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> micro-USB is a legally defined requirement for device charging in some areas Where? Wouldn't this outlaw iPhones?

• marpstar 9y ago
  Apple provides an adapter, I believe.
• gregschlom 9y ago
  In Europe. And iPhones ship with a little micro-usb adapter for charging there.
  • praseodym 9y ago
    No they don’t. (Source: I bought an iPhone 8 in The Netherlands)
    • josteink 9y ago
      They ship with a lightningstrike/thunderport/whatever-was-that-name to usb cable though which can be used to charge it with pretty much any USB charger out there. Not perfect by far, but better than it used to be before EU started to tell phone manufacturers to wisen up. It’s easy to forget how crazy bad things used to be before the EU mandated a standardization.
• benjaminjackman 9y ago
  From what I have read it’s in Europe and if the device doesn’t include a micro-USB port it must have a dongle / adapter included at no extra charge, which is what I believe Apple does.
• danmaz74 9y ago
  It's a EU standard, and it effectively stopped the crazy situation where every produce had its own port and charger. Except for Apple, which doesn't offer any low-margin phone and thus can still use their custom charger and bundle an adapter.
  • digi_owl 9y ago
    Apple can still do so because their charger cable can be detached and has an A plug on the charger itself. Thus the charger can be reused on a different device with a simple change of cable (a different story is that Apple has their own way of signaling max As to the device).
    • mirkules 9y ago
      The A-plug never made sense to me since they introduced the USB-C-only MBP. Regulation-skirting was one aspect I haven't considered though. Still, it's kind of sad you can't buy an iPhone and plug it into your new MBP
      • jonny_eh 9y ago
        I bet it's just cheaper to make USB-A AC adapters and cables for now. You can buy a USB-C lightning cable.
• SEMW 9y ago
  Contra sibling comments, it technically isn't a legal requirement. It's entirely voluntary, a memorandum of understanding between manufacturers, facilitated by the EU. Obviously 'voluntary' here deserves some scare quotes since the EU had made it very clear that it was willing to swing its sledgehammer and formally regulate if the manufacturers couldn't agree on a standard amongst themselves. Which would have been less good for everyone (including the EU), e.g. since formal legal regulations are a lot harder to change with the times, So they were pretty incentivized to work something out, and happily they did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply
  • gka_ 9y ago
    > facilitated by the EU popular rumor is that it was Merkel who wanted them to adopt this, cause she hated traveling with six different adapters
• jhoechtl 9y ago
  In the EU. And it put the insanity of having many incompatible chargers to an end up to the point when some mobile phone producers did not include a charger with the phone they sold because they rightly assumed one available from the previous phone. One really good EU standardization effort which actually worked except for Apple.
  • digi_owl 9y ago
    There were an exception clause specifically for the likes of Apple. As long as the proprietary plug was removable from the charger (either by having the other end plug into an A socket on the charger, or by being a proprietary-to-micro converter) the EU would accept it. The main point was to facilitate that chargers could be reused, rather than fill up drawers and landfills.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]