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.
