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Comment by dagorenouf | Hacker News Reader

Usb-c sounds cool for now. But what about when a new port comes out and Apple can’t use it because the EU still mandates to use the old one?

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Ah yes, that magic new port that dose something we can't do, but nobody can pinpoint what it is or why we need it.

It's been a decade since a new port (lightning was 2012, usb-c is 2014). So apparently, they are doing pretty well!

I think my answer here would "enjoy the next decade of benefits and worry about it then?"

Except that’s exactly what Lightning was in the world of (mini, micro, nano) USB2. Try again

USB-C itself was that "magic" new port 10 years ago. EU at the time was recommending standardization on the abomination that was micro-USB. Luckily they didn’t make alternatives illegal, like now, or you’d never have seen your much beloved USB-C.

Instead of mandating the standard to be used, they should've mandated that phone vendors agree on one standard, with a revision every x years or so.

Luckily, that is exactly what happened! The law explicitly states that it will be reviewed every few years to determine whether USB-C is still the best choice.

And why would a better choice magically appear though when it’s illegal to put it on the market to let it prove itself? Why would anybody who is actually innovative pay to research and risk such a better choice in the first place? To wait for its review in a few years?!

This is indeed what literally happens in tons of sectors where standards are adopted or mandated by law.

It's insane how entitled tech companies are. They see perfectly normal and useful for the consumer standardization as oppression.

Sounds like you describe how aviation and other critical tech work. Every single piece has to be checked and validated by the administration, and yet planes keep flying.

The ideal is two or maybe even three standards. Having one means that upgrading to any new standard would never actually be possible.

When this was first proposed in the EU, the connected they wanted to mandate was the "standard" at the time. USB Mini-B. Which is now deprecated and a few generations behind.

And the same arguments were made at the time. "Stifle innovation" and "what innovation, this connector is perfect. No need for improvement."

> When this was first proposed

Well, it's a good thing they UPDATED the bill that eventually became law, right? I guess they could probably do that again, if necessary!

They technically can, but making such update is not like making a correction in google docs, it easyly can take years. And as always in politics there will be some well-established players interested in keeping outdated standard in place.

I like USB-C way more, and frankly don't like Apple that much at all, but let's not pretend lawfare doesn't have collateral damage.

In everything in life, there are trade-offs between different solutions. Personally, I like having just one connector for chargers even if it takes a few extra years to update. I don't think it will, someone else in this thread mentioned the actual connectors aren't in the law but rather a description of a process that the standards org has to perform when updating the approved connector(s) list.

I do like the same thing. That's why I don't buy Apple things for personal use, and it doesn't even feel like a trade-off. I may agree with using blunt and stupidly heavy weapon which is gov't (in this case supragov't) against power of some monopoly. However, charger doesn't look like that case at all. I think it was picked simply because it makes a nice populist move, and not because it has significant impact on a significant number of customers.

I never understood why this law became so important either. what’s so bad of having 2-3 different type of ports? If your senator / deputy has time to spend working on such laws then maybe they need to rethink their career choice.

How long it took to pass it and how long it will take to update it? Meanwhile when a better port comes up, manufacturers will stay away from it because of this limitation.

Evidently very little time.

Well, obviously the EU authorities aren't as ass-backwards as people claim if they switched from mini-USB to USB-C, are they? So why would they be less flexible if USB-SuperNexGen comes out?

EU regulations are constantly updated to follow modern developments. It’s not a frozen thing.

They add another common standard, probably allowing manufacturers to choose between "old" and "new" for a little while.

Similar to the switch from microUSB-B to USB-C. Budget phones kept using the cheap option for awhile, but eventually costs came down and people settled into the new standard.

Not sure how it's done in the EU, but their legislature could delegate authority to make such decisions to an executive agency if the process of passing an amendment or new law is too slow.

> Not sure how it's done in the EU

That's how it's done, is my understanding. The actual articles of the "usb-c" law[0] doesn't even mention usb-c. Here's what Article 1 states:

> With respect to radio equipment capable of being recharged by means of wired charging, the Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts [...] in order to ensure a minimum common interoperability between radio equipment and its charging devices, as well as to improve consumer convenience, to reduce environmental waste and to avoid market fragmentation, by:

> (a) modifying, adding or removing categories or classes of radio equipment;

> (b) modifying, adding or removing technical specifications, including references and descriptions, in relation to the charging receptacle(s) and charging communication protocol(s), for each category or class of radio equipment concerned.

> [...]

> The Commission shall submit a report on the assessment referred to in the third subparagraph to the European Parliament and to the Council, for the first time by 28 December 2025 and every 5 years thereafter, and shall adopt delegated acts pursuant to the second subparagraph, point (a), accordingly.

So the Commission (which is part of Europe's executive branch) can enact delegated acts to add new technical specifications for wired charging. USB-C is not "hardcoded in law". What's hardcoded in law is the Commission's authority to mandate the use of certain ports.

[0] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

I don’t know why everybody trusts government bodies to act fast and delegate authority as needed when it’s clearly not how things happen in the real world. The nature of government is to be slow, safe and long-term, not enable technological disruption.

For example the cookie law has made most websites significantly less enjoyable and everybody hates it and yet it has been stuck for years, no hope of improvement in sight.

Exactly, standards should be durable and predictable. They need slow, lumbering curators.

When it comes to overbroad laws like the cookies thing, lazy malicious adherence is the name of the game. Simply block JavaScript from domains like "cookielaw.org", and you'll never see the dialogs.

Is it legal that the website doesn't ask for your consent if you block random third parties from executing code on your machine? Who cares!

You mean like when everyone moved from mini-USB to USB-C? It's also good to remember that lightning connectors are USB2 in a different form factor - outdated and slow.

Oh you're giving lightning connectors too little credit. They also come with a LOT of logic to prevent people from charging their Apple devices with unapproved chargers. All added on top of USB 2 (and definitely against the standard, one might add)

Like a lot of Apple and huge company stuff in general, it's a flimsy reason to change something and introduce many limitations the huge company thinks will make them more money. It sure as hell is not about reversible connectors.

What? I've plugged lightning cables into pretty much any imaginable sort of USB-A socket over than last decade and have never encountered one that wouldn't supply a charge specifically to a lightning cable. Please, be specific with what limitations you're referring to because this is counter to all evidence I've ever been witness to.

They supply a charge fine, but no standards-based fast charging.

Oh, so you're moving the goal posts to avoid discussing your lie. Got it.

But please, reference a USB2 or USB3 standard over a type A connection that enables fast charging too. This will be fun.

What you mean to say is: USB Power Delivery as a standard didn't even appear until after Lightning was launched. Any fast charging didn't appear until USB-C specs that only became finalized in 2014.

And Lightning has been charging my iPhones pretty fast

There have been many fast charging standards that are available on way cheaper chargers that apple just ignored. It's not that big a deal, but it did force apple consumers to buy expensive "official" chargers to actually charger quickly.

> There have been many fast charging standards

"Many different standards" means "no standard".

> that apple just ignored.

Apple ignored them because none of them were standards until very, very late

They support Power Delivery 2 and higher just fine. I believe the new phones will use 3.0 PPS as well to more aggressively tune for charging speed vs heat.

USB Power Delivery 1 was a disaster, launched years after Apple had moved beyond 7.5W charging. Android phones typically also ignored it, using Qualcomm's proprietary charging tech.

If you want fast charging, use the bundled USB-C cable to charge your iPhone rather than the USB-A ones from years ago.

To flip it around, what advantage do you think one gets with official Apple iPhone chargers? Do you know of any evidence that Apple promotes their chargers working better than others? And if none exists, why would they sabotage customers who were never educated that hypothetically only Apple chargers charge fast?

Actually having just tested, I have a bunch of "aftermarket" lightning cables, and a few of them some of my iPads (I think the more recent ones) and most of my iPhones refuse to charge. Like at all.

So not fast charging, charging at all. They work on some of the iPads, so they do work.

Why do the phones refuse to charge then? Not fast charging, which I can sort of understand, charging at all.

There wasn't a law mandating the use of the old micro-B port. The EU issued a memorandum asking companies nicely to use micro-B, but obviously it wasn't enforced (Apple never complied).

This situation is different. Apple and others are completely unable to upgrade to USB-D when it comes around.

No, they are not. They will be able to use USB-D in parallel with USB-C until USB-D becomes industry standard, at which point it will be adopted by the EU as the new mandatory standard port.

And during that transition, exactly like now with the Lightning to USB-C transition there will be a lot of e-waste generated... unless the connector is identical

Then industry players would build consensus around a new standard and adopt that into law? Would you prefer a world where browser vendors are all designing their own HTML and JS features independently rather than working off a common spec too?

At a certain scale of adoption/societal impact, having a common set of agreed standards is much more important than fragmented "innovation". I would argue having a general and common way to charge devices qualifies for that level of importance. The incentive on Apple's side to stay off of USB-C can only be one of profit driven customer hostile design... as there's really zero technical or otherwise reason to have stayed on lightning this long.

One of the biggest annoyances in my daily life is having to swap back and forth between USB-C and lightning cables. These lightning cables being sold today are effectively trash to be thrown away in a year or two. Completely unnecessary, and hard to have any respect for the intelligence of people who defend it. There is no slippery slope here. If Apple wants to build a next gen port, then they do it alongside other industry players rather than monopolizing the technology so they can charge 10x markup on cables/accessories/licensing... which imparts zero benefit to the consumer.

That exact same waste/annoyance is going to happen during the USB-C to USB-next transition.

And as it is it seems extremely unlikely that Apple wasn't already planning Lightning for iPhone...

I would agree, but i really don't know if this happens. top usbc can endure 120-240W and 40gigabits/s and I am not sure we've even hit the limits, some Chinese brands had mock phones with abnormal charging speeds (at least I'm about sure 120w). Like I can't imagine what new features some port could bring, that we'll want in a phone that fits in our pockets. The only thing changin imo is maybe a new fancy more durable form factor, but I can't say usb-c is that bad in this direction

Lightning is a better physical connection than USB-C for phones. It's still reversible, but more importantly, it's more durable as there isn't a tongue inside to get broken. Before you reply saying that you've broken a lighting port, read carefully - I'm not claiming they're indestructible, just more resilient to needing to be cleaned out. If you work near metal and dirt or even just missoportune bits of fluff, they'll get stuck inside the port. Solution is to take a paperclip and jam it in and try pulling out the metal shavings or other foreign debris. USB-C's internal tongue is too breakable and in-the-way.

Now, not everybody works in or near a metal shop or a saw mill, but all the people I know with phones wear clothes, which sometimes has lint, especially in pockets where phones are kept, and so aren't totally immune from this problem.

Thankfully there's wireless charging, and it's decently powerful/quick these days, so the whole port can be taped off - when you remember before you go into the workshop, which hopefully is every time.

Just to be sure, isn't lightning more liable to corrosion because contacts are 'naked'?

The issue with lightning is not that it is old, but because it is available only on Apple devices.

Here's a crazy idea. USB-C can coexist with the new port until the new port proves its worth standardizing to the same degree (as USB-C).

But somehow we have decided that small computers (aka phones) must only have 1 port.

> But somehow we have decided that small computers (aka phones) must only have 1 port.

Because, you guessed it, they are small. And any port you add requires a not insignificant amount of space

There will never be another one. Who would put R&D into something the EU might not approve?

The next one is actually already on the horizon and it's called Qi2

USB-C is only mandatory for specific classes of devices. Presumably, if some new technology would have a good chance to provide a substantial improvement, it would also make sense to develop it for other devices. In addition, it’s possible to develop compatible extensions to USB-C, meaning technical progress isn’t “frozen” at the current USB-C version.

Good point. Laws are immutable and can never be changed.

It doesn't really matter if laws can or can't be changed, the question is whether or not regulations imposing a standard on manufacturers on what kind of connector they put on their phone should exist at all.

Yeah, they could just impose additional tax for nonstandard phones, like +30% the price. This way if a company really wants a fancy port, they technically can do this, but likely will loose market share because of a big price compared to companies that follow standards

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