EU isn't legislating USB-C, it's demanding that the industry standards body have a common standard for charging, and continue to develop it as a common standard. The manufacturers are going to be collaborating on the specs. It will be like TCP/IP, DNS, UTF and many other things.
But why does the EU bureaucracy know that charging ports cannot be an important part of product differentiation? I would hope they wouldn’t legislate a common screen size or a common operating system... why legislate a common charging port? I STRONGLY prefer Lightning and would hope that people who prefer Lightning like me can buy Apple and people who prefer USB-C can buy Android.
Because the EU isn't there to pamper big corporations, it is there to strengthen the rights of consumers and citizens by strengthening competition. If your company can't survive without selling adapters or locking in customers with unnecessary differing standards (and therefor avoiding competition), maybe it isn't really healthy to begin with.
I would have a different perspective if there was really a practical reason for apple to go the different route — but there isn't.
How is there no practical reason? The practical reason is implied by context. Apple is among the single most profitable companies in existence, consumers vote with their wallets and their wallets overwhelmingly vote in a manner that supports Apple's decisions. It's a very European thing to point at the purpose of a government entity and assume it's true. Helping consumers? If consumers prefer universal cable standards then they'll favor products with cross compatability standards. The only people who benefit from this government intervention are the EU businesses that can't be bothered to examine themselves long enough to find a way to compete effectively. This sort of disconnected legislation is just another reason the EU has lost significance as an innovator, they'd rather settle for a comfortable and unchallenging norm.
Isn't it possible that consumers don't like needing separate proprietary chargers for iPhones, but it's a small enough part of the overall iOS experience it doesn't noticeably harm sales? After all, phone ecosystems are a duopoly. It's not an area where free market arguments hold water. This legislation lets the industry decide on their own standard. Do you think customers would also enjoy incompatible Wi-Fi standards, or cell modems?
Sure it’s possible but the opposite is also possible and politicians shouldn’t be trying to figure this out. There clearly isn’t some major harm to the world being caused by two different power standards. I can say that I personally vastly prefer Lightning to USB-C. Politicians should focus on the areas where the harm has been clearly established, like in privacy, not some dubious guesses about what power cable people like. And in other places where Apple has their own standard, like AirPlay and AirDrop, I prefer it to the open standard, so I’d prefer if politicians didn’t make laws standardizing the worse option.
To me it's the same as fridges and TVs. I should be able to buy a common cable that plugs into a Samsung or an LG TV and the same for an Apple or Google phone.
