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Comment by jollybean | Hacker News Reader

The iphone uses the 'thinnest' connector of all, which I find nice.

All phones use 'thinner' and better chargers than they did 10 years ago.

It's unbelievable how people are default supporting this completely unnecessary intervention.

This is exactly the kind of bad regulation we worry about, because it might have immediate populist appeal, it's ultimately not really a win.

There are so many other things that need regulation aka app store rules, pay pal taking your money.

There's nary any real advantage in 'single charger' and it'll make evolution that much harder.

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All Apple users I know are joyous because of this, simplification of life long term. Nobody enjoys carrying lightning cable for their phones and USB for everything else

Maybe if Apple would make their lightning an open free standard, this would be now adopted, but since Apple is... well Apple their arrogance met the laws of place not governed by corporations (that much)

"The government will force companies to make a product decision that I happen to like"

This is an extremely bad reason to support this legislation.

The government could legislate any number of product changes, they don't do that, because that's not their role.

Apple has always been a leader in these areas, and this kind of thing will definitely stifle from making the decisions they need to, in addition to the fact their are all sorts of unintended design consequences on these forced choices.

There are really only 2 kinds of charges floating around these days, and several mechanisms for handling both, it's not even a 1/10 on the problems we face.

This is really bad populism, the EU is running up the wrong tree here.

> The government could legislate any number of product changes, they don't do that, because that's not their role.

In many cases they do, because it is their role. They have done so now with charging cables. You can whine about it until you turn blue but the objective fact remains that the EU has now made regulation of charging cables part of their role.

Roles of governments aren't set in stone, they can in response to changing cultural and social norms, corporate practices, economic conditions, etc. The EU is not obliged to neatly confine itself according to your demands.

> The government could legislate any number of product changes, they don't do that, because that's not their role.

Why isn't it? Is there a certain "size" an issue needs to be before it becomes government-appropriate? How do you determine that size?

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