this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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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.
I honestly feel like it's a mistake that USB-C means almost nothing outside of "it's got this port shape." The idea was that you have one port and one cable, and you plug whatever you want into it. In practice, virtually no where is this true. Is this a data port or power only? What speed for either? Does the port support Thunderbolt or no? Video or no? Does the cable support data or just power? What speed? Video? Which HDMI spec? Thunderbolt? Grab 3 random devices with USB-C and 3 random USB-C cables and see how often you get the intended outcome.
Tbh I think the only goal that USB-C really accomplishes is that it's less shitty than micro-usb (might as well make all of those ports/connectors out of paper mache) or USB-A (let's make a port shape that there is no way for anyone living or dead to plug in correctly the first time.)
Nearly every USB-A male I’ve seen has a USB logo carved into the rubber boot.
This is on the “up” side of the cable, and would face “up” from the perspective of how the computer is intended to be used (or from the perspective of the motherboard, if we’re talking about a tower PC).
Why assume the cable would have low speeds? Are those enough cheaper to justify that?
I mean, it would be a trademark Apple kind of thing to do, for sure. They may take privacy seriously, but literally every other thing they do is pure scumbag.
I don't wanna assume they are 3.0 speed either, but do we know one way or the other?
Also, is there really a use for 240W cords? I've never heard of a phone accepting triple digit speeds at all, and even a tablet wouldn't go that high.
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.