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Comment by heliostatic | Hacker News Reader

I believe we have found the economist.

What's the electrical failure rate of every appliance in your home, and the associated risk of death by electrocution? If you don't know offhand, it might be that you are implicitly relying on UL standards to keep you safe and whole.

Consumers don't have perfect information, so the risk is asymmetric. If you assume the market will sort out risk and quality so we don't need standards and enforcement thereof, I don't believe your model is aligned with reality.

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Many responses to my comment made the same argument, so I’ll just reply here.

What do you see as the main safety differences between Lightning and USB-C? As both systems have been in use at scale for some time now, this should be easy enough to answer quantitatively.

My understanding is that they offer equivalent safety, in spite of Lightning not having been standardized by the EU, but I may be wrong.

Your response does zero to address (absolutely rightful) negative comments on your original comment, nor is it related to your original comment that sounds like a parody of a Wall Street liberals before they start crying for government bailouts. It's just a poor Red Herring argument that you provided.

Did the EU create the usb-c plug or was this standard enforced only after it already existed and was a de-facto standard for everything non-Apple?

The person you replied to did not imply that there was a difference in safety between lightning and usbc, they just used safety as an example of regulated standards with which to attack your reasoning. The EU is mostly seeking to reduce waste by standardising common parts.

You're missing the point. It's not that Lightning is bad, it's probably great (I don't have any iThings to compare). But left to themselves, it's entirely plausible that Apple will just abandon it in a few years in favor of some exciting new technology called Laser or Quantum or Telluric. Sure, people will complain, but they'll upgrade because there are some other great new features on the iPhone 17, plus clinging to old stuff makes people feel poor.

Lighting has been the standard for Apple devices longer than USB-C existed, since 2012. The previous standard, the 30-pin connector was introduced in 2003.

Apple has had fewer connectors than the USB standards.

USB for small devices like phones has gone: Proprietary -> Mini -> Micro -> USB-C

In the same timespan apple has gone: 30-pin -> Lightning

Yes, but USB connectors are spread across an entire universe of devices, Apple connectors are proprietary.

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