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.
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.
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.
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]
Only partially true, let's not be misleading. It works for short vacations, that's about it. The EU has a so called "fair use policy", that basically give mobile operators the possibility to charge you more when you're more than xx days out of the country of registration (it's more complicated than this, but it's the idea anyway). In my case, traveling often abroad, means I'm constantly hitting this limit which force me to buy local sim card from time to time. It's nowhere near like in the US if some were thinking at this for comparison.
Yup. And there's exceptions galore too. You can just claim that free roaming will cause "financial hardship" and still get away with charging roaming fees anyway. Nearly every provider in Finland immediately applied the exemption and kept charging roaming fees anyway.
Goddamn 2021 and we're still pretending electrons cost more based on distance.
I renewed five contracts this year, neither of them had the same amount of data for roaming as they did for local. Calls and SMS, they did (unlimited, basically). This seems to be the norm for Orange here. I would assume the same goes for Vodafone since they generally seemed to always offer less for more.
That being said, it's absolutely lovely to be able to travel for business or holiday and to be able to find your way around, purchase things and get access to public transportation information abroad. Roaming costs before that always tended to be so eye-watering that I never really knew anyone who thought they were worth putting up with. I really dislike going outside of the European Union because of them, myself, too.
If memory serves, the amount of roaming data you get is computed on the basis of 'what would you get if you paid roughly the same amount of money to a typical provider in the country where I am travelling', with some caps in both directions.
I live in Italy which has low prices, so I get 50 GB/mo for 8€ (and 200 GB/mo during the summer). Last summer I travelled to Austria and Czechia, I had 4GB available in both countries, and indeed checking their biggest ISPs' landing pages it looks like 8€ wouldn't have bought me even a gig! So 4GB is probably a mandatory minimum.
Thankfully, if you have an eSIM compatible phone, you can use a service like https://www.airalo.com/ to quickly get a local data plan. Let's see if this forces carriers to reduce their roaming fees.
I find it interesting that our main hope for forcing the big tech to follow ethical/environment_friendly/user_friendly procedures is not the US, but the EU.
I'm not European, but can anyone tell me how does the political system in the EU let (or even motivate) law-makers and governments to support such mandates and laws that are in favor of consumers?
The EU is about the internal market, but having an internal market means it's about standards. There should be no technical difference between products from Denmark or Spain.
These rules are developed by the commision, but approved by national governments, which are then 'translated' into national laws.
In some areas the rules are very specific and detailed (eg chemicals) but in others the national governments are still in control (like protected titles such as baristers).
In the end is the motivation money. If you think your usb-c chargers are better than other countries, you would like to force apple to move to USB-C chargers. So it's a big economical incentive, and having countries on board like Germany, Scandinavia or the netherlands, makes the EU more suspicious of large companies, it's in their culture ;).
US has a more liberal policy where they make mistakes very costly, if you can succesfully bring a claim to the responsible party. The european mindset just tries to forbid things (Things aren't allowed if they aren't proven safe, instead of only things proven unsafe being forbidden)
I'm not an expert by any means, but my impression is that, while they certainly still have some influence, lobbyists and big companies hold a lot less sway in European politics than in the US. Part of that may be tighter rules around campaign finance, part of it may be cultural.
There is not really a 'european' government. There is a political body, which is setting some wider rules in the union, but only in areas which have been transferred by national governments.
However, there is a tendency of these national governments to introduce laws on that level, and then turn around to their citizens and tell them 'Bruxelles told us to do this'.
There are certainly some stupid laws on that level, especially in the area of tech. But most of the complaints (these laws are conflicting!) are just a meme.
In general is the support for the EU a majority [1] and the UK only succesfully 'won' the referendum to leave, and are now seeing the difference the EU has made in daily life.
The quotes research is a bit older, I am certain the Covid response and the fallout from Brexit has improved the support for the European union.
Also, the EU government is not hugely popular in the public opinion. Years ago the EU government was popularly known for creating nonsensical rules (and there are indeed examples of nonsensical rules).
To claim their future existence, the EU government really has to prove their usefulness for the EU citizens.
> To claim their future existence, the EU government really has to prove their usefulness for the EU citizens.
A lot of it has to do with the EU government being the punching bag of local politics. Like the German conservatives would throw up their hands "we can't do anything against this nonsensical EU legislation", completely omitting that they are represented in the EU parliament and could've done something against it there.
And the population buys it because the in general the EU population knows less about EU governance than US governance. A shame.
Lots of right wing parties in the EU advocate for a "countryname-exit" and thus lobbyism in the EU has to fight the fear of no-existing very soon. Thus, the government has to fight for the approval of the people every day at gunpoint and thus, good legislation may appear for fear of loosing ones power, job and by that even the lobbyism bribery income.
Also remember, until the day the brexit vote happened, the Brexxit was not possible,not real and not even worth discussing on HN.
Such things might not make waves in the high-tech bubble, but in the real world, such movements might be considerable. Lots of people see globalism as a attack on their life and community by now.
I agree with you on this point. It's worth noting that they are usually the same people who actually push for globalism, every time they choose "cheaper" over "local".
Do they really choose? Wage stagnation is very real- so going for the cheapest, is not really a choice, just a attempt to keep your economic downfall from materializing.
Legislating pricing is something governments can do well. Legislating physical interconnect is an area where they are much more likely to be ignorant of the relevant requirements. I, for one, vastly prefer Lightning to USB-C despite the interoperability; I hope that if the EU goes down this road that Apple makes a Lightning phone for the rest of us.
MUCH easier to connect in the dark, which I do a lot of. My broader point is that government regulators are not product managers / user researchers and shouldn’t get in the business of regulating specific features.
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.
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.
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.
So, what are they going to do? Fine Apple for a couple of million euros? Give another reason for Apple to increase the prices of their products even more?
So, it's the latter. They will have another excuse to increase the prices further. "We had to spend $BILLIONS to change the design of the iPhone, so this is why the new iPhone EU Edition is going to be 1400€".
This is the kind of thing that really makes me understand Brexit.
Nobody forces you to buy a consumer-unfriendly product that also happens to be arbitrarily expensive. If somebody in Milan can't afford a Ferrari made in Maranello because the damn company insists in pricing their cars beyond what is reasonable for a 4-wheeled vehicle, it doesn't mean Milan should secede from Italy, surely.
Nobody forces you to buy a consumer-unfriendly product, period. Are you also going to push for governments to force Apple to make iPhones with removable batteries? What about the headphone jack? Why not force Apple to open source their OS? Why not block the sale of any product that is made in a country that has concentration camps?
These are all valid reasons that make me never want to buy an iOS device. But it is my choice.
Why is there this constant need for individuals to delegate their consumer conscience to an ill-informed and corrupt entity?
> "Are you also going to push for governments to force Apple to make iPhones with removable batteries?"
Kinda - I am pushing my government to force Apple to provide spare parts, and give us right to repair. Make ownership of digital device mean something again.
US obsession with choice is a red herring. I don't want sadistic 'choice' between getting going backrupt and dying of a treatable disease, I want the problem fixed.
> Make ownership of digital device mean something again.
Then just go buy from someone who actually is behind these values, and not someone who just greenwashes their products.
> US obsession
Sorry to spoil your ad hominem, but I am born in Brazil and have been living in Germany for 8 years.
> I want the problem fixed.
The problem is fixed already: I've been having this discussion while typing from a fairphone, which I was free to install /e/ OS without any Google services, and it cost less than an iPhone SE. I can open and replace not only the battery, but also the display and the camera.
I didn't have to wait any bureaucrat in Brussels to do this, and quite frankly I believe that if it were up to them they would find a way to screw this small Dutch company out of existence.
Stop buying Apple products. Stop buying anything from any company that is consumer hostile, even if the "ethical" alternatives are more expensive/less adequate for your needs. I can guarantee you this problem (and others that you don't even care about) will be fixed faster than by waiting for the EU.
"The problem is fixed already: I've been having this discussion while typing from a fairphone"
Congratulations, you are part of the 0.1%. and yet every day millions of unrepairable phones go to landfill, petrol cars are still being produced, coal is still being burned.
Maybe enough is enough, democracy is more impirtant than 'free market'. I want to nail the invisible hand to the cross to make a point.
Manufacturers that are interested in catering to that market don't have the capital/resources to compete with Apple on more common customer needs like performance and efficiency. So there's effectively a natural monopoly on high performance mobile devices which allows Apple, and a small number of other brands, to be customer-hostile in other ways.
Are you saying that companies like Motorola/Lenovo, Samsung, LG, Sony, Nokia/HMD, Huawei - who all were producing each a handful of different models at the most different price points, targeting all different market segments - didn't have the resources to build a model with a removable battery?
I am more inclined to believe that they consumers have signaled that removable batteries are not as important as improvements on other constraints like size, durability and material look & feel.
Let me flip the question: if removable batteries and repairability are important to you, why don't you buy a Fairphone?
No, I am saying they don't have the resources to produce phones which are competitive with iPhones on performance. And in the rare cases where a big vendor is able to achieve it, then they inevitably take advantage of that monopolistic position to drop consumer-friendly features like removable batteries, just like Apple. I am saying there is not enough competition at the highest level of performance for market forces to be able to work there.
That is technically not true (Samsung makes their own electronics and their own displays. Flagships from other companies are often based on better specs than Apple's) and completely irrelevant to the point.
> take advantage of that monopolistic position
What monopolistic position?!
> to drop consumer-friendly features like removable batteries
What?! That makes absolutely no sense.
If consumers (as a whole) wanted to have removable batteries, companies would fulfill the demand by producing and marketing those. The fact that the most expensive and premium phones do not have this feature (while a handful of niche companies can offer that at no extra cost) is an indication that the consumer market simply does not care about it.
You are looking at basic supply-and-demand and you are going ass-backwards at it.
It's the entire basis of the argument which I am making. Maybe you are reading past what I am saying if you think it's irrelevant.
> What monopolistic position?!
The position in which they have access to the highest performance hardware.
> If consumers (as a whole) wanted to have removable batteries, companies would fulfill the demand by producing and marketing those.
Customers are more concerned about having the highest performance hardware. That doesn't mean they don't want removable batteries, obviously nobody would be opposed to having a removable battery since it has many advantages and no inherent disadvantages. But the limited selection of vendors which have access to the highest performance hardware don't need to compete with removable batteries because they have something customers want even more, high performance hardware, which cheaper vendors can't compete with due to economics of scale.
If smaller vendors were able to compete in the high performance device space, then perhaps the increased competition would lead to more options for the customer like high performance devices that also have removable batteries. But because of the natural monopoly that exists among the limited number of vendors which can provide high performance devices, they don't have a need to create those options (even though customers would obviously want them).
Yes, your argument that consumers (as a whole) base their choices on performance and technical specs is flawed. Maybe you are concerned about that and most of your peers, but I can bet that the absolute majority of the consumers have other criteria in mind.
Look and feel, for example, would be sacrificed to have removable batteries. Have you seen the Fairphone? It looks like a brick from 2010. It is by far the ugliest phone that I ever had. Do I care about it being ugly? No. But believe it or not, people will not want removable batteries if that means an "uglier" phone, or one that can fall on the floor and get disassembled.
Features always come at a trade-off. If Apple or Samsung wanted to have removable batteries, their phones would have to be larger, or use smaller batteries, certainly they would have different waterproofing ratings, etc. To think that they just don't offer it because they are abusing their monopoly (sic) on high performance hardware (sic) is beyond naive.
This purview that an iPhone is 'consumer unfriendly' is a hint of the arrogance that drives irresponsible legislation.
Literally the most profitable product in history, that 100's of millions of Europeans - including literally probably most of EU government - want so badly they pay a very high price.
'But it's unfriendly!'
No, it's not.
Apple has 100x more credibility than most other parties on what a 'consumer friendly' product might be. Making something work as well as the iPhone is very hard.
Perhaps what you meant is "user friendly". Yes, iPhones are user friendly. No product Apple sells right now, however, is consumer friendly. Not even remotely.
One glance at their history of handling product flaws, repair costs and their tendency to bend the truth until they can't deny the problems anymore will show that very clearly.
But that's not just Apple, it's an industry-wide problem. Apple however have proven themselves to be the grand masters of consumer unfriendly practices.
> Nobody forces you to buy a consumer-unfriendly product that also happens to be arbitrarily expensive.
If anything, Apple's Lightning port (and the 30-pin connector before that) are significantly more consumer-friendly than USB. Where consumers are consumers of Apple products, but still.
In the span of time when Apple only had two connectors, USB went through 3 or 4. USB didn't even have a charging standard until 2012 (the year Lightning was introduced).
A single, monopolistic market would also be "consumer friendly", given those parameters. Obviously we don't want that, do we?
Getting multiple manufacturers to agree on anything is always going to be a challenge and produce some compromises. But it's still better for the market as a whole, which in turn is better for consumers. I look forward to the chance of buying a single, universal charger with great features that will last me decades, from a vendor that may or may not be a phone-manufacturer. Apple would gladly do their worse to stop me from doing that, if they could.
> I look forward to the chance of buying a single, universal charger with great features that will last me decades
I really highly doubt about the decades part. I also highly doubt about the "single charger with great features" because USB has so many optional parts that many manufacturers are unlikely to implement.
If Apple thought they could charge more they would be already doing it, based on their considerable margins. If this makes you understand Brexit I doubt you really understand Brexit.
If you really believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.
The EU, just like any political entity that has grown beyond the original intended responsibilities, has become the stage for cronies and the elites to play their power games.
If the EU was really for "fair markets", Dieselgate alone would have been enough to wipe the German auto industry off the Earth. That is certainly something that has caused more environmental damage and stopped healthier market competition than a fucking power connector.
And don't even get me started on the subsidies given to French farmers and the market quotas for eastern countries that kill any chance for them to develop their industries.
But, hey, at least the EU is giving Apple fans another way to greenwash their consumer behavior, so that counts for something...
"Criminal prosecution for Dieselgate" was political theater of the worst kind. It's an example of systemic and institutional corruption and all that has brought was a couple of scapegoats. If the same thing were to happen in a smaller country, say Poland or Czech Republic, it would be grounds for the bigger EU states to bulldoze the plants and to bankrupt the nations.
Also, it's the second time that you try to counter an argument by throwing an American Whataboutism. Maybe you should let go of the nationalism and find better arguments?
3 - if one is pointing at dieselgate as a failure of EU, there must be a place where such failure doesn't happen. If such a place does not exist, then it's not much of an argument, every system has it's failures. It's not like i am defending WV
Every system has failures. That much is a given. The main issue is about scale of these systems and its failure modes.
The problem of "big" systems - whether the EU, modern day US where federal govt taking over power from the states or Communist China - is that it fails in spectacularly catastrophic ways.
This is why you get crisis like 2008 and Dieselgate. Both are instances of "too big to fail" industries, protected by the government and that in the end screw with the people that they claim to serve and protect.
So it doesn't matter that you are not defending VW, or that you are against Apple. The point is that by backing this ever-growing centralization of power and influence by one single political entity, you make the whole system more fragile and easier to be manipulated by those elites that you so loudly claim to be against.
> there must be a place where such failure doesn't happen.
Switzerland. Local governments rule over any attempt at centralization. Direct democracy. Individual freedom but without forced globalization and universalization of values. Not involved in any wars. NOT AN EU MEMBER STATE.
Ok great you argued the EU is hypocritical when it comes to large local companies.
I still don't see how encouraging competition and interoperability in the smartphone and electronics market is a problem... except for Apple's margins.
If Switzerland is your model, I'm even more confused about how you could be against a liberal economy using protectionist measures against an American company.
They are not encouraging anything. They are just playing a power game to see who can jerk more the other around. In the process, they create costs and bureaucratic obstacles that make it easier for any smaller player to have any chance of entering the market competitively.
> liberal economy using protectionist measures
Because it is a problem with the scale. There is not one economy in the EU states. There are many. By trying to apply a top-level, centralized solution to all member states, it ends up creating sub-optimal solutions for everyone. Or worse, it executes the decisions that benefits the member states with most power: Germany and France.
Systems that are designed bottom-up are more robust, have a more diverse set of tools to solve their problems and fail in more localized, controlled ways. Tell me how many times has Switzerland got into some kind of deep systemic crisis. Now do the same with similarly small countries that are in the EU.
> This is the kind of thing that really makes me understand Brexit.
It seems a tad inconsistent to be against restrictions on imports but also for the kind of fallout that resulted from Brexit. That makes your understanding of Brexit seem incomplete.
And if you don't like price increases on Apple products, don't buy them. That's the only language they understand.
It's not the restrictions on imports that I am against. It is the all-encompassing political bureaucracy that the EU has become and how upside-down its priorities are.
> And if you don't like price increases on Apple products, don't buy them.
I don't buy them already, but the type of connector they use is way down on my list of reasons not to use them. Closed source? Hard to repair? Exploitative app store practices? Spyware that scans your data? An unwilling intermediary into developers and consumers? Greenwashed, overpriced hardware that can only be used by the terms dictated from Cupertino?
Those are reasons to not use Apple. Yet, here we are discussing the most irrelevant feature of their devices like it is the only issue that is wrong with them.
Note how many of the topics you mention as critical are actually discussed at EU level: GDPR, support for FOSS in various programs, ongoing examination of the appstore monopolistic practices, tax-dodging... And chargers too, yes, if anything because it's a pretty simple thing to mandate.
What is "simple to mandate" has not been effectively turned into results even after a decade of "legislation". The rest is nothing but "discussions" or big laws that don't really accomplish anything.
What is the point again? To have "discussions" or to effect change?
I wish I could say something like "keep waiting for the EU to being actually effective, I will be over there with the people that can get stuff done", but the main problem is that the more time passes, the more the EU finds a way to fuck with ordinary citizens and the more we have midwits asking to be supervised, afraid to step outside the lines and pointing out at those that fight the absurdity of it all.
I think Apple is moving in this direction on their own. They sell 4 products that charge by USB-C (Mac, iPad Pro, iPad Air, iPad Mini) and 4 that use lightning (iPhone, iPhone Mini, iPhone Pro, iPad). But it's a gradual change, each of the last few years has seen a product introduced using USB-C.
> They will have another excuse to increase the prices further.
This sounds like a very poorly thought out slippery slope argument, specially taking into account that iPhones' manufacturing cost is already a fraction of the huge price they sell it to consumers (i.e., $200 vs $1200)
At worst, they can block sales across the Union. Somehow I don't think Cook would risk losing their second-largest market on a triviality like this, but who knows.
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).
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
>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.
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".
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
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
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?
And I'm pretty sure you are being fooled by your biases. You want to believe that the EU is necessary for this kind of change to happen, ergo when the change happens (worldwide!) it can only be because of the EU?
- Apple managed to get through all the regulation "mandates" without any serious repercussion to their operations, showing the complete lack of effectiveness of said regulations.
- market conditions and the development timeline of the technology (USB-C with power delivery) can alone explain the gradual change in the Apple product line.
Those are the facts. Now let's go to the opinion part and apply Occam's razor here: between the explanation that requires believing that Apple is changing its products out of fear from EU regulatory bodies (despite historical evidence of the contrary) and the explanation that says changes were bound to happen anyway due to being sensible business, which one is simpler? Which one is more likely to be correct?
> but rather that it’s unconventional for governments to directly stipulate a technology
aren't you forgetting that governments hand out and enforce patents/monopolies/IP?
also it's hard for small groups to compete with giants when those giants have plundered the commons and more and more scientific and technological research is locked up behind their corporate firewalls.
at this point ignoring that plundering is wilful, not due to ignorance. [1]
> aren't you forgetting that governments hand out and enforce patents/monopolies/IP?
In general, "handing out and enforcing monopolies" is a bug in democratic governments, not a feature. So by way of your own analogy, this legislation would be another bug.
> also it's hard for small groups to compete with giants when those giants have plundered the commons and more and more scientific and technological research is locked up behind their corporate firewalls.
I'm already sold on the idea that corporations have too much power and corporations often abuse it. We probably agree here, but I don't think that has anything to do with this case in particular--all of the mainstream connector/power protocols are already open. We're not talking about smaller tech companies being unable to manufacture and sell Lightning chargers (or whatever the tech is called, I've already forgotten).
* 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.
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.
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.
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.