How much space in landfills is required for the hundreds of millions of Lightning cables and Lightning-equipped accessories that are in use today? We’ll find out soon as four iPhone 15 models dumping Lightning for USB-C ports begin to arrive this month.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
If Apple Inc. had its way, the iPhone would continue to use the current Lightning connector for the next few years — until the point when the company is ready to begin phasing out ports on its smartphones altogether.
But the European Union forced its hand, requiring mobile device makers to use the USB-C standard by the end of next year. So Apple is now in the awkward position of embracing the very technology it didn’t want. When the company introduces the iPhone 15 on Sept. 12, USB-C connectors will appear on its four new phone models, as well as the AirPods Pro…
Apple’s keynote presentation won’t mention the European Union or make reference to the many times over the past few years that it criticized the government’s decision to require USB-C.
Back when it was still resisting the switch, Apple laid out a few arguments, including that the change would harm the environment — given that billions of obsolete cables may wind up in a landfill. Another rationale, floated by Apple marketing chief Greg Joswiak last year, is the potentially harmful precedent of governments influencing product design.
MacDailyNews Take: There will be more people than you think who will soon be bitching and moaning that they have to buy a new USB-C charging brick if they want to charge their new iPhones via the USB-C to USB-C cable that Apple will include in each iPhone 15 box (even though you can get them starting at under $10 on Amazon today).
Don’t blame Apple. Blame the EU bureaucrats.
Any government — or, in this case, an extra-national quasi-government-ish body — that mandates technology will stifle innovation. It is a mistake. Luckily, in this case, it won’t matter much. Apple’s iPhones are moving to port-less and, if there is some overlap with USB-C iPhones for a few years, the e-waste created will be minimized.
This isn’t a matter of Lightning vs. USB-C. The problem is the mandating of a certain standard and the innovation it squelches. Idiot bureaucrats never seem to consider unintended consequences, regardless of how obvious they are. This is, as usual, a “sounds great, oh, wait” mistake. (They never seem to be able to even imagine much less consider and weight the “oh, wait” part.)
If you believe the EU will move quickly all of a sudden (it took them over a decade to (almost, not even quite done yet) codify this mistake), as quickly as a tech company like Apple to keep on top of innovation, you’re either a rube or under the age of eight.
USB-C is the wired port now, at least in the EU (and therefore everywhere; nobody is going to make specific devices for the EU which comprises a whopping 5.8% of the world population), pretty much forever.
Big government, quasi or not, is slow and wedded to its own red tape. If something markedly better were to come along, the EU will not magically change their mandate. In fact, what’s the incentive to create a better port than USB-C now? Not only do you have to coax adoption from tech companies as usual, but you’re now also tasked with nightmare and expense of lobbying and convincing a raft of EU bureaucrats to expeditiously agree to change their USB-C mandate.
Forget innovation in wired connectivity. It’s now dead.
Don’t believe? Watch and see. “iCal” us. – MacDailyNews, October 4, 2022
This is just needless, slow-as-molasses, bureaucratic meddling in the market; a stick in the spokes that, in the end, will be like mandating a buggy whip with every cart sold, twenty years after the advent of the automobile.
If the EU had passed such a law when this innovation-stifling foolishness was initially proposed, we’d all still be stuck with MicroUSB today!
Regardless, soon Apple’s iPhones won’t have any ports at all. As it stands even today, the Lightning port on our iPhones is a largely superfluous liquid and dust ingress point. If anything, this misguided, shortsighted EU move only hastens Apple’s move to port-free iPhones featuring even better water and dust resistance. – MacDailyNews, June 3, 2022
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