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AberrantRambler t1_izja5fx wrote

Reply to comment by King_madness1 in EU sets December 28th, 2024, deadline for all new phones to use USB-C for wired charging by speckz

That’s like saying our current government is the best government as everyone voted on it so we all agree it’s the best. It really glosses over a lot of things.

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King_madness1 t1_izjccjy wrote

I did not say that.

USB was created for this purpose: standardization.

It all comes down to whether you want a universal port, or if you’re too busy drinking Apple’s anti-consumer koolaid ;)

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AberrantRambler t1_izjcql7 wrote

I know you didn’t say that - do you know what an analogy is?

A port designed by committed isn’t going to be the best port for all things - it’s just a standard.

You definitely said it was the best - and it’s most definitely not unless you’re explicitly defining exactly what it’s best for (as there’s plenty of ports/cables that are better for different purposes, or else every single cable you’d use in your life would be the same - ever use a power cord for a desktop PC? Or an Ethernet cable?)

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King_madness1 t1_izjd3e3 wrote

Okay, which port would you like them to use instead?

Do you think companies want to use the port they’ve already invested years of R&D into, or be told to scratch it all and make a new one just for shits and giggles?

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AberrantRambler t1_izjddll wrote

Whichever port they (the engineers familiar with the project) decide is the best port for the application.

If I feel they were able to competently design the rest of the product I see no reason to assume they cannot competently choose an appropriate port for the product.

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King_madness1 t1_izjdluh wrote

Okay so we’re on the same page really. What I’m trying to say is that this design phase is already happening with Type-C and USB 4. This is what the engineers agree on.

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AberrantRambler t1_izje6eo wrote

Mostly - my point of contention with your post was the use of “best” (which I feel is a really tricky word to actually use correctly without being very specific about for which purposes).

I also really have a hard time with people praising usb c/usb 4/thunderbolt as they made an absolute cluster fuck with them all being the same port and I don’t particularly find it to be anybody at the USB consortiums “best” work. And in terms of consumer confusion I’d call it some of their worst.

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King_madness1 t1_izjenlh wrote

We’re in total agreement about the clusterfuck of naming schemes and feature support.

That said, there is no better port. USB 4 has the best display output, power delivery and data transfer rate capabilities.

This hypothetical “new best port” would literally just be USB 5, which hopefully is less confusing than USB 4 and will probably still use the Type-C cable.

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AberrantRambler t1_izjfrwb wrote

I’m not as confident it would just be USB 5.

I could see Apple having made a better port in same way they made better SoCs. It’s not out of the realm of possibility they’ve been iterating on lightning Ike they were SoCs and just not releasing them (it’s incredibly unlikely, but not out of the realm of possibility).

Imagine it’s literally what would take until USB 6 or 7 in terms of features for the sake of argument.

In theory if apple must use the standard they’d be prevented from using this obviously better cable.

That’s a bad situation.

Similarly saying to all companies you must make all your innovations out in the open so that way governments don’t accidentally make your better product illegal to implement.

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King_madness1 t1_izjtnak wrote

That’s where our viewpoints differ then: I’d rather have all the companies working together than creating their own proprietary stuff.

The “bad situation” in my opinion is when there are fractured proprietary solutions, it’s anti-consumer by design.

Unless you mean Apple (or any single company) creating an open standard all by themselves and sharing it for free, but then they have no reason to do it (no profit). More likely, they would share the burden of cost with other companies, which is essentially what USB is.

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AberrantRambler t1_izju3pi wrote

I feel if we’re going to start abandoning some of the tenants of capitalism in favor of a socialistic approach it would behoove us to do it in a more thorough manner than just cell phone port charging regulation :/

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King_madness1 t1_izjv1k9 wrote

It’s not socialism, technically. Consumers/governments don’t own USB and can’t contribute to it either, it’s just corporations.

You’re right, there are more important things than this (see right to repair) but I believe universal ports are a good pro-consumer step forward, whether it’s USB or if we start from scratch and call it something else :)

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