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Comment by mig39 | Hacker News Reader

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."

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> 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 And as always in politics there will be some well-established players interested in keeping outdated standard in place.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.

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