Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me.
I don't see any win besides a minor convenience. A lightning cable weighs almost nothing and it's not a big deal to have one around.
As to lightning port limitations, I question whether usb-c will give average iPhone users any other advantage other than charging their phone. What are people gonna do with it other than charge their phones or transfer files?
Feels like there's nothing to celebrate here. Just the EU using its influence to exert control over things that don't matter at all.
> Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me.
It's not, we're glad SOMEONE is forcing them to take this direction, but it's really sad (and potentially damaging) it had to come to this.
> As to lightning port limitations, I question whether usb-c will give average iPhone users any other advantage other than charging their phone. What are people gonna do with it other than charge their phones or transfer files?
Lightning itself is also used for audio (analog audio dongle) and video. The one benefit USB-C could bring to the table is higher transfer speed since Lightning is stuck on USB2 speeds, USB-C doesn't imply USB 3 but they might as well try.
The Lightning connector has 8 pins: 2 for power, 2 for ID/control, and 4 for 2 differential lanes of anything. Those 2 differential lines are used for all data transfer, and, IIRC, are bidirectional. So, in theory, the Lightning connector could carry USB 3.0's differential RX/TX lanes no problem.
My guess as to why Apple hasn't implemented that is a lack of demand. Syncing/backup is expected to be handled on the device now, and USB 2.0 gives enough bandwidth for the majority of the other cases. And on iPads where more bandwidth might be required (eg. external data storage), they already have USB-C connectors supporting the higher speeds.
It does seem petty. “I just paid for a $1000 phone with a massive markup and you mean I have to pay an extra $12 to get a decent amount of storage?” It’s not like the 99¢ gets you a terabyte; you only get 50 GB. They could just swallow the cost, but they don’t.
Continuous services are taxed and accounted differently from one-time costs.
They hook you in with the $1 option, you see how useful iCloud is and then you'll fork up even more. Then you notice that your whole family can share the subscription and soon you'll be paying $10 for the 2TB option and are an Apple One subscriber.
That's just good business nowadays. All companies _could_ just sell stuff with an one-time fee and provide a service forever, but it's not fiscally responsible in the long run.
That adapter acts like usb host IIRC. So does your computer. Connecting two hosts with a A-to-A cable is not going to do anything good (and might cause harm). This is why A-to-A cables aren't supposed to exist as per usb spec.
Apple wants to do away with all external connectors on that phone. My guess is that they won't have any ports once they get rid of the lightning connector.
Better transfer speed would be a benefit to USB-C. It comes up using an iPhone as a camera when wifi is congested or just not available, e.g. a college campus with device registration required. Dongles for phone to HDMI could work without needing compression as well.
God forbid you'd ever want to transfer to a non-Apple device amirite? Most of the people that I know that use iPhones don't have Macs. And those with Macs don't have iPhones lol.
Comparing a shared RF medium to a fairly guaranteed point to point connection is one of those things that in theory works great, but in practice, not so much...
Apple is part of the USB-IF. They also have pushed USB standards to consumers since the iMac. Hell, Apple participates of every single industrial forum they can benefit from.
Apple has moved on to USB-C for almost every other product they have. They know Lightning is old and insufficient, even for their iPad Air.
The only reason why Apple keeps Lightning around is for phones and some portable accessories, and the revenue from those, and their certifications, is not something they are willing to dismiss. Technically speaking, if you want something as simple as a cable, you have to go through Apple and their MFI program.
So here we are, with Apple holding the keys to every Lightning accessory, and also keeping a degree of control of USB-C.
If anything, the EU is trying to keep Apple honest.
> The only reason why Apple keeps Lightning around is for phones and some portable accessories, and the revenue from those, and their certifications, is not something they are willing to dismiss. Technically speaking, if you want something as simple as a cable, you have to go through Apple and their MFI program.
The other way of viewing this is that by not switching (yet) they haven't created instant e-waste out of every cable and accessory manufactured in the past decade. USB-C didn't exist when they released the lightning cable, and they have clearly been migrating every other product over the past several years.
Seriously, you don't need to invent a conspiracy for every single move Apple makes.
> The other way of viewing this is that by not switching (yet) they haven't created instant e-waste out of every cable and accessory manufactured in the past decade.
Well no time like the present since time is linear and unless they're going to stick with lightning _forever_ then they'll eventually have to create a bunch of e-waste.
> Seriously, you don't need to invent a conspiracy for every single move Apple makes.
How is this a “conspiracy”? It is literally what they are doing with the MFI program.
If anything, the e-waste theory is less credible, as Apple have changed the iPad and MacBook charging ports three or four times in the past 12 years. They have also a long history of preventing third parties from fixing their products, latest of which is software locking of replacement parts.
This is not the reason. The reason is, the last time they changed ports (from 30pin to lightning) it created huge blowback from consumers who had lots of 30pin accessories that were no longer compatible, and even though lightning is FAR better people don’t like switching.
USB-C is not much different than lightning for charging / connecting a phone, so the blowback from consumers will be huge when all their accessories are no longer compatible with the next phone.
> USB-C is not much different than lightning for charging / connecting a phone...
As far as I understand, there are no Lightning cables that support anything over 18W. Data transfer tops at 480Mbps, or roughly USB 2.0 speeds.
These are specs many other companies have surpassed several years ago.
> ... so the blowback from consumers will be huge when all their accessories are no longer compatible with the next phone.
Apple is the same company that went through 4 different charging connectors for their MacBook line, in about 15 years: MagSafe, MagSafe 2, USB-C, and now MagSafe 3. Their iPad line is 12 years old and has gone through 3 different connectors: 30-pin, Lightning, and USB-C.
If the iPhone had an USB-C connector, I could pretty much carry a single cable and charger for my laptop, my tablet, and my phone. So unless there is zero overlap between iPhone users and users of anything else, the point is moot.
Even worse, Apple stopped bundling a charger with their phones over three years ago. Instead, they ship a Lightning to USB-C cable, but they bundle an USB-C charger only for a year after the release of the iPhone X, effectively forcing their customers to buy USB-C hardware anyway.
Sure, you can now carry 1 less cable. That's a win, but it's not some monumental change people try to make it out to be. When I travel I will still carry multiple cables since I need to usually charge more than one device at a time. But now they can be the same cable.
They can be, but in practice you’ll want a cable capable of at least 60 W for the laptop. So now you either have to carry all the same high power cable (more expensive and wasteful) or give up on the benefit of having one type of cable to begin with.
You must not have been here for years that people whined about the MacBook getting rid of MagSafe and how it only had USB-C ports. How quickly we forget. "No blowback" is the completely opposite of the truth. Consumers aren't going to give a shit what some foreign government mandated, they're going to be pissed at Apple that they need to buy all new cables.
> Consumers aren't going to give a shit what some foreign government mandated, they're going to be pissed at Apple that they need to buy all new cables.
For sure, but only if Apple wouldn't provide such cables, which they do.
Currently, cables bundled with iPhones are Lightning to USB-C. It has been like this for several years.
I suspect that the kind of person who would buy a new $1,000+ phone with an USB-C to USB-C cable in the box, and bitch and moan about the $30 worth of Lightning cables about to end in the trash, is the same who vociferously complain on the Internet and then still buy the next years version.
My impression has always been that, at least online, there was quite a bit of criticism to Apple for switching to USB-C so soon. Or was it because now dongles were needed?
Except lightning also still operates at USB 2.0 speeds - so if you don't want to trust Apple with your data in iCloud backups (which as it's not E2EE encrypted is foolhardy, plus you have to pay for a higher tier for any phone with more than 5GB of personal data) it takes an absolute age.
It is very inconvenient and a hassle to have 5 different cables for 5 different devices. It is a waste of space, materials... The economic gains by volume continent wide should not be underestimated.
Do you actually have data on that though? I see that kind of argument get thrown around but it is never substantiated.
How will usbc lead to less waste?
If you wanna make that argument, wouldn’t it be better to force companies to opt you out of getting chargers and cables unless you explicitly ask for them when you make the purchase?
> If you wanna make that argument, wouldn’t it be better to force companies to opt you out of getting chargers and cables unless you explicitly ask for them when you make the purchase?
That is a natural step forward after the cables are unified. Even today, 80% of the electronic devices I'm buying are coming without a charger and this is all due to the fact that the market stabilized to USB charging (mini and now USB-C).
I still remember we used to have drawers full of old phone chargers...
I still have a small sack of those old chargers. Can't put them in the generic waste, nobody would buy them, and I've been too lazy to take them to the electronic waste recycling.
> Unbundling the sale of a charger from the sale of the electronic device
But without a universal charger that doesn't make sense: if I still need a specific charger for a device, I'm going to have to buy that with the device anyways.
Apple already does that with chargers, new iPhones no longer come with charging bricks, just the cables. I'd be fine with not including the cables if the phones were USB-C, but since they're Lightning the likelihood of a new iPhone user already having a cable that will work is very low.
Yes but do cables contribute a significant amount of waste in general, worthy of being specifically regulated? I actually don’t know either way, so it would be nice to see some data.
You've somehow avoided USB-C cables? That's confusing to me since I have an iPhone and other Apple devices. My phone uses lighting but my Beats earbuds, My Macbook Pro, and my iPad pro use USB-C for charging. Plus plenty of other non-Apple devices.
Yes, I suppose if you want to charge your phone in a dozen locations, and you want a separate cable for every location, that will be what you need to do. It doesn't seem like a major hardship to me, having lived through a few connector changes, like the 30-pin to lightning switch, but I suppose it may be more of an issue for others.
It's just back to my point. This change will cause me to throw away a significant amount of cables (some over 5 years old). That's a decent amount of waste.
Really? I consider myself pretty economical, but I throw out much more than a few lightning cables worth of waste in a given week (probably more on any day even). Would they even really be noticeable in your trash can?
I don't know that I had an argument, more of a question of if a couple of cables would even be noticeable as trash.
I'd say my argument is purely logistical - one less cable type would be quite a boon to me personally. I have a few lightning cables that only work with exactly one device that I own - my iPhone 11. I'm quite happy with my phone, and perhaps ironically for Apple, the best way they'd have to get me to replace it would be to make a new one with a USB-C port; it's the feature I'd most like at this point.
I'd also love to see touchid make a return, but I don't see that happening.
This law might have actually encouraged more waste than would have otherwise existed.
Cables (generally) don't go bad in a year or two and can last for quite a few years. Most long-term iPhone users probably have at least a few spare cables throughout their desk, house, car that they've bought over time that they'd now have no substitutes for and would need to replace.
You might have dictated a situation where people now have to throw away a pile of perfectly usable cables/accessories and buy a bunch of new ones. While well intentioned, this law might have otherwise achieved the opposite of what it set out to do.
PS: Whether this law exists or not, I'd have bet on Apple working to go fully wireless soon and this might just accelerate that effort.
> You might have dictated a situation where people now have to throw away a pile of perfectly usable cables/accessories and buy a bunch of new ones.
I mean, or Apple could do the one thing they've done absolutely tons of recently (so it wouldn't be a surprising or unheard of move from them) and sell a dongle for lightning -> USB-C?
Now you don't have to do any of what you just said would be a guarantee.
It's OK to make decisions with long-term beneficial impacts that may come with short-term negatives. I'd also wager the majority of iPhone users have USB-C cables already.
Why would they? I can guarantee my parents don't. I guess I got one last year when I got an Xbox controller to connect to the PC, but I don't want to use that one for my phone, it stays with the controller.
I guess if I'm going to replace my phone I should do it soon while I can still use my existing cables with the new one.
Most iPhone users are going to buy new iPhones though, eventually. And when they do the lightning cables they already have are going to be useless and they'll have to replace every single cable they own.
This literally just created a mountain of e-waste. We turned a hypothetical "what about when they switch" into a forced reality.
Um... What portion of your budget are you going to have to spend to buy a couple USB-C cables? Like if you really need, I can probably send you one or two because otherwise I'd just throw them away.
I mean, I’m an iPhone user and have plenty of USB-C cables. And charging cables rarely last that long anyway, so I don’t think this is going to be a big deal.
I don't think I've had any decent lightning cable wear out. The super thin and cheap ones have, but I haven't had any from Apple or Anker wear out yet.
...now, whether that's because it's that good of a connector or because we humans wipe ourselves out before we get around to inventing something better is another question altogether.
The plug will be universal with usb-c, but not the cable specs, I read someone of someone that have a usb-c-jack dongle that came with the phone and worked, then when it broke he bought a new one but it didn't work, the dongle itself was not using a standard, also I read a lot that fast charging is kinda property with each manufacturer, so a cable that can fast charge one device might not be able to fast charge another, and the blame is on USB itself, it's like HDMI, everything is optional, so you can't be sure if you bought the correct usb-c cable.
At least with lightning you know what you are buying, and maybe the overpriced cables that Apple sells will work better than the most cheap ones, which brand give you the warranties for the cable specs? does belkin and co sell also cables?
Imagine a World where your appliances just work in some sockets and not in others. Where the tires of your car can just be bought from one supplier because it was limited by the car manufacturer. Your toaster just accepts some kind of bread. Your pencil can't be sharpned except with one specific equipament. Your mechanical pencil can use just one kind of pencil lead because it has some specific size.
And now imagine a step further, where all cars, mechanical pencils, toasters, wall sockets... everything is disposable because some small detail or component has just one supplier.
Imagine how much you'll spend to have things, and how much you'll have to throw away when any small thing of it gets broken.
and literally none of that has happened with no mandates. What a dumb argument. Now the government (that creates no value) now gets credit for "preventing" fictional "horrors" like proprietary bread? statists guna state. seems like some of europe just looooves being told what to do like children
> What are people gonna do with it other than charge their phones or transfer files?
It would at least save me from carrying one power brick + usb cable. Steam Deck (USB C), Switch (USB C), MacBook Pro (USB C) and iPhone is the only odd one out. This does make a significant difference to what I can take with me on holiday.
It seems many are confused about what the iPhone Pro comes with today - a usb-c to lightning cable. So right now you only need to carry a single power brick and 2 cables. So after this law you can carry a single cable. A big win...I guess.
That's just you, of course. For hundreds of millions of others, this cuts the other way: over a decade's worth of Lightning accessories and cables and docks are out there.
Which is why the EU is just being dumb, here. They think they are accomplishing some amazing user-friendly enviro-friendly feat, but all they are really doing is making a lot of Lightning gear out there less useful.
And all this to switch to a port that is substantially larger, clunkier, and has no real advantages for iPhone users. Which is why Apple hasn't bothered changing up til now. That, plus Apple actually values what its customers REALLY need and what REALLY ACTUALLY benefits them.
How much time has to pass before the one-time cost of deprecating lightning is overtaken by the ongoing savings of having a single standard? Also consider that lightning would surely have eventually been deprecated one day even without this initiative.
How did lightning ever provide "ongoing savings"? It was simply an update of the 30-pin connector, it wasn't created to improve reusability or applicability to other kinds of devices.
Also, I don't really appreciate the snark. It's just a connector.
No on both counts. No, Lightning was not "simply an update" of the 30-pin connector; it was a creation of something entirely new, from scratch. And no, you don't have any idea about the motivations (or lack thereof) about why it was created, so let's just discard that.
The factual record, of course, shows us quite clearly that Apple did indeed design something that was highly "applicable to other kinds of devices", devices which Apple then went on to apply Lightning to. :) And of course we can also see quite clearly from the last ten years that Lightning has had a massive impact on the reusability of various chargers, docks, and cables. Why? Because Apple stuck with it for ten years and used it in all kinds of stuff.
As far as I'm aware, lightning was never used for any host device product line or use case that wasn't previously served by the 30 pin connector. So it clearly wasn't created with an intent to allow a broader range of devices to share it (or else they simply failed at achieving that). It covered the same use cases across the same product lines as the thing it replaced with no expansion upon that. Therefore there was never any "ongoing savings" by bringing together a greater range of use cases compared to the alternative.
Ignoring the fact that USB-C to Lightning cables exist, how in the world does a little power brick and cable make a "significant difference" to what you can take with you?
Can you tell me which standard does work with the switch? I have a few usb-c cables but only a few can charge it, while I can charge my iPad with every cable that I own, it a bit sad that ubs-c is a lie, I'd hope that at least a few things were not optional with usb-c standard, and also that it didn't have too much optional stuff that makes harder and harder to buy a cable, it the same with HDMI, that's why display port feels superior IMHO, less optional features.
The Switch USB-C connector is notorious for being non-complaint to the spec, making charging it finicky. However I did not encounter as much trouble as you, 9 out off 11 chargers I try work. This problem is unique to the Switch however.
No, but the parent’s point is still valid - many people own more than one lightning cable and/or lightning-enabled accessory (charging docks, stereos, etc) and as soon as you own an iPhone with USB-C, they’ll immediately become either useless or require yet another adapter.
This already happened once when the iPhone switched from the iPod connector to Lightning, and people revolted for this exact reason.
> This already happened once when the iPhone switched from the iPod connector to Lightning, and people revolted for this exact reason.
That was before USB-C existed (and micro-USB didn't have the same sort of accessory ecosystem that the 30-pin connector had). In this day and age, those same charging docks and stereos and such typically already support USB-C (because that's what most modern phones use, and it's kind of silly in this day and age to run two separate manufacturing lines for two separate SKUs instead of simply supporting both connectors in the same device), so if anything this would be the opposite of a reason to revolt.
Micro-USB was similarly enforced by law (but adapters were permitted with that regulation, thus allowing Apple to continue using proprietary ports) and that legislation had a clear and obvious positive impact for smartphone users. Don't you recall the days when every single manufacturer had a terrible proprietary connector? I think that enforcement was one of the best examples of a regulatory win in the technology sector in recent times. This is simply an attempt to strengthen that regulation and update it to a modern standard.
You missed their point. The EU "locked" devices into micro B but somehow they still managed to switch to USB-C when it became viable. How could they have switched if they were as "locked in" as you think?
I mean the simple fact that every phone manufacturer bar Apple moved to Micro-B indicates that the mandate works, and the fact that they then migrated to USB-C indicates that it doesn't lock manufacturers in forever.
In addition, Apple is known for making loads of dongles, so it wouldn't be remotely weird for them to sell/ship a lightning -> USB-C dongle. So the argument about mandating e-waste doesn't really hold up either.
So you have:
- It works
- It doesn't lock manufacturers in forever
- It doesn't mandate e-waste
Any other reasons you want to give? So far those are the only three I've seen and none of them hold water.
As someone else pointed out, the micro-b thing in the EU was a recommendation and not a mandate so the terms are a bit different here.
I would be happy to have Apple move to Type C, but I do question if an actual mandate (and not a recommendation) could prevent future USB connector adoption in the EU market.
You are broadly right about the last one not being a legal mandate.
It was basically a case of the EU saying "you need to choose one charging port that you all use, we _will_ create a mandate if you don't".
Importantly, the EU has already gone through a shift in charging standards, so they already understand how this stuff advances and have prepared for it in their own legislation (the EU tends to make laws with details on how those laws will be changed in the future etc. since they are at core still a large trade bloc). You can find a Q&A they gave here:
The Commission's proposal aims at providing consumers with an open and interoperable solution and, at the same time, enabling technological innovation. The proposal encourages innovation for wired and wireless technology charging.
Any technological developments in wired charging can be reflected in a timely adjustment of technical requirements/ specific standards under the Radio Equipment Directive. This would ensure that the technology used is not outdated.
At the same time, the implementation of any new standards in further revisions of Radio Equipment Directive would need to be developed in a harmonised manner, respecting the objectives of full interoperability. Industry is therefore expected to continue the work already undertaken on the standardised interface, led by the USB-IF organisation, in view of developing new interoperable, open and non-controversial solutions.
In addition, larger technological developments are expected in the area of wireless charging, which is still a developing technology with a low level of market fragmentation. In order to allow innovation in this field, the proposal does not set specific technical requirements for wireless charging. Therefore, manufacturers remain free to include any wireless charging solution in their products alongside the wired charging via the USB-C port.
To summarize, they'll work with the USB-IF (made up of a whole bunch of companies, including Apple) when the USB-IF makes a new standard in order to ensure that new connection innovations will be propagated to new devices. What they won't allow is a company like Apple having an "innovation" then diverging from how everyone expects devices to charge.
Interestingly they've also said that there's a set of standardized fast-charging capabilities that need to be clearly labelled on products that require/support them. So if you buy a tablet it'll have a label on the box saying "can charge at up to 50w" or whatever, and a charger would say "can charge at up to 50w", so you know it'll charge at full speed. That's a little better than the previous "it supports fast charging" umbrella.
> When would this mandate be changed? After the rest of the world has already moved on to Type D?
The EU has already passed multiple recommendations previously about mobile phone port standardization. They were all passed in a reasonable amount of time. Moreover, this mandate was also passed in a reasonable amount of time.
Therefore, I have reason to believe that future mandates regarding mobile phone port charging will also be passed in a reasonable amount of time.
> Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me.
I'm sorry that we need a law to instil some common sense into some managers' thick skulls. But I'm happy that EU is showing that in, a sane democracy, no huge corporation can force its will on the people.
Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me.
Having unified, standard cables and power bricks means more reuse, which reduces waste and cost. It means someone switching from Android to iPhone or vice versa doesn't need to replicate all their cabling. It means users can buy a third party cable without paying Apple for a licence or a patent. These are all good things.
A minor inconvenience multiplied by the number of smartphones (7.33 billion) is not a minor problem.
It's not that it's a problem on the individual level, it's that we're roughly doubling the number of cables needed and halving their utilization at the same time. Yes I know android is more popular, but the issue is the two different cables needed.
iPhones don't have USB 3+ because the Lightning connector only has one differential pair for data. If iPhones had a connector with more pairs (USB-C), I doubt it would cost much of anything to add a USB 4 block to the SoC (which they already have on many Apple Silicon SoCs) and wire it up to the connector. Sure, there's more to it, but it's not rocket science.
This isn't an important reason. There's no technical reason that Lightning could not have been updated to support higher speeds, and there's also nothing in this legislation that forces USB-C to magically use a high data rate.
> I don't see any win besides a minor convenience. A lightning cable weighs almost nothing and it's not a big deal to have one around.
The standardization is good for a lot of purposes:
- cutting down on the number of cables and especially chargers. Seriously, it's amazing to have one single Anker 65W power supply and a single cable on vacation and it can charge everything - tablet, work phone, laptop, power bank, drones, Nintendo Switch. I 'member the dark times where each of these devices had their own cable and for some even own charger.
- car and in-flight entertainment systems can now be relatively secure that USB-C is here to stay and be used for connectivity, which means less effort for this kind of appliance
- if a cable gets lost or damaged, spare cables are cheap and plentiful, and they will also be available in a few years of time
- devices can now be shipped without a charger and cable, which reduces package size and weight (and thus shipping efficiency, as more packages fit into a single container) and as almost everyone has chargers and cables, there is no need to produce as many chargers and cables before, which reduces resource consumption and eventually waste
- when devices break down, chargers still can live on. Even a plain old 5W USB charger is enough to charge an e-cigarette.
- interoperability between devices gets increased. No more micro-USB-to-micro-USB or whatever rare cables to interface, say, a DSLR camera with a phone to transfer photos, a plain USB-C cable is sufficient.
> Feels like there's nothing to celebrate here. Just the EU using its influence to exert control over things that don't matter at all.
Well... Apple refused for years to implement USB-C on the iPhone on their own, while the rest of the market converged first on micro-USB and nowadays on USB-C. The regulation was only established to force the hands of the largest player, which didn't like USB-C because it would destroy its lucrative MFi licensing - basically, rent seeking by preventing competition with a closed solution instead of an open standard.
If there is one thing that drives EU legislation ideas, it is the convergence towards open and common, market-wide standards. This reduces the barriers to entry for small players and leads to more innovation as a result. Additionally, since the 500M citizens of the EU are a market bloc that no manufacturer can afford to ignore and for most things except automotive it isn't worth to set up different supply chains, our legislation can improve the lives of everyone on this planet - just take the RoHS directive, which led to lead solder being phased out worldwide and less lead ending up in the environment.
> If there is one thing that drives EU legislation ideas, it is the convergence towards open and common, market-wide standards. This reduces the barriers to entry for small players and leads to more innovation as a result.
Too many people don't understand that trade agreements are about common standards and accountability.
There is a lot of noise about EU regulations made by people who are stuck in 18th century mindsets about trade and who fancy themselves as "free traders".
> Too many people don't understand that trade agreements are about common standards and accountability.
Unfortunately, trade agreements can also end up being abused to enable price dumping. Yes, consumers may enjoy lower prices for goods, but if the cost is domestic industry being completely devastated or human rights being violated at large scale (e.g. children being enslaved in questionably legal mining operations or factories), is it worth it?
Most trade agreements at the time have almost no "equal standards" clause for manufacturing. Stuff like toxic materials (e.g. RoHS) is regulated, but lower work standards - minimum wages, child labor prevention, slavery prevention, fire codes (e.g. the horrible fires that regularly happen in Bangladesh [1]), disposal of waste, CO2 emissions - are not.
The result of that non-regulation is that nations like China, India or Vietnam flood European and US markets with goods that are only cheap (compared to domestic products) because the environment and the workers get exploited. We outsource our dirty industry.
I think if you're going to accuse Apple of rent seeking here you also pretty much have to accuse anyone who develops their own standard or plugin or similar of rent seeking as well.
When will the EU ban HDMI connections to monitors or force Apple to remove them from MacBooks? Why are dSLR cameras allowed to continue to use micro USB and SD cards when they could just use USB-C so we don't have to buy dongles and adapters?
The argument that Apple only provides one physical port (they also provide Magsafe and allow other wireless charging options) isn't sufficient with respect to your discussion point about market-wide standards. This really looks to me like the EU is just saying "we don't like lightning chargers and since nobody is going to defend it except Apple we'll ban it" while they also let plenty of other "standards" run amok in the market.
FWIW I much prefer USB-C and I want my next iPhone to include it (along with any other devices), but I really struggle with the logic of the decision to force it here.
> When will the EU ban HDMI connections to monitors or force Apple to remove them from MacBooks?
HDMI is a somewhat-open-ish, widespread standard and for what it's worth Apple MacBook models haven't carried HDMI ports for ages now.
> Why are dSLR cameras allowed to continue to use micro USB and SD cards when they could just use USB-C so we don't have to buy dongles and adapters?
Again, the market seems to converge towards USB-C already (almost all the models on [1] and other buying guides have USB-C), and for memory cards towards SD cards and CFexpress (on the pro segment). Both of these are somewhat-open-ish again.
The EU usually only steps in when the free market is either stuck somewhere along the road and needs a push towards a specific standard (=> USB-C), profit incentives need to be overruled (=> RoHS / leaded solder) or the free market suffers from oligopolies that need to be broken up for actual competition or the creation of an actual single market (=> EU-wide mobile roaming).
> The argument that Apple only provides one physical port (they also provide Magsafe and allow other wireless charging options) isn't sufficient with respect to your discussion point about market-wide standards.
Apple can provide a MagSafe port on MacBooks or a Lightning port on iDevices if they want. All Apple has to do is to support the mandated USB-C port as well!
> Why are dSLR cameras allowed to continue to use micro USB
Because DSLRs are dead. If you look at the new mirrorless cameras, they're either doing USB-C charging, or take batteries charged from a device that uses USB-C.
Why aren’t TV’s mandated to use USB-C? Why do I still need to connect via HDMI? Why does my TV remote still use double-A batteries instead of USB-C charging?
The cameras are just a random example.
As soon as you look at the EU’s decision (which is one I like the effects of) you can see that this was just a very arbitrary ruling.
> - cutting down on the number of cables and especially chargers. Seriously, it's amazing to have one single Anker 65W power supply and a single cable on vacation and it can charge everything - tablet, work phone, laptop, power bank, drones, Nintendo Switch. I 'member the dark times where each of these devices had their own cable and for some even own charger.
I have this now, except with 1 extra cable (which happens to charge my iPhone and AirPods).
> - if a cable gets lost or damaged, spare cables are cheap and plentiful, and they will also be available in a few years of time
Walk into any store or gas station today and you'll find all sorts of cable solutions for lightning. I was looking for a cable on vacation last year and had a harder time finding a usb-c to usb-c power cable. Everywhere had lightning though.
> - when devices break down, chargers still can live on.
Again, all my chargers have been usb-c for awhile.
Apple was clearly headed towards usb-c anyway, so I doubt this law changes much in their plans. But, a lot of the benefits were already there. Apple will need to include a lightning to usb-c dongle for a period of time as accessories shift over.
> Apple was clearly headed towards usb-c anyway, so I doubt this law changes much in their plans.
Highly doubt it. In any case, the aim of the EU was to create a standard or at least force the industry into coming up with one - and had Apple been allowed to keep their proprietary connector, the competition would be completely correct in claiming "why should we keep using the standard while Apple can get away with MFi licensing income?".
So, in order to actually keep the standard a standard, Apple now has to be openly forced. I doubt this regulation would have been done if Apple had signalled to be moving away from Lightning.
C'mon. Apple went all in on usb-c before anyone else. It hurt them with the laptop line and they reversed some. They have moved the iPad, include usb-c -> puck for the watch, and usb-c to lightning for the iPhone. They are transitioning.
Eh? The iPhone charges over a USB-Lightning cable. There are USB-C and USB-A versions of the cable available. The charger was never the issue. In fact Apple stopped including (USB) chargers with the iPhone a while back.
>If there is one thing that drives EU legislation ideas, it is the convergence towards open and common, market-wide standards. This reduces the barriers to entry for small players and leads to more innovation as a result.
Can you provide some examples of innovation that the EU has made in this industry in the last 20 years?
- mobile phone and data roaming, the most notable user-facing innovation
- the single market itself with all the associated side legislation (GDPR, VAT OSS) that allows every tiny small business to serve the entire EU
- Schengen free-movement zone
- Euro currency
- SEPA instead of national schemes (ties in into the single market aspect as well) with everything from card payments over wire transfers to direct debit covered. Strong authentication required for opening bank accounts. No more paper cheques. (Directly compare all of this to the hot mess that the US is)
- EPD PS2 that forces banks to provide APIs to third parties, e.g. budget planners
- unified drone legislation that allows me without tons of paperwork and individual permits to fly my drone everywhere reasonable in Europe
I meant innovation in consumer electronics or even just software services as a result of legislation, not legislation itself. Payments and bank APIs count. Thanks for the examples.
>Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me
this idea that it is somehow a bad thing to force mega-corporations to do things that are good for society. it's so widespread and yet - short of actual communism - I have literally never seen any evidence of public action against mega-corporate interests resulting in damage to society as a whole, beyond the inevitable political lobbying and media corruption that ensues
is it any surprise that entities whose entire existence has been justified by clever storytelling (i.e. marketing) have been successful at convincing people that rules for them are a bad thing, while rules for you on the street are perfectly fine and actually good?
people act like these mega-corps are weak, soft little babies that need to be treated with kid gloves. "no, but what if this law could do that to them? but what if this law means they make 0.1% less profit this year?". I absolutely understand this kind of reticence with actual babies, or individual people, or small-to-medium-sized businesses, but it makes me angry that people are so reluctant to act against these unaccountable mega-entities. it is hamstringing society
> Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me.
School shootings - why do we have to enforce not commiting school shootings with the stupid law, surely everyone can get together and agreee murdering a 10 year old for fun is evil and just not do it?
Kind of a ridiculous comparison. If you absolutely must compare this to school shootings, compare it this way:
Should a national government mandate only one method of security that every school must implement, or allow states/provinces/districts to experiment with what works for them? Even if the national government improves security in the short term, there is a strong possibility that the bureaucracy of national government's slowness to adapt will cause security to be worse in the long term.
> Why do people think it is a good thing to have this enforced by law is beyond me.
It's because consumers have rights too. Standardising something actually fosters competition (healthy capitalism), increases profit (as standardising something often leads to lower manufacturing costs) while reducing costs for consumers (due to increased competition). It also reduces waste which is good for the environment.
> I don't see any win besides a minor convenience.
You will, when you have to buy another USB-C cable for your iDevice. I recently had to, for an iPad Air, and I was able to buy a good quality replacement USB-C cable (of similar spec) from Samsung for Rs. 750 (around $10) rather than paying Apple an exorbitant Rs. 2000 (around $20+). (Past experience with Apple cables has taught me that the higher price charged by Apple is no guarantee of better quality, and other non-Apple cables from reputed companies are often cheaper, more durable and last longer than Apple's).
You can already buy non-Apple branded lightning cables.
Apart from the cable that came in my iPhone 7's box many years ago (which still works perfectly and, excluding a little dirt, looks like new), all my other lightning cables are off-brand ones that cost much less than $20 apiece. More like 10.
Some of them (Aukey brand) developed a wonky connection after a while, or only work on one side. The others (Amazon Basics) still work perfectly, after spending uncountable hours in the sun and rain powering my phone on my motorbike's handlebars.
> You can already buy non-Apple branded lightning cables.
Lightening cables are not a standard and thus Apple dictates terms even with non-Apple lightening cables. As lightening cables are not an industry standard the prices are influenced by Apple and artificially inflated (even for non-Apple ones). And they can only be used with Apple devices. (Lightening cables have seen a recent price fall only after Apple shifted to USB-C for some iDevices, as the market fears Apple is already preparing to switch to USB-C).
USB-C cables will be even cheaper in the future as they are standardised, and since they can be used with multiple devices (due to such regulations) you need to buy fewer of them too.
> since they can be used with multiple devices (due to such regulations) you need to buy fewer of them too.
I’ve seen this argument a few times “yay now I only have to take one cable on holiday”. Sure, unless you want to charge two devices at once while you’re sleeping, perhaps… it’s an unrelated argument to which connector is better.
I don't particularly follow Apple's products, so I don't know when they started selling USB-C devices, and hence what "recently" means to you.
What I can say, is that in France on Amazon, USB-C cables and Lightning cables had similar prices when I last bought mine a few years ago. I usually compare Amazon Basics and Ugreen / Aukey brands.
This I really don't get. It reads as though you're saying that non-apple cables are cheaper and better, and also that mandating USB-C is valuable because it means you don't have to buy cables from apple.
Most certainly there are cables that are much better than the ones Apple is selling. I’ve been an iPhone/iPad user for more than 10 years and I no longer use Apple cables because they are gone in 6-8 months. This is an issue they had from the very beginning and which they utterly ignored.
In contrast, I bought an usb-c cable from one plus 5 years ago, which is still in perfect condition. With the iPhones, I use cables from some company (forgot the name) that have lifetime warranty. I swear I could tow my car with those, _for the same price_
Lightening cables have currently seen a price fall as Apple introduced USB-C devices. Yes, it's an automatic win for us consumers when regulation creates industry standard and fosters competition as that gives us the option to buy a product from multiple vendor. When something is standardised it is better for the whole industry, and especially for us consumers as it means we are not forced to buy something whose design and manufacturing is dictated by a single company. With lightening cables, Apple dictated the design and manufacturing terms and thus had an influence on its price even for non-Apple branded cables. With USB-C as a standard it can no longer do so.
What exactly is your USB-C cable example meant to illustrate? You were successfully able to buy a cheaper cable without any laws being passed. Seems like things are working fine as-is.
I benefited only because I bought a USB-C iDevice. Apple introduced USB-C support in some of its devices not because they wanted to but only because they realised that regulation would force them to in the future. Now that the regulation is in effect, Apple will be forced to drop support for its proprietary lightening cable and switch to supporting USB-C standards for all its devices. That's a huge win for consumers and the industry too.
A 4 year old iPhone still works perfectly, but a $200 Android will find its way to a landfill way sooner. As a rule of thumb, appliances that last are better for the environment than cheap products. Apple is good at make devices that last.
Nowadays all laptops can charge over usb-c (including Apple laptops, mind you!). Did anybody have to force Apple to do this? No, because charging technology improved so much that what used to be a big brick is now a pocketable GAN charger. Even the new magsafe laptops still support usb-c charging. And iPhones support wireless qi charging as well as Apple's proprietary magnet based wireless charging solution. Thanks to cheaper chips all devices can now negotiate how much power they need from the power brick. That's a big win, and this just wasn't possible a decade ago.
We're in the final stretch of a 20 year trend towards universal chargers, and this EU mandate is totally unnecessary.
> A 4 year old iPhone still works perfectly, but a $200 Android will find its way to a landfill way sooner
Not really, though. I'm using one and it's just fine. Nonsense aside...
> Nowadays all laptops can charge over usb-c (including Apple laptops, mind you!). Did anybody have to force Apple to do this? No
Yes. That's what the EU has been doing by talking about forcing the standardization. Dollars to donuts that apple would still be on their proprietary connector if not for that.
> this EU mandate is totally unnecessary
Disagree. Just look at the iPhones apple is still manufacturing, which they'll now be forced to change.
Android uses RAM as planned obselesence when they stop giving security updates to your old OS. The updated OS always uses more RAM and slows the phone down because of swapping to disk
I don't know that any stock Android swaps to disk. They swap to zram, generally.
That said, the thing that seems to make old Android devices obsolete is Google Play Services. It takes up significantly more RAM over time, and it keeps getting updated even when your OS isn't. A degoogled older Android device stays about as useful as it ever was.
Why has apple bucked this 20 year trend for iPhone charging? Much progress has been made, but never at this place. For a long time, it has looked like they will, but they never did. The EU finally got impatient and decided this mandate was needed to get apple to do this.
Note that the threat of a law like this is what caused many other manufacturers to standardize. If Apple gets a pass, what does that signal to the manufacturers who caved, and to everyone else. I would wager it tells them "the eu makes empty threats". This was the result of Apple saying "bluff" to EU demands, and the EU deciding to follow through.
Apple could have prevented this. The EU sort of had its hands bound when it started the process of pushing everyone to one charging. That process was largely very valuable, for apple specifically it isn't that important. But leaving the process incomplete would send the wrong message.
Hence I think that Apple is at fault for this regrettable law as the EU is.
This is a bad law that is the result of a process that was, on balance, still very valuable. This law is a small element in the minus column, that does not weigh against the many elements in the plus column. The process I refer to is the EU push to get manufactures to use the same charging port.
Anecdotal, but my friend has been complaining for over a year that the updates are making his iPhone too slow. Otoh, my 6+ year old Android phone is still going strong (after 1 battery replacement).
Your friend's iPhone will go a lot faster after he also gets his battery replaced. Once the battery degrades too much the iPhone slows itself down in order to not crash by trying to use more power than the battery can provide.
>A 4 year old iPhone still works perfectly, but a $200 Android will find its way to a landfill way sooner. As a rule of thumb, appliances that last are better for the environment than cheap products. Apple is good at make devices that last.
I will definitely switch to iPhone as soon as they come with USB-C. It feels like they're just not doing it out of spite - I already have 20 USB-C chargers and power banks for all of my hardware. If you've been in the Apple ecosystem for years, no, it probably won't matter to you and will probably annoy you more than what it's worth because you now need separate cables to charge your mouse and your phone.
Out of spite? What about it feeling out of spite to make this change for the tens of millions of users who have one or two or four sets of AirPods, and several wireless Apple keyboards and mice and trackpads, and various other gear, all of which uses Lightning?
Some people need to remember that it's not all about them.
And your USB-C chargers and power banks were and are perfectly capable of charging Lightning devices.
Perhaps you can outline the many times that Apple dropped support for something to move to something new?
Phones no longer have "dock connectors" do they? What about anyone who had a dock port?
Having an iPhone and android phones, Lightening is ANNOYING. Almost nothing uses it. I can charge my Kindle via USB-C, my headphones via USB-C but need an ancient lightening to charge my phone?
Lastly, can you outline what devices people have which are dependent on Lightning? AirPods? they could have been released with USB-C from the start, allowing Apple to move away from lightning.
I find this argument really funny since Apple already dropped lightning connectors on the newer IPADs in favor of USB C and already doesn't support lightning laptops.
I guess you'll have to figure out how to handle the slight inconvenience that Apple is putting their IPAD customers and laptop customers through.
It's a common misconception for the less tech savvy but you can just buy a USB-C to Lightning cable for a few bucks. In fact, here's a 3-pack for $7: https://a.co/d/1WFoRGZ
The constant dongle arguments are so funny, especially in this case.
1) You buy a USB-C to Lightning cable. Obviously.
2) Everyone bitches about Apple supposedly requiring all kinds of dongles, but of course, what caused that? Apple's insistence on putting only Thunderbolt ports on the Mac. Which of course use what connector? USB-C.
People need to figure out what they are bitching about before just mouthing words about dongles all the time.
I don't see any win besides a minor convenience. A lightning cable weighs almost nothing and it's not a big deal to have one around.
As to lightning port limitations, I question whether usb-c will give average iPhone users any other advantage other than charging their phone. What are people gonna do with it other than charge their phones or transfer files?
Feels like there's nothing to celebrate here. Just the EU using its influence to exert control over things that don't matter at all.