Louise Guillot, writing for Politico:
The European Commission is set to present a legislative proposal on Thursday to force manufacturers to use a common charger for electronic devices, according to a Commission official closely involved in the file.
The proposal will require all manufacturers to harmonize the charging points on devices — using a USB-C charging point — and to make their software protocol for fast charging interoperable between brands and devices.
The main target of the new legislation is U.S. tech giant Apple, which has pushed back against EU attempts to standardize chargers through binding requirements, arguing that it will hamper innovation.
This is such a fundamentally stupid proposal.
How can you enforce all phone manufactures to use the same charging port?
What happens when USB-C isn't good enough anymore?
What about the massive number of lightning cables that would be unusable by the current iPhone users? Does that waste not matter?
What if a manufacturer wants to only support wireless charging?
John Gruber echoed my feelings in the last sentence of his post[1]:
And people in the E.U. wonder why England wanted out, and why nearly all the major tech companies are from the U.S. and Asia.
Of course, it was the UK that left the EU, not just England. But I think everyone gets the point. ↩︎