The US has a long way to go before adopting a universal charger policy | Hacker News Reader

The US has a long way to go before adopting a universal charger policy

arstechnica.com

8 pointscarride11 comments

I understand that governments prefer a standard and may want to avoid proliferation and vendor lock-in, but I'm still not convinced this is something that needs to be legislated. When the next version of USB comes out will we then have to legislate that too?

Yes, this proposal - and more broadly - government bureaucrats legislating technical choices for consumer products is a terrible idea. The problems it aims to address are real but government regulation is poorly suited to multi-national, rapidly evolving, market-driven things like this. There are too many stakeholders with divergent price, capability and performance needs based on personal context and preferences. Similarly, there are thousands of potential solutions and suppliers in a complex ecosystem with near-real-time market signals and multi-layered feedback loops.

While free market solutions can have their issues, this is the class of problem where iterative, contextually responsive and adaptive approaches tend to work better than alternatives and top-down, high-latency, one-size-fits-all central planning often makes things worse in hard-to-predict ways.

Why do we need a next version ?

> They pointed to new products making specialized chargers obsolete (looking at you, 30-pin connector)…

And with that, I lost interest in this article.

For those interested, check out https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/30-pin_Connector: The 30-pin connector allowed both USB _and_ FireWire (which existed back then) charging & data, line-level audio output (better for sending into a stereo), and (for some models) video output. It also provided a serial interface for iPod querying and control. It allowed a car, for example, to query what was on the iPod, control it, and get audio back over line-level.

Calling out the 30-pin connector in this way is, in my opinion, a disservice to what needed to be supported at the time the 30-pin connector was introduced.

Who cares? You've got 2 choices of cables - USB C and Lightning (I ignore MicroUSB because that's mostly deprecated in modern cell phones). I can use the same power blocks because I can easily buy USB C to Lightning or USB A to Lightning or USB A to USB C.

I don't get the hysteria and massive government overreach on this whole issue? Seems to me at least in EU it's just the usual Anti-Apple venom which colors a lot of decisions they seem to make in the tech world.

It is the threat of pending regulations which pushed the industry to have shareable reusable blocks you mention. Before this "innovation" the industry did not care, and gave hardwired power blocks. In the past you had to throw the entire cable and attached power block into the trash.

The main reason for the regulation is to lessen e-waste. Once a majority of phone and tablet owners all have the same connector, they no longer need a new wall charger or cable to be provided when they buy a new device. They will already have the cable and wall charger from their previous device, or easily share from others. If they really need a new one, they buy.

Meanwhile there is incentive for the manufacturers to work together when proposing the next iteration of charging technology.

My problem with USB charger ports is that they are sensitive to oxidation and gooey dust. I miss the old "cylinder with pin" ports. Never failed me.

I don’t see why they (Apple, Samsung) would bother having two plug designs. I expect the USB format to be adopted globally. It would be nice if it were better designed, but thems the breaks.

Other than apple, isn't this a "problem" that the industry has largely solved already? When was the least time you saw a proprietary connector on a new non-apple product in any of those products categories? Seems like politicians trying to get wins on things that don't actually matter...

“ In a letter sent Thursday [PDF], Senators Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) asked Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo to look toward a strategy that would require universal charging standards in consumer tech”

Bravely solving a problem that doesn’t exist, immune from all unforeseen consequences.

Unless there is some kind of consumer safety issue involved I see no authority to dictate technical choices.

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