Right, but I assume what it means is that any Apple charging cable will be generally useless as a USBC cable for anything other than charging an iPhone, which very much violates the spirit of the EU anti-waste law.
For most people, it won't matter. But a USBC cable which can't support USB3 data rates probably also won't support proper USB-PD, or USB-HDMI/DP, etc. The dream of having one universal physical standard for charging and high data rate comms will be violated in principle, even if it makes little difference in practice.
USB C is already a mess, and plenty of Android devices don't support USB 3.0 speeds either. Apple changing to USB C port changes nothing except for the literal receptacle.
Legislating that everything shall be a $50 20Gbps cable stuffed with impedance matched micro-coax and shielding on top of shielding on top of shielding just means that nobody can afford it.
USB-C is not and will never this thing that you are imagining. It is one commonly shaped hole, with all the incompatible connections of yesteryear now lurking in a mess of unreadable symbols next to each port. This one can charge. That one can thunderbolt. These can send out power, if you want to use your laptop as a $2000 portable battery. This one sends out video, but wait it's only HDMI, and only if that port over there isn't using its superspeed lanes.
Right, but I assume what it means is that any Apple charging cable will be generally useless as a USBC cable for anything other than charging an iPhone, which very much violates the spirit of the EU anti-waste law.
For most people, it won't matter. But a USBC cable which can't support USB3 data rates probably also won't support proper USB-PD, or USB-HDMI/DP, etc. The dream of having one universal physical standard for charging and high data rate comms will be violated in principle, even if it makes little difference in practice.
The iPhone already doesn't support USB 3.0 speeds, or video out from the port so nothing would be lost.
And the data rate of the cable has no impact on it's power delivery capability. I have USB 2.0 speed cables capable of doing 240 watts. Plus the iPhone already does USB PD, just through the lightning port. https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/12152bd5-5977-4cf3-9dd5-c302ca78462b.jpeg
USB C is already a mess, and plenty of Android devices don't support USB 3.0 speeds either. Apple changing to USB C port changes nothing except for the literal receptacle.
Legislating that everything shall be a $50 20Gbps cable stuffed with impedance matched micro-coax and shielding on top of shielding on top of shielding just means that nobody can afford it.
USB-C is not and will never this thing that you are imagining. It is one commonly shaped hole, with all the incompatible connections of yesteryear now lurking in a mess of unreadable symbols next to each port. This one can charge. That one can thunderbolt. These can send out power, if you want to use your laptop as a $2000 portable battery. This one sends out video, but wait it's only HDMI, and only if that port over there isn't using its superspeed lanes.