This is the kind of thing that really makes me understand Brexit.
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).
And even with USB-C it's still a hodge-podge of standards with multiple optional and non-optional parts, and it's not getting better: https://old.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/mjz2pu/usb4_a...
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 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.
These are all the plugs USB has come up with over the years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_hardware
I still have a bunch of USB cables and devices at home, and I every time I have to use them I struggle to find the right combination.
Standardization is good. But in this case USB is objectively not a better standard than Apple's proprietary one.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Again with the whataboutism? Who are you trying to fool with this lame rhetoric?
You say you want democracy, but what you are preaching is totalitarianism.
I think you are preaching anarchy.
If you need a label, I am "preaching" localism.
That's not such a bad idea. Or at least make the iPhone more repairable by not having to tare it appart just to change the 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?
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).
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.
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.
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.
Interoperability favors competition, the EU is all about fair markets, not protecting Apple's margins.
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...
Dieselgate has resulted in criminal prosecution, remind me how many people went to jaill after 2008? 2?
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?
2 - I am not even an EU national
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
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
EU bureaucrats are so useless and full of themselves, they think they can teach birds how to fly.
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)