

1> https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Powerline-Lightning-Probably-Ce...

2> https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Lightning-USB-Cable-Cert...

Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#365

Post by scarface74 »

mmis1000 wrote: post #255
scarface74 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow so now every time that Apple gets ready to introduce a new connector they have to wait for the entire industry to agree to it? But guess what? Only the end connecting to the wall is standard, the end connecting to devices in the house are far from standard. How is this different than iPhones?

Usb type c is a connector type. Not a protocol, you are able to run different protocol through the same physical line as long as both side understands it. PD, HDMI, miniDP, PCIE, earphone, and probably other device run through the exact same line with different protocol. And vendor is also allowed to add their own one. Apple also don't need to accept all protocols above except charging. What is the point to introduce…

Yet the iPad has a different connector type for attached keyboards.

Are you saying that no one will ever need anything besides USB C?

Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#366

Post by a9h74j »

markdown wrote: post #174
_bxg1 wrote: post #125

I'm not someone who's shy about regulation, but even I think this is totally unnecessary. As an Apple user, I should be the first to complain about their own internal (inexplicable) lack of a standard (Lightning for phones, USB-C for everything else). It's annoying, sure, but it's far from a material burden on my quality of life. Is this really the problem we need to be spending our regulatory energies on in 2020?

> It's annoying, sure, but it's far from a material burden on my quality of life. It's a material burden on the rest of us though. Every home has a dozen cables where 2 would do. The reduction of eWaste is a noble goal.

I'd be happier if as much thought had gone into better system layering to allow Android kernels etc. to be kept updated. There must be some opportunity cost for humanity to have planned obsolescence over billions of mobile phones.

Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#367

Post by scarface74 »

alt_f4 wrote: post #334
kortilla wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No? iPad Pro and MacBook sales are a drop in the bucket compared to iPhone.

And iPhone sales a drop in the bucket compared to Android phone sales. And they all have USB-C.

Well as far as “all Android phones have USB-C”, a quick Google search for Android phones on Amazon brings me to this link:

https://www.amazon.com/Honor-Unlocked-Smartphone-Dual-Lens-E...

“Whats in the box:phone, power/wall charger, Micro USB cable and sim ejection tool.”

Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#368

Post by scarface74 »

riffraff wrote: post #278
scarface74 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing that Apple is always bragging about their 90%+ retention rate, not many people are switching from iOS devices and throwing away cables. But is “think about the environment” the new “think about the children” and “terrorism” war cry for more regulation and big government?

But if I switch to apple I have to throw out my cables, too. Maybe try to look at this differently: is your life better for the fact that when you travel you need to bring power plug adapters? If cars had different gas plugs that required different gas stations, would that be nice?

You mean like if you buy a Tesla you can’t use a standard gas station....

Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#369

Post by perl4ever »

barney54 wrote: post #202
perl4ever wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today it's phones, tomorrow it's electric cars. The slippery slope could be a feature and not a bug.

It’s already like that for electric cars. See Tesla’s Superchargers.

No, I mean today it's standard regulated connectors for phones, tomorrow it could be standard regulated connectors for cars.

Re: EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, vote to push for charging cable standard

#370

Post by anticensor »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #339
1023bytes wrote: post #316

Not even the wall outlets across the EU are standardised.

Because they're much more difficult to standardise. They would require each individual user to change all their plugs in their home, which is not even something the average person can do. On the other hand, finding a different connector and cable when you eventually buy a new phone is seamless.

They should standardise on a fused version of type C/E plug.
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