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Comment by jld89 | Hacker News Reader

A LOT of less waste maybe ?

It is very inconvenient and a hassle to have 5 different cables for 5 different devices. It is a waste of space, materials... The economic gains by volume continent wide should not be underestimated.

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Do you actually have data on that though? I see that kind of argument get thrown around but it is never substantiated.

How will usbc lead to less waste?

If you wanna make that argument, wouldn’t it be better to force companies to opt you out of getting chargers and cables unless you explicitly ask for them when you make the purchase?

> If you wanna make that argument, wouldn’t it be better to force companies to opt you out of getting chargers and cables unless you explicitly ask for them when you make the purchase?

That is a natural step forward after the cables are unified. Even today, 80% of the electronic devices I'm buying are coming without a charger and this is all due to the fact that the market stabilized to USB charging (mini and now USB-C).

I still remember we used to have drawers full of old phone chargers...

I still have a small sack of those old chargers. Can't put them in the generic waste, nobody would buy them, and I've been too lazy to take them to the electronic waste recycling.

They already do that in Europe, IIRC my iPhone came with just a lightning to USB-C cable and no charger.

Apple already does that with chargers, new iPhones no longer come with charging bricks, just the cables. I'd be fine with not including the cables if the phones were USB-C, but since they're Lightning the likelihood of a new iPhone user already having a cable that will work is very low.

less cables needed = less waste

Yes but do cables contribute a significant amount of waste in general, worthy of being specifically regulated? I actually don’t know either way, so it would be nice to see some data.

you do not need data to know that hundreds of millions of people using one less cable will = hugely lessened waste

Yes, that was part of the proposal: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_21_...

> Unbundling the sale of a charger from the sale of the electronic device

But without a universal charger that doesn't make sense: if I still need a specific charger for a device, I'm going to have to buy that with the device anyways.

I will basically immediately throw away about a dozen cables and need to buy new ones. I'm unclear on how I'm gaining in this.

You've somehow avoided USB-C cables? That's confusing to me since I have an iPhone and other Apple devices. My phone uses lighting but my Beats earbuds, My Macbook Pro, and my iPad pro use USB-C for charging. Plus plenty of other non-Apple devices.

Not at all. I have like a dozen lightning cables in various places (work, many places in my home, my car). I have 2-3 USBC cables.

So, now I'll have to replace the one in my car (with, I guess, a usbA to usbC cable?), I'll have to replace the ones all around my house.

Unless you are suggesting that I should only charge my phone in the one room with my Mac?

Yes, I suppose if you want to charge your phone in a dozen locations, and you want a separate cable for every location, that will be what you need to do. It doesn't seem like a major hardship to me, having lived through a few connector changes, like the 30-pin to lightning switch, but I suppose it may be more of an issue for others.

It's just back to my point. This change will cause me to throw away a significant amount of cables (some over 5 years old). That's a decent amount of waste.

Really? I consider myself pretty economical, but I throw out much more than a few lightning cables worth of waste in a given week (probably more on any day even). Would they even really be noticeable in your trash can?

If your argument is “you already throw away so much stuff that it doesn’t matter”, then what’s the point of the law in the first place?

I don't know that I had an argument, more of a question of if a couple of cables would even be noticeable as trash.

I'd say my argument is purely logistical - one less cable type would be quite a boon to me personally. I have a few lightning cables that only work with exactly one device that I own - my iPhone 11. I'm quite happy with my phone, and perhaps ironically for Apple, the best way they'd have to get me to replace it would be to make a new one with a USB-C port; it's the feature I'd most like at this point.

I'd also love to see touchid make a return, but I don't see that happening.

This law might have actually encouraged more waste than would have otherwise existed.

Cables (generally) don't go bad in a year or two and can last for quite a few years. Most long-term iPhone users probably have at least a few spare cables throughout their desk, house, car that they've bought over time that they'd now have no substitutes for and would need to replace.

You might have dictated a situation where people now have to throw away a pile of perfectly usable cables/accessories and buy a bunch of new ones. While well intentioned, this law might have otherwise achieved the opposite of what it set out to do.

PS: Whether this law exists or not, I'd have bet on Apple working to go fully wireless soon and this might just accelerate that effort.

> You might have dictated a situation where people now have to throw away a pile of perfectly usable cables/accessories and buy a bunch of new ones.

I mean, or Apple could do the one thing they've done absolutely tons of recently (so it wouldn't be a surprising or unheard of move from them) and sell a dongle for lightning -> USB-C?

Now you don't have to do any of what you just said would be a guarantee.

Less waste after iPhone users all have to throw away their cables and buy new ones, presumably?

It's OK to make decisions with long-term beneficial impacts that may come with short-term negatives. I'd also wager the majority of iPhone users have USB-C cables already.

Why would they? I can guarantee my parents don't. I guess I got one last year when I got an Xbox controller to connect to the PC, but I don't want to use that one for my phone, it stays with the controller.

I guess if I'm going to replace my phone I should do it soon while I can still use my existing cables with the new one.

You're going to buy an 800 dollar phone to avoid spending 20 dollars on wires?

They'd have to throw away their phones first for the cables to become useless, I'd say the phones are the larger e-waste problem.

There is more waste this year, but in 10 years there is less waste.

Assuming USB-C is the last connector humans invent...

For all we know, it very well could be.

...now, whether that's because it's that good of a connector or because we humans wipe ourselves out before we get around to inventing something better is another question altogether.

In 10 years, we'll be on USB5/6 and who knows what that cable will look like

It's not going to affect existing phones.

Straw-man argument, as the law won't require retroactively changing the port on existing iPhones.

Most iPhone users are going to buy new iPhones though, eventually. And when they do the lightning cables they already have are going to be useless and they'll have to replace every single cable they own.

This literally just created a mountain of e-waste. We turned a hypothetical "what about when they switch" into a forced reality.

How long do you think the average lightning cable lasts?

I mean depends. Sure, some people are hard on cables but I'm still using the original that came with my 2017 iPad I'm writing this on.

I don't think I've had any decent lightning cable wear out. The super thin and cheap ones have, but I haven't had any from Apple or Anker wear out yet.

I mean, I’m an iPhone user and have plenty of USB-C cables. And charging cables rarely last that long anyway, so I don’t think this is going to be a big deal.

Um... What portion of your budget are you going to have to spend to buy a couple USB-C cables? Like if you really need, I can probably send you one or two because otherwise I'd just throw them away.

Cables aren't e-waste. Phones are.

It's not a straw man, and you clearly have neither learned what a straw man is, nor really looked at this entire issue.

Not if you already have an Apple iPad or an Apple MacBook that's already USB-C.

The plug will be universal with usb-c, but not the cable specs, I read someone of someone that have a usb-c-jack dongle that came with the phone and worked, then when it broke he bought a new one but it didn't work, the dongle itself was not using a standard, also I read a lot that fast charging is kinda property with each manufacturer, so a cable that can fast charge one device might not be able to fast charge another, and the blame is on USB itself, it's like HDMI, everything is optional, so you can't be sure if you bought the correct usb-c cable.

At least with lightning you know what you are buying, and maybe the overpriced cables that Apple sells will work better than the most cheap ones, which brand give you the warranties for the cable specs? does belkin and co sell also cables?

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