EU Gives Final Approval to Law That Will Force iPhone to Switch to USB-C
macrumors.com
macrumors.com
Cross network messaging and international roaming were solved problems in europe years before the US due to this kind of standardization.
My theory is that they just want to wait for the legislation so that this very minor change that may upset part of the userbase can be blamed on the EU squarely, and they are okay either way (nigh every other device they manufacture are using usb-c)
If this legislation was 10 years earlier everything in the EU would be using micro/mini-usb today - and usb-c would not be an option without new legislation.
Meanwhile, Apple has been employing USB-C in more and more of their devices. It's not like they've been avoiding it. All the EU has done is ensured Apple won't keep the Lightning connector longer than the 10 years Apple promised.
And wireless is secure if you do it right.
WiFi and bluetooth basebands and drivers have been repeatedly compromised, via public and non-public exploits. WPA3, despite promises of security improvements, remains vulnerable to deauth attacks. 5G LTE, despite promises of tower authentication improvements, remains vulnerable to IMSI catchers.
Oct 2022, Over-the-Air remotely exploitable Linux WiFi vulnerabilities (5 CVEs), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33200171
July 2021, iOS WiFi RCE 0-day vuln, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27868487
May 2021, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27121918 & https://www.fragattacks.com/
> FragAttacks (fragmentation and aggregation attacks) ... is a collection of new security vulnerabilities that affect Wi-Fi devices. An adversary that is within range of a victim's Wi-Fi network can abuse these vulnerabilities to steal user information or attack devices. Three of the discovered vulnerabilities are design flaws in the Wi-Fi standard and therefore affect most devices. On top of this, several other vulnerabilities were discovered that are caused by widespread programming mistakes in Wi-Fi products. Experiments indicate that every Wi-Fi product is affected by at least one vulnerability and that most products are affected by several vulnerabilities.
July 2017, Broadpwn bug affects millions of Android and iOS devices, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14727400
Though I'm not sure if they had a suitable cable? It was weird.
Considering the nightmare of USB-C cable specs, I don't really fault them for not releasing multiple USB-A to lightning cables with different max charging and data rates.
The USB-C to lightning cables support faster charging cables, but they did not improve data rates. This might be because this would add cost, and they weren't willing to have two tiers of cables. It might also be because only a very few devices would support the faster data rates.
The reality is that most people use the cables the phone came with, they only really use them to charge, and even android devices come with USB-C cables that only support USB 2.0 speeds for cost reasons. They aren't sending their files to their computer, they are sending them to the cloud - often over a wireless connection faster than the WIFI network any home computer would be on.
IMHO it is the pro devices and workflows which have really suffered there, since you have a rather nice camera - but with no fast way to get the content onto your workstation.
Apple will probably have Thunderbolt/USB4 on the Pro phones for fast data transfer of large video files. However, the non-Pro phones might be portless, especially if they do a small folding phone.
Apple couldn’t get AirPower to be good enough to release - I don’t see a world where iPhones transition to wireless charging any time soon. The next iPhone will be USB-C, aligning with all current iPads and Macs. I don’t think Apple are even particularly against it; they’re just afraid of the backlash they got after changing connector last time and would rather put that off as long as possible.
This has already happened. The AirPower thing was for a dynamic charging mat that would do multiple devices. All modern iPhones do Qi charging and most of those support a special magnetically-aligned Apple magsafe system for higher power charging.
Killing all ports would also kill all instruments on iOS.
In reality they will go for much more mature acts of spite, like ramp down data and power capabilities for "safety reasons" when not using an Apple-certified USB-C to C cable.
Just ask South Korea how their IE law went :-/
In this case the EU has aligned with an existing industry standard, and has said that they expect the standard to develop over time.
This is done through the USB Implementers Forum. All this law really, truly does is force manufacturers to sit around a table and work out a single solution for the whole electronics market. EU doesn't really care about USB-C or USB-D or USB-Whatever, they just require industry to set aside pettiness and work out a solution.
What if someone comes up with something just better, and doesn't want to deal with the cruft and backward compatibility requirements of USB?
For slow to medium data, USB 2.0 is baked in to so many chips that it's hard to imagine wanting anything else.
For fast data, maybe you want a new port in some situations, but does that also have to be your only charging port?
Have you ever looked at the horror that is USB-PD? The reason you've never seen v1 devices in the real world is because the spec was impossible to implement so they had to fix it in a v2.
"Tiny" probably isn't the best word but it's straightforward enough. It can be put into tiny chips.
Compare with PCIe, which is actually sane.
Nowadays only one brand is against interoperability.
This is because they wanted you to be able to connect a computer to a camera, but also to be able to connect that camera to a printer.
IMHO it really is. For the first releases of power delivery, the IF decided to _not_ go with Apple's existing system that they developed to negotiate charging levels for iPods, iPhones and iPads. Instead they standardized another new, incompatible mechanism.
If you ever wondered why so many Apple devices and cables don't have USB logos, it is because they were left with little way to be compliant with PD 1.0 and still support literally a billion previously shipped devices and chargers at the time.
This caused a market with incompatibilities between Android and iDevice charging ecosystems, which (again IMHO) was what caused the last round of EU mandates in the first place. Qualcomm and others capitalized on various gaps with their own proprietary charging protocols, which then created a need for their chips in chargers as well.
Things really didn't even start to get fixed until rather recently, with Power Delivery 3.0 and PPS.
No one can put a new device on the market without first getting approval from the USB-IF. It means that companies for which the only thing that matters is the fractions of a cent they can save on the production have much more control over the entire industry.
It also means that no one can put a product out that requires _anything_ beyond what the current connector can do, because step 1 is going to the IF and detailing what you are planning to do in a future product, and then wait while your competitors implement your feature and get to ship at the same time as you.
(I don't know exactly "how" in this case)
Also it's extremely unlikely we'll need that for decades. USB-C as a connector supports absurd bandwidth and power. If you can pull 120W and drive 2x 4k displays from your phone... what would be the reason for the next upgrade? (and those are likely not the physical limits yet)
It’s not like the (mostly) unified electric plug has been keeping us from innovation, let’s be realistic here, electricity flowing through a cable won’t change any time soon as the basis for most of our infrastructure, even from a simple physical point of view. Also, wireless charging is not affected, but that will always be less efficient, at least in the foreseeable future.
The problem isn't "the industry" being petty, it's Apple, and Apple alone. Everyone else got over their idiotic pettiness and attempts at proprietary connectors many, many years ago and jumped on the USB bandwagon.
Apple's lightning connector was simply better than what others offered. They had a data connector that worked upside down. They solved an annoyance users had, which is why the thing was so popular. It then took other cell phone manufacturers three years to implement that.
The interoperability between radio equipment and accessories such as chargers is hampered as there are different charging interfaces for certain categories or classes of radio equipment that use wired charging such as handheld mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones or headsets, handheld videogame consoles, portable speakers, e-readers, keyboards, mice, portable navigation systems, earbuds and laptops.
It basically applies to anything that is portable (but not so small that it can’t fit a USB-C socket), battery powered, and has some sort of radio in it. For example, this is presumably why the new Kindle now has USB-C.[2]
[1] https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-10713-2022-...
[2] https://www.theverge.com/23409106/amazon-kindle-2022-e-reade...
People don't really need that much data transfer speed with their phones, and we already have the technology to push 80 Gb/s via USB-C. Apple has gotten by by selling sub-0.5 Gb/s for a decade. And I'd expect us to hit a couple more speed records still before we actually outgrow the physical USB-C connector.
We're also pushing up to 240 watts through the USB-C connector, so the charging side (the one that people care much more about) also seems fine for the USB-C connector.
Other equipments should not be plugged into those sockets, so the physical design prevents it.
If equipment is designed with sufficient insulation that prevents users from coming in contact with the mains voltage in cause of malfunction, 2 pins are generally enough. Otherwise any electrically conductive parts need to have a connection to ground through the 3rd pin to prevent risk of electric shock.
In the UK most electrical outlets are on ring circuits that are limited to 32A - that's a whopping 7.5kW. Fuses in the plugs of specific appliances provide additional protection with 13A being the largest (3kW) required.
Bathroom outlets are required to have a separate transformer that isolates ground. This prevents the possibility of any electric shock from a short to earth. The current the isolated transformer provides is limited so connecting a regular appliance cannot be allowed.
USB-C seems to be significantly more durable than microUSB, and it can handle a really impressive amount of power.
Or is your belief that Apple should aggressively make users replace all their accessories?
The previous iteration of the law in the OP only encouraged the industry to get together and make a decision to use a single connector.
This didn't happen because Apple just refused to participate and now the lawmakers are sick of it and stepped it up.
Apple had a huge number of existing users, with existing accessories, before usb-c was even standardized, let alone before it was available in quantity. Look at how people complained about apple dropping the 30pin connector, and replacing it with something superior in every single way - how do you think that would have gone? Hell when the usb-c macbooks started coming out people complained incessantly about no one having usb-c.
This bizarre belief that there is absolutely no reason to not have switched to usb-c is annoying BS - there is very clearly a tradeoff, and Apple didn't think it was worth it. I'm going with what others in the thread have said, and expect any plug at all to disappear. Although then it sounds like Brazil will have a shit fit about that instead.
They may get rid of the physical connectors but wireless charging is already Qi, PAN connectivity is already Bluetooth and WiFi - all of which are industry standards. If they insist, what did we really lose? I guess efficiency of charge?
Of course, power sockets differ country to country, but that's only because these things were cemented in place long before it mattered, and now it would be extremely difficult to change. But most countries have settled on a single plug/socket design, and that is due to government regulation.
This type of thinking is why the EU got taken out of the phone manufacturing scene back in 2007. We want and need companies that try to, dare I say, Think Differently than their competition. It is foolish and hindsight is probably going to make the EU look really bad. Their policies have a track record of near total failure in the phone electronics space. They couldn't even keep ARM CPUs in the EU. Their industry leaders failed to lead this industry. They should let more competent companies lead, not force their way in to the design process via law.
Everyone is playing ball except apple. They aren't special. They aren't unique. They have to play by the rules like anyone else.
Legislating this way means that the EU won't produce any companies that are special. They won't produce companies that are unique. They will play by the rules and get crushed by the Asians and Americans, who will take turns passing the baton of success between the two continents.
And I look forward to coming back in a few years to see what impact this has on e-waste. I bet no detectable change. People will still throw out the same number of chargers as ever.
That's a pretty big leap from use USB-C like everyone else. Are you saying that now that Apple has to use USB-C there is no more innovation let for them to do? Were people really buying their products just because of thunderbolt?
Just saying, Samsung isn't a Swiss name. Nor are any of the others on that list down to Sony. Maybe Europe has a contender in the also-ran category that makes up number 10?
We have a continent of people who don't know how to design a good phone, pretending that their bureaucrats can make better decisions than arguably the best phone design company in the world. Certainly the best over the 21st century. I don't think that this piece of regulation is that important, big picture - but it is hilarious that on HN this is one of the topics that gets the most unanimous support for the EU. I honestly can't think why, this is the an area where they have demonstrably failed to an outrageous degree.
There is a literal land war in Europe as we speak. Threats of nuclear war fly. There is an ongoing energy crisis. We just came out of a global pandemic, people were being locked down left, right, centre and a lot of deaths because they failed to prepare like the Asians did for the last decade.
And through all this the EU has found time to decide that some committee needs to tell Apple how to design iPhones. This is the stuff of parody! Let Apple design iPhones, and the EU should maybe concentrate on securing peace in Europe. Get their own act together securing peace and freedom before trying to tell a rather successful phone company how to design phones.
What were their politicians doing? diplomats doing? Their engineers? Their doctors and scientists? Hopefully not backseat redesigning iPhones.
A bunch of vendors spent a decade or two shipping charger cables that weren't noticeably innovative, one still does that. The one that still does is also the one that invented Magsafe and doesn't ship that for phones.
One should be careful about drawing conclusions from a handful of examples, or even just one example. I feel safe in saying that even though Apple was legally permitted to use magsafe for phones, that didn't lead to the company doing it.