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Comment by kalleboo | Hacker News Reader

If there's a better standard in the future the law can be changed, they didn't put this in the constitution.

I've never had a phone with USB-C to compare, but I've had rotten luck with Lightning. I always get that one power pin that blackens and makes the cable unreliable.

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Yeah, me too. Or even though the cable is supposed to be reversible and yet my phone will only charge if the cable is inserted one way, but not the other. I've had that happen a lot too!

I'm just glad USB-C has come along so we didn't do something foolish like standardize on Micro USB - I hate those ports! I recently bought two brand-new BT speakers and guess how they're charged? Micro USB! Grrrrrrr!!!

> If there's a better standard in the future the law can be changed, they didn't put this in the constitution.

Who will build the spec and research and then lobby Europe to change the law when no device uses it? The marketing of saying “this new spec is better… throw out EVERYTHING” won’t happen.

What will happen is that the hot mess of a market that is the Asian market will grow and change and develop… and throw out cables. And it’ll get better over time while the availability in Europe stagnates.

PS you can clean the blackened pin so it works again.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-why-your-iphone-lightnin...

>Who will build the spec and research and then lobby Europe to change the law when no device uses it? The marketing of saying “this new spec is better… throw out EVERYTHING” won’t happen.

Except that's basically what happened with USB-C. Micro-B was the standard for the EU, USB-C was developed and got approved, and now it's replacing micro-b as the standard.

USB-C was developed partly because lightning should how much better a reversible multipurpose cable could be. The argument is that without the ability for one player to innovate with a new port we not have the same quality of USB-C port we have now.

> the law can be changed

Basically there will never be a usb-d.

The only way I see there being a need to evolve from USB-C is if we see some major developments in optical (cost/size)

The EU seems perfectly willing to adopt new standards if you look at what has been happening in mobile standards (e.g. despite 3G being standardized we got 4G, despite 4G being standardized we got 5G)

3G/4G/5G isn't a good example. Standards evolve, but the issue many people have is that this isn't a standard, but a mandate to use said standard. So people are concerned that the USB Consortium will come up with a USB-D, but new devices won't be able to use it until the EU updates their law.

There's already Thunderbolt 4. And the requirement will expire in 2030. It's fine, stop with the drama.

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