Comment by scarface74
3 years ago
So how well are the USB C cables going to work that follow the minimum “mandate” that doesn’t require cables to support data at all? How well are they going to work when people pick up a “USB C” cable and wonder why they aren’t seeing video when they connect their phone to their TV?
Not very well, but you can buy decent cables from a variety of manufacturers for cheap, and there isn't this one license-holder (Apple) out there trying to take a big cut from that. If someone wants to make a good Lightning cable for cheap, first they have to break the law by skipping the licensing deal, then they have to get around Apple's own mechanisms.
It doesn’t prevent “ewaste” if phone makers (mostly low end Android phone makers) still bundle shoddy cables, stores are still allowed to sell shoddy cables, etc.
And USB C is not free of licensing requirements
https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/450494/are-u...
A “good” USB C cable that supports all of the things I said - high speed data, video over USB, etc - costs around $15. The same price as an Anker Lightning cable.
A random USB C cable doesn’t support video over USB - something I need for my portable secondary display.
The iPads with USB C already support this. I have no reason to believe that the next iPhone won’t.
> A “good” USB C cable that supports all of the things I said - high speed data, video over USB, etc - costs around $15. The same price as an Anker Lightning cable.
But the Lightning cable won't support high speed data. And if you want video over Lightning you can't just use a cable, you need an adapter with an embedded computer to decompress the output.
A USB C cable that has the same capabilities as that Lightning cable is 2-3 dollars.
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It's not free, but it's cheap. A good USB-C cable costs less than $5, not $15. You hardly ever need a good one either, just one for charging.
Re ewaste, that's a different topic. I'm just talking about licensing fees.
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> So how well are the USB C cables going to work that follow the minimum “mandate” that doesn’t require cables to support data at all?
Citation needed? I think those are below the minimum.
> How well are they going to work when people pick up a “USB C” cable and wonder why they aren’t seeing video when they connect their phone to their TV?
They probably feel similar to people with lightning cables.
> They probably feel similar to people with lightning cables.
Lightning supports video. Or were you just making a joke about how unreliable it is? Cause man, I can't even charge my phone sometimes.
Lightning doesn't support video over mere cables. You need a complicated adapter that decompresses the video sent by the device. It's like a tiny streaming setup.
If you just pick up a generic lightning cable, you're not getting video.
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> Citation needed? I think those are below the minimum.
The law states nothing about data transfers or anything else.
Oh, I thought you meant spec minimum not legal minimum.
Does the law not say the cables have to meet the USB C spec?
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