Yes but why is it so bad to let companies choose what charging cables they provide?
You get a free charging cable usually when you purchase a new phone and charging cables are cheap.
I get the environment argument but I don't see how this moves the needle on protecting the environment. If anything it could scare off tech companies from developing charging cables that are better for the environment.
> You get a free charging cable usually when you purchase a new phone
"Free". It's amazing how many consumers see it this way. When everyone has the same charger phone companies can actually start putting it in as an optional paid add-on, which virtually no consumer will take. The hypothetical environment argument is spurious at best.
Um... may be because the median Smartphone cycle is now 3 - 4 years in most countries and it would not be bad to have a new Chargers and new cables put to work?
Arguably not Charger, but you do get the possibility of improved charger or higher power charging. But all cables wear out. So not really wrong with providing it by default.
I carry two phones, my private Android phone (my personal preference) and an iPhone imposed on me by work. Not having to bother with two sets of cables would be a welcome improvement.
As for "not moving the needle", every little thing sums up. Also, it's not just the cables - manufacturing lines, shelf space, redundant labor, ...
I’m pretty sure that using two phones offsets any environmental savings from a single cable by quite a bit. Who knows when the EU will crack down on that kind of splurging?
I mean, I know from the American cultural point of view, government intervention is like a last resort, and you have to prove that it's absolutely necessary in order to apply it. Government is seen as an enemy and every one of its actions seen as a potential limiter of freedom, hence the right to bear arms (I hope it never becomes necessary, I suspect guns vs. drones and missiles wouldn't be a very fair fight).
But we are talking about an EU directive here. As an European, if the government makes regulations that make life more convenient for me (and other citizens), that's amazing, it's what I'm voting and paying them for. And I think most Europeans would see it that way.
Because it would be more convenient for everyone who has ever or will ever own more than one phone, or ever upgrade their phone. Imagine if you needed an adapter to refuel your car, or to plug an electric device into a wall. Genuinely, how is this any different?
We’ve seen what happens when corporations can’t get their shit together - VHS/Beta Blu-ray/HD-DVD - the market decided. We didn’t need government to mandate a standard.
That's an obnoxious and immature way to jump into a conversation. I didn't touch on government action anywhere, nor the comment I was responding to.
I understood the parent post as arguing that having a unique cable isn't so bad because you get one for free with the device, among other things. While this is true, my counter is that having a single cable over multiple devices is still nice.
Making life convenient is kind of one of the things that governments should do for their citizens. And intervention is the only way to make that XKCD strip about standards not true.
OK, so do you want them to make life harder? Or just sit around? Because I prefer it when they actually do something for the ordinary citizen. Fortunately we didn't have Reagan here in Europe, so we still care about ordinary citizens.
That's what big business would like you to think, so that you leave them alone. Truth is, the government is the only thing with power that may actually give a damn about you, even if just to get re-elected. Business cares about the bottom line only. Workers' rights, the environment, convenience? All don't matter if they hurt the bottom line.
Yes businesses care about the bottom line - but the only way they make money is by selling things that people want.
The government should be involved in regulating where there are negative externalities. Negative externalities are not - I don’t like having two cables.
Also politicians care about what the majority wants. As long as you’re part of that majority you’re fine. But if you aren’t - the last thing you want is more government power.
Businesses don’t have the ability to take away my property or liberty. The government does. Given a choice between the two, Id rather the government have less power.
Please make yourself familiar with a bit more modern economic theories. The belief that the unregulated market moves things to an optimum for all participants has been proven to be wrong by modern game theory. Not all economic games have their equilibrium at the optimum for consumers.
I leave open if this particular intervention on chargers is beneficial for the public or not, but you will have to argue about chargers to make a point, not about governments and markets.
And taking a look at history - even recent history. The government definitely doesn’t move things in an optimum way for all participants.
The difference is that businesses don’t have the power of the state to compel me to buy their products. I can change phones a lot easier than I can change governments.
Again, you need to show specifically that a uniform charger is less beneficial to consumers than letting Apple keep their proprietary patent-protected charger.
I want my iPhone and my Android phone and my tablet and my notebook to share the same charging port. I would definitely buy an iPhone with USB-C if the market would offer one to me. However, the market won't give that to me. Even if 90% of iPhone buyers would prefer USB-C over Lightning, Apple would not give it to us, because it is beneficial for their business to build their own walled garden.
I don't know if forcing Apple to agree with other vendors is a net benefit for all consumers or not. However, as you seem to have a very strong opinion on why that would be detrimental to consumers, you need to show where consumers would be negatively affected, specifically for charging ports.
This has nothing to do with what one thinks about governments in general.
What I am saying is simple. Giving the government more power without a compelling reason is always detrimental. Making things a little more convenient is not compelling.
But why stop at the connector? Why not force Apple to make AirDrop, FaceTime interoperable? Why not force Apple to port iCloud backups to Android or force Apple to allow backups to third party providers?
I think we have to agree to disagree. I assume that you are not living in the EU. Our experiences here with governmental regulation are not so bad. Companies are complaining, but consumers are not.
Making things a little more convenient for everybody is super-compelling if there is no downside. Freedom for humans is an extremely high value. However, companies are not humans, there is no inherent benefit in giving them as much freedom as possible. And I know economics well enough to confidently state that freedom for companies does not naturally cause well-being and freedom for humans.
And definitely: Every country regulated power outlets. Every country regulated landline phone connections. Every country regulated mobile phone transmission. EU even regulated mobile phone roaming prices. Now they are regulating chargers. And I hope they won't stop, but do everything to keep modern technology open. Industry loves to lock consumers into separate, proprietary, walled gardens. There is no viable strategy for individual consumers to escape. The only viable strategy to escape is by regulation.
No countries did not regulate mobile phone transmissions. The US licenses bandwidth to different companies but did not legislate the protocols. That’s why in the US you had things like push to talk and Sprints aborted 4G non LTE protocol. The market killed it - not the government.
As far as not being able to escape, before 2007-2010, everyone feared the Windows lock-in, technology and the market made that not as big of a fear. Before that it was IBM.
By the time the slow moving government finally made a decision about IBM’s mainframe monopoly that it started in the 60s - in the mid 80s - the market had made the case irrelevant.
As far as everyone liking the files of the EU - see Brexit.
Windows was lock-in in late 90s and early 2000s. That was not only a fear. EU forced Microsoft to open Windows during that time. And that was a good thing. I don't want to wait decades until that stuff is sorted out by obsolescence.
Where is the advantage in waiting for the market?
However, no one forces you to live in the EU. Even countries can exit it. Let us do our thing, and you can do your thing. The market will sort it out :-)
EU had no affect on the browser wars. How do you explain that Chrome took over in the US. Again, Google made a better browser while Microsoft was sleep at the wheel.
Microsoft is just as dominant with Office and desktop PCs as it was in the 90s. The web and then mobile just made the desktop less relevant.
Of course, everybody can interpret history as they like. The fine handed out by EU to Microsoft was of course also a deterrent against further similar attempts, and Microsoft afterwards changed their tactics not only in EU, but world-wide. Or did you not get the Windows browser choice menu in US?
No we not did not get the Browser choice in the US. That’s kind of the perfect control to show that government policy didn’t have any effect. Chrome took over in both markets.
Also it wasn’t the choice of browsers that made Windows less relevant. It was that everything moving to the web made Windows less relevant and that gave to the rise of the modern mobile platforms now that you could do everything on the web that most people cared about and then the app economy.
What do you really think had a bigger impact on even IE losing marketshare, browser choice or the most popular website destination - Google - giving prime advertising real estate to Chrome and Google bundling Chrome with third party apps left and right?
We also see from FB that the little fines that governments hand out don’t stop corporations from behaving in a way that the government doesn’t like.
Amazing how free will works isn’t it? You as a competent adult are able to judge products and make decisions about tradeoffs and you didn’t need the government to help you do it.
If Apple saw that enough customers switch to Android because of the cable they would change - free markets are amazing.
Hang on though, the point is that the market isn’t able to address this issue.
There aren’t two platforms with equal privacy available but differing power connectors.
I’m forced to prioritise privacy over proprietary connectivity.
If all things were equal then I could vote with my wallet and I’m sure the market would fix this... but all things aren’t equal so market isn’t going to solve this problem.
In that situation you need an external authority to set a standard.
Because a government full of people who know nothing about technology must be the right answer. What other areas of the iPhone should the government force Apple to standardize? FaceTime? AirDrop? iOS itself?
Everything where high interoperability is more beneficial for consumers than proprietary solutions by individual companies. As a rule of thumb, everything where standardization brings more benefits to consumers than innovation.
Note that as consumer, I can't vote with my money for standardization. I can only vote for one of the proprietary solutions. So if 70% of consumers stick to one option, and 30% stick to the other option (because of other product features), standardization will never happen through market forces, even if 100% of the consumers would want it.
It gets even worse when more than 2 options are on the market, and vendors gain an advantage by locking customers in to their proprietary option.
So it would be more beneficial that Apple is forced to make FaceTime interoperable and all messaging platforms. Should the government enforce that too?
It’s perfectly possible to have sensible hardware standards where doing so will not impede the market without insisting that all software be also standardised.
For the record I think it would be useful for Apple to have the built in Facetime client be able to communicate with other phone platforms. I don’t think Apple should be compelled to offer that currently.
Let’s say back in the day when Apple has the Apple Desktop Bus for low speed peripherals and Nubus for cards, would you also have been in favor of the government forcing Apple to use PS/2 and ISA?
The Android market is just like the PC market of old - a slow moving race to the bottom. Even today, most low end Android phones are still using Micro USB.
I have a hard time understanding the question. If something is overwhelmingly beneficial for everyone, I don't mind at all if market or government make it happen. I just want it to happen.
Again, to not be misunderstood, I'm not sure if charger standardization is indeed overwhelmingly beneficial for everyone. That is what I believe we should discuss here.
But there is never anything that is “beneficial for everyone” and the government does in the best case what is beneficial to their specific voters - even if it is detrimental to others. There is a very high bar for me to say that the government should step in. A powerful Government is more harmful than a powerful business.
Apple forces everyone to use their own browser engine , their own marketplace no free will there. Competent adult can not judge products on their own, they can only install Apple approved ones!.
If only competent adult are able to judge products and make decisions about tradeoffs and you didn’t need the government to help you do it would be able to install whatever they want.
You can't have it both way dude unless you think Apple is afraid and going to loose money which might bring down the stock value.
If I buy a game console, I have to choose between what the platform offers and the trade offs. I don’t need the nanny state to tell Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft how to build their platforms.
85% of the world chooses Android. If you want to choose your browser, you are free to choose Android also.
But if I switch to apple I have to throw out my cables, too.
Maybe try to look at this differently: is your life better for the fact that when you travel you need to bring power plug adapters? If cars had different gas plugs that required different gas stations, would that be nice?
You would rather trust public usb cables? Of course you should bring your own chargers.... so long as that port has a data connection to the most personal device you own, you should probably own the hardware that plugs into it.
And there is no government mandate for cars to have a standard gas plug. Car manufactures know that it would make the car less desirable in the market.
But in fact, you can sell a car with non standard methods of making it move - see Tesla. They didn’t have to wait for the nanny state or other manufacturers to agree on a standard before it started shipping cars.
Apple is the only company that defied the EU. The fact that we have 2 standard cables (apple and USB) instead of the past's 15+ is solving 99% of the problem.
The regulation set out to do something and the problem is basically solved. It worked.
Sounds like "why spend money on NASA when we have poverty here on earth?".
Governments have a lot of people and a lot of resources and can work on more than one thing at a time.
> Apple has kept working on improving the charging experience for its phones over time
And it will continue to do so. Except it now has to convince others to adopt its improvements.