EU Competition Commisioner wants to force Apple and others to switch to USB-C industry standard for charging phones

[NoOverflow]

1 hour ago, DrMacintosh said:

And all the tax revenue that would be lost also gives Apple bargaining power. When you're that big, you get to make some of your own rules. 

They pay minimal tax thank to Ireland so it's not a problem

[Taf the Ghost]

This seems fairly petty. Does Type-C really fail at that much less of a rate that the waste caused by the switch, in a large 2-year period, would cause some catch up? Wouldn't setting higher quality standards for USB cables actually accomplish more?

 

And, if the worry is "new phone/toss cable", they could enforce some separate packaging requirement.

[Sauron]

Good! I wish it wouldn't take regulation from the government but if that's what it takes...

[Morgan MLGman]

9 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

That’s freaking stupid if you ask me. 

 

Lighting to USB C by that logic would also be stupid but at least Type C and lighting are reversible and similar in size.

To be fair, there are two things wrong here:
1. The problem is that EU wants to achieve equal outcomes so they're forcing companies to do what they want them to do, which is a huge issue and IMO the companies should be able to do whatever the hell they want because it's a free market and it's their own designs. Laws like this may slow down the progress and there's no end to them once you let one of those pass.
2. Apple using Lightning just not to use industry standards is stupid as well, all it does is drain more money from the customers for overpriced dongles. For the end-user using Lightning over USB-C gives no real benefits, but only causes problems like when you need a charger and don't have your own charging cable or a dongle.
I actually heard from a person being in such situation that "if everyone had iPhones then it wouldn't be a problem"... Yeah, sure, this is how the world works...

[Morgan MLGman]

23 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

was they saying this ironically as a defeatist comment or o_o

That person was dead-serious There's actually more people like that and they really believe such things

On 8.08.2018 at 10:04 AM, Gealach said:

Sure, I understand you guys don't like governments making decisions that are traditionally made by companies, but in this case the outcome will be positive for us:

Maybe this will help: The problem with this part is: if you let the EU do that once, they will do that once more with some other thing with not-so-positive outcome on the basis that "but you already let us do the same thing with the cables, therefore you should let us do this other thing even if the outcome is not desirable for you". Letting them do that takes away your freedom of choice and the freedom of choice for the companies on how to design their own products and inventions.

Equality of opportunity is what we should all desire, which means that we should let companies decide how to design their own products and not the EU or governments. To give them the freedom of choice. The EU is ran by people that want equality of outcome and this is very, very wrong on so many levels.
But, explaining this matter further is not for this particular forum so I'll leave it at that

[Tech Enthusiast]

3 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Apple devices are extremely popular not to mention Apple is a Trillion dollar company now. Couldn't Apple just tell the EU to go "eff off"? Apple stuff is popular enough where people will probably be smuggling them in anyway if a sales ban were ever put in place.

Don't confuse market "value" with market share.

Apple is not more important than Huawei and much less important than Samsung in the EU.

 

Sure, they could try that, but they are not in a position to take the blow, they are already struggling to reach 2 digit market shares in some areas.

[Carclis]

3 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

And all the tax revenue that would be lost also gives Apple bargaining power. When you're that big, you get to make some of your own rules. 

I'm not sure the EU will see it that way. Any sales lost will likely be made up by increases in sales of Samsung and competing products since the market is saturated. On top of that costs will be saved on recycling the waste which will make this gap even smaller.

[Mihle]

3 hours ago, Morgan MLGman said:

1. The problem is that EU is governed by leftists 

False. Overall EU is quite centrist.

It might be left wing compared to US, but overall its quite centrist.

Was more left wing years ago.

[Morgan MLGman]

1 minute ago, Mihle said:

False. Overall EU is centrist.

In my opinion, since you're from Norway then it might be the case that you see it that way, your country is among the most egalitarian countries in the world.
It's not about what they claim they are, it's about what they do to prove it and most of the things they do, the laws that they pass are leftist. It's not that obvious to see it, but when you think about it for a while, it becomes as clear as day.

It's an interesting topic but we sadly cannot go on about it because it's not the place for it

[cj09beira]

2 hours ago, huilun02 said:

If EU really cared about wastage, they would have enforced rights to repair, instead of targeting the Lightning port/connector which had never been an issue to consumers. And punishment in the form of banning distribution of goods/services, establishment of businesses, that are related to the offending product. Instead of mere fines which never works to stop large corporations from continuing their nonsense.

 

Baddies can and will continue to do bad stuff if you allow them to stay. But not if you outright exile them.

its like how you can only drive recent cars on big cities, sure those cars pollute less but if you are making people buy more of them you end up polluting more due to the pollution cost of making those cars

[Mihle]

Just now, Morgan MLGman said:

In my opinion, since you're from Norway then it might be the case that you see it that way, your country is among the most egalitarian countries in the world.
It's not about what they claim they are, it's about what they do to prove it and most of the things they do, the laws that they pass are leftist. It's not that obvious to see it, but when you think about it for a while, it becomes as clear as day.

It's an interesting topic but we sadly cannot go on about it because it's not the place for it

It totally depend on what area you look at. And I bet you think the economy here is less free than it actually is in Europe. It also depend if you look at the stuff that stuff is like now, that was decided years ago, or you look at what the current government is. EU is less left wing than it was years ago.

 

Also, more right wing people also usually think they are more centrist than they actually are.

 

But fine. End of discussion, this is a tech forum.

[Mihle]

6 minutes ago, cj09beira said:

its like how you can only drive recent cars on big cities, sure those cars pollute less but if you are making people buy more of them you end up polluting more due to the pollution cost of making those cars

Where do they ban old cars in cities?

[Morgan MLGman]

6 minutes ago, Mihle said:

It totally depend on what area you look at. And I bet you think the economy here is less free than it actually is in Europe. It also depend if you look at the stuff that stuff is like now, that was decided years ago, or you look at what the current government is. EU is less left wing than it was years ago.

 

Also, more right wing people also usually think they are more centrist than they actually are.

 

But fine. End of discussion, this is a tech forum.

Yeah, I really like to talk to people about matters like that but we sadly can't do that here due to rules to keep the forum a non-political place

4 minutes ago, Mihle said:

Where do they ban old cars in cities?

In Berlin for example, Amsterdam I believe as well - there are rules that cars made before a certain year and even all diesel-powered cars are restricted to go into the center of the city due to exhaust emissions. Older cars have this restrictions due to looser exhaust emission norms than the current ones, meaning that they don't have such complex filtering systems etc. In Poland a similar law was just passed, it should soon be legal that you will be forced to pay a certain amount of money to go into the capital city centre in a car with a diesel (or even petrol I think) engine.

[cj09beira]

2 minutes ago, Mihle said:

Where do they ban old cars in cities?

don't know if this is a eu phenomena or not but for example you can't drive a car from before 2000 in the capital of my country 

[Mihle]

5 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Yeah, I really like to talk to people about matters like that but we sadly can't do that here due to rules to keep the forum a non-political place

In Berlin for example, Amsterdam I believe as well - there are rules that cars made before a certain year and even all diesel-powered cars are restricted to go into the center of the city due to exhaust emissions. Older cars have this restrictions due to looser exhaust emission norms than the current ones, meaning that they don't have such complex filtering systems etc. In Poland a similar law was just passed, it should soon be legal that you will be forced to pay a certain amount of money to go into the capital city centre in a car with a diesel (or even petrol I think) engine.

 

5 minutes ago, cj09beira said:

don't know if this is a eu phenomena or not but for example you can't drive a car from before 2000 in the capital of my country 

Haven't heard of that before. Have only heard on restrictions/extra toll of diesel, but not the age of the car.

(Two different things)

[Morgan MLGman]

22 minutes ago, Mihle said:

Haven't heard of that before. Have only heard on restrictions/extra toll of diesel, but not the age of the car.

(Two different things)

Older diesel-powered cars did not have the (mandatory now) DPF, which stands for diesel particulate filter which is responsible for filtering the exhaust fumes from diesel engines, therefore those older cars would fail any modern emission tests and restrictions - this is partially why age of the car matters, it's because of the technological improvements made in them.

[Trixanity]

52 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

In my opinion, since you're from Norway then it might be the case that you see it that way, your country is among the most egalitarian countries in the world.
It's not about what they claim they are, it's about what they do to prove it and most of the things they do, the laws that they pass are leftist. It's not that obvious to see it, but when you think about it for a while, it becomes as clear as day.

It's an interesting topic but we sadly cannot go on about it because it's not the place for it

To be fair, pretty much everything is left wing in comparison to Poland.

[porina]

The last time similar was done, this is NOT a new thing, was with the micro USB connector. That worked well, as not only phones but also other small devices also moved to the micro connector. I think it would be useful to have a refresh of that, make a clear move away from micro USB.

 

If Apple wants to play along is another matter... while they're still a powerhouse in $, in terms of units I think the only way is down.

[Morgan Everett]

3 hours ago, Morgan MLGman said:

To be fair, there are two things wrong here:
1. The problem is that EU is governed by leftists who want to achieve equal outcomes so they're forcing companies to do what they want them to do, which is a huge issue and IMO the companies shoud be able to do whatever the hell they want because it's a free market.

Wait. What?

[Morgan MLGman]

7 minutes ago, Morgan Everett said:

Wait. What?

By that I only meant that restricting companies to alter their own designs just because some governmental organisation wants them to is wrong because it infringes their freedom of choice, and thus it also infringes on the freedom of choice of customers because what if someone just wants to have a lightning port because he has other devices compatible with it? Well, thanks to EU you might not have that choice anymore in Europe.

This is my point

[Drak3]

Does the EU have nothing better to do than vastly overstep the boundries of government?

1 hour ago, Mihle said:

Overall EU is quite centrist.

That's a blatant lie. The EU is a good deal left, and getting further left as time goes on.

[Drak3]

Just now, Morgan MLGman said:

By that I only meant that restricting companies to alter they own designs just because some governmental organisation wants them to is wrong because it infringes their freedom of choice, and thus it also infringes on the freedom of choice of customers because what if someone just wants to have a lightning port because he has other devices compatible with it? Well, thanks to EU you might not have that choice anymore in Europe.

This is my point

Also, the whole gun control thing they have going on...

 

But that's a discussion for another thread and time.

[Morgan MLGman]

Just now, Drak3 said:

Also, the whole gun control thing they have going on...

 

But that's a discussion for another thread and time.

And place* Let's stop at that, I wanted to elaborate what I meant for more sensitive people.

[Morgan Everett]

3 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

By that I only meant that restricting companies to alter they own designs just because some governmental organisation wants them to is wrong because it infringes their freedom of choice, and thus it also infringes on the freedom of choice of customers because what if someone just wants to have a lightning port because he has other devices compatible with it? Well, thanks to EU you might not have that choice anymore in Europe.

This is my point

I'm not sure why it would be wrong for the EU (or any other state body) to require companies to maintain certain environmental standards. That just seems to be a basic part of any sensible regulatory framework. 

[Morgan MLGman]

3 minutes ago, Morgan Everett said:

I'm not sure why it would be wrong for the EU (or any other state body) to require companies to maintain certain environmental standards. That just seems to be a basic part of any sensible regulatory framework. 

Yeah, but what if you invent a better standard that works better for your own products only, because of the specifics of the design of your products?
Nope - you still have to use what EU told you because it's the law until they decide it's time to change it. Who decides when it happens? How do you determine that those people are qualified to do that? - Many unanswered questions arise with that solution.

You can't choose what you want to use in your own designs and this is the problem here. I understand that they (the EU) can give guidelines for companies to follow but they can't be obligations forced by law.

This is all my concern about laws like that