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Comment by nickff | Hacker News Reader

>"I don't think replaceable batteries or USB-C requirements restrict the industries ability to move forward. "

Compelling the use of USB-C will cause stagnation in connector innovation; there's no point in trying to to create new and more durable/water-proof/wear-resistant/faster connectors. The requirements for replaceable batteries may cause stagnation in other innovations; if we imagine that there'd been similar requirements in the alkaline era, we might never have gotten to Lithium-Ion.

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Note that USB-C was invented after the EU mandated Micro USB. Innovation still happens and the regulations get updated.

How did Apple sell phones in the EU without micro-USB?

Common EPS was a voluntary standard.

So the idea that mandatory standards don’t halt progress because phones moved past micro USB is hogwash, then?

There's no reason why devices can't have such a newer, better port alongside type-c. Until the new port gains traction the presence of type-c will help with compatibility, and presumably once this hypothetical connector has been proven better than type-c the regulation will simply be updated to mandate that instead.

How can it exist along side USB-C? You mean two ports or a converter or something?

Either a port that's compatible with USB-C charging but has otherwise different pins or electrical characteristics (just like how a USB-A port has 4 pins in USB 2 but 8 pins in USB 3, but is still compatible). Or you just add a second port.

Ugly to have 2 ports.

Before we standardized on micro USB, lots of phones had ports easily three times the width of USB-C. We were ok with that back then, so why would two USB-C sized ports next to each other be so bad? In return, all your gizmos and chargers continue to work in the transition period.

Or, just make the new port a barrel connector like a headphone jack, just with more segments. Bonus points if you can plug in an actual headphone and it works. Nobody seemed to have a problem with a headphone jack next to their USB port.

Why do I want a headphone jack on my phone?

I don’t. It’s all Bluetooth now. I like wireless headphones.

But you should be free to buy them and we can both vote with equally with our wallets.

Go buy phones that have the 3.5mm jacks and send the signal that consumers still want plugs invented in the 1950s. If that’s what you want to signal. You have a great way to tell Apple if you like what they are doing! So do I.

Maybe Europeans like wired headphones over wireless? That’s news to me, but they should vote with their wallets. If you like what a company does, but things that company makes. If you don’t, don’t.

It bugs me to see a government meddle with what customers want to buy.

Don’t rig the system so you get a bigger voice than others. That’s not fair.

it bugs me to see rabid "free market", after all europe is birthplace of socialism

Ugly to have 5 cameras on the back :-)

> The requirements for replaceable batteries may cause stagnation in other innovations

What conceivable stagnation could requiring replaceable batteries cause?

How can we know?

This is part of the challenge with these regulations - by definition we're defining a framework based on existential knowledge.

What about batteries that can also be panes of glass that act as the display? What about ultra low-power devices that are powered kinetically by typical human movement or magnetic perturbations?

None of these currently exist in a commercially viable form, but if we regulate based on our current view of technology do we run the risk of making these innovations more challenging to bring to market? That's the challenging balance that needs to be considered.

The regulation gives manufacturers quite a lot of leeway on how easy it is to replace the battery. You could make the display a battery, just make sure users can replace the display with pull tabs, a set of precision screwdrivers and whatever other commercially available tools you want. And from just skimming the regulation, I don't see how devices would be forced to have a battery. It talks about devices with batteries, and batteries in mobile phones, but if your device doesn't have a battery then this regulation simply doesn't apply.

History is littered with examples of policy creating unintended consequences causing more harm than good. Or at least negating the early good it created over time. It’s usually fine at the start until cracks start to show and policies are often a one way street, that only get reformed many years after the problems become apparent, if at all.

It's also littered with examples of a lack of policy causing untold harms. A light-hearted one would be the time libertarians found out that policy helps keep the bears away[0].

The answer isn't to abandon policy, it's to design it to be flexible and to respond quickly when problems are discovered.

[0] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-...

"Connector innovation" is a solved problem. We really only needed symmetric connectors so we didn't have to insert a cable twice each time.

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