[nicpottier]

I think phone manufacturers will figure it out once it is a requirement. Was switching everyone to USB-C annoying for Apple? Sure. Are we in a better place because the EU forced it. You betcha. That's the point.

I don't love everything the EU does (cookie banners!?) but this is one where I have confidence that the consumer will ultimately benefit.

As others have noted, most people do not replace their phones every two years anymore, there just isn't any big reason to.

[dijit]

Cookie banners is malicious compliance. The ultimate goal being for you yo think it was bad legislation instead of how every company is fucking you for your privacy.

They’re winning.

[loup-vaillant]

I'm not sure they're complying even with the letter of the law. Many cookie banners I see, require several clicks to deny anything but those they don't have to ask me about. And in most other cases, the accept button is significantly more visible than the deny one.

If that's actually allowed, yeah, bad law. If it's not… well I guess we can hope prosecutors will prosecute. Though I'm afraid we won't get much more than hope…

[lotu]

I'd say it was bad legislation because this was a foreseeable outcome. I actually worked on cookie banners, and we did user testing, a full 80% of people closed it before reading single word and thought it was an ad.

This type of ambush agree to XYZ or you can't come in that we see with EULA's and privacy polices is unfair, just like if some scammer demanded people sign a fifty page contract before they enter the supermarket. This is something people understand intuitively.

It was foreseeable, and the end result is very little has changed as far as consumer privacy. Most people just agree to get the box to go away, if you actually want privacy your best bet is still a private browsing session and a VPN.

[tjoff]

Here is an idea, don't abuse your users and you don't even have to show a cookie banner. Of course people treat it like spam - because that is exactly what it is. A giant fuck you to every single user.

[monocularvision]

Why does the EU Commission site have cookie banners then?

https://commission.europa.eu

Malicious compliance?

[littlestymaar]

It doesn't have one on my phone (from inside thetge EU).

But if it did, it would most certainly because nobody in the administration takes IT seriously, and the web development agency which made the website just used their usual amount of trackers because they don't care about data protection whatsoever.

[runeks]

It was bad legislation because it didn't achieve anything except make visiting websites more annoying.

I don't care what the politicians intended. The outcome is no improvement in privacy but more annoying banners.

[anonymars]

The cookie banners typically have an opt out. How is that not a privacy improvement?

[gib444]

What do you think most users click? The quickest and easiest option ("agree"/ "that's fine”) to get on with their day. That then makes consent explicit which is worse than the previous gray area

[anonymars]

I don't follow this reasoning

Because most people won't make use of their ability to opt out and will thus get the exact same thing as they were already getting, that's "worse"?

Somehow this nebulous "gray area" concept of not explicitly consenting (so, no actual difference) is better than the actual ability to opt out?

[gib444]

I don't think you're trying to understand at all

[dijit]

The same way that the legislation that abolished slavery was bad because it didn’t account for the prison systems leasing out unpaid workers leading to even worse conditions for black folk in the US?

People talk as if the EU should have done nothing, or that the rule should be repealed, the GDPR forced people to have a functioning deny all.

The real lesson here is that people would rather annoy their users for money than create good products. Its a case for regulation.

[Alive-in-2025]

I also want headphone jacks back - which I'm sure will be less popular here than batteries. We used to have waterproof phones with both.

I'm not sure about the rules around required ability but I'd like that too

[heavenlyhash]

I've come to realize (I think) that this actually does have a lot to do with waterproofness ratings -- a legibility trap.

I notice that Fairphone excludes headphones from their latest devices, and attributes it to the necessary of doing so in order to get an "IP55" rating.

I'm not sure if that ultimately makes sense (and suspect that it... doesn't), but the legibility trap of that ratings system might actually be part of the cause of the current market absence of a feature so many people still talk about after years of its unavailability.

[gf000]

Phones back then were definitely not as durable as modern ones. Whether you like it or not, it's easier to waterproof a completely insulated system.

[Alive-in-2025]

I do recognize that not having headphone jacks make it easier to waterproof phones.

[philistine]

Every phone should have a SCSI port with an included terminator in the box.

[Alive-in-2025]

Yeah, I'll add that to my phone. what kind of scsi port, there are a few choices ;-)

[throwaway-11-1]

Apple was a key member of the USB-C consortium, it was always planned to be their universal connector. They waited on switching to avoid public backlash about "why are you switching wires when I already bought all of these wires?". They generally give connectors 10 years before changing them (see 32-pin 2003 - 2012 etc). Doesn't invalidate your larger point, but it incorrectly describes the history of USB-C adoption by Apple.

[gf000]

> Was switching everyone to USB-C annoying for Apple? Sure.

Doubt. They have already switched over every other line they had.

I believe it was more of a marketing stunt, they calculated that n% of customers will be upset with the change, so they waited for the EU ruling so now they can just point these n% to blame the EU who will take the blame instead of them.

[retired]

Apple switched the iPhone to USB-C years before it became an EU requirement. I doubt the EU played a role in it. The 2015 MacBook was USB-C only.

[kalleboo]

> iPhone 15 released September 22, 2023

> EU’s Common Charger Directive went into effect on December 28, 2024

Years?

[retired]

The iPhone 15 released in September 2023 already had USB-C. Apple wasn't required to use USB-C up until the iPhone 17 release in September 2025. That is two years.

[kalleboo]

> Apple wasn't required to use USB-C up until the iPhone 17 release in September 2025

No, starting December 28, 2024 they could no longer import and sell iPhones with Lightning ports, so they had to at the very least make the iPhone 16 in September 2024 USB-C.

But Apple likes to sell the previous model phone as "the cheap option", so to have a previous generation to keep selling they had to add USB-C a model year early.

Apple added USB-C to the iPhone as late as they possibly could with their typical product cycle.

[retired]

Existing models could be sold after the deadline, that date was only for newly introduced models.

[littlestymaar]

Due to the length of the European legislative process, apple knew it was coming years before it eventually landed.

[bydo]

Everyone moving to USB-C was the same standard, though; now you can use the same charger with your phone, laptop, tablet, other random gadgets, etc. If you forget your charger you can buy one virtually anywhere, or borrow someone else's, since they're all the same.

Everyone moving to "battery must be replaceable without tools" doesn't do anything useful for most users. Yeah, now you can carry an extra battery on a camping trip, I guess, though you could also carry a portable USB-C charger and use it for more than just your phone. It isn't particularly useful that it doesn't take tools to replace the battery when it starts failing, five years after your phone was discontinued, if you can't find a replacement battery for that exact model.

[tzs]

> Everyone moving to USB-C was the same standard, though; now you can use the same charger with your phone, laptop, tablet, other random gadgets, etc.

You could already use the same charger with nearly everything. It was the cables that were not necessarily USB on the device end.

Apple for example as far as I can tell has used USB chargers for everything (phones, tablets, music players, headphones, Apple TV remote) except laptops since sometime in 2012. For laptops everything introduced after the last MagSafe 2 laptop in mid 2017 has used a USB charger.

[mk89]

> if you can't find a replacement battery for that exact model.

Usually there are compatible ones that still give you some juice for 1-2 years at a small fraction of the price (of the original one).

If you worry about that, you can always buy an "official" battery in advance to be used 4-5 years later.

[daemonologist]

I believe part of the legislation is that manufacturers must make spare parts available for five years.

[salad-tycoon]

I like usb C more than lightning but I think legislation is terribly suited. If people only wanted usb c then just don’t buy an iPhone? But this is from my US idealistic view and distrust of over regulation.

Anyways, Apple was working on an iPhone with usb C in 2022 and said they were going to do it anyways* so I don’t see it as some massive win that shows the prowess of the EU legislative body.

Granted this may have shaved a couple of years off of the timeline but at what cost of legislation (monetary, attention, and time cost)!?

# https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/apple-pushes-back...

[zamadatix]

When a product becomes as complex as a cell phone it's not as easy as saying "just get one that doesn't have ${thing}" as no product has the right combination of everything for everyone but people may agree every product should have something (whether it be for safety, environmental, buyer protection, or convenience reasons). Once most folks agree that's the case, it's about "where do you draw the line" rather than "does it make sense to require ${thing} in isolation when there are already options with ${thing}".

Your link is from 2020 and does not say Apple was moving to USB C, just that the industry was. By 2022 the law requiring it had already passed, so it would make sense they were planning on doing it at that point. Regardless, a few years would be a lot of impact for a market where over 100 million phones are sold annually.

[retired]

The EU did not force USB-C on the iPhone. Apple switched to USB-C years before it became mandatory.

[littlestymaar]

Apple switched long after the Regulation was written by the Commission and handed to the European council. The fact that legislative process takes a long time (and that the EU always leave a long window to companies to comply) doesn't change the role of the EU here.

Apple was told that they wouldn't get the exemption they have had with micro-USB plugs this time, and they acted accordingly, diligently enough so that the regulation wouldn't disrupt their business.

[Ntrails]

> Are we in a better place because the EU forced it. You betcha. That's the point.

Speak for yourself, I've gained nothing but annoyance. (I'm willing to accept a theoretical greater good argument - but I'm not precisely sold)

[hilbert42]

What exactly is your specific annoyance?

[Uvix]

USB-C ports are more fragile than Lightning - one of the three ports on my laptop will no longer hold cables in place anymore. It also requires more precise alignment to get the cable plugged in.

[dijit]

I agree, and it preceeded USB-C. It came out in a market that was almost overwhelmingly USB Micro B; which was an extremely terrible connector.

Apple really fucked up by keeping the connector proprietary. Sure it helped them slim some phones but it didn't exactly help long term, and now we have a technologically inferior connector that took even longer to come to market.

I can't forgive Apple for that.

Good engineering, early to market, mired by greedy and short sighted businessmen.

[anonymars]

I thought this way too, but have since heard that the Lightning connector itself has the spring-loaded contacts that wear out, in contrast to USB-C where they're on the cable. So I don't think it's so straightforward

[rootusrootus]

Sure, on paper the USB-C should be superior for that reason. But we have a lot of years of experience that suggests in practice the Lightning connector is more durable.

[hilbert42]

"So I don't think it's so straightforward"

Don't let them off that quickly. We've been making electrical connectors for well over a hundred years. There are books on high reliability connectors many hundreds of pages long. Connectors for aerospace, the military and industry have made connector technology highly advanced and connections very reliable.

Fact is USB connectors are shitty because they've been made as cheaply as possible—cheap manufacturing takes precedence over reliability and user ergonomics.

The trend of mass producing rock-bottom cheap connectors started in the early 1950s with that abominable super cheap RCA audio connector and it's continued ever since with consumer products. There's no end of crappy designs, the F coaxial connector for antennas, the DIN audio connector, the Belling Lee coax and so on.

Trouble is too many consumers are prepared to tolerate the crap without complaining so it continues.

[dijit]

Honestly, I’m not sure either. I can’t find anybody who actually went through the trouble of testing port/cable durability over many cycles.

I can personally speak to the seeming reliability of the springs on lightening, but thats anecdotal and would only apply to devices I’ve interacted with. Truthfully USB-C has been almost as reliable (only seen 2-3 ports with issues over literally hundreds, vs the 0 for lightning over a smaller sample).

I guess at some point the argument is moot, but I do like digging lint out of USB-C connectors a lot less- it is a lot more worrying to do.

[hilbert42]

Right, I'm no fan of USB-C either. One knows why the USB alliance keeps designing such shitty connectors. After so many attempts they've got it right—it's the cheapest crappy design they could get away with.

[wao0uuno]

Apple USB-C ports and plugs are superb so maybe the design is not so bad. Maybe most manufacturers just use crappy ports to save a few cents. But yeah, mechanically Lightning was awesome. Great plug/port.

[littlestymaar]

They also have a much higher data bandwidth and higher charge rate, so Apple would have most likely ditched lightning for something else at some point (though it would probably be some proprietary cable if not for the EU regulation)

[0x3f]

Lack of incentive for technological development beyond the current required standard.

[PunchyHamster]

My guess is apple user