[ohgodplsno]

Apple has a single production line. If they drop Lightning for the EU, they drop Lightning for the whole world. Their entire margin strategy is based on having as few SKUs as possible. In the same way that GDPR made every single major US tech player comply and offer more or less the same tools for the rest of the world.

[ghaff]

Of course Apple has more SKUs than they need to have. Different product generations, sizes, storage options, colors, etc. Adding a different connector on some subset of models for some number of countries is perfectly doable.

It's probably moot because Apple seems to be moving to USB-C over all their product lines anyway. But if the EU were to mandate something that Apple felt was a materially inferior choice, I'd fully expect them to comply where they had to and implement a different option everywhere else.

GDPR is simply a case of, if a company doesn't have a compelling reason for not following GDPR where possible, it's just easier to follow mostly uniform rules worldwide.

[tinus_hn]

GDPR is actually an excellent example, all tough talk with strict rules, yet basically nobody follows the rules and nothing happens. The government itself runs websites that say ‘you can’t visit this site unless you agree to our use of cookies!’