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Comment by alpaca128 | Hacker News Reader

Would you rather have your phone refuse to charge for no apparent reason, or have it popup "slow USB charging" as it does when you connect it to a weaker charger?

Nintendo unnecessarily chose to make their device partially USB-C incompatible in an intransparent way. A lot of users will rely on this working (as it already did on the Switch 1) and then it just won't, and probably the user will just assume their third-party USB dongle is broken and maybe buy another one, which means Nintendo won't get anything out of it and the user will lose more money. Everyone loses but at least the pesky customer can't use a third-party product.

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Aren’t we talking about video out from the dock ?

Because it wasn’t possible for Switch 1. After some time, some alternative USB-C hubs supported the Switch video output but it was basically reverse engineering and I totally remember this first "compatible" hub back in the early days of the console which happened to brick consoles.

Nintendo is like Apple they :

- Don’t want you tu use the Switch in unpredictable ways : with the switch on the dock the cooling is guaranteed to be efficient, even on Switch 1 because it meant that the console wasn’t lying on a blanket.

- Don’t want you to buy anything else than their expensive dock.

Apple devices work near flawlessly with third-party periphery in my experience, what are you talking about? They have some questionable limitations at times (like iPads supporting Thunderbolt but not being able to safely eject USB drives), but I don't buy Apple cables & adapters and that's because they're not needed. I can charge a Macbook with a random USB-C charger on my desk, I can turn on my third-party BT headphones and they're connected within two seconds, I can connect a screen with a third-party USB-C adapter and the only possible issue is that not all USB ports go up to 240Hz. I cannot say some of these things about my PC on which Bluetooth audio simply is not usable at all and some other basics need janky workarounds or ironically only work on Linux.

I have many reasons to be pissed at Apple but connectivity is not one of them.

Lightning was pretty limited. Third party companies either had to be blessed by Apple or clone them some how. For some accessories like video out this was a big limitation.

Again you're just excusing the lack of engineering time put into an onscreen message.

'Overheating detected, reducing video resolution'.

Nintendo will earn millions by keeping it proprietary. Lets stop pretending this is about technical ability or 'protecting' the consumer from a bad ux.

> Nintendo will earn millions by keeping it proprietary. Lets stop pretending this is about technical ability or 'protecting' the consumer from a bad ux.

Nintendo ships a dock with every Switch 2. How big is the market for people buying aftermarket docks? Nintendo has always aimed very squarely at the mass market.

A very selective reply

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