And if Apple was going to switch to USB C anyways, whats the point of this legislation?
It also is just a charger, they can do whatever they want with data.
Are you saying that politicians should be designing technical standards? And how will you ever know there is a need for a new standard if you can't even deploy it?
It's not like this is something new. We've had national standards for things like AC power plugs and outlets for over a century, and they are mandatory in many countries.
https://www.amazon.com/Charger-AYNGWRNB-Certified-Lightning-...
"If Rolex's cost $6,000+, how come I can buy one in the Bronx for $20?" "It's probably not real." "I bought it, it works."
I entirely get what you're saying. But the chip is counterfeit, so the company doesn't pay the licensing cost, that's why the cable is "so cheap". Nothing to do with audiophile-esque tendencies. More that your 5 pack of cables would cost $14+(5*$4, the current license price) if it were that way.
No-one's disputing that you can buy cheap cables that will work (until they don't, because who knows what else was skimped on), just that you don't in any way shape or form have Apple to thank for that, it's entirely _in spite of_ Apple.
It’s amazing that the same people who are worried about not having genuine Apple certified cables are probably the same people who want Apple to open up the iPhone to allow side loading.
Shouldn’t in that case Apple lock down cables more?
On one one hand, everyone is arguing that Apple’s proprietary cables are cynical attempt to make money and they shouldn’t have that control and people should have the choice.
Now I am showing you they already have that choice.
> What do you think is going to happen when you buy cheap USB C cables?
I can buy licensed USB-C cables from reputable brands for cheaper than I can buy licensed Lightning cables from reputable brands. And the USB-C cables are more complex to manufacture. One example is Amazon Basics.
> Now I am showing you they already have that choice.
People will always have the choice to buy anything as long as cash exists. But if you want to buy something that is quality, you will look to a reputable brand. A reputable brand will be economically successful, so it is a target for lawsuits, so they will always enter a license. If the license for Lighting costs more than the license for USB, then a consumer who wants to buy a quality cable will always pay more.
I agree in general; but at some point don't we hit diminishing returns? If I were to say, "18.4 exabytes of RAM ought to be enough for everybody", that'd be basically correct, even future-proofing for the craziest sci-fi holodeck use cases we can imagine, right?
As much as I am for interoperability, a legislation directing a specific technology is one way how we end up with ridiculous standards.
Remember, we still have laws on where we can or cannot tie a horse in town on the books a century after they were irrelevant. Laws move in centuries, while technology moves in years. They are not compliant with each other.
[0] One of the reasons that the loss of the headphone jack is so exasperating, is that's an example of an ideal universal connector; it solved the problem so well, there was little reason to improve on it, either in quality or function.
But the legislation doesn't lock into something that might happen in the future. It locks the future to what we have today.
And in fact, they did. By the time I was reaching adulthood, that was that hard limit built into Win95, give or take boot errors if you had a quarter of that (which was gigantic at the time; 64MB was more than enough to boot it).
Fast forward another 25 years to today, and laptops routinely have 16GB of RAM, and higher end Mac Pros can apparently get a whopping 1.5TB of RAM.
Put another way, the high-end went from .1MB to 1TB in 40 years or so.
I get that we're reaching the physical limits of miniaturization, but I'd still be surprised if my grand kids don't have exabytes of RAM or equivalent on whatever the hell their main devices will be by the time they reach adulthood.
Things change or evolve, and often in ways not foreseen.