EU lawmakers overwhelmingly called on Thursday for rules to establish a common charger for all mobile device makers across Europe, a drive that iPhone maker Apple has criticised.
Members of the European Parliament voted by 582-40 for a resolution urging the European Commission, which drafts EU laws, to ensure that EU consumers are no longer obliged to buy new chargers with each new device.
This story is a case of government regulation done extremely well. This whole process started with a voluntary agreement in the industry to standardise on one charger and port, and if they failed, the EU would step in and enforce it by law. This agreement has worked out quite well – first micro USB, now USB-C.
However, one popular phone maker decided to not adhere to the agreement, and so, more than ten years after the agreement, and thus ample time for this phone maker to follow suit, the EU will now have to step in. Apple has already moved all of its devices to USB-C, save for one – the iPhone. Now they won’t have much of a choice but to follow along.
Much like with RoHS, the rest of the world has only benefited from this push for a charging standard, as anyone who remembers the feature phone and PDA days can only attest to (you should see my mutually incompatible collection of just PDA chargers – I must have dozens of them!).
And no, this won’t stifle innovation. This whole process is done in collaboration with the industry and standards bodies, so if newer options come along that the sector wants to standardise on, they can – just as they did with the move from micro USB to USB-C. Apple will just have to suck it up – maybe while they’re at it, they can finally make a charging cable that doesn’t suck?
The EU, legislating for the things that matter! (TM)
Anyway, the reason Apple uses lightning rather than USB-C is because they designed lightning before USB-C existed, and because lightning is a smaller port which allows for thinner devices. Matters a lot more for iPhone than for iPad and Mac.
And Apple actually contributed to USB-C. This is not the not-invented-here syndrome. Apple actually doesn’t suffer from that as much as some people make out – they are usually at the forefront of adopting new standard technologies – such as when they adopted USB initially. And in many cases, they adopt open standards, such as when they moved their Quartz graphics system to be PDF based in the original OS X.
A far important thing that will reduce waste is for products to be used for longer. On that front, Apple is way ahead of other manufacturers. https://www.gadget-cover.com/blog/what-phones-have-the-best-lifespan/
Except when they don’t, like for the software side, instead of adopting Vulkan like everyone else, and coming out with Metal. There is definitely a divide of software adoption vs hardware adoption there.
Metal predates Vulkan! How is Apple supposed to adopt something which does not exist? APIs are a promise – once a company develops and encourages developer to use them, they should really not just abandon them without very good reason.
mkone,
These aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s normal for platforms to support multiple APIs like OpenGL/OpenGLES/directx/vulkan. Linux has some support for all of these (directx through wine of course). And while apple is free to do whatever it pleases, like ceasing opengl development and not providing vulkan support, IMHO that comes at the expense of it’s own users who would clearly benefit by having these standard APIs.
And if only you hadn’t included a completely irrelevant linkbait at the end of your comment…
I am all for unifying around USB-C even though I really don’t think there is major issue. Apple has so many iPhones in the market that lightening cables don’t go to waste.
I do think if the the EU wan’t to minimize waste they need to set a minimum power for chargers. Simply specifying the connector will allow cables to be reused but if each new device needs greater power then chargers will still be discarded.
Chargers will continue to need to be replaced as charging and power storage technologies continue to evolve so there’s no getting around that. What benefit is there to settings a minimum power requirement? Nobody is in a race to be the slowest or meet the minimum.
I am no fan of Apple, and the only Apple product I use is its desktop keyboard (with my Windows PC), but lightning has this small but significant advantage over USB-C: The fragile contact surface is located on a $5 cable (I know Apple charges much more for that cable), rather than on a $500 device. That’s why I’d prefer standardization around lightning, but we all know that’s not very likely.
“That’s why I’d prefer standardization around lightning, but we all know that’s not very likely.”
Well if Apple worked within the USB-group to show that “their” interface is superior why couldnt that happen?
They moved from micro to usb-c so why not usb-c to lightning (or whatever the standardized port is called when its released in 10 years 😉 )
Have you heard about an early 18th century concept called “patents”?
I cannot agree more.
All USB ports suck ass because they are meant to break sooner or later. Looks like the EU government has never bothered to investigate them because if they did they’d mandated a new eco-friendly wallet-friendly standard.
Nope, you got it backwards. USB is designed to break the cable not the port (after an average of 10000 inserts and removals). Lightning is designed the other way, as Apple makes money on selling hardware.
Carewolf
Birdie exaggerates that they’re meant to break, nevertheless it’s pretty clear that both the cables and ports do break before the 10k insert/remove cycle that they’re speced at. I wouldn’t have said anything, but it bugs me that official 10k number gets quoted as a rebuttal even though it fails to live up to this. Maybe they tested it under lab conditions where 100% of the stress gets applied to the direction of insertion with perfect alignment, but in practice the lifespan is probably closer to 500-1000 cycles for microusb under normal use. Miniusb was speced at 5000, but I have more confidence that they might actually reach that as opposed to microusb’s deceptive 10000 claims. The 10k spec, if we could take it seriously, would be ~ 20-30 year lifespan under normal use, but that’s just false advertising as anyone who’s ever had microusb contacts start to fail can attest to. Heck the standard is only 13 years old and so many of us have experienced several failures with multiple devices in this time!
I have never had a micro-B cable break on me. Nor do I know anyone who had.. That is unless I include cables that didn’t have the official logos, and thus didn’t live up to the spec. I have had a few of those, until I learned to look for the right logo that guarantees it follows the specs and the lifetime guarantee.
Carewolf,
Ask around and I’m failure sure you’ll find at least some people who’ve experience this problem, unless maybe everyone you know is in the habit of upgrading every year or two before they start failing. The minimum 10k insertions required by the spec is just not realistic even for the authentic cables that everyone starts out with and many of us can attest to that. What bothers me more than the cable is when the port in the phone begins to fail since that means throwing away the whole phone. This is not something I’ve ever needed to do before or since with USB-C (cross my fingers).
I still see miniusb on many toys and embedded devices, and I’d take it any day over microusb on account of it making a more solid connection. Thankfully I haven’t seen too many products embrace microusb outside of phones, but on significantly more expensive products, I would rethink purchasing anything with a microusb port…
http://forums.rolandclan.com/viewtopic.php?t=54142
I’m just starting to see more USB-C peripherals like webcams and headsets, so far my experience with these has been positive and it feels sturdier than its predecessor, which is a great sign.
The EU tried this once before, a few years back. They wanted everyone to standardize on Micro USB. Think about that for a minute.
Yeah, and it worked pretty well for many years.
They forced the adapters to all be the same 10 years ago. With success, even apple is using the USB-A adapter on the power side. That was the result the last time.
Carewolf,
You aren’t wrong, but darknexus stated “micro usb”, and he’s not wrong either.
As a consumer I feel the standards are extremely useful. Before standardization, every device used something different and the number of unique wall & car adapters was just absurd. You went to someone else’s house, there was no compatibility, this really was terrible. You couldn’t even go to the store to buy a standard charger and many had to be special ordered from your manufacturer. I think we can agree the push to standardize was extremely beneficial. In hindsight, it’s just unfortunate that the EU didn’t do due diligence with regards to micro-usb’s quality issues that so many of us hate it for and I think they just took the USB consortium at their word. I imagine most of us are strongly in favor of having standards, but make sure it’s a good one before you standardize it!
Thom wrote: “ Apple has already moved all of its devices to USB-C, save for one – the iPhone”
Not quite true — the consumer level iPads still use lightning too.