[jackvezkovic]

This EU regulation diminishes the incentive of researching and developing a new technology in this area. This is a fact.

And no, innovation usually does not come from a bunch of companies sitting down to cooperate on a new version. First there is individual innovation, then there is consolidation, even if these come with changes from the original.

[lwhi]

Absolutely not true.

There's still an incentive to be the company that replaces the technology.

FUD.

[nordsieck]

> There's still an incentive to be the company that replaces the technology.

That may be the case. But the innovation won't be deployed to Europe first.

Technologies and standards need adoption first before they'll be taken seriously by bureaucrats. And you're going to have a hard time getting adoption if it's literally against the law to do so.

[ralfd]

What incentive would that be?

[hef19898]

Owning the underlying technology of just has a huge propability of becoming the new, global charging trch and standards world wide?

[Y-bar]

Case in point: Look at how much innovation Apple managed to squeeze into Lightning after its launch… right?

[worrycue]

Funny enough, if Micro-USB has been mandated by the EU, Lightning wouldn't even exist and everyone would have been stuck with the IMHO chunky Micro-USB.

[xorcist]

Micro-USB was mandated by the EU. That's a large part of the reason we even have a standardized charging port.

This has been enforced since late 2012 (in draft since 2008) and is the reason why Apple had to include the micro-USB adapter in order to sell in the EU.

There is no reason for speculation since facts are available on your friendly neighborhood wiki. What we're seeing now is that the law is updated to enforce USB-C, which has been accommodated for a while.

The intent is not to standardize on an implementation forever, but to make the industry agree on a standard.

[worrycue]

It wasn’t mandated the same way USB-C is today. It had enough flexibility that Apple could implement the superior Lightning connector. If the EU mandated micro-usb the way they are USB-C, Lightning would not have been released.

[xorcist]

Please explain why you think this is true, it is far from obvious. I don't have time to read the legalese in detail, but from reading an abstract it doesn't seem to be the case.

[Dylan16807]

I'm pretty sure they still would have moved to C, a bit later than lightning happened but much earlier than they currently are.

[Moldoteck]

We had a fkin usb-c with godspeed of data transfer and 120-240W transfer and is universally adopted across different devices and brands and Apple still is using a fkin usb 2 with proprietary connector. There is innovation, Apple decided it's users don't need that to sell them overpriced accessories

[Auracle]

Lightning is capable of faster speeds. They just (probably rightly) decided it wasn’t worth the cost to put that in their phones when basically nobody transfers data on their phone using a cable. I believe one iPad had it before they switched to usb-c.

Obviously HN readers are the exception.

[Moldoteck]

So why they did replace lightning in ipads and didn't use it for macbooks to create a full lightning ecosystem? Suggestion: because it is not capable and they know that lightning is nothing more than a cash cow for overpriced accessories

[Auracle]

Or because they knew their "power-users," as in people with laptops and iPad Pros, would prefer USB-C. They probably wanted to keep control over accessories on the iPhone not only for straight up financial reasons, but also to make sure "it just works."

Anyways, USB-C is obviously technically more advanced - but it doesn't really matter for phones much, does it? Most people only ever transfer data on their phones from/to the cloud.

[Moldoteck]

It does matter. Much faster charging, much faster transfer for prores 4k videos. The fact that a lot are using cloud doesn't mean few use cable for data transfer

[neoromantique]

>basically nobody transfers data on their phone using a cable.

Maybe because it takes an eternity to do so?

[Auracle]

Even on Android phones, but I thought my meaning was clear. A lot of people don't even have a PC in their house anymore.