sonofagunn t1_ir56xk8 wrote on October 5, 2022 at 12:51 PM

Reply to comment by Agreeable_Win7642 in Great news for everyone by bk27465

The law is well written. It does not specify a technology, it says they must all follow the IEEE standard, which is an industry organization. The standard can't change for at least three years.

It just so happens that the current standard is USB-C.

Agreeable_Win7642 t1_ir5b95y wrote on October 5, 2022 at 1:26 PM

That's a good point. The issue I see with this is that as a start-up I can't build something cheaper with older connectors now.

Do I also have to compete for connectors now with the big players, while everyone makes the switch? This might open opportunities for some new manufacturers to build type c connectors, to cover the new demand, sure. I don't think that's how it will go though.

Some devices also don't need faster connections. I would rather have my sport's smartwatch be more waterproof rather than have it's data bandwidth increase.

I don't know. It will be interesting to see what happens.

sonofagunn t1_ir5e4rd wrote on October 5, 2022 at 1:47 PM

It only applies to smartphones, tablets, and cameras.

Zerieth t1_ir5fn3l wrote on October 5, 2022 at 1:59 PM

Stuff has to move with the times and there's no avoiding that. We don't make floppy disks anymore for data transfer either, and some of the older connectors are no longer in wide use. Give it a few more years and vga will vanish completely from the market(still on some motherboards) to be replaced by DPort and HDMI.

Apple has been trying very hard for years to create their own product bubble with limited compatability to anything outside of that bubble. This means their own OS on all their products, Bluetooth compatability problems to none Apple related products, and yes connectors.

This is why I dislike them as a company. At least in Microsoft land we can buy pretty much anything we like and expect it to work with our tech. Microsoft and Linux can run on the same hardware with no issues. Apple you basically have to buy from Apple, or someone that has a contract with Apple. Mac stuff requires its own proprietary hardware on their computers, smartphones, and tablets. You can get the Mac Os onto a PC but hardware wise it's all Mac shit. Limited market competition means higher prices.

Agreeable_Win7642 t1_ir5i8j1 wrote on October 5, 2022 at 2:17 PM

I agree with your final point. Market competition is great. This law doesn't provide that, in my opinion. It will drive smaller players that cannot afford this adaptation out of the market.

And Microsoft and Linux can run on many things, but not without issue. There's a great cost to develop such systems with a lot of compatibility in mind. Vertical integration is more efficient. Regardless if you like apple or not, they have provided the best laptop by far because of this, in recent times. There isn't anything on the market to top the battery life to performance of the last pro lineup, and this is coming from a thinkpad fan. But this argument hasn't much to do with port choice. Apple can change that with ease and it will lead to more sales. They can take the cost now for sales later. I care more about the smaller companies that won't have a choice but to switch to type C. They might not be able to do the same

chownrootroot t1_ir5wvtu wrote on October 5, 2022 at 3:56 PM

Android phones basically already had either microUSB or USB-C already, and microUSB is considered flimsy, cheap, and slow, if a small Android phone maker was sticking to microUSB, chances are they wouldn't be much of a player in the EU market and they are welcome to sell their phones in other markets regardless of what the EU says.

Apple complained about this but they won't mind the cost and they switched much of their products to type-C already.

The law does apply to tablets, some laptops (not gaming or workstation types), and cameras. Tablets are basically the same as phones, so the above also applies to them, with laptops there could be small laptop makers complaining but charging a little more for universal charging is a fair trade-off, so many times in the past getting a laptop charger would be a problem with proprietary charging. And cheap and small point and shoot cameras are basically dead, replaced by smartphones, most cameras you buy are like Gopros or large DSLRs and they can spare the cost for changing the USB port (some in the past had the Superspeed Micro connector, so it would be a huge improvement to have the USB-C connector so you don't have to carry around another cable just for the camera data transfer).