Comment on The EU common charger : USB-C
TenderfootGungi@lemmy.world 5 months agoBut this law is going to make changing when a better standard should take over. Imagine if this was passed 5 years ago when the terrible one sided USB was common. The only group that will have the power in the future to update it is the USB group, and that is a group of manufacturers that have a driving goal of absolute cheapness at heart, not innovation. This is a terrible law.
It should be difficult. You need to convince ten billion people to buy new chargers if you’re going to switch to a new charging standard and often several chargers per person (five at home? three at work? two in your car?).
Manufacturing and distributing 50 billion or so chargers only makes sense if your new standard is a lot better than USB-C. And if it is, then it won’t be difficult to convince people to move to it.
We tried your way. It failed. We ended up with no standard and a mess of chargers.
The only group that will have the power in the future to update it is the USB group
No, it isn’t. The law includes language that allows the Commission to upgrade the standard that applies, not the USB-IF. If the USB-IF does something stupid the Commission can veto it for the whole EU market, which likely means that the USB-IF won’t be stupid. The standard to be used in the EU will never fall behind the currently adopted one (at least when the Commission is competent and it generally is, in these matters. They’re quite good at technocracy).
Overall EU doesn’t really care what the standard is, only that there is a standard and that it’s sensible, and thus let manufacturers figure out the details on their own, but that doesn’t mean that the EU is handing the USB-IF legislative powers: The commission will only rubber-stamp what comes out of the USB-IF if they indeed have no objections.
themurphy@lemmy.world 5 months ago
That’s why it wasn’t passed “5 years ago”. Because it sucked too much.
USB-C doesn’t, and that’s why you could make the rule. Fuck your potential innovation on the cost of 1.000 tons e-waste a year.
nickhammes@lemmy.world 5 months ago
And the downside of too many chargers was very real. They tried to solve it without the costs of a binding law, and Apple refused to join in. So now they’re stuck with a good connector, and the replacement process for it will probably be a bit worse than it otherwise would have been, whenever it happens