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Apple Will Be Forced To Use New Charger After EU Votes for USB-C (bloomberg.com) 314

Members of the European Parliament voted to force companies such as Apple to adapt products that don't already feature a standard USB-C charger to use one. This would include iPhones, in Apple's case. From a report: A total of 602 lawmakers voted for the plan on Tuesday, with 13 against, and eight abstaining. The deal, provisionally agreed in June between the commission and the European Union's 27 countries, still needs to get the final sign-off from the EU member states. The rules are likely to be written into law at the beginning of 2023.
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Apple Will Be Forced To Use New Charger After EU Votes for USB-C

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  • Article isn't detailed enough to know: can they get around this by having no charger at all? I.e. by relying 100% on wireless charging?
    • by Junta ( 36770 )

      I believe that previous articles stated that *if* there was a cable to charge, it was going to have to be USB-C.

      Further, if wireless charging, then there was no stipulation about using a standard, however even if there was Apple would likely be fine since they do work with Qi charging.

      Some have speculated that Apple would go portless rather than do USB-C. This would of course mean that phone charging would now be throwing away a significant chunk of energy for the sake of not having a port.

      • Considerable gains in waterproofing though - either in making it waterproof where it wasn't or in reducing the cost of waterproofed ports.
      • Another thing they can do, since you can layer all sorts of stuff on top of the physical USB-C interface, e.g. TB3/TB4, is that Apple can easily implement an "enhanced" USB-C that's as Apple-proprietary as Lightning is now, falling back to a "compatibility-mode" USB-C that charges at 5V / 500mA and runs 12 Mbps data. Then the EU will have to go through a second round of lawmaking, and possibly a third, as they keep evading being non-proprietary, or at least crippling the standard form of the interface so e
        • by Junta ( 36770 )

          Of course, that would screw themselves over. They already have standard USB-PD for their laptops, so to not support USB-PD just pisses off their customers, and there's really no room to claim that a different power negotiation protocol gives them benefit (unless somehow they managed over 240W charging in a phone, which would be pretty unlikely).

          I would not be surprised if data transfer is slow though. It's all about that iCloud.

          • by Malc ( 1751 )

            It doesn't piss me off at all. Lightening has worked really well for me. I have a laptop and a phone, for which I have two cables that I can connect simultaneously. It doesn't bother me that they're different cables.

            What pisses me off is that the next phone I buy will probably force me to throw away the cables I've got and possibly buy new ones. There are lots of people out there with stereo with iPhone docks - what will happen with these? Talk about the EU shooting themselves in the foot and creating e-

            • by dasunt ( 249686 )

              What pisses me off is that the next phone I buy will probably force me to throw away the cables I've got and possibly buy new ones. There are lots of people out there with stereo with iPhone docks - what will happen with these?

              The iPhone docks will eventually end up in thrift stores on the shelf which currently has the iPod and old iPhone docks with the proprietary Apple 30 pin connectors

            • In the long run the argument for avoiding waste falls heavily on the side of standardizing everything around USB-C.
            • by Junta ( 36770 )

              I was stating that if they went for a proprietary protocol over USB-C to enable fast charging, it would piss off Apple customers since that would be utterly senseless frustration of having identical plugs that behave different between their laptops and their phones.

              I can see the frustration of changing cables when the existing cables are just fine. Of course Apple users have been subjected to this by Apple themselves (30-pin to lightning, removal of USB-A when a lot of accessories need USB-A). It might have

            • by Pascoea ( 968200 )

              There are lots of people out there with stereo with iPhone docks - what will happen with these?

              The same thing that happened when Apple ditched their original iDevice connector in favor of lightning.

            • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

              The waste will happen once for anyone who has equipment using non standard cables, and then in future much less waste will be produced because a lot of the cables and chargers will be reusable.
              Most of the non standard cables would end up as waste anyway as soon as you replaced the equipment it was paired with. I have various non standard chargers that only ever worked with 1 model of a specific type of device. Doing away with these single use cables in favor of reusable cables that will fit a huge variety o

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by edwdig ( 47888 )

          Another thing they can do, since you can layer all sorts of stuff on top of the physical USB-C interface, e.g. TB3/TB4, is that Apple can easily implement an "enhanced" USB-C that's as Apple-proprietary as Lightning is now, falling back to a "compatibility-mode" USB-C that charges at 5V / 500mA and runs 12 Mbps data. Then the EU will have to go through a second round of lawmaking, and possibly a third, as they keep evading being non-proprietary, or at least crippling the standard form of the interface so everyone still has to use the Apple-proprietary one.

          Lightning exists because there wasn't anything else capable of doing what a lightning port does. USB-C came along much later.

          Lightning continues to exist because switching to USB-C offers no advantage to anyone that already has an iPhone, but does require existing users to throw out their cables and accessories and buy new ones.

          The only benefit of switching iPhones to USB-C ports is it'll take away one thing Android users like to complain about that didn't impact them in any way.

          Doing that stuff you suggest

          • by Junta ( 36770 )

            Lightning continues to exist because switching to USB-C offers no advantage to anyone that already has an iPhone, but does require existing users to throw out their cables and accessories and buy new ones.

            Technically, Apple has let it languish and USB-C has much much faster data transfer speeds than Lightning ever supported. Of course data transfer over cable is 'lame' now in favor of iCloud for everything.

            Doing that stuff you suggest would just make things worse for everyone involved.

            The debate is short term versus long term. In the short term, absolutely it made some things obsolete (though Mac users love their dongles, so a lightning-to-usb-c adapter could exist to bridge a lot of those accessories). In the long term, it takes the fragmented mobile device charging ecosystem and co

    • Apple at least follows the Qi standard for wireless charger so that charging pad can work on just about any other device with wireless charging.

      Lightning cables don't even work with all of Apple's other products anymore. The iPad has been USB-C for a couple generationsnow at least.

  • Torn (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @07:03AM (#62936481) Journal

    I'm not sure how I feel about this. USB-C is a good standard (physically and logically), but what if it wasn't? USB Mini and USB Micro both sucked in comparison to Apple's Lightning - for example neither of those USB standards had reversible connectors, and were inferior in amperage, throughput, etc. What if the EU decided to force Apple to use USB Mini? Or something else sub-standard? Lightning was greatly ahead of USB technologically for many years (and of course I'm talking about actual use in products with an entire ecosystem of supporting products and hardware, not just some spec on paper).

    Not everything should be designed by consortium (or worse, by government), and just because a product reaches some level of success that it sees widespread adoption doesn't mean that it can no longer innovate. What if Apple comes out with something even better than USB-C or Lightning?

    In reality this isn't a huge deal, because Apple has already embraced USB-C. New iPads use USB-C instead of Lightning, and the Macbooks basically have nothing but USB-C ports now (for charging, etc). However my hunch is that Apple's plan is to drop the charging port entirely at some point, just like they dropped the 3.5mm audio port (that everyone threw a fit about, yet all other cell manufactures immediately followed suit). So that is probably what they will do if the EU forces them - totally remove the port and only support wireless charging. That deflects some of the criticism for the move away from Apple to the EU.

    • by jabuzz ( 182671 )

      I have been using reversible microUSB leads exclusively for about 8 years now. What's this none reversible microUSB you are on about?

      • It's not part of the standard, which is why you didn't see those shipped with any cell phones. Also it may be patent encumbered by whatever company came up with that non-standard modification to the connector design. That fact of the matter is it is not USB compliant and thus cannot be officially labeled as such. That basically shuts it down as far as any official support by any OEM manufacturers.

      • I have also been using them. But I threw them all away at some point. Just because, over time, they kill the USB port on the devices, even if it's not easy to see it. They mostly wear the original connector, so that you can only use those reversible cables and the standard cable just disconnects if you try to use it afterwards.

      • As Dan East mentions, reversibility is not to USBmicro spec so caveat emptor.

        But my real reason for this post is to note that I've never heard of such a thing so I googled it (err.... amazoned it). The very first result ("Amazon's choice") boasts as one of its features: "Resistant to plug & play". Hmm.
    • Re:Torn (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dbialac ( 320955 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @07:23AM (#62936525)

      just like they dropped the 3.5mm audio port (that everyone threw a fit about, yet all other cell manufactures immediately followed suit)

      And to this day I remain incredibly pissed about it. Cell phone manufacturers seem to think because Apple or "the other guy" did it, that means more sales. Nope, I'm forced to use tech I hate because I can't buy tech I like. Give me a high-end phone with a slide-out physical keyboard and a headphone jack and I'll be happy again while I type accurately and listen to music without a stupid adapter. News flash to cell phone manufacturers: many cars don't support bluetooth audio but do support an aux port, and that aux port will provide better audio quality than bluetooth if the car has it.

      • by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        Samsung still have 3.5 jacks in their latest phones. TBH the sort of hipsters who'll burn a grand on a phone wouldn't be seen dead with wired headphones anyway - they need those apple earpods to demonstrate to anyone looking that they're part of the more-money-than-sense tribe.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        To be fair a USB C to 3.5mm adapter is cheap and effective.

        You can even build one with inline controls, very handy for hands-free use in the car if you stick the controller to the dash. Just get a cheap pair of USB C headphones with inline controls, cut the cable and attach your own 3.5mm jack.

        • by dbialac ( 320955 )
          It's money I didn't need to spend in the first place. Now I need one for my car, my cell phone, etc. because I have some things that need a USB adapter and others that don't. And if you have an iPhone, you need the lightning adapter in addition to a USB adapter for other things. Or they could have just used the existing standard, something a guy named Steve Jobs promoted. This was a change that nobody outside of profiteers wanted nor needed.
          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Jobs was just as bad. iMacs with no floppy drives, no ADB or whatever it was called for keyboards and mice, no parallel/serial, no SCSI. Just USB 1.1.

            It is annoying to lose the headphone jack, I won't argue with that. Just saying that there are good alternatives IF you have a USB C port.

            • Jobs was just as bad. iMacs with no floppy drives, no ADB or whatever it was called for keyboards and mice, no parallel/serial, no SCSI. Just USB 1.1.

              iMac 1.0 was patterned directly after the original Macintosh, which had all the same limitations (except it did have serial ports, you couldn't build a computer without them...) Not including ADB or serial ports was outright abusive. Luckily that backfired on Apple, I almost never see official Apple dongles for that stuff but I see third party ones all the time. SCSI was not as problematic an omission, since most Macintosh users with SCSI stuff probably weren't in the market for an iMac anyway.

              And the ports

      • by skam240 ( 789197 )

        Ha, glad I'm not the only one still pining for a built in physical keyboard that slides out. I'd still be using my old Motorola Droid if it wasnt so massively under powered at this point.

        I'd rather have the 3.5mm audio port as well but fuck do I miss having a real keyboard.

    • Re:Torn (Score:5, Informative)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @07:28AM (#62936535) Homepage Journal

      I'm not sure how I feel about this. USB-C is a good standard (physically and logically), but what if it wasn't?

      What if pigs flew? Then they could shit on you as easily as I'm going to shit on that argument. Whoops, I just did.

      USB Mini and USB Micro both sucked in comparison to Apple's Lightning - for example neither of those USB standards had reversible connectors, and were inferior in amperage, throughput, etc.

      The maximum speed over Lightning is the same as USB 2.0. Lightning has shit power delivery. It's only 12W with all Apple branded equipment, which in case you didn't notice is only 20% more than USB2. You can get somewhere around 35W, but only with third party hardware. USB-PD can now deliver 240W. It's past time to let Lightning die, but Apple isn't doing that because they are making money selling licensed, proprietary, DRM-restricted cables that were designed first and foremost to cost you money. And here you are, carrying water for them. Slap a steak over that eye and get out of that abusive relationship.

    • by lordlod ( 458156 )

      I'm not sure how I feel about this. USB-C is a good standard (physically and logically), but what if it wasn't? .... What if the EU decided to force Apple to use USB Mini? Or something else sub-standard?

      This seems a really odd line of argument to take.

      What if the government had done something they didn't do, and never will, that would have made me unhappy.

      So now I'm going to be unhappy, or "torn".

      What if they legislated that all phones had to be purple, with sparkles? What if they said we were only allowed to dial with our feet? What if they didn't allow phones at all?

      I get it, you decided you wanted to be unhappy and are desperately grasping for a reason why.

      How about, why should the EU require phones to

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      If USB had been crap they probably wouldn't have standardized on it. What a bizarre bit of hand wringing.

      Lightning was briefly ahead of USB C, for the 2 years between the release of the two. USB C is vastly superior though. A great example is the Lightning to HDMI adapter. It's a system-on-chip internally that runs a VNC client. The phone encodes the screen, sends it over USB, the SoC decodes it and outputs HDMI. Nice and laggy, chews up the battery, frame rate all over the place.

      USB C just supports HDMI ov

      • Lightning was briefly ahead of USB C, for the 2 years between the release of the two.

        What? No it wasn't. The only thing Lightning has over USB-C is that the connector can bear more side loading. USB-C has always been as fast or faster, and has always delivered more power.

    • One thing is for sure: it will be USB-C going forward forever (practically), innovation be damned. And that same government standard will hold back the industry for years after it becomes apparent that USB-C can't keep up with future needs.
    • by bjb ( 3050 )
      I certainly hope they don't remove wired charging; various articles I've read that measure the power consumed found that wireless charging consumes roughly 40% more energy than straight wired charging.

      I suppose you have to imagine the PR blowback to Apple on that one, especially when there are billions(?) of their devices out there. Yeah, we're not talking 1.21 gigawatts for a phone, but that 40% will start adding up.

    • I, for one, think it's a terrible decision.

      There's things that the free market is terrible at, and many places that market failures arise, but this is not one of them.

      Most of the industry has standardized around USB-C, so a law mandating USB-C is useless in that regard.

      The only real effect is forcing Apple to change their chargers. Presumably Apple, a ridiculously profitable and successful company, has good motives for continuing to use Lightning chargers, so why is the EU deciding that Apple is wrong and t

    • Well... only to a point. IMHO, the USB-C connector is flimsy and the contacts are delicate. A better design for certain applications might be a magsafe version.

  • by DeathToBill ( 601486 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @07:11AM (#62936495) Journal
    Laptop vendors have no excuse for including a USB-C port today but not allowing charging from it. HP, I'm looking at you (though to be fair, my laptop is pushing the definition of "today" a bit).

    It beggars belief that Apple are still clinging to Lightning, really. 12W, USB2 and 500-ish Mbps, compared to USB-C's 240W, USB4 and 40Gbps. If you want fast charging (by which they still only mean 20W) you have to buy a lightning cable... and a USB-C to lightning converter. FFS.
    • by EvilSS ( 557649 )

      you have to buy a lightning cable... and a USB-C to lightning converter.

      Why not just use the USB-C to lightning cable included with all new iPhones since the 12? Or buy a USB C to lightning cable instead of buying a whatever kind of cable you were thinking of.

  • by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @07:51AM (#62936595) Homepage

    While I understand the need to constantly upgrade the USB spec does it really require so many different connector types?

    USB A (vers 1/2 or 3), B, mini A/B, micro A/B, C

    I mean fecking seriously?? Even with video is now pretty much down to HMDI vs DisplayPort and they're different systems, not purporting to be the same one.

    Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/927/ [xkcd.com]

    • C is suppose to kill all the other before it.
      As in no new device should be coming with any A or B ports anymore.


      I but I think licensing? spec (non)-compliance? that things still are not.
      • It's got to be cheaper to make a USB micro connector than any other kind of USB connector. USB A has to have that weird plastic insert inside of the shell, or a PCB insert. USB Micro has a more convoluted shell, putting more bends in a piece of steel costs more money because it takes more steps. Type C has more contacts.

  • This is moronic. A. If this was in place wireless charging would have never made it as a product. B. The wireless charger is not wireless so now what? This reminds me of the idiot TSA “protecting” passengers from being bombed while amassed together inside a plane by moving them closer to the street amassed together in a winding line.
  • Are adapters allowed or are they going to need to put the port on the device itself?
  • They've already had usb-c charge ports on phones in the factors needed. It's not like they're going to have to break new ground.

    Plus, with USB-D on the horizon, it'll all change again, of course!

  • by John Cavendish ( 6659408 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @12:07PM (#62937575)

    Standards are always better than the walled gardens, and as I've been around for a while I can assure everyone that if a corps can enforce and are allowed they'll always go with a walled garden - it's been so in every branch of industry, and the only way out of such lockups are government regulations or when a company is loosing the market share due to some reasons (which becomes less likely the longer the patented or trademarked gardens are).

    We - consumers - are much better of with standardized interfaces, which I hope will come to software APIs and documents formats some day as well. And even though I like the Apple connector better, I'd still support USB-C as a standard.

    It's better, when a user can replace tires from the brand he/she likes or some bolts or wheels, or HDD, SDD, monitor, memory, browser, now charger, etc. Would be great if ink cartridges, document editors.

    Standards open the field for competition, some smaller companies filling the niches, which lower prices and improve customer experience. It happens that some standards get corrupted with time (especially in software) by injecting "proprietary" fields (e.g. DICOM, ODF), but it's still better than no standards at all.

  • by ArcRiley ( 737114 ) <arcriley@gmail.com> on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @12:38PM (#62937717)

    Europe is not "forcing" Apple to do anything. Apple is not the victim of an Orwellian government shoving committee-formed standards and practices on a forign corporation. Soldiers aren't arriving at Apple manufacturing facilities with boxes of USB-C ports and shouting at workers in German to install these or else.

    Europe is "requiring" every cell phone manufacturer to comply with a universal charging standard in order to sell phones in Europe. This is no different from Europe requiring Apple to comply with European radio transmission laws or to manufacture phones for ROHS compliance to prevent mercury from entering landfills.

    Apple is not "forced" to do anything, they could shrug and withdraw from the European market. You're likely reading this and thinking, "why would they give up such a valuable market?" and you've come to the core of the issue. Apple profits from selling proprietary chargers and cables, and they continue to profit by changing those every couple years. Apple, almost single-handedly, created the need for this regulation.

    This kind of ongoing inflammatory language is why Bloomberg isn't a respectable news agency.

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