Hacker News Reader

Comment by outoftheabyss | Hacker News Reader

This removes the incentives to innovate though. If you are found to have created the latest innovation surely there’s only two outcomes: either you can’t go to market or you are compelled to allow competitors to piggy back off of your technology en masse

View on HN

When a technology matures, at some point standartisation becomes more important than innovation.

Power distribution, wall sockets and fire safety, fire hydrant connections were all unregulated and subject to innovation at some point. A fire engine from a different city could not connect to your water supply. At some point we decided that it wont do. We are gradually arriving to that point in software.

Wall sockets are standard - but what about the other end?

My point is that at this point, benefits of standartisation outweight benefits of marginal innovation.

What are you actually saying? "if a toaster doesn't work off USB C, neither should an iPhone have to?

I’m saying that the analogy is flawed. There has never been a mandate or standard for the device end of a power cord.

What a weird coincidence that the power cable to my desktop fits my flatscreen monitor! What are the odds that would happen by pure chance?!

And yet my power cable from my Dell laptop doesn’t fit in my work provider HP laptop. Not does the cable from my son’s Sony fit the XBox....

It's not an analogy, it's a general principle: we put a standard in place in important industries with mature technology. Your car has a standard interface to a petrol pump. Fire engine has a standard interface to a fire hydrant.

Some people believe it's time for a standard interface between a phone and a charger.

We don’t have to reach for other industries. Electricity in the home is definitely “mature” yet we never saw the need for the government to mandate a standard for a plug on the device end.

The "other end" almost always has IEC connectors in Europe. Is this not the case in your country?

If there's no regulation enforcing this, it's because the EU doesn't think it's necessary — the industry has agreed upon a standard without intervention.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60320

I have multiple laptops and various other gadgets that use different connectors.

> If there's no regulation enforcing this, it's because the EU doesn't think it's necessary — the industry has agreed upon a standard without intervention.

Which is exactly what the EU asked them to do with chargers, 15 years ago :) And then they didn't so here's the resolution.

And if they had done it even when the iPhone 5 came out in 2012 they would have been stuck with micro usb. Would that have served customers well?

Maybe it’s a good idea to let the market compete and come up with better ideas than the government mandating things....

Those are all examples the market would solve really well. If some car manufacturer were to release a car that cannot be filled up at a regular petrol pump, nobody would buy the car. Those isn't happening with phones because clearly not enough people care.

> Those are all examples the market would solve really well.

Fire engines? No.

If consumers would agree, people would stop buying Apple products because of this. Apple would be forced by the market to adopt the same connector. Clearly none of that is happening because nobody cares. If it's a big issue for someone they can just not buy an iPhone. That option already exists.

Are we at that point yet? The other thing about power distribution, wall sockets and fire safety is that they hardly ever change. If this had been in place 10 years ago, we could be stuck with micro USB.

They can innovate to their heart's content, so long as the connector is compatible, and the legacy charging protocol still works. So e.g. if USB-C is the standard, Apple could still use Thunderbolt 3.

So they can innovate, so long as it is within a strict and limited set of boundaries. That is the very definition of stifling innovation

Reply on news.ycombinator.com