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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

#441

Post by ksec »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #364
michaelt wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-Cab…

They used to be $3 - $4 dollar per cable, but price has gone down since then. ( That is why Lightning cable are cheaper than they were used to ) But that money is actually the connector itself and the controlling chip. So it isn't really $3- $4 of pure profits.

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

#442

Post by ksec »

georgespencer wrote: post #372
michaelt wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Having to pay Apple does not mean that Apple wishes to use proprietary cables in its devices in order to make money from third parties. Apple has several products/services which one could reasonably assume operate at break even or negative margin (e.g. Apple Developer accounts). To illustrate (accept you may be too busy to do the research, but I'm trying to show you why a company which does $250bn a year in revenue d…

1. I dont think you understand Apple's business and supply chain really well, due to theirs sheer scale, they do count pennies.

2. There are roughly 1.5 billion devices with Lighting Port, if only 10% of its user buy a new cable every year at $1 net profits that is $150M per year. Not to mention they ship 250M lightning cables inside new devices every year that could be used to mask their BOM and margin. From Apple's perspective, that is a 400M profits per year business.

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

#443

Post by ksec »

thomasahle wrote: post #302
defnotashton2 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how you can think this is needed in the slightest unless you literally can't make a decision yourself. I'm sorry but you can buy a USB cable or adapter to charge any phone in the world at any gas station, or corner convince store. This just simply isn't a problem, it's not a quality of life issue. It's just not. Buy cables with breakout mini, c, and tbunderbolt for 5$. Solved. This type of regulati…

> you can buy a USB cable or adapter to charge any phone in the world at any gas station, or corner convince store. And that's exactly because of the first round of EU standardisation. The gas station now has to stock only USB and Apple. If we still had different cables for every single brand of phone, there's no way you'd be able to get them all at most, if at any, gas stations. I recently had to get a new USB-c to…

>And that's exactly because of the first round of EU standardisation. The gas station now has to stock only USB and Apple.

Um... No. It has nothing to do with that EU standardisation. The USB converged on all Android SmartPhone was because it was cheap, and it transfer Data fairly fast. Which was the De-Facto Standard on PC.

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

#444

Post by ksec »

ShorsHammer wrote: post #271
veeralpatel979 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You get a free charging cable usually when you purchase a new phone "Free". It's amazing how many consumers see it this way. When everyone has the same charger phone companies can actually start putting it in as an optional paid add-on, which virtually no consumer will take. The hypothetical environment argument is spurious at best.

Um... may be because the median Smartphone cycle is now 3 - 4 years in most countries and it would not be bad to have a new Chargers and new cables put to work?

Arguably not Charger, but you do get the possibility of improved charger or higher power charging. But all cables wear out. So not really wrong with providing it by default.

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

#445

Post by outoftheabyss »

int_19h wrote: post #149
outoftheabyss wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This removes the incentives to innovate though. If you are found to have created the latest innovation surely there’s only two outcomes: either you can’t go to market or you are compelled to allow competitors to piggy back off of your technology en masse

They can innovate to their heart's content, so long as the connector is compatible, and the legacy charging protocol still works. So e.g. if USB-C is the standard, Apple could still use Thunderbolt 3.

So they can innovate, so long as it is within a strict and limited set of boundaries. That is the very definition of stifling innovation

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

#446

Post by ksec »

bpfrh wrote: post #138
_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?

Yes, because that regulation effort started ten years ago and led to less ewaste, something which we can all agree is good. Remember the time each new phone model had a new charger? And you had to replace the whole charger if the cable was broken? That changed because ten years ago the EU forced the companies to change their way and I think it didn't stiffle innovation but made developing a good standard even more im…

Why does this keep coming up as if the EU law was the reason why all non-Apple Smartphone used USB?

It is not, and the EU law has very little ( if anything ) to do with it. What you describe as different charger and cables were before the Smartphone era.

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

#447

Post by labawi »

oxfordmale wrote: post #286
eanzenberg wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because gov't moves as fast as innovation /s

Apple could define an USB-D standard tomorrow and use it for their phone charging cables, as longs as they allow other companies to use the same standard.

I don't think it works that way. They need to actually agree, use it, and you can't switch every day.

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

#448

Post by ksec »

uxp100 wrote: post #165
alt_f4 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not quite an apt comparison because the vast majority of people already own USB-C chargers and accessories, whereas lightning was a brand new thing. Also if Apple were that bothered by complaining, it would not have taken them 5 years and 3+ years of service programs to replace their laptops' butterfly keyboards with regular scissors switch keyboards.

The vast majority? I suspect that is very very wrong. I own a single device that has a USB C port, and no peripherals that connect to it without an adapter, and I post on HN. It is very early for USBC yet.

Thank You. Apart from my "returned" MacBook Pro, I dont own a single USB-C cable or devices that supports it.

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

#449

Post by emiliobumachar »

FireBeyond wrote: post #232
qeqeqeqe wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then wait 20 years for everyone to agree?

That is an order of magnitude exaggeration. Lightning appeared in 2012. USB-C appeared in 2014. 20 years means we'd apparently still be waiting for another 12 years for USB-C. Hardly helps your argument.

Presumably companies are a lot faster after one competitor is actually shipping a connector with dual orientation. What's the hurry if everyone has to wait for consensus?

I think it's a reasonable possibility that we would all still be waiting for dual orientation if this mandate had been in place back then.

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

#450

Post by emiliobumachar »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #146
outoftheabyss wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This removes the incentives to innovate though. If you are found to have created the latest innovation surely there’s only two outcomes: either you can’t go to market or you are compelled to allow competitors to piggy back off of your technology en masse

When a technology matures, at some point standartisation becomes more important than innovation. Power distribution, wall sockets and fire safety, fire hydrant connections were all unregulated and subject to innovation at some point. A fire engine from a different city could not connect to your water supply. At some point we decided that it wont do. We are gradually arriving to that point in software.

Are we at that point yet? The other thing about power distribution, wall sockets and fire safety is that they hardly ever change. If this had been in place 10 years ago, we could be stuck with micro USB.
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