[codexb]

There's nothing wise or moral about this decision.

Mandating a technology standard, purely for personal preference and convenience reasons -- not for reasons related to safety, or pollution, or security -- especially for things that change as fast as phones, is one of the most short-sighted and naive things any government could do.

There's a long history of Apple using proprietary connectors to achieve performance specifications above what the currently available standardized connectors could provide. Hell, in all likelihood, Apple is likely to ditch a charging connection altogether in favor of wireless charging in the near future. The EU is mandating technological stagnation. They will always be behind the market.

[Jtsummers]

> There's a long history of Apple using proprietary connectors to achieve performance specifications above what the currently available standardized connectors could provide.

Lightning was good when it came out (compared to the various micro-USB options), but it's not held up. Even Apple knows this and they've moved away from it on their iPads.

[Daniel_sk]

In the same regard it will be now hard to move from USB-C to something better due to regulation.

[mmastrac]

As others in this thread have mentioned, the "unofficial" regulation that drove most non-apple phones to micro-USB, and then to USB-C did not prevent progress.

The laws are not going to mandate USB-C of a certain revision, etc. The laws simply mandate cooperation in a market that has been mostly cooperative, save for a single participant.

[Rebelgecko]

If I'm reading it properly the law does mandate certain USB revisions. For example devices that pull more than 15 watts but less than 100 have to support the 2021 version of IEC 62680-1-2.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Even if laws were written in stone, we could just get new stones, or plaster over and write new laws in to the old stones.

The Personal Electronic Device Port Amendment Act 2025, and so on and so forth.

[dlqx]

Do you know how long this takes? Most probably it will take years to change.

[Nullabillity]

So… your quote boils down to "if the device operates within the parameters supported by standard X then it must comply with it"?

This seems like it inherently provides wiggle room when you have a legitimate reason that you can't follow the public standards?

[DiabloD3]

Lightning was a design put forth by a company that wasn't Apple during the USB IF's design stage of USB-C. It was rejected because the pins were on the outside, not the inside, and would allow easy damage of both the cable and the connector. It was rejected purely on completely sane technical and mechanical reasons.

Apple shipped it anyways, and all Lightning cables have failed or will fail for exactly the reasons it was rejected. Apple chose the cable because of how easily it fails.

Lightning was never good, and Apple has a long history of fucking customers, period.

[virusduck]

What world are you living in?

[Jtsummers]

> Lightning was a design put forth by a company that wasn't Apple during the USB IF's design stage of USB-C.

Do you have some references for this? I had never heard of Lightning having been developed anywhere but at Apple and specifically for their iDevice line and a check on Wikipedia's Lightning connector page has no references to anything that can substantiate this claim. Either a great example of historical erasure, or you're making this up.

TL;DR: Source?

[no_identd]

"during" ≠ "as part of", so technically they're as-written right either way, albeit I do suspect they did mean "as part of", so, I'll second that source request

[ephimetheus]

I’ve never had a single lightning cable fail ever since they switched to them.

[thebruce87m]

What on earth. Some people have an irrational hate for Apple that borders on a mental illness.

[wongarsu]

It gets kind of lost in the summary, but only devices that are rechargeable via a wired cable have to be chargable via USB-C. So going fully wireless is perfectly legal. It's also perfectly legal to offer other charging ports in addition to USB-C, though that's less likely to happen in phones.

And while this regulation puts some limitations on innovation in connectors, Thunderbolt shows that there is lots of room to innovate within the USB-C format (in a way that's compatible to normal USB).

[dzhiurgis]

Wireless magsafe is like half the speed of wired (peak 18w, nominal 11w vs 20w)

[enkrs]

I’m not in a hurry, I can charge slowly during the night.

Remember when people said they’d never use an phone that needs to be charged every 2 days? Now we all charge our phones every day. Habbits change with technology.

[dzhiurgis]

Personally fast charging changed everything. Plug phone at random occasion (few minutes before leaving home or during short ride) and never have to think of overnight charging. I've mounted magsafe thing on my car dashboard and it was somewhat of disappointment. Sure it's convenient but slower charge was def noticeable.

But the whole point is being able to depend on a cable that just about everyone has. All of your gear has USB-C. Apple just being cocky.

[dlqx]

Like this you waste charging cycle. I doubt this "few minutes before leaving home" can charge your phone up to 100%. Every cycle you do not charge from 0% up to 100% can be considered a wasted cycle. And in wasting things we are good ;)

[FabHK]

That is not accurate, as far as I understand. The opposite might even be the case.

From what I understand, the battery is damaged most when close to 0% or close to 100%.

So, if a phone could do, say, 1000 full cycles until the battery reaches a certain stage of degradation, and now you used an identical phone, but with shorter cycles only down to 20%, then charge to 80%, you could not only do 1000 of those short cycles, but even 1000/60% = 1667, and still have the battery in a better shape than the one with 1000 full cycles.

I am not certain about this, though.

[dzhiurgis]

I don’t need anywhere near 100%. Mere 20% with low battery mode will last me the evening.

[duffyjp]

I have the MagSafe battery and if your iPhone is hot it won't charge wirelessly at all. It was frustrating to come prepared with a 100% phone and 100% battery pack, and leave an event with a dead phone and 60% still in the battery pack.

[cynix]

Fast charging is bad for the battery. I’d actually be happier if the wireless MagSafe charger was slower, say around 5-8W. I have all the time in the world while asleep, why would I care if it finished charging in 1 hour vs 3 hours?

[dzhiurgis]

Few percent of capacity over incredible convenience easily wins. IPhone batteries are trivial to replace these days too.

For you it’s easy - there are Tons of crappy chargers and weak power supplies you can use.

[thedrbrian]

wireless charging efficiency isn't too great either

https://debugger.medium.com/wireless-charging-is-a-disaster-...

[datavirtue]

Permitting wireless charging without a USB-C option basically topedos the legislation. This whole affair is going to end up as an embarrassing meme.

[9dev]

Well i dunno, it worked tremendously well for USB 2, don’t you think? Might be my age, but I distinctly remember having heaps of different charging cables. Gone, thanks to EU legislation.

Why would it be different this time?

[RankingMember]

I too remember the bad old days of a different charger for every phone, and for no real reason in most cases (other than profit-motive).

[jhoechtl]

It was about the charger and they settled on USB as the outlet.

Now the EU is settling on the socket on the devices, that's dofferent.

[anilakar]

You're not completely honest here, though. It was either Type A jack for power supplies without a cable, or Type B micro jack for fixed cables, and the latter very much specifies the port on the device.

[dwaite]

> Gone, thanks to EU legislation.

Sort of. Standardizing on a USB-A charger did slightly push people to use a USB form plug on the other end - but data transfer is what really killed the proprietary connectors.

The multitude of USB connectors has been pared down - mini USB was withdrawn due to its design flaws, micro USB was obnoxious for 5Gbps data transfer, as was the larger USB-B plug. The convenience and capabilities of USB-C have slowly replaced them both on the device side, as well as the capability to go higher than 5 Gbps.

If anything has slowed adoption of USB-C, I'd point at desktop PCs and the reluctance to put 'real' USB-C ports on them. This is mostly because of what I consider to be a design error on the USB-IF's part - they added backward compatibility, allowing a USB-C dongle to supply a USB-A connector, when they should have supplied forward compatibility instead. This left a lot of bundled cables as well as hardware dongles like wireless mouse adapters stuck on USB-A.

[kelnos]

How so? Wireless charging is still slower and inferior (in the usability sense) than wired charging, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

[wongarsu]

The decision passed today also talks about harmonizing wireless charging in the future, to make sure it's compatible across brands and device types. Presumably that would happen once the technology has matured a bit more.

[Vespasian]

And with this outlook, industry should/will get ahead of the legislators and gravitate towards a standard of their own.

The current legislation was introduced because 1 manufacturer chose to not follow the standard and mostly for profit reasons.

[fomine3]

Move to wireless only is shame since charge is slow, not good for battery health, breaks many compatibility like wired only CarPlay, and not fixing big file (high quality 4K video) transferring issue.

[arcticbull]

Apple hasn't changed the 'fast-changing' lightning connector since 2012, and USB-A lasted from 1996 to, well, present. USB-C came out in 2014 and is likely going to outlive us both. Connectors simply don't change that fast, and I'm not sure why people think they do.

I think even the EU can regulate on that kind of schedule.

[Moru]

The only reason connectors would change fast is to sell another cable and charger every time you buy a phone.

[jonwinstanley]

Or to make them slimmer, lighter, improve performance or improve the user experience.

[kelnos]

I think with the size of USB-C and Lightning, we are pretty close to the point (if not there already) where structural limitations are not going to let us go much (if any) smaller. No one wants a connector that will break after 10 uses.

USB-C, electrically, has enough headroom that performance should not be an issue for a very, very, very long time. Already you can push more data over a USB-C cable than a phone can meaningfully handle.

[rtkwe]

The only thing that really comes to mind is we could go to fiber core for crazy data speeds but those are so delicate I don't think the improvement would be worth the hassle unless we have a big improvement there.

[fennecfoxy]

I think C could easily adopt a fiber, there's the "tongue" bit in the middle of the socket, and empty space in the middle of the plug, could easily have a fiber run down the middle there.

[int_19h]

Standardization also improves user experience. And it does so here and now, as opposed to some hypothetical future gains.

[pySSK]

iPhones don't even ship with a charger anymore and they definitely did not lower their prices when the decision to leave them out. It's a win-win for them – they can claim to be more environmentally conscious etc. while reducing their BOM cost.

Apple and other phone companies don't depend on selling cables and chargers. If they did, they would have been doing a much better job and they'd be more like Anker and Griffin.

[dmitriid]

> USB-A lasted from 1996 to, well, present. USB-C came out in 2014 and is likely going to outlive us both. Connectors simply don't change that fast

How convenient of you to forget Mini-USB and Micro-USB and regular USB-B

[jdeibele]

One end of the cable changed but I think the point was that the other end, the part that was built into your laptop, didn't.

I still have a stash of USB-B, mini-USB, and micro-USB cables with the USB-A because I've got a printer, a camera, and devices (Kindle, older battery) that use those ports. I have a USB-C -> USB-A hub. In 5-10 years from now, I might have gone all USB-C.

[fomine3]

and Dock?

[kristiandupont]

>purely for personal preference and convenience reasons

Those are not the reasons.

[Arkhaine_kupo]

> There's nothing wise

There is, for example the fact that the standard is set by comittee means large players have more say but cannot dictate the market. This allows innovation that doesn't benefit one party.

> purely for personal preference and convenience reasons

Not the reason behind the move

> not for reasons related to safety, or pollution, or security

Those are some of the benefits but not all

> especially for things that change as fast as phones

Connectors are standards, plus phones do not change that often, they get marginally better but most of them have looked largely the same for a decade.

> There's a long history of Apple using proprietary connectors to achieve performance specifications above what the currently available standardized connectors could provide

Previously there was also a long history of interoperability between Apple designs that no longer exists. And before that there was a long history of Apple being a tiny company constantly on the verge of bankruptcy. Long history is a pretty short time nowadays.

> Apple is likely to ditch a charging connection altogether in favor of wireless charging in the near future.

I cannot wait to have the slowest charging phone on the market as a selling point.

> he EU is mandating technological stagnation.

The EU mandating GDPR has increased security protection on data around the globe, and decreased bloatware. A large player like europe setting a standard means that companies follow that legislation to not have 2 products one for Europe and one outside.

[birksherty]

It's not for all that reason. But to make companies follow standard. So it's a great decision.

These companies have been doing what they want for far too long like removing headphone jack, removable battery etc.

[kelnos]

> There's a long history of Apple using proprietary connectors to achieve performance specifications above...

Oh please, Apple has barely improved Lightning since its introduction a decade ago (2012!). Yes, back then, it was better than what was available, but the industry has moved on, and Apple has stagnated.

> Hell, in all likelihood, Apple is likely to ditch a charging connection altogether in favor of wireless charging in the near future.

Unlikely. For one thing, wireless charging is still much slower than what you can get with a cable, and for another, users will not tolerate needing to lug around a charging pad (with its own cable), or hope that someone nearby has one. Yes, I know similar things about tolerance were said about the removal of headphone jacks, but I don't think this is quite the same situation.

> The EU is mandating technological stagnation. They will always be behind the market.

I haven't read the text of the law, but I would hope that it's flexible enough to allow for embracing improvements to technology.

But even if that process is slow, I don't think that's a bad thing. Fast-changing technology generally does not really help users (it can, but I think more often it does not). Yes, benefits can be realized over time, but these sorts of changes create confusion and waste if not done well. I really don't care if Apple wants to put a new connector on iPhones, but it takes them 3 years instead of 1 year to do it because of legal/regulatory issues.

> Mandating a technology standard, purely for personal preference and convenience reasons -- not for reasons related to safety, or pollution, or security

Pollution is* a concern here, though I agree that's probably not the primary reason this law was drafted. I'm with you on the general discomfort around regulations targeted toward preference/convenience. But I think it's a little unfair to call it "personal preference". Lighting is inferior to USB-C in almost every way (the only advantage Lightning has is that it's slightly smaller, but not to a degree that really matters). Apple continues to use Lightning out of stubbornness and NIH syndrome, and that hurts consumers overall.

But consider all the places that have two cables. I've seen dual-cable setups in Lyft/Uber vehicles, and at friendly coffee shops and stuff like that (hell, I still see a few places that additionally have micro-USB cables). What a huge waste of material! And yeah, you can buy single cables that have multiple "heads" on them, but I very rarely see those in the wild. If there was actually a good technical reason why we have this split, then sure,

> especially for things that change as fast as phones

I don't think that's really true anymore. Most smartphones are basically the same as they were 5 years ago. Incrementally better camera hardware, incrementally better display technology, more RAM, faster processors, more storage. But I see very little change year to year. Maybe there will be some big new changes coming soon, but I don't see any evidence of that.

> is one of the most short-sighted and naive things any government could do.*

Heh, I think you underestimate government capacity for short-sightedness. This particular thing seems pretty middling and mediocre to me on that scale.

[2III7]

> Unlikely. For one thing, wireless charging is still much slower than what you can get with a cable, and for another, users will not tolerate needing to lug around a charging pad (with its own cable), or hope that someone nearby has one. Yes, I know similar things about tolerance were said about the removal of headphone jacks, but I don't think this is quite the same situation.

But users do accept carrying charging pads. Smartwatches, electric toothbrushes and shaving apparatus have charging pads/cables and no one complains about carrying those when going on a trip.

For the average consumer, the iPhone really doesn't need a port of any kind anymore. What it needs is all day battery life. As Apple doesn't really care about "pro" smartphone users who use external devices like DAC-s or IR cameras they will ditch the port at some point. If they cared about "pro" smartphone users, they would've come out with a USB-C iPhone in 2018 or 2019.

[kelnos]

> no one complains about carrying those when going on a trip.

I kinda think "going on a trip" is a minority subset of the times when people bring charging gear with them. Regardless, I personally would find it a huge annoyance to have to carry a charging pad. Right now I just bring my laptop charger, and use it for both my laptop and (Android) phone. I don't want to bring a charging pad in addition.

[omniglottal]

The devices you list are not used/charged in a moving vehicle, but rather at its destination. A phone is considerably different in this very relevant regard.

[dmitriid]

> Oh please, Apple has barely improved Lightning since its introduction a decade ago (2012!). Yes, back then, it was better than what was available, but the industry has moved on, and Apple has stagnated.

You mean: in 20 years Apple has had only two connectors, and they worked and work extremely well. Meanwhile the industry "that moved on" invented 6 different incompatible connectors, didn't even specify a charging standard until 2010s (IIRC) and is now busy inventing USB 4 Gen 1x15 revision 16

[valzam]

All the USB data specs are irrelevant for this legislation. All it says is: Use a USB-C connector and support the USB PD charging standard. In fact many cheaper android phones use USB2 since the port is purely for charging.

[kelnos]

That's a bit of an unfair argument, since you're mixing various things together that are not connectors (USB 4... etc.).

Bottom line is that the industry has actually been converging on USB-C for some time now. And again, I think it's unfair to compare an industry with tens (hundreds?) of players having trouble agreeing on something, when we're talking about Apple -- a single entity -- obstinately refusing to drop their obsolete, outdated "uniqueness" in this case.

I get why Apple chose to do Lighting instead of microUSB back in 2012 (I have lost track of the high number of microUSB connectors I have broken), but the funny thing is that Lightning didn't really offer any technical benefits beyond the more sturdy form factor at the time. Lighting was USB2 (and more or less still is), and microUSB carried USB2 signals just fine. They went their own way there for pretty dubious reasons. Well, ok, one obvious reason: they wanted to restrict who could build an iPhone/iPad accessory, because using the Lightning connector required licensing it from Apple.

So basically Lightning exists for one physical sturdiness reason (which, alone, probably would not be justification to do something new), and one anti-competitive reason.

Apple should have just stuck with microUSB, and then switched to USB-C once that made sense. But no, that would have reduced their iron grip on what people are allowed to do with their phones.

[rlt]

I'd like to see Apple remove the port completely and rely on wireless charging and communication, only in the EU, just to spite the EU.

[jackvalentine]

What an odd thing to say.

[fennecfoxy]

If Apple could use their own proprietary wifi/bluetooth etc too, then they would. Imagine the _profit_.

[outworlder]

> especially for things that change as fast as phones

USB-C is forward looking. It will be quite a while before it will no longer be useful.

[brokenmachine]

>in favor of wireless charging

So, force people to have more stuff and use the less power efficent option. As well as the glued-in non-replaceable batteries that were such a wonderful futuristic idea before.

Thank the flying spaghetti monster that the EU is "behind the market", because the market is consumer-hostile garbage.

[brokenmachine]

Hilarious that I got downvoted for that, don't people realize that having usb-c doesn't exclude wireless charging?

My current phone has both usb-c and wireless charging. Removing the port is undeniably a downgrade, how can anyone not understand that?

[henvic]

> The EU is mandating technological stagnation. They will always be behind the market.

Well said!

[franczesko]

EU is doing pretty much what Apple does all the time - forcing standards.

[henvic]

Apple gives you the option to adopt or not. EU thugs, not.

[sacrosancty]

Not a fan of metric screw threads? Mandates were needed in some countries to change from imperial to metric because the market can't make such a non-incremental move on its own even if it's good for everyone.

[aaaaaaaaaaab]

>Hell, in all likelihood, Apple is likely to ditch a charging connection altogether in favor of wireless charging in the near future.

Lol. Literally not possible.

[gnicholas]

Why? I can definitely see Apple rolling this out to the Pro line first, then the regular iPhones, and then the SE. It could be like the home button, which disappeared on the X and then rolled through the 11s, and the SE will be the last to go.

The benefit will be better water/dust-proofing, and slightly more internal room for battery or whatever else. I have only just started charging wirelessly, but I find it works great for me. I know wired charging is faster, but only a handful of times a year do I care about that.

[aaaaaaaaaaab]

For one, you can’t use the phone during wireless charging.

I know, ”akshually, you can use it, you just can’t hold it in your hand!”. Anyway, you can’t use it normally - it must be kept on the mat to charge.

Also, there are a bunch of accessories that require physical connection. Search for “iphone pendrive” for instance.

Bluetooth headphones still have laughable latency for music production, and decent quality full-duplex audio isn’t there either.

iOS developers will also tell you how reliable wireless debugging is. (Hint: it’s abysmal)

[rtkwe]

There's the magsafe wireless charging now though right so you could slap that on and hold the phone maybe? I don't have an iPhone so I'm not aware how thick those pucks are off the top of my head but seems doable.

Those other two use cases of music creation and thumb drives are a tiny market on iPhone I could see Apple abandoning them entirely.

[gnicholas]

You're right, that is an important caveat! I've not run into an issue, since I mostly charge at night, and rarely is my battery in perilous territory (even though it's the diminutive 13 Mini). On the few occasions where I was using the phone and needed to charge it, I just switched to using my computer, which I usually have with me.

And if I were charging at a Starbucks or something, I could use the phone while charging, just flat on the table.