EU Passes Law to Switch iPhone to USB-C by End of 2024
As an EU citizen, I am really happy with this decision.<p>I am an iPhone user, but having an iPhone is not ubiquitous here, almost all of my friends&#x2F;special other, use an Android phone with USB-C. Most of their laptops, Mac or not, use or allow USB-C for charging.
This as been the case for a few years now, yet, if I go somewhere for more than a full day and forget my lighting cable, my phone will become a useless paperweight while every non-iPhone user is fine in the meantime because of the wide adoption of USB-C.
It is also ironic how Apple markets heavily on how you can take great RAW photos or videos but somehow you have to use lightning USB2 speeds to transfer them.
Lightning is barely smaller than USB-C, and clearly my iPhone thickness will not change if it switches to USB-C.<p>As for the e-waste generated by &quot;having to throw all of those lightning cables&quot;, how is it not e-waste that someone buying an iPhone will have yet another lightning cable that will only be used to charge it. If we want to really be more environmentally friendly, wouldn&#x27;t it make more sense to have no cable at all with the devices we buy, force the sellers to clearly tell the consumers about it and offer the cable on the side only if needed? With that cable being usb-c, the consumer don&#x27;t have to think about the cable type, for non-tech savvy people, that would be &quot;the regular charging cable&quot; and that&#x27;s it.
I would also add that all lightning cables won&#x27;t suddenly go to the landfill in 2024. Many people will keep their iPhones&#x2F;AirPods for a while after that date. Many would probably donate their old lightning cables to whoever needs them. In the meantime, we all already have an ever growing landfill in our homes called the cable drawer, and it is also an issue that needs to be addressed.