As far as I remember, this piece of legislation has been floating around since USB mini. We have now gone through 2 revisions to a connector that is now reversible and can carry video. Locking onto USB-C now could be a very "640k ought to be enough for everybody" moment.
And if Apple was going to switch to USB C anyways, whats the point of this legislation?
There are now low power ports (only enough for phones), high power ports (good for laptops), and full-on data ports (which create malware risks, and may or may not support your use case). There are good reasons these should not look alike nor fit together.
>If there is a reasonable need for upgraded standard
Are you saying that politicians should be designing technical standards? And how will you ever know there is a need for a new standard if you can't even deploy it?
It's not like this is something new. We've had national standards for things like AC power plugs and outlets for over a century, and they are mandatory in many countries.
Apple isn't going to change to USB-C anytime soon for iPhones because they make a significant amount of money with the MFI program (~$4/connector), the vast majority of which comes from lightning accessories.
Apple licenses the connector and validates it via a chip.
I entirely get what you're saying. But the chip is counterfeit, so the company doesn't pay the licensing cost, that's why the cable is "so cheap". Nothing to do with audiophile-esque tendencies. More that your 5 pack of cables would cost $14+(5*$4, the current license price) if it were that way.
No-one's disputing that you can buy cheap cables that will work (until they don't, because who knows what else was skimped on), just that you don't in any way shape or form have Apple to thank for that, it's entirely _in spite of_ Apple.
Whether are not the cables are quality or not is different than whether they are licensed. You would make the same decisions if they use USB C with regard to quality.
It’s amazing that the same people who are worried about not having genuine Apple certified cables are probably the same people who want Apple to open up the iPhone to allow side loading.
So now are you saying that you are in favor of Apple’s “Walled garden” to ensure quality? If you are worried about quality cables that must pass some type of certifications doesn’t that argue for proprietary cables where Apple ensures the quality?
Shouldn’t in that case Apple lock down cables more?
I'm not saying I'm in favor of anything, just that you bought some cheap unlicensed chinese garbage off of Amazon doesn't prove that Apple doesn't charge a $4/connector license fee. Amazon is well known for selling piles of counterfeit crap
So it’s counterfeit because it’s not license. What do you think is going to happen when you buy cheap USB C cables?
On one one hand, everyone is arguing that Apple’s proprietary cables are cynical attempt to make money and they shouldn’t have that control and people should have the choice.
Now I am showing you they already have that choice.
USB is also licensed, it's just far cheaper. The USB license is more about making things compatible rather than making money.
> What do you think is going to happen when you buy cheap USB C cables?
I can buy licensed USB-C cables from reputable brands for cheaper than I can buy licensed Lightning cables from reputable brands. And the USB-C cables are more complex to manufacture. One example is Amazon Basics.
> Now I am showing you they already have that choice.
People will always have the choice to buy anything as long as cash exists. But if you want to buy something that is quality, you will look to a reputable brand. A reputable brand will be economically successful, so it is a target for lawsuits, so they will always enter a license. If the license for Lighting costs more than the license for USB, then a consumer who wants to buy a quality cable will always pay more.
> Locking onto USB-C now could be a very "640k ought to be enough for everybody" moment.
I agree in general; but at some point don't we hit diminishing returns? If I were to say, "18.4 exabytes of RAM ought to be enough for everybody", that'd be basically correct, even future-proofing for the craziest sci-fi holodeck use cases we can imagine, right?
I dunno. Having lived through the days where having 128kB of RAM was an eye popping upgrade, you could easily have made the argument back then that 2GB of RAM was future proof for as long as the eye can see.
And in fact, they did. By the time I was reaching adulthood, that was that hard limit built into Win95, give or take boot errors if you had a quarter of that (which was gigantic at the time; 64MB was more than enough to boot it).
Fast forward another 25 years to today, and laptops routinely have 16GB of RAM, and higher end Mac Pros can apparently get a whopping 1.5TB of RAM.
Put another way, the high-end went from .1MB to 1TB in 40 years or so.
I get that we're reaching the physical limits of miniaturization, but I'd still be surprised if my grand kids don't have exabytes of RAM or equivalent on whatever the hell their main devices will be by the time they reach adulthood.
I agree in general; but at some point don't we hit diminishing returns? If I were to say, "18.4 exabytes of RAM ought to be enough for everybody", that'd be basically correct, even future-proofing for the craziest sci-fi holodeck use cases we can imagine, right?
But the legislation doesn't lock into something that might happen in the future. It locks the future to what we have today.
As much as I am for interoperability, a legislation directing a specific technology is one way how we end up with ridiculous standards.
Remember, we still have laws on where we can or cannot tie a horse in town on the books a century after they were irrelevant. Laws move in centuries, while technology moves in years. They are not compliant with each other.
I agree; if this law were put to a vote, I would vote against it. I just think it's conceivable that we hit a point where there's very little end-user benefit to additional improvements, and we achieve an equilibrium that essentially solves the given problem[0]. The catch is: we don't necessarily know in advance at what point that will actually be the case (hence the irony of the 640k line, which I'm sure sounded very sensible at the time, just as the 18.4 EB thing sounds very sensible to me now).
[0] One of the reasons that the loss of the headphone jack is so exasperating, is that's an example of an ideal universal connector; it solved the problem so well, there was little reason to improve on it, either in quality or function.
Well, there's the rub: 32 bits for IPv4 was clearly inadequate. IPv6, on the other hand, gives us with 128 bits = 3.4 x 10^38 addresses, which seems from our vantage point like it should cover us until the end of time, even if we colonized the whole galaxy. Is that actually the case? Time will tell. ;)
But that's just the point. When they decided on 32 bits, then it was more than sufficient for the intended use case. If we had stuck to universities and government uses, then we probably still wouldn't have run out.
Things change or evolve, and often in ways not foreseen.
