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Comment by viraptor | Hacker News Reader

> People often forget Lightning is much superior to microUSB which was the alternative at the time

At the time, yes. But not for years now. Apple could've changed the path by opening this as a standard but choose not to.

> Imagine if we mandated microUSB in 2010.

Apple would include an extra/expanded connector like a number of other device producers. Then they'd talk to the other large companies about moving to a new standard just like the currently introduced law proposes. This is not a "you must use usb-c" law, but rather "you must figure out how to get along" law.

Also, this pretty much happened, just without regulation. EU at the time effectively said "figure it out, or else" and microUSB became a standard for years. Now they felt like they need to push harder.

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> This is not a "you must use usb-c" law, but rather "you must figure out how to get along" law.

No, this is exactly "you must use USB-C law." Please don't reframe it as a strawman.

> Apple would include an extra/expanded connector like a number of other device producers.

They did mandate such thing IIRC, just not forced directly on device, which is a slightly better IMO, to mandate how something is sold rather than dictating how the device should be built.

It's usb-c currently with an explicit: if there's a consensus, it can be changed. See point 9 of https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv%... I mean, the point of the regulation is not usb-c. It's literally called a harmonisation directive, with a currently chosen implementation.

That literally means you have to change the law first, then innovate.

If you read it any other way, you'd be naive.

Good luck getting to "consensus" with the low end Android manufacturers who do not give a flying fuck about the customer experience and want to save $0.02. It just won't happen before they are forced to do it by the market competition, which won't happen now.

It has already happened. This is a change to usb-c from the previously enforced micro-USB which was also done by the EU. So it can be done again.

> Good luck getting to "consensus" with the low end Android manufacturers

Are they going to be more influential than Apple? Because this change happened even with Apple opposing it. And I really don't believe others have a stronger voice in Europe.

MicroUSB was not mandated on the device. The adapter shipped in the box satisfied the requirements. If it weren't for competition from Lightning (2 sided connector) I'm not sure the switch to USB-C would have happened either so no that wasn't a legal transition of the same sort.

Apple is a minority manufacturer in the EU especially now that UK is not part of the EU. Plus EU politicians measure their manhood by sticking it to US companies so they love hating on Apple and Google and favoring China and South Korea.

> This is not a "you must use usb-c" law, but rather "you must figure out how to get along" law.

Correct, thanks for reading the actual regulation

It does specify USB-C as the common charger port for now, of course (with support for future charging protocols over USB-C). And it does allow for technological evolution

(And of course the margin of improvements in wired charging diminishes over time - I think such regulation would have been more problematic before USB-C came along)

> And it does allow for technological evolution

That’s just silly because it doesn’t. Any new standard won’t be able to get any traction because no device would be allowed to use it.

So only major corporations that can afford go lobby EU bureaucrats should have any say? Any small/medium company that wants to introduce any better/improved standard will just be ignored.

If there are competitive advantages they should be able to convince everyone to switch without lobbying the govt

How exactly would that happen? Because this statement seems beyond absurd otherwise (unless it’s sarcasm?)

You need actual functioning devices that people use before any of those hypothetical advantages become obvious.

> Apple could've changed the path by opening this as a standard but choose not to.

Sure, and Apple could have shipped a free pony to every child on earth. But expecting them to do so is childish.

It's not for our benefit. They had a better connector and decided to keep it proprietary. If they made it an open standard, there's a chance the regulation would be enforcing lightning for everyone. They don't get to both keep it proprietary and complain about being forced to sell standard things.

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