Comment by joshstrange
8 months ago
So it's lightning all over again? Lightning was better than micro-usb, then USB-C came out and was even better and people get pissy at Apple for creating something better than the standard (and donating some of that back to the standard).
I know this will not be popular here but I really do not like the EU's most recent round of "no, you have to open up this feature".
I absolutely love it. USB-C is easily among my top 3 changes for the better on iPhones in the last 10 years.
If "Wi-Fi Aware" (almost as ridiculous a name as "Bluetooth Low Energy", but that's a different topic) ends up allowing Android to iOS file transfers without any third-party apps or network connectivity – like feature phones could, 20 years ago – that'll make the top three too.
Apple was bringing USB-C to their entire line well before the EU "mandated" it. They were one of the first to put it on their laptops.
Yes, and they even co-developed the standard to my knowledge.
Still they were stubbornly refusing to bring it to their phones, which are their most popular product line by far, until the EU forced their hand.
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The only thing they had with USB-C were the tablets. Literally everything else came out after the mandate. Apple also didn't communicate any intent on switching their connectors to USB-C.
> I know this will not be popular here but I really do not like the EU's most recent round of "no, you have to open up this feature".
The EU did not ask Apple to open up AWDL to competitors, they asked Apple to comply with the Wi-Fi Aware 4.0 standard.
"Asked" might not be the correct word here, "demanded" is more fitting.
I'm pretty torn, and I know this conversation has been beaten to death on HN, and I have nothing new or novel to contribute to it, but even though this pushes Apple in a direction I'd personally like to see them move - it just feels like regulatory overreach.
In Europe we like our regulators to step in and force megacorporations to do the right thing every now and then.
What makes this overreaching? We already regulate RF heavily since it's a shared space that would all go to shit if everyone could roll their own incompatible thing
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Apple isn't technically forced to do this, they're an American company. They could instead withdraw entirely from the EU market and then they don't have to follow any EU laws. Of course, Apple will never do that because selling their phones in the EU makes _way_ more money than complying with the regulations will cost them.
Were you also against the FCC implementing local number portability after Verizon etc refused to hand over your number to a different provider?
The point is that capital incentives alone do not drive interop, and when interop is low, you get stagnating innovation and stifling competition, which leads to customer choice being limited and high prices during the value extraction phase. Just look at the VC world - competition with better product is for losers, all that matters is dominance and ”market share”.
Corporations aren’t alive, they can’t exercise freedoms, they move wherever their incentives dictate. Good regulations like DMA is a tool to make these entities step out of local optima they’re stuck in. (It even helps the affected companies, long term)
Lightning is proprietary and incurs high per-cable license fees. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22209924
Apple said it didn't ship chargers with their 1k+ phones in order to reduce waste right?
Then having the EU force usbc for the same reason shouldn't be a problem.
Lightning is still better than USB C in terms of physical connector design (Lightning puts the male part on the more easily replaced cable side). Annoying that it’s not a strict improvement being imposed.
So let me get this straight, the male part which is the most durable one is on the cable side on lightning while on USB-C the durable part is in the phone and the easily ruined female pins side is on the cable?
You can keep tooting the Apple horn, Lightning was better than micro USB but saying it's better than USB-C is incorrect on every measureable point. Lightning is dead, long live USB-C!
> while on USB-C the durable part is in the phone
the problem is, it can snap or be sheared off under unfortunate circumstances - say, someone laying their phone on their belly in bed, putting strain on the connector, a chonky cat deciding to jump down right onto the charger cable while the phone is plugged in, or someone dropping their phone while it's attached to a power bank.
With Lightning, it's a matter of removing the broken connector of the cable and that's it. With USB-C, you gotta replace the socket, tough luck on that given that these things generally don't come as single spare parts.
(IMHO, that is the next thing the EU should tackle - parts that often need to be replaced such as sockets and buttons should be mandated to be on a dedicated flex cable that can be easily replaced)
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It’s really not, I’ve had disproportionately more USB-C ports go dodgy because there was repeated tangential force on the cable plug than I had with lightning
The physical lightning port and connector are far superior than any USB-C. It is not even a contest.
The only thing usbc has going for it is wide usage.
Lightning can do usb3 things if designed for it. So software side is not an issue between the two.
At least as far as I can tell, this seems to be a solved problem. USB-C ports on iPhones are holding up just fine.
I'll take a 1% higher chance of a port wearing out over a 100% chance of needing to always carry two cables and not being able to share accessories with Android users any day.
The port connector is more reliable on USB-C.
The fine springy wiry bits that are impossible to clean and easy to damage are on the cable, which is a massive improvement. See: the super common broken Ethernet ports.
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The male part isn't necessarily the key here, the idea is that you put a softer alloy and/or any sprung contacts onto the wear side such that springs and contacts will wear on the replaceable bits. This is the key problem micro USB got wrong, and it's also what Lightning gets wrong (although I'd agree that it was loads better than micro USB).
> Lightning is still better than USB C in terms of physical connector design (Lightning puts the male part on the more easily replaced cable side).
Yeah, basically just repeating what luma said but you have this backwards. USB-C does have the female part on the cable side. Its just also enclosed in a metal cover for protection.
Lightning’s form factor is nice, but there are still a few issues with it. Look at any Lightning cable you’ve used for a few years and you’ll probably notice one of the contacts is darker than the others. That’s from arcing every time you plug it in, and that just cannot be a good thing.
The springs being on the socket is also not a great feature of Lightning, though usually the device itself has a shorter lifetime than the socket.
...what use is "donating" back to the standard if you don't adopt the standard, practically preventing its adoption through your position in the market?
It wasn't really prevented, though, right? Apple was late to the game, yes, but that by definition means that its adoption was already well on its way; most of my non-Apple acquaintances were mocking me for having a non-usb-c phone (such an important issue!)...
> mocking me for having a non-usb-c phone (such an important issue!)...
It really isn't that irrelevant in a world in which being able to charge a phone can mean the difference between being able to get on a flight/train etc. or missing it.
Apple switching to USB-C has doubled (or more, based on the country) the odds of finding somebody with a compatible cable and power bank in a pinch.
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> non-Apple acquaintances were mocking me for having a non-usb-c phone
I've not mocked an Apple user purely for having a non-standard port on their device, though I have more than once mocked the arrogance of an Apple user being put out because when they were wanting to borrow a charger/battery/cable I only had standard parts, those needed to support my devices, in my kit.
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lightning was worse by nature of being proprietary