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by jraph 477 days ago
> up to the customer & manufacturer

Yeah, no. In this specific topic, we've had plenty of time to establish that it is isn't the case. Power is not balanced between individuals and manufacturers.

USB is a horrible mess but for the first time in my life, I can travel with one charger that works with all the devices I take with me. I could even travel without a charger and be pretty sure I will be able to find one at the destination.

People around me seem as happy as me about this and it wasn't the case as long as manufacturers were not forced to use USB. Nobody complains about the port form factor. That's simply not a concern.

1 comments

Yep. Whenever I travel, I bring a single 60W USB-C charger that charges my laptop, my phone, and even other random gadgets I might need to bring with me.

I have an older micro-USB Kindle that annoys me. Of course, for most trips I never need to charge it, as long as I charge it before I leave, so for all practical purposes it's fine.

My wife just bought an iPhone 16 to replace her iPhone XR, and if it weren't for her AirPods from a few years ago, she'd be able to avoid carrying around that extra lightning cable too.

This might feel like a minor, first-world problem, but it is annoying. And when you scale it up, there's so much waste with so many people needing two cables, one of which could have never been manufactured, had we all been using the same ports all along.