The question to ask is this: if this law were already in place, would Apple (or any manufacturer) ever innovate something like Lightning or the magnetic mac chargers, given that they then also have to support the common standard, putting them at a significant cost disadvantage?<p>This kind of regulation, while arguably well-meaning, always seems to end up distorting market forces and discouraging innovation.
I don't understand this. It's pretty much standardised on micro-usb anyway. Any enforcement of this is just going to be a pain as better technologies arise (USB type C).
Ugh no thanks. Lightning is orders of magnitude superior to other current solutions (except cost). If it came to the point where this was actually enforced, I bet Apple would just pay the fines it receives and just continues to use Lightning.
It's not exactly clear but I assume this means they'll have to provide some sort of converter to Micro USB or whatever? It's a great idea to have a common connector, but Apple aren't going to use the same as everyone else and everyone else seems to be compatible now anyway. It looks like the end result might just be iOS stuff costs a bit more and governments get some more tax money from a ridiculously marked up converter.
Standardization seems like a good idea but I'm not sure if I'm ok with the government forcing a single standard. Maybe another idea would be to tax non-compliant chargers, so they could still be legal, but have an incentive to comply to the standard. Or remove patents on chargers so there isn't any incentive to force consumers to buy your brand of charger, you might as well just comply with the standard. Or allow permits for non-compliant chargers if they can give a good justification for doing it.
Maybe they'll force manufacturers to use that hideous new USB 3.0 Micro-B standard. Personally, I'd much rather use a great connector designed by someone at Apple (such as Lightning, MagSafe, etc.) than one chosen by a bureaucrat.