[mrtksn]

EU laws don't expand beyond EU. EU consist about 5% of the population, 95% can have whatever they like. Yes, there's Brussels effect but that effect work when the trouble of designing or producing something else is not worth it.

Also, you are not banned from engineering other solutions. The police isn't going to knock on the doors of engineers who are suspected to develop better charging cables :)

[throwaway50606]

EU is the second largest market in the world. Of course everything is going to be made in a way that's sellable in the EU.

> Also, you are not banned from engineering other solutions. The police isn't going to knock on the doors of engineers who are suspected to develop better charging cables :)

We are discussing under an article where the regulator has sent a "stern warning" to a company. I don't think what you're saying makes sense. If I tried to sell my better plug in my home market, the police would come knocking.

[ghaff]

You mean like how EU-compatible AC plugs/voltages are sold everywhere else in the world? Of course, manufacturers can have different versions of things for different geos--or just not sell in the EU if it's not profitable to do so (which presumably won't be the case with the iPhone).

[throwaway50606]

EU exists 10% of the time the electrical plugs existed and were regulated in the respective countries.

We are talking about new innovations, not something used for 100 years.

[anigbrowl]

No they wouldn't, because you are not a giant corporation like Apple. Stop assuming your scrappy little startup and a trillion-$ corporation with massive market share have similar interests, this is like an ant worrying about a fence designed to block elephants.

In reality if you come up with some kind of better plug, you will sell to a specialist market that would recognize the benefits (dentists or musicians for example) and then expand into other markets. You could try selling direct to consumers but guess what, nobody would buy it unless it had connectivity with other devices, and manufacturers wouldn't go out of their way to adopt it unless it delivered overwhelming advantages at low additional cost.

[mrtksn]

Not necessarily. If you come up with such a superior plug, you can easily have it sold on the 1st largest market in the world.

Not everything has to be sold in EU, there are plenty of things not available across all markets.

[throwaway50606]

No, I can't. I need to sell it on both markets to make it profitable. There's no way to have that large margins it could sell just in the US.

[mrtksn]

If you need to sell it on both markets and can't have two production lines, I guess your product will have USB-C port and your superior charging port, like the new MacBooks having type-C and magsafe.

[throwaway50606]

And that's supposed to be good? I really don't understand this world...

[bonzini]

Having three computers of different brands in the family (an HP, a Lenovo and a Microsoft Surface), it's certainly been useful in the past to be able to share a single charging port for all computers and most phones in the family.

In fact, USB-C and magsafe are complementary. USB-C is commonly used by displays to provide docking station functionality, so I can buy any display and use it with any computer (instead of having to buy a proprietary docking station that is different for each model). If I'm travelling, I can enjoy the more robust magsafe connector but I can also use USB-C if needed.

[mrtksn]

It's good because until you invent this new cable, we can have everything work with USB-C.

Not betting on your ability to come up with a new type of charging cable is not as big deal as you imagining it is. Maybe you should come up with a prototype before demanding all type of charging cables be allowed?

[anigbrowl]

IF you can't be profitable at anything other than global scale, maybe your (wholly hypothetical) invention is not that great.

[nickpp]

There are now zero incentives to research and develop better plugs in the EU since it is illegal to market devices sporting them instead of USB-C.

[mrtksn]

The rest of the world can develop the superior charging cable plugs and we can use this thing called internet to find out about it.

[nickpp]

Depending on the rest of the world for tech, research and innovation is why us, Europeans, are worried about these authoritarian EU mandates which can only cause us falling further behind the rest of the world.

[mrtksn]

Can you give me an example of an EU regulation which prevented an European company invent a technology?

I'm familiar with the narrative but I don't know any examples.

[throwaway50606]

Gaia-X funneled money to large corporations that used it to market their shitty corporate services and that allowed them to beat actually innovative cloud computing startups.

[mrtksn]

I'm not familiar with this. Did it happen due to the EU regulation which dictated that Gaia-X have to funnel money to large corporations? Which regulation specifically you are blaming this to?

[nickpp]

By definition, we cannot know the creations and innovations we are missing due to the unintended second-order freezing effects of regulation. This is why we need to be extremely skeptical of regulation and only accept it in truly important and non-trivial cases (unlike a damn charging plug).

There is a clear push from European elites for a halt in progress, aiming to maintain a status quo and preserve their existing advantages. Modern corporation not under their control threaten them. As progressives, it is crucial that we fight to ensure that Europe continues to advance instead of turning into an Amish village and we won't have all to emigrate to the US.

[mrtksn]

EU citizens are sceptical of the corporations and their ability to regulate themselves. Different attitudes, the American psyche definitely allows for better innovation and business environment but on the other hand in EU we don't have carcinogens in our bread.

It is O.K. to have two or more different societies, those feeling like they need more freedom for business can go to the US. It definitely makes the US much more competitive but a lot of people like Europe the way it is.

EU is not some company in Belgium, it is made of elected and appointed people from all the EU countries. It's not like EU making up things that members didn't ask for. EU creating a regulation is not like Twitter forcing a new policy over its users.

[anigbrowl]

We can't know what innovations are missing due to corporate greed or the ubiquity of AC power transmission either. You're making the same argument as people who think Tesla had the secret of cheap and abundant wireless power transmission but the knowledge was suppressed by shadowy elites.

It's kinda hard to believe you seriously believe you might end up living in an Amish village. Perhaps you should visit the US and be surprised at how mediocre a lot of stuff is.

[Moldoteck]

Wtf are you smoking? You can add other ports, the law is about mandating usb-c. If you want thunderlightening port or anything you want besides usbc, like HEADPHONE JACK, you can doo this...

[nickpp]

How many phones have you seen with multiple different ports for the exact same purpose: charging?

[Moldoteck]

I can name a few but why does this matter. The point is Apple can work around this for eu market if they want but at the end consumers will win anyway

[nickpp]

I'm a consumer and I lost: I'll have to change all my charging cables with an inferior alternative.

[Moldoteck]

Why is it inferior? Last time i checked lightning can't do 240W charging or 40gbps data transfer? Just like afaik typec doesn't have corrosion problem lightning has, also type c is universally used across the majority of brands, heck even in ipads and macbooks, you say apple deliberately choose to replace 'superior port' with 'inferior type c'? Lmao)

[TheCleric]

I mean Apple currently has two...