8 ms·

I think Apple should just make USB-C the norm for iPhones. But the idea that a trans-national government over 750M people should be trying to regulate in this

I think Apple should just make USB-C the norm for iPhones. But the idea that a trans-national government over 750M people should be trying to regulate in this level of detail is just obviously a recipe for disaster. For every one time they successfully push a company to do something correct -- but ultimately trivial, like this thing -- there are going to be 10 cases where some bureaucrat makes a bad decision and they're like fifteen steps removed from any kind of oversight, or where no uniform rule-making makes sense over the vastly diverse areas of the EU. Humanity is just not capable of making a bureaucracy of this size that makes decisions at this level of detail in a on-average-good way.

MagicMoonlight 3y ago
>They're saying we can't put sawdust in bread, if they're that interested in a small product like that then what's to stop them banning lead in toys?
- aetherson 3y ago
  If only there were some kind of distinction we could draw between health and toxicity regulation versus "which charger for your phone is better." I just can't think of what it could be.
hef19898 3y ago
And now think about all the normed parts you encounter everyday: screws, material, plugs, tools, fuel... All of those stabdards have been enforced at one time. Including adminiszartive commitees, staffed mostly by industry (!), to revise them and keep them updated. Edit: One can make the case about the roman empire, and some really old civilization in India I am too lazy to look up, building quite impressive empires running on engineering and other stabdards across gigantic portions of thebthen known earth. That neother of those exists anymore is hardly the fault of those norms. Oh, nor to forget: measurement units.
- NickBusey 3y ago
  Citation needed for the claim that governments enforce standards for screws. Maybe in the stuff they buy, but that’s not the same thing.
  - dghlsakjg 3y ago
    Agreed. One visit to an industrial fastener store will let you know that there is no such thing as a standard screw/bolt. Even metric Mx machine screws (which are the closest thing I can think of to a standard) have 4 different common pitches, and you can have them custom made to ANY pitch.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      And a look in enineering literature and norms, EN for example, woupd tell you thatvall those different screw types, from heads and pitches to strength and surface treatment, are, in fact, stabdardized and normed. And of course you can get custom parts for everything. Those are, as the name implies, custom and not standard.
      - dghlsakjg 3y ago
        The point is that EN standards are set by industry, not government. This is a reply to a comment about supposed government regulations around what a screw is allowed to be.
        hef19898 3y ago
        And they are based, after having replaced a bunch of national predecessors like DIN, on an EU regulation providing the legal basis for them. Ehich makes Apples bahvior even worse, litterally everybody else managed to agree on common standards, but thay had to insist on proprietary tech to the point they got their set of legislation.
revelio 3y ago
[flagged]
- DangitBobby 3y ago
  As everyone knows, if you do something dumb and wasteful you must always do dumb and wasteful things or risk being derided as a hypocrite!
  - mort96 3y ago
    Yeah! They made this one bad decision so it's hypocritical of them to make this other good decision!
- baq 3y ago
  It'd be so much better... for Pfizer to sell to consumers individually for 10-100x the price!
  - revelio 3y ago
    The Commission staff who signed these contracts are clearly idiots. Why do you assume they aren't paying 10x what the natural market rate would have been? Pfizer realized the EU would sign literally anything to be able to say it was going to save the day by purchasing vaccines. That's the absolute perfect time to set prices well above what you normally could charge!
    - throwaway049 3y ago
      You're welcome to bring numbers rather than hand-waving to this argument.
    - anigbrowl 3y ago
      Seems like a problem with Pfizer exploiting its monopoly position to hold public health hostage as much as bureaucrats choosing to have a signed contract with an overly-generous safety margin over getting the best possible price over some unknown timeframe.
petesergeant 3y ago
> this level of detail The gazillion iPhone users in the EU use this twice a day, in physical space, and honestly that feels ok rather than nit-picking. If they do an EU-only model, I’ll absolutely go out of my way to get one
cagenut 3y ago
this is your brain on (neo)liberalism. neurotically paralyzed by the hypothetical and counterfactual demons in your imagination.
oasisbob 3y ago
> But the idea that a trans-national government over 750M people should be trying to regulate in this level of detail is just obviously a recipe for disaster Why? Standards harmonization has big upsides too. For example, the EU PPE safety standards are so good that there aren't even North American equivalents for many products. If you buy a climbing carabiner in the US, it's being tested according to a test procedure defined by the same EU bureaucracy you deride.
- wskinner 3y ago
  If the standards are so good, they shouldn’t need to force companies to use them.
  - aliceryhl 3y ago
    Being good for the consumer is not necessarily the same as being good for the company selling the device.
  - heliostatic 3y ago
    I believe we have found the economist. What's the electrical failure rate of every appliance in your home, and the associated risk of death by electrocution? If you don't know offhand, it might be that you are implicitly relying on UL standards to keep you safe and whole. Consumers don't have perfect information, so the risk is asymmetric. If you assume the market will sort out risk and quality so we don't need standards and enforcement thereof, I don't believe your model is aligned with reality.
    - wskinner 3y ago
      Many responses to my comment made the same argument, so I’ll just reply here. What do you see as the main safety differences between Lightning and USB-C? As both systems have been in use at scale for some time now, this should be easy enough to answer quantitatively. My understanding is that they offer equivalent safety, in spite of Lightning not having been standardized by the EU, but I may be wrong.
baq 3y ago
I remember the world before micro USB chargers and it was a disaster only mitigated by regulation. Calling it trivial is missing the forest from the trees. It was a good decision and it's good to finally see an end to this madness after 15 years of 'Who has a Nokia/Samsung/Sony charger?' to 'Who has the USB a/b/c/iPhone cable?' to hopefully 'who has a charger?' in five years. Humanity does not have an alternative to bureaucrats because lassez-faire markets optimize for maximum company profits over all time spans instead of consumer convenience.
- 13of40 3y ago
  The fact that my headphones, laptop, telephone, and even my electric shaver all use the same (usb-c) charger now is a complete game changer. I can't imagine what kind of hubris Apple has to not snap to that.
- TylerE 3y ago
  Micro usb is close to being the worst of all worlds.
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    Why? It's small, reasonably robust, easy to connect. The first time I got a USB-C device I was shocked at how elegant and well-engineered the connection felt. As consumer devices go, it's great. For context, I was a pro sound engineer in the film industry for many years, so I have lots of experience with industrial grade connectors and operating in hostile environmental conditions from heavy rain/marine environments to desert dust storms. There are times when I go straight to industrial/military manufacturing specifications, but USB-C is still great.
    - TylerE 3y ago
      Micro usb not C. The directional connector that gets crushed if you look at it funny.
      - anigbrowl 3y ago
anigbrowl 3y ago
or every one time they successfully push a company to do something correct -- but ultimately trivial, like this thing -- there are going to be 10 cases where some bureaucrat makes a bad decision This is a truism, but does it have any basis in reality? Certainly, if every manufacturer were forced to use USB-C for everything it could lead to an innovation problem, but I don't think makers of new products are forbidden from offering innovative kinds of connectivity, which the market might or might not decide to adopt. Nor is the issue trivial just because it's physically small, any more than the design of electrical wall sockets is of low importance. They're making Apple do it because they have huge market share, a long history of foisting different physical connectors on their customers and generating a significant amount of electronic waste as older models are abandoned. Crucially, the charging devices end up being unwanted because they don't work with anything else including other iphones. Sure, they could enjoy a longer life with the use of adapters, but physical adapters are Not Great. It's a pity, because Apple does innovate and some of their innovations are very cool, eg the magnetized charging ports on Macbooks was an Apple first iirc. But they also have a reputation for stiffing their own customers by ignoring backward compatibility , assuming that most of their customers will grumble but keep paying for the new model because they like the ecosystem.
- aetherson 3y ago
  Have you ever, like, actually interacted with a bureaucracy? I don't mean a governmental one, necessarily. An even mid-sized company's HR department, let's say. I was just trying to get a medical evaluation for my son: I called them and they spent 10 minutes on the phone with me explaining that they were going to send me four emails before they had a 30 minute call with me before they were going to do the actual evaluation of my son. They told me that I could fill out the two surveys in the four emails that they sent me via, and I quote exactly, "A desktop or a laptop or an iPad, but not an iPhone: this is for security reasons." It's hilarious that your big question is: "Does the idea that bureaucracies routinely make money-and-time-wasting decisions have any basis in reality." You should investigate this reality at some point.
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
iso8859-1 3y ago
> 750M people Where are you getting this figure? It's below 450M AFAIK.
- bj-rn 3y ago
  The population of Europe (continent/region) is ~750M. The EU (political/economic entity) has ~450M.
- aetherson 3y ago
  Sorry, just did a quick Google and didn't look past the headline figure. I don't think that it substantially changes the point, but I regret the error.
nborwankar 3y ago
It’s not really about the hardware interface. It’s about a single standard for charging infrastructure so that economies of scale and zero barrier to entry makes charging tech a commodity as it should be, not a product with premium pricing enforced by a proprietary interface. The market dynamics are the real target. The interface is being targeted because it’s the tool used to distort pricing and create a pseudo-premium product. Anker now makes far superior chargers for Apple products, cheaper and with more features than the original. But they are forced to pay Apple licensing fees for their proprietary but not really superior interface.

MagicMoonlight 3y ago

>They're saying we can't put sawdust in bread, if they're that interested in a small product like that then what's to stop them banning lead in toys?

aetherson 3y ago
If only there were some kind of distinction we could draw between health and toxicity regulation versus "which charger for your phone is better." I just can't think of what it could be.

hef19898 3y ago

And now think about all the normed parts you encounter everyday: screws, material, plugs, tools, fuel... All of those stabdards have been enforced at one time. Including adminiszartive commitees, staffed mostly by industry (!), to revise them and keep them updated. Edit: One can make the case about the roman empire, and some really old civilization in India I am too lazy to look up, building quite impressive empires running on engineering and other stabdards across gigantic portions of thebthen known earth. That neother of those exists anymore is hardly the fault of those norms. Oh, nor to forget: measurement units.

NickBusey 3y ago
Citation needed for the claim that governments enforce standards for screws. Maybe in the stuff they buy, but that’s not the same thing.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  Agreed. One visit to an industrial fastener store will let you know that there is no such thing as a standard screw/bolt. Even metric Mx machine screws (which are the closest thing I can think of to a standard) have 4 different common pitches, and you can have them custom made to ANY pitch.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    And a look in enineering literature and norms, EN for example, woupd tell you thatvall those different screw types, from heads and pitches to strength and surface treatment, are, in fact, stabdardized and normed. And of course you can get custom parts for everything. Those are, as the name implies, custom and not standard.
    - dghlsakjg 3y ago
      The point is that EN standards are set by industry, not government. This is a reply to a comment about supposed government regulations around what a screw is allowed to be.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        And they are based, after having replaced a bunch of national predecessors like DIN, on an EU regulation providing the legal basis for them. Ehich makes Apples bahvior even worse, litterally everybody else managed to agree on common standards, but thay had to insist on proprietary tech to the point they got their set of legislation.

revelio 3y ago

[flagged]

DangitBobby 3y ago
As everyone knows, if you do something dumb and wasteful you must always do dumb and wasteful things or risk being derided as a hypocrite!
- mort96 3y ago
  Yeah! They made this one bad decision so it's hypocritical of them to make this other good decision!
baq 3y ago
It'd be so much better... for Pfizer to sell to consumers individually for 10-100x the price!
- revelio 3y ago
  The Commission staff who signed these contracts are clearly idiots. Why do you assume they aren't paying 10x what the natural market rate would have been? Pfizer realized the EU would sign literally anything to be able to say it was going to save the day by purchasing vaccines. That's the absolute perfect time to set prices well above what you normally could charge!
  - throwaway049 3y ago
    You're welcome to bring numbers rather than hand-waving to this argument.
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    Seems like a problem with Pfizer exploiting its monopoly position to hold public health hostage as much as bureaucrats choosing to have a signed contract with an overly-generous safety margin over getting the best possible price over some unknown timeframe.

petesergeant 3y ago

> this level of detail The gazillion iPhone users in the EU use this twice a day, in physical space, and honestly that feels ok rather than nit-picking. If they do an EU-only model, I’ll absolutely go out of my way to get one

cagenut 3y ago

this is your brain on (neo)liberalism. neurotically paralyzed by the hypothetical and counterfactual demons in your imagination.

oasisbob 3y ago

> But the idea that a trans-national government over 750M people should be trying to regulate in this level of detail is just obviously a recipe for disaster Why? Standards harmonization has big upsides too. For example, the EU PPE safety standards are so good that there aren't even North American equivalents for many products. If you buy a climbing carabiner in the US, it's being tested according to a test procedure defined by the same EU bureaucracy you deride.

wskinner 3y ago
If the standards are so good, they shouldn’t need to force companies to use them.
- aliceryhl 3y ago
  Being good for the consumer is not necessarily the same as being good for the company selling the device.
- heliostatic 3y ago
  I believe we have found the economist. What's the electrical failure rate of every appliance in your home, and the associated risk of death by electrocution? If you don't know offhand, it might be that you are implicitly relying on UL standards to keep you safe and whole. Consumers don't have perfect information, so the risk is asymmetric. If you assume the market will sort out risk and quality so we don't need standards and enforcement thereof, I don't believe your model is aligned with reality.
  - wskinner 3y ago
    Many responses to my comment made the same argument, so I’ll just reply here. What do you see as the main safety differences between Lightning and USB-C? As both systems have been in use at scale for some time now, this should be easy enough to answer quantitatively. My understanding is that they offer equivalent safety, in spite of Lightning not having been standardized by the EU, but I may be wrong.

baq 3y ago

I remember the world before micro USB chargers and it was a disaster only mitigated by regulation. Calling it trivial is missing the forest from the trees. It was a good decision and it's good to finally see an end to this madness after 15 years of 'Who has a Nokia/Samsung/Sony charger?' to 'Who has the USB a/b/c/iPhone cable?' to hopefully 'who has a charger?' in five years. Humanity does not have an alternative to bureaucrats because lassez-faire markets optimize for maximum company profits over all time spans instead of consumer convenience.

13of40 3y ago
The fact that my headphones, laptop, telephone, and even my electric shaver all use the same (usb-c) charger now is a complete game changer. I can't imagine what kind of hubris Apple has to not snap to that.
TylerE 3y ago
Micro usb is close to being the worst of all worlds.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  Why? It's small, reasonably robust, easy to connect. The first time I got a USB-C device I was shocked at how elegant and well-engineered the connection felt. As consumer devices go, it's great. For context, I was a pro sound engineer in the film industry for many years, so I have lots of experience with industrial grade connectors and operating in hostile environmental conditions from heavy rain/marine environments to desert dust storms. There are times when I go straight to industrial/military manufacturing specifications, but USB-C is still great.
  - TylerE 3y ago
    Micro usb not C. The directional connector that gets crushed if you look at it funny.
    - anigbrowl 3y ago

anigbrowl 3y ago

or every one time they successfully push a company to do something correct -- but ultimately trivial, like this thing -- there are going to be 10 cases where some bureaucrat makes a bad decision This is a truism, but does it have any basis in reality? Certainly, if every manufacturer were forced to use USB-C for everything it could lead to an innovation problem, but I don't think makers of new products are forbidden from offering innovative kinds of connectivity, which the market might or might not decide to adopt. Nor is the issue trivial just because it's physically small, any more than the design of electrical wall sockets is of low importance. They're making Apple do it because they have huge market share, a long history of foisting different physical connectors on their customers and generating a significant amount of electronic waste as older models are abandoned. Crucially, the charging devices end up being unwanted because they don't work with anything else including other iphones. Sure, they could enjoy a longer life with the use of adapters, but physical adapters are Not Great. It's a pity, because Apple does innovate and some of their innovations are very cool, eg the magnetized charging ports on Macbooks was an Apple first iirc. But they also have a reputation for stiffing their own customers by ignoring backward compatibility , assuming that most of their customers will grumble but keep paying for the new model because they like the ecosystem.

aetherson 3y ago
Have you ever, like, actually interacted with a bureaucracy? I don't mean a governmental one, necessarily. An even mid-sized company's HR department, let's say. I was just trying to get a medical evaluation for my son: I called them and they spent 10 minutes on the phone with me explaining that they were going to send me four emails before they had a 30 minute call with me before they were going to do the actual evaluation of my son. They told me that I could fill out the two surveys in the four emails that they sent me via, and I quote exactly, "A desktop or a laptop or an iPad, but not an iPhone: this is for security reasons." It's hilarious that your big question is: "Does the idea that bureaucracies routinely make money-and-time-wasting decisions have any basis in reality." You should investigate this reality at some point.
- anigbrowl 3y ago

iso8859-1 3y ago

> 750M people Where are you getting this figure? It's below 450M AFAIK.

bj-rn 3y ago
The population of Europe (continent/region) is ~750M. The EU (political/economic entity) has ~450M.
aetherson 3y ago
Sorry, just did a quick Google and didn't look past the headline figure. I don't think that it substantially changes the point, but I regret the error.

nborwankar 3y ago

It’s not really about the hardware interface. It’s about a single standard for charging infrastructure so that economies of scale and zero barrier to entry makes charging tech a commodity as it should be, not a product with premium pricing enforced by a proprietary interface. The market dynamics are the real target. The interface is being targeted because it’s the tool used to distort pricing and create a pseudo-premium product. Anker now makes far superior chargers for Apple products, cheaper and with more features than the original. But they are forced to pay Apple licensing fees for their proprietary but not really superior interface.