9 ms·

No, I don't. Here the EU is creating legislation that forces manufacturers to increase interoperability, be more consumer-friendly, and more climate friendly.

No, I don't. Here the EU is creating legislation that forces manufacturers to increase interoperability, be more consumer-friendly, and more climate friendly. This all seems within the remit of governments to me. > I guess I just wonder if in 20 years will every device still have a USB-C port on it in some odd location? No one is using it anymore, but it is still mandatory on everything. Or course not, it's not like legislation is set in stone and will never change.

m000 5y ago
> Or course not, it's not like legislation is set in stone and will never change. Go tell that to Moses.
- TheRealMoses 5y ago
  Hello, I am Moses. Those damned stone tablets could have been iPads, they sure were heavy.
sidewndr46 5y ago
I don't know enough about the EU to say if the laws will adapt. But in the US, I very much view it as once something is legislated it becomes a permanent fixture of our society.
- toyg 5y ago
  This is already a change from previous legislation that effectively mandated micro-USB. So yeah, it can be done.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    Does it count if no one ever complied to this legislation? Where are the micro-usb iPhones?
    - lrem 5y ago
      Apple complied by adding a free dongle to every iPhone sold in the EU.
      - rglullis 5y ago
        That's the opposite of compliance. Not only they didn't get to change their own product to match some standard, they went straight against the spirit of the law (add more electronics and yet-another source of waste).
        shawnz 5y ago
        It was still considered a success because it at least reduced the need for proprietary AC adapters. Now it seems they want to expand on that to fix the proprietary cable/dongle issue too.
        jaywalk 5y ago
        You never needed a proprietary AC adapter to charge an iPhone, just a "proprietary" cable.
        shawnz 5y ago
        Without the dongle you couldn't use iPhones with micro-USB AC adapters that don't have detachable cables. However I agree that besides that specific circumstance, they were basically already compliant. The 2009 initiative wasn't targeting Apple specifically.
    - toyg 5y ago
      Apple "complied" by putting USB-A on their chargers and calling it a day. EU authorities grumbled but didn't opt for a lenghty legal challenge; instead, they talked a bit more and came up with this updated legislation. Note how they give Apple something (the unbundled charger) while becoming more restrictive in other areas... if Apple continue taking the piss after this gets passed, I expect the hammer will come down.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    Man, lightning is FAR better than the fragile micro-USB. I’ve had to repair microUSB ports multiple times.
    - toyg 5y ago
      From the perspective of a free and non-monopolistic market, anything from the USB consortium is massively better than an expensive proprietary standard controlled by a single vendor. Technical superiority is not the point.
      - Robotbeat 5y ago
        I would say it’s easily possible to pick a standard that is so subpar compared to a proprietary one that it’s worse for the consumer. A solution would be to just require any port used to be freely available and open. Require Apple to open the lightning standard and make IP related to it unenforceable.
        toyg 5y ago
        So you are a communist thieve of IP !!11!! Who will ever design a plug again, if it can be stolen from them by the government?!?!? /s Honestly, this is the result of dialogue between consumers, authorities, and manufacturers, including Apple. It tries to do the right thing under the circumstances. Apple could have avoided this sort of thing entirely if they were only a bit less greedy than they are.
        galgalesh 5y ago
        > So you are a communist thieve of IP !!11!! Who will ever design a plug again, if it can be stolen from them by the government?!?!? /s "jokes" like that are counter-productive to a good discussion. HN is not a place for such comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - asddubs 5y ago
      micro usb does kind of suck, but it's vastly better than every phone having a different proprietary charger like it was before smartphones
- ortusdux 5y ago
  I am a huge proponent of sunset provisions, especially when legislating tech and things that correlate with tech advances.
- arghwhat 5y ago
  It might mean that it won't change as often as through a free market, but laws adapt. On the other hand, things also become permanent fixtures without law. Like USB-A connectors having been stuck on laptops and desktops for more than 20 years.
  - grepfru_it 5y ago
    MIDI 1.1 would like to have a word with you
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  The usual way to legislate about this kind of thing is that a legislative body writes down the goals and gives the responsibility over the technical design for a much faster executive body. But I'm not sure the EU even has an executive body that could receive it. So I'm not sure about how this one is done. Anyway, since this is a revision already, it seems to be adapting reasonably fast.
  - toyg 5y ago
    The EU executive body is the Commission itself. When it comes to technical details, what happens depends on the actual legislation. There are plenty of technical committees in Bruxelles (in fact, some would say there are too many of those...), but for situations where some trickery in application or enforcement is expected, directives stay light on details and national governments will then get a good degree of freedom in adapting the rules. If a government implements a directive badly, it will eventually be challenged in the European Court of Justice, that will decide if the national rules follow the spirit of the directive.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  >But in the US, I very much view it as once something is legislated it becomes a permanent fixture of our society. once something is legislated on it is a permanent fixture of society that that thing will be legislated, but that does not mean that legislation, in the U.S as well, is not updated. https://law.gwu.libguides.com/electricity/laws-LH https://law.gwu.libguides.com/electricity/laws-LH
traveler01 5y ago
Apple removed the charger to be more enviromnent friendly. Why don't do this willingly? Oh yeah... they didn't do it for the environment.
- grepfru_it 5y ago
  Now apple can announce they support full HDMI from iPhones when in reality it’s because thunderbolt had to do cheap hacks to do it properly. Everyone gets to buy all new dongles and accessories. Apple low-key wants this to happen
FabHK 5y ago
One nice and welcome example of consumer-friendly legislation, btw: The EU prohibited mobile operators from charging voice and data roaming fees within the EU. So, now on holiday in Spain, say, you can just keep using your mobile contract including free minutes and data. (A typical deal is <10$ a month for unlimited calls, unlimited SMS, and, say, 3 GB data; or 15$ for >10 GB data.) When traveling outside the EU, it's still best to buy a local SIM to avoid the ludicrous roaming charges, but there's no need to do that within the EU anymore.
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  Very interesting (or disturbing) in this regard is the UK after Brexit, where one by one the mobile operators are all reintroducing roaming charges now that the relevant EU law no longer applies.
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    Elections have consequences.
  - throwaway473825 5y ago
    Another consumer-friendly regulation that Brexit has destroyed is the cap on interchange fees (0.2% for consumer debit cards and 0.3% for consumer credit cards).[1] [1] https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/37706/visa-hikes-uk-eu-online-interchange-fees-faces-us-investigation-into-debit-card-practices https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/37706/visa-hikes-uk-eu-...
- beezischillin 5y ago
  That's strange because I have separate roaming data in my contract and it's way less than my local one.
  - chefkoch 5y ago
    Then you have either a very old contract or one of the special no roaming ones.
throwaway894345 5y ago
I don’t think anyone is objecting to the motives of the legislation, but rather that it’s unconventional for governments to directly stipulate a technology. Typically they set some parameters that their subjects must comply with. For example, they usually say something like “cars may not emit more than X PPM of carbon monoxide per liter of fuel” rather than “cars shall use technology Y”. It’s not that speculating a technology is outside of the government’s remit, but rather that it’s typically a bad way to make policy (politicians aren’t technologists, governments move slowly, etc). In the particular case of USB-C, it’s a bit puzzling since it’s not actually an interoperable standard. For example, while the charger shape is the same, I can’t charge my laptop with my phone charger. Maybe the legislation accounts for this, but it’s a bit of a disappointing standard to cement. > “legislation isn’t set in stone” I suspect it’s an order of magnitude more difficult to change that legislation than it would be for the market to bring another standard. You might say, “if the Americans have some new fangled charger, the Europeans might demand change from their government”, but it’s pretty unlikely that anyone will invest on a new charger that they won’t be able to sell in Europe. For example, most phone manufacturers are unlikely to make a Euro-only variant, but will rather make a USB-C phone for the whole world, much like how Americans have to suffer through GDPR cookie notifications even though GDPR doesn’t apply to us. Lastly, is interoperability even a problem? I remember the bad old days before USB and interoperability didn’t really exist because every adapter was proprietary and expensive, but I can’t remember the last time I had an issue. Similarly, are these chargers a major source of e-waste? And how much of that is this legislation going to change? Cords will still wear our and be thrown away whether they are USB-C or Thunderbolt.
- toyg 5y ago
  They tried the light-touch approach for years (i.e. the previous rulings), and it has improved things but Apple insists in, basically, respecting only the letter of the law and not the spirit - and they are a third of the market. So this time, the Commission came up with a stricter approach. > it’s an order of magnitude more difficult to change that legislation The previous attempt is from 2009. A review every 10-15 years or so is not that difficult, when there is widespread political agreement on consumer matters. > Lastly, is interoperability even a problem? Before the EU committees stepped in, the market was a jungle of custom adapters. You don't remember the last time you had a problem partially because they forced the market to stop with shenanigans, and most manufacturer complied at least in the most visible sector (phones - stuff like watches is still a jungle, but they are less popular and definitely not as essential as phones). Some convergence was already happening but EU rules accelerated adoption and ensured it would happen across the board. Only Apple insisted in ignoring the spirit of the decision, so this is meant to force their hand somewhat to play ball (while also giving them something, since the unbundled charger was at risk of being challenged as anti-consumer). > Similarly, are these chargers a major source of e-waste? Yes. > And how much of that is this legislation going to change? More than the alternative of doing nothing.
simonh 5y ago
The fact is Lightning is so widely used in practice that force deprecating it would drive an awful lot of kit into land fills. If it was one of the dozen or so variations of little USB with 2% or 3% market share each you'd have a point, but those have mostly gone already. I don't expect Lightning to be around forever, but then I don't expect USB-C to be around forever either. Some day it will be super-ceded - should be super-ceded. Apple has shown remarkable consistency and discipline in managing it's connector designs. Far, far more so than any other manufacturer I can think of. They were also at the forefront of adopting USB-C in the first place and spearheaded making it so popular.
- rualca 5y ago
  > The fact is Lightning is so widely used in practice that force deprecating it would drive an awful lot of kit into land fills. An awful lot of kit is already going to landfills due to being rendered useless for depending on non-standard components to work. Personally I had to throw out a couple of phones because their chargers stopped working. Also, it's not as if lightning-to-USB-C adapters are unheard of. To top things off, even if we somehow assume that USB-C is unable to meet anyone's needs in a few years, and in the process ignore the fact that USB-A has been meeting all needs for some decades now, why would we jump to the conclusion that whatever port format comes next it will be technically impossible to get it to work with USB-C, or offer it in parallel with USB-C?
- toast0 5y ago
  Apple could make an iPhone for a few years with usb-C and lightning if they wanted people to be able to use their existing gear, but that doesn't feel very Apple: their laptops jumped right from zero USB-C to zero ports that aren't USB-C. They might also get some new customers; I was considering an iPhone rather than Android in my last phone purchasing round, but no USB-C means I need different charging, means I don't want to deal with it. No headphone jack is also something I don't want to deal with, been there, lost the dongle, would rather not go there again.
  - foogazi 5y ago
    Or use an adapter
Blikkentrekker 5y ago
I don't believe they should mandate a specific port, but I do believe they should mandate that any nonstandard port must make a show in a court of law that it's on technical merit, rather than creating interoperability problems for it's own sake. I believe that in general consumer laws should say that companies cannot create interoperability problems for it's own sake and when doing so must have a salient technical reason, whether the reason is so salient is for a court to decide. But that is a more specific version of my more general view that I believe that any form of crippleware, defined as companies investing time and resources into generating an inferior quality product should be illegal. Essentially, I believe that companies can only make a worse product from a consumer perspective, if it were cheaper for them to make that product, they must be legally required to not make a product worse except to cut their own production costs. Researching and producing their own port when an existing port suffices their needs would fall under this.
gruez 5y ago
>Or course not, it's not like legislation is set in stone and will never change. How's that going with the EU cookie legislation?
- moviuro 5y ago
  That's a symptom of: * Stupid webmasters (you don't need that cookie popup for my session cookie) * Greedy advertisers (that track me) and greedy web publishers that insist on including such privacy-violating scripts and third-parties on their sites * Sheep user (that have become so accustomed to cookie popups they now just keep pressing the most colorful button) Long live uBlock origin and its "annoyances" filters.
  - nickpp 5y ago
    So it's everybody else's fault BUT that of the actual people who created rules?
    - LeonidasXIV 5y ago
      I generally agree that the rules were well-intentioned, so now we have seen a bunch of loopholes being exploited (basically dark patterns) so I fully expect the next revision of these rules to come down with improvements that would make the current dark patterns illegal.
- lol768 5y ago
  > How's that going with the EU cookie legislation? You mean the twice-amended ePrivacy directive? I think it's going pretty well, noyb have achieved some fantastic results by pursuing complaints in accordance with the directive: https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-aims-end-cookie-banner-terror-and-issues-more-500-gdpr-complaints https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-aims-end-cookie-banner-terror-and-is... and https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-files-422-formal-gdpr-complaints-nerve-wrecking-cookie-banners https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-files-422-formal-gdpr-complaints-ner...
rhino369 5y ago
>Or course not, it's not like legislation is set in stone and *will never change.* Regulations can be changed, but its not easy. If this regulation was proposed in 2005, would we even have usb-c? or would the mobile world still be stuck on mini-usb because that is what the EU would have mandated at that time? I don't want my cell phone designed by an EU committee.
- rhacker 5y ago
  That's the other issue, it feels like the EU committees are composed of grouchy HN readers that want to "fix the world". It feels very much, "if I were king I would do this".
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jollybean 5y ago
The legislation doesn't really do any of those things, and 'cords', like 'plastic straws' are negligible bit of waste - moreover, the legislation probably wouldn't even change the amount of 'cord waste' that much. The legislation has risk because USBC is ill suited to many things and it's best to let manufactures make that decision. The EU legislators are a buit lazy on this one: they are legislation what is 'in front of their faces' (i.e. the phones they use) without recognizing the impact might not be what they think. Now - where there is a non-standard situation (remember A/C adapters?) - then it would actually help for an engineering body to set some kind of standard - but that should probably be a standards body, and not the EU. As long as manufacturers are using some measure of standardization that would be fine. A more rational (but difficult) approach would be to figure out a method and system for disposing or recycling the cords. "Or course not, it's not like legislation is set in stone and will never change." Government legislation does not keep pace with innovation, it lags it considerably. Not only that, it tends to stagnate. As such it risks becoming a limiting factor and push the dynamism to Asia. I think requiring the use of standard connectors would be fine, but they mostly already do. Creating an electronics recycling program would be actually smart, and have positive impact on the environment, but that's hard.

m000 5y ago

> Or course not, it's not like legislation is set in stone and will never change. Go tell that to Moses.

TheRealMoses 5y ago
Hello, I am Moses. Those damned stone tablets could have been iPads, they sure were heavy.

sidewndr46 5y ago

I don't know enough about the EU to say if the laws will adapt. But in the US, I very much view it as once something is legislated it becomes a permanent fixture of our society.

toyg 5y ago
This is already a change from previous legislation that effectively mandated micro-USB. So yeah, it can be done.
- rglullis 5y ago
  Does it count if no one ever complied to this legislation? Where are the micro-usb iPhones?
  - lrem 5y ago
    Apple complied by adding a free dongle to every iPhone sold in the EU.
    - rglullis 5y ago
      That's the opposite of compliance. Not only they didn't get to change their own product to match some standard, they went straight against the spirit of the law (add more electronics and yet-another source of waste).
      - shawnz 5y ago
        It was still considered a success because it at least reduced the need for proprietary AC adapters. Now it seems they want to expand on that to fix the proprietary cable/dongle issue too.
        jaywalk 5y ago
        You never needed a proprietary AC adapter to charge an iPhone, just a "proprietary" cable.
        shawnz 5y ago
        Without the dongle you couldn't use iPhones with micro-USB AC adapters that don't have detachable cables. However I agree that besides that specific circumstance, they were basically already compliant. The 2009 initiative wasn't targeting Apple specifically.
  - toyg 5y ago
    Apple "complied" by putting USB-A on their chargers and calling it a day. EU authorities grumbled but didn't opt for a lenghty legal challenge; instead, they talked a bit more and came up with this updated legislation. Note how they give Apple something (the unbundled charger) while becoming more restrictive in other areas... if Apple continue taking the piss after this gets passed, I expect the hammer will come down.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Man, lightning is FAR better than the fragile micro-USB. I’ve had to repair microUSB ports multiple times.
  - toyg 5y ago
    From the perspective of a free and non-monopolistic market, anything from the USB consortium is massively better than an expensive proprietary standard controlled by a single vendor. Technical superiority is not the point.
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      I would say it’s easily possible to pick a standard that is so subpar compared to a proprietary one that it’s worse for the consumer. A solution would be to just require any port used to be freely available and open. Require Apple to open the lightning standard and make IP related to it unenforceable.
      - toyg 5y ago
        So you are a communist thieve of IP !!11!! Who will ever design a plug again, if it can be stolen from them by the government?!?!? /s Honestly, this is the result of dialogue between consumers, authorities, and manufacturers, including Apple. It tries to do the right thing under the circumstances. Apple could have avoided this sort of thing entirely if they were only a bit less greedy than they are.
        galgalesh 5y ago
        > So you are a communist thieve of IP !!11!! Who will ever design a plug again, if it can be stolen from them by the government?!?!? /s "jokes" like that are counter-productive to a good discussion. HN is not a place for such comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - asddubs 5y ago
    micro usb does kind of suck, but it's vastly better than every phone having a different proprietary charger like it was before smartphones
ortusdux 5y ago
I am a huge proponent of sunset provisions, especially when legislating tech and things that correlate with tech advances.
arghwhat 5y ago
It might mean that it won't change as often as through a free market, but laws adapt. On the other hand, things also become permanent fixtures without law. Like USB-A connectors having been stuck on laptops and desktops for more than 20 years.
- grepfru_it 5y ago
  MIDI 1.1 would like to have a word with you
marcosdumay 5y ago
The usual way to legislate about this kind of thing is that a legislative body writes down the goals and gives the responsibility over the technical design for a much faster executive body. But I'm not sure the EU even has an executive body that could receive it. So I'm not sure about how this one is done. Anyway, since this is a revision already, it seems to be adapting reasonably fast.
- toyg 5y ago
  The EU executive body is the Commission itself. When it comes to technical details, what happens depends on the actual legislation. There are plenty of technical committees in Bruxelles (in fact, some would say there are too many of those...), but for situations where some trickery in application or enforcement is expected, directives stay light on details and national governments will then get a good degree of freedom in adapting the rules. If a government implements a directive badly, it will eventually be challenged in the European Court of Justice, that will decide if the national rules follow the spirit of the directive.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
>But in the US, I very much view it as once something is legislated it becomes a permanent fixture of our society. once something is legislated on it is a permanent fixture of society that that thing will be legislated, but that does not mean that legislation, in the U.S as well, is not updated. https://law.gwu.libguides.com/electricity/laws-LH https://law.gwu.libguides.com/electricity/laws-LH

traveler01 5y ago

Apple removed the charger to be more enviromnent friendly. Why don't do this willingly? Oh yeah... they didn't do it for the environment.

grepfru_it 5y ago
Now apple can announce they support full HDMI from iPhones when in reality it’s because thunderbolt had to do cheap hacks to do it properly. Everyone gets to buy all new dongles and accessories. Apple low-key wants this to happen

FabHK 5y ago

One nice and welcome example of consumer-friendly legislation, btw: The EU prohibited mobile operators from charging voice and data roaming fees within the EU. So, now on holiday in Spain, say, you can just keep using your mobile contract including free minutes and data. (A typical deal is <10$ a month for unlimited calls, unlimited SMS, and, say, 3 GB data; or 15$ for >10 GB data.) When traveling outside the EU, it's still best to buy a local SIM to avoid the ludicrous roaming charges, but there's no need to do that within the EU anymore.

Freak_NL 5y ago
Very interesting (or disturbing) in this regard is the UK after Brexit, where one by one the mobile operators are all reintroducing roaming charges now that the relevant EU law no longer applies.
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  Elections have consequences.
- throwaway473825 5y ago
  Another consumer-friendly regulation that Brexit has destroyed is the cap on interchange fees (0.2% for consumer debit cards and 0.3% for consumer credit cards).[1] [1] https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/37706/visa-hikes-uk-eu-online-interchange-fees-faces-us-investigation-into-debit-card-practices https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/37706/visa-hikes-uk-eu-...
beezischillin 5y ago
That's strange because I have separate roaming data in my contract and it's way less than my local one.
- chefkoch 5y ago
  Then you have either a very old contract or one of the special no roaming ones.

throwaway894345 5y ago

I don’t think anyone is objecting to the motives of the legislation, but rather that it’s unconventional for governments to directly stipulate a technology. Typically they set some parameters that their subjects must comply with. For example, they usually say something like “cars may not emit more than X PPM of carbon monoxide per liter of fuel” rather than “cars shall use technology Y”. It’s not that speculating a technology is outside of the government’s remit, but rather that it’s typically a bad way to make policy (politicians aren’t technologists, governments move slowly, etc). In the particular case of USB-C, it’s a bit puzzling since it’s not actually an interoperable standard. For example, while the charger shape is the same, I can’t charge my laptop with my phone charger. Maybe the legislation accounts for this, but it’s a bit of a disappointing standard to cement. > “legislation isn’t set in stone” I suspect it’s an order of magnitude more difficult to change that legislation than it would be for the market to bring another standard. You might say, “if the Americans have some new fangled charger, the Europeans might demand change from their government”, but it’s pretty unlikely that anyone will invest on a new charger that they won’t be able to sell in Europe. For example, most phone manufacturers are unlikely to make a Euro-only variant, but will rather make a USB-C phone for the whole world, much like how Americans have to suffer through GDPR cookie notifications even though GDPR doesn’t apply to us. Lastly, is interoperability even a problem? I remember the bad old days before USB and interoperability didn’t really exist because every adapter was proprietary and expensive, but I can’t remember the last time I had an issue. Similarly, are these chargers a major source of e-waste? And how much of that is this legislation going to change? Cords will still wear our and be thrown away whether they are USB-C or Thunderbolt.

toyg 5y ago
They tried the light-touch approach for years (i.e. the previous rulings), and it has improved things but Apple insists in, basically, respecting only the letter of the law and not the spirit - and they are a third of the market. So this time, the Commission came up with a stricter approach. > it’s an order of magnitude more difficult to change that legislation The previous attempt is from 2009. A review every 10-15 years or so is not that difficult, when there is widespread political agreement on consumer matters. > Lastly, is interoperability even a problem? Before the EU committees stepped in, the market was a jungle of custom adapters. You don't remember the last time you had a problem partially because they forced the market to stop with shenanigans, and most manufacturer complied at least in the most visible sector (phones - stuff like watches is still a jungle, but they are less popular and definitely not as essential as phones). Some convergence was already happening but EU rules accelerated adoption and ensured it would happen across the board. Only Apple insisted in ignoring the spirit of the decision, so this is meant to force their hand somewhat to play ball (while also giving them something, since the unbundled charger was at risk of being challenged as anti-consumer). > Similarly, are these chargers a major source of e-waste? Yes. > And how much of that is this legislation going to change? More than the alternative of doing nothing.

simonh 5y ago

The fact is Lightning is so widely used in practice that force deprecating it would drive an awful lot of kit into land fills. If it was one of the dozen or so variations of little USB with 2% or 3% market share each you'd have a point, but those have mostly gone already. I don't expect Lightning to be around forever, but then I don't expect USB-C to be around forever either. Some day it will be super-ceded - should be super-ceded. Apple has shown remarkable consistency and discipline in managing it's connector designs. Far, far more so than any other manufacturer I can think of. They were also at the forefront of adopting USB-C in the first place and spearheaded making it so popular.

rualca 5y ago
> The fact is Lightning is so widely used in practice that force deprecating it would drive an awful lot of kit into land fills. An awful lot of kit is already going to landfills due to being rendered useless for depending on non-standard components to work. Personally I had to throw out a couple of phones because their chargers stopped working. Also, it's not as if lightning-to-USB-C adapters are unheard of. To top things off, even if we somehow assume that USB-C is unable to meet anyone's needs in a few years, and in the process ignore the fact that USB-A has been meeting all needs for some decades now, why would we jump to the conclusion that whatever port format comes next it will be technically impossible to get it to work with USB-C, or offer it in parallel with USB-C?
toast0 5y ago
Apple could make an iPhone for a few years with usb-C and lightning if they wanted people to be able to use their existing gear, but that doesn't feel very Apple: their laptops jumped right from zero USB-C to zero ports that aren't USB-C. They might also get some new customers; I was considering an iPhone rather than Android in my last phone purchasing round, but no USB-C means I need different charging, means I don't want to deal with it. No headphone jack is also something I don't want to deal with, been there, lost the dongle, would rather not go there again.
- foogazi 5y ago
  Or use an adapter

Blikkentrekker 5y ago

I don't believe they should mandate a specific port, but I do believe they should mandate that any nonstandard port must make a show in a court of law that it's on technical merit, rather than creating interoperability problems for it's own sake. I believe that in general consumer laws should say that companies cannot create interoperability problems for it's own sake and when doing so must have a salient technical reason, whether the reason is so salient is for a court to decide. But that is a more specific version of my more general view that I believe that any form of crippleware, defined as companies investing time and resources into generating an inferior quality product should be illegal. Essentially, I believe that companies can only make a worse product from a consumer perspective, if it were cheaper for them to make that product, they must be legally required to not make a product worse except to cut their own production costs. Researching and producing their own port when an existing port suffices their needs would fall under this.

gruez 5y ago

>Or course not, it's not like legislation is set in stone and will never change. How's that going with the EU cookie legislation?

moviuro 5y ago
That's a symptom of: * Stupid webmasters (you don't need that cookie popup for my session cookie) * Greedy advertisers (that track me) and greedy web publishers that insist on including such privacy-violating scripts and third-parties on their sites * Sheep user (that have become so accustomed to cookie popups they now just keep pressing the most colorful button) Long live uBlock origin and its "annoyances" filters.
- nickpp 5y ago
  So it's everybody else's fault BUT that of the actual people who created rules?
  - LeonidasXIV 5y ago
    I generally agree that the rules were well-intentioned, so now we have seen a bunch of loopholes being exploited (basically dark patterns) so I fully expect the next revision of these rules to come down with improvements that would make the current dark patterns illegal.
lol768 5y ago
> How's that going with the EU cookie legislation? You mean the twice-amended ePrivacy directive? I think it's going pretty well, noyb have achieved some fantastic results by pursuing complaints in accordance with the directive: https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-aims-end-cookie-banner-terror-and-issues-more-500-gdpr-complaints https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-aims-end-cookie-banner-terror-and-is... and https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-files-422-formal-gdpr-complaints-nerve-wrecking-cookie-banners https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-files-422-formal-gdpr-complaints-ner...

rhino369 5y ago

>Or course not, it's not like legislation is set in stone and *will never change.* Regulations can be changed, but its not easy. If this regulation was proposed in 2005, would we even have usb-c? or would the mobile world still be stuck on mini-usb because that is what the EU would have mandated at that time? I don't want my cell phone designed by an EU committee.

rhacker 5y ago
That's the other issue, it feels like the EU committees are composed of grouchy HN readers that want to "fix the world". It feels very much, "if I were king I would do this".
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jollybean 5y ago

The legislation doesn't really do any of those things, and 'cords', like 'plastic straws' are negligible bit of waste - moreover, the legislation probably wouldn't even change the amount of 'cord waste' that much. The legislation has risk because USBC is ill suited to many things and it's best to let manufactures make that decision. The EU legislators are a buit lazy on this one: they are legislation what is 'in front of their faces' (i.e. the phones they use) without recognizing the impact might not be what they think. Now - where there is a non-standard situation (remember A/C adapters?) - then it would actually help for an engineering body to set some kind of standard - but that should probably be a standards body, and not the EU. As long as manufacturers are using some measure of standardization that would be fine. A more rational (but difficult) approach would be to figure out a method and system for disposing or recycling the cords. "Or course not, it's not like legislation is set in stone and will never change." Government legislation does not keep pace with innovation, it lags it considerably. Not only that, it tends to stagnate. As such it risks becoming a limiting factor and push the dynamism to Asia. I think requiring the use of standard connectors would be fine, but they mostly already do. Creating an electronics recycling program would be actually smart, and have positive impact on the environment, but that's hard.