What do you /g/uys think of this? Is it a good thing because it creates a consistent standard for customers, or is it a bad thing because it stifles innovation and there's no guarantee that adapters will be made for devices that need older cable types?
>>28176 It's pretty much a universally good thing. Most of the industry has realised this already, with many manufacturers moving to microUSB and now pretty much everyone is on USB-C. The only holdout has been Apple for the iPhone specifically - newer iPad models have USB-C.
>it stifles innovation
This line is bollocks. The only company seriously pitching it has been Apple, presumably because they have some new charging standard coming Real Soon NowTM. USB-IF has demonstrated, albeit in some of the worst possible ways, that innovation with a standard charger is still possible. You now have full-on 240W power delivery and high resolution and high framerate video both capable of being handled in the same form factor, which is a bit of a pain if you need those things because now you need to make sure the cable itself can handle it.
I'm fine with it. I like the fact that I can use my one plugged in USB-C charging cable for my Switch, my Xbox controllers, my Xbox headset, my mobile phone, and my headphones.
Yeah, pretty much that. Basically everyone other than Apple is already on USB-C. The main complaint about USB-C is that it supports so many different standards and alternate modes that it can get a bit confusing - the same physical connector can support lots of different electrical connection types. There's literally no reason to use anything else, other than locking people in to your proprietary ecosystem.
>>28179 Royalties on Lightning are apparently a significant revenue stream for Apple. To manufacture and implement USB requires paying a few grand to USB-IF. To manufacture and implement Lightning requires not only paying similar sums to Apple but also a significant royalty on every individual connector you produce. Want to produce a 4-port Lightning hub with a Lightning plug? That'll be 5 licences per unit, please.
Yes its good that Apple will be forced onto the same common charger as everyone else and that we'll get away from new devices that still get sold with micro-usb.
But as for the stifling innovation argument, in the near future that's not true at all, but there are perhaps concerns going forwards 5-10 years or so the USB-C connector may stop looking so great and the legislation will greatly impede a move away from it.
It's good, but if it precipitates a stunt like moving to wireless charging only to maintain proprietary fuckery then the European Commission should be given the authority to launch the entire force de frappe against California.
I like seeing Apple get fucked, as does anyone, but I don't think it's really any kind of magic bullet for consumers.
USB C is a bit of a mess to start with as far as standards are concerned. There's one physical connector but that doesn't guarantee standards compatability between devices, which can lead to issues like a lot of people discovered the hard way blowing up their Nintendo Switch.
Then there's just the simple fact plenty of people have loads of old micro and even mini USB devices they won't be getting rid of any time soon. My computer case has a type C on the front, but my motherboard (which is itself pretty new) doesn't have a header for it, so it's pointless. I don't have any type C to type C cables anyway, only A to C. I've got one charger that's type C, but about 6 that are type A.
In general it's always going to be that way. You can try to make a specific connector the standard if you want, but it simply never will be. By the time I've caught up and all my devices are type C, and finally ditched the last of the micro USB devices, there will be a type D by then, and the whole cycle will start again.
From what I understand, the Switch issues were due to Nintendo's slightly non-standard USB-C implementation interacting badly with cheap chargers that don't properly implement USB-C Power Delivery. Plenty of iPhone users have had their charging ports blown up by cheap chargers and I'm not sure that there's anything a standards body can do to stop off-brand manufacturers from cutting corners. The general rule of "don't plug a £400 gadget into a poundshop charger" applies.
USB-C is a worthwhile improvement over Micro-USB by merit of being much more mechanically reliable, being double-sided and having loads of extra pins for future expansion. The principle is that the USB standard can continue to evolve while retaining the same physical plug and full backwards compatibility. It remains to be seen how well that principle will hold up, but the USB-IF has thought really carefully about maximising the longevity of USB-C. The fact that you can get 240W of power and 40Gbits/s of data through a tiny plug is pretty wild.
