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As far as I remember, this piece of legislation has been floating around since USB mini. We have now gone through 2 revisions to a connector that is now reversi
by nemothekid 7y ago
As far as I remember, this piece of legislation has been floating around since USB mini. We have now gone through 2 revisions to a connector that is now reversible and can carry video. Locking onto USB-C now could be a very "640k ought to be enough for everybody" moment.
And if Apple was going to switch to USB C anyways, whats the point of this legislation?
- lukifer 7y ago> Locking onto USB-C now could be a very "640k ought to be enough for everybody" moment. I agree in general; but at some point don't we hit diminishing returns? If I were to say, "18.4 exabytes of RAM ought to be enough for everybody", that'd be basically correct, even future-proofing for the craziest sci-fi holodeck use cases we can imagine, right?
- mritun 7y agoHow do you know? Have you seen the future? As much as I am for interoperability, a legislation directing a specific technology is one way how we end up with ridiculous standards. Remember, we still have laws on where we can or cannot tie a horse in town on the books a century after they were irrelevant. Laws move in centuries, while technology moves in years. They are not compliant with each other.
- lukifer 7y agoI agree; if this law were put to a vote, I would vote against it. I just think it's conceivable that we hit a point where there's very little end-user benefit to additional improvements, and we achieve an equilibrium that essentially solves the given problem[0]. The catch is: we don't necessarily know in advance at what point that will actually be the case (hence the irony of the 640k line, which I'm sure sounded very sensible at the time, just as the 18.4 EB thing sounds very sensible to me now). [0] One of the reasons that the loss of the headphone jack is so exasperating, is that's an example of an ideal universal connector; it solved the problem so well, there was little reason to improve on it, either in quality or function.
- reaperducer 7y agoI agree in general; but at some point don't we hit diminishing returns? If I were to say, "18.4 exabytes of RAM ought to be enough for everybody", that'd be basically correct, even future-proofing for the craziest sci-fi holodeck use cases we can imagine, right? But the legislation doesn't lock into something that might happen in the future. It locks the future to what we have today.
- Drakim 7y agoDoes it actually do that? Have you read the legislation, or are you just saying what you assume it says?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- smm2000 7y agoI want to fully charge my phone in 1 minute. Is it possible with USB-C?
- ddebernardy 7y agoI dunno. Having lived through the days where having 128kB of RAM was an eye popping upgrade, you could easily have made the argument back then that 2GB of RAM was future proof for as long as the eye can see. And in fact, they did. By the time I was reaching adulthood, that was that hard limit built into Win95, give or take boot errors if you had a quarter of that (which was gigantic at the time; 64MB was more than enough to boot it). Fast forward another 25 years to today, and laptops routinely have 16GB of RAM, and higher end Mac Pros can apparently get a whopping 1.5TB of RAM. Put another way, the high-end went from .1MB to 1TB in 40 years or so. I get that we're reaching the physical limits of miniaturization, but I'd still be surprised if my grand kids don't have exabytes of RAM or equivalent on whatever the hell their main devices will be by the time they reach adulthood.
- martin8412 7y agoJust like 32 bits for IP addresses should be sufficient for all use cases?
- lukifer 7y agoWell, there's the rub: 32 bits for IPv4 was clearly inadequate. IPv6, on the other hand, gives us with 128 bits = 3.4 x 10^38 addresses, which seems from our vantage point like it should cover us until the end of time, even if we colonized the whole galaxy. Is that actually the case? Time will tell. ;)
- martin8412 7y agoBut that's just the point. When they decided on 32 bits, then it was more than sufficient for the intended use case. If we had stuck to universities and government uses, then we probably still wouldn't have run out. Things change or evolve, and often in ways not foreseen.
- radicaldreamer 7y agoApple isn't going to change to USB-C anytime soon for iPhones because they make a significant amount of money with the MFI program (~$4/connector), the vast majority of which comes from lightning accessories.
- scarface74 7y agoIf they made $4 a connector, how pray tell can I get a 5 pack of lightning cords from Amazon for $10? https://www.amazon.com/Charger-AYNGWRNB-Certified-Lightning-Compatible/dp/B07VLLK7WZ https://www.amazon.com/Charger-AYNGWRNB-Certified-Lightning-...
- akersten 7y agoOccam's razor would indicate that those too-good-to-be-true cables by a no-name Amazon seller are probably not genuine.
- scarface74 7y agoI’ve ordered them, they work.
- FireBeyond 7y agoCounterfeit [lots of things] work, that doesn't negate the point. "If Rolex's cost $6,000+, how come I can buy one in the Bronx for $20?" "It's probably not real." "I bought it, it works."
- scarface74 7y agoIt’s a cable. Having a genuine Apple certified cable means no more than buying a cheap HDMI cable instead of the $50 Monster cable back in the day.
- FireBeyond 7y ago
- vincnetas 7y agoWell legislations are not written in stone. If there is a reasonable need for upgraded standard in future legislation can be updated.
- nemothekid 7y ago>If there is a reasonable need for upgraded standard Are you saying that politicians should be designing technical standards? And how will you ever know there is a need for a new standard if you can't even deploy it?
- int_19h 7y agoEngineers design technical standards. Politicians enforce them. It's not like this is something new. We've had national standards for things like AC power plugs and outlets for over a century, and they are mandatory in many countries.
- erik_seaberg 7y agoThere are now low power ports (only enough for phones), high power ports (good for laptops), and full-on data ports (which create malware risks, and may or may not support your use case). There are good reasons these should not look alike nor fit together.
- ClumsyPilot 7y agoYou are misunderstanding. The idea is that manufacturers are free to do USb D, E... Z, they just have to all agree on whatever is their next thing. It also is just a charger, they can do whatever they want with data.