Hold on there sparky... If they did that, they would loose money on both the new chargers they sell people, plus every other adapter seller would need to change products, and then buying a charger that works with both iPhone and Android on one cable!?! Sacrilege! /s
I can kinda see how this would make sense in the case, as long as the iPhone has Lightning, you will have to bring that charger anyway. Though this might be a good way to ease people in by selling two versions.
one charger for many devices beats one charger per device. period.
Apple obviously knows this, as they just moved their macbook to USB-C.
now i can charge my android phone with the same cable as my macbook, android is more compatible with the new macbook than the iphone is; thats an embarrassment
That would be pretty bad for anyone with a bunch of apple devices and a bunch of chargers, as during a period of several years you would no longer be able to charge any device using any charger in your home. It’s like the switch from the wide connctor to lightning all over again.
I really don’t care what plug Apple uses (their own or something else) but I do want them to use a single one and stick with it.
Which would be awesome, except that the USB-C adapter wasn't included with any iPhone until last year (and those people aren't buying a new phone, it's the people who have older devices and therefore won't have a charger to use with their $800 smartphone). They may not even have a USB-C adapter at all, the only device I regularly use with USB-C is the Switch and that charger can't charge the iPhone.
I wonder if they'll consider giving the next iphone a usb-c port too. If they're really going to be consolidating to a single port I could get on board. Changing yet another standard connector but still requiring everyone to keep around 2 types of chargers (now exactly the same size) seems pretty obnoxious even for Apple.
Then they need to start shipping iPhones with Lightning to USB-C cables and swap out the port on the wall chargers. There needs to be some bridge between the two categories of devices that they currently are not providing.
I believe this is only talking about the piece that connects the charging cable to the electrical system. Apple already ships a charger that has a female USB-C on one side and male electrical plug on the other which will satisfy this proposal. You would then still use a USB-C to lightning cable to charge the phone but you could reuse the the charger itself between android and apple.
But no, this is not true. The iphone charger is already USB. I use them with my Android phone all the time, and iphone users charge with my pixel charger. Those already interoperate.
I understand the e-waste and consumer protection argument for the charger (power converter), but why the cable?
From the perspective of Apple though, that's another adapter for them to sell. They already make a lightning -> USB-A adapter.
And the idea of a common, readily available for most people, port is exactly what this legislation is about. It should apply to charging cables for phones too.
As an iPhone and iPad owner, I've loved being able to share charging apparatuses across the two devices, even if this is incorrect (my 4S throws up an incompatible charging device error once in a while with the iPad charging brick, though the issue is resolved by unplugging and replugging). It is frustrating that between now and the new iPad launch I will have to deal with two incompatible Apple plugs.
I don’t think that’s entirely fair to Apple: they are trying to not include a charger at all in the first place (just the cable), which does a lot more for the environment than including a charger which you can use with anything as well as forcing the cable to be useful for more than one device.
Apple already does that with chargers, new iPhones no longer come with charging bricks, just the cables. I'd be fine with not including the cables if the phones were USB-C, but since they're Lightning the likelihood of a new iPhone user already having a cable that will work is very low.
Did you watch the presentation? The new cables (if you buy an iPhone today) are Lightning at one end, and USB-C at the other. So you can't use them with your old adapter. This means a new iPhone buyer is getting a phone with no charger, and any of the old chargers they have won't be usable with this cable.
And cheap USB-A Lightning cables are crap. Even expensive ones from Anker are crap. Apple made ones are okay, but have poor strain relief, so eventually they crap out too.
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