This kind of regulation, while arguably well-meaning, always seems to end up distorting market forces and discouraging innovation.
What I would love to see insofar as wall outlets is an adjustment of the current standard wall box and outlet+plate so that you could quickly replace the entire wall place in one go very quickly. With that innovation I would love to see the same on the appliance end where it is trivial to replace the entire code on an appliance. This already exists with IEC320, but if would be nice if everything used IEC320.
Then every 5-10 years the industry innovates to dramatically improve one end and then 5-10 years later works to dramatically improve the other end. This would give a very reasonabe 10-20 years between completely replacing all the appliances (or using adapters or switching neither), and 10-20 years between replacing all the wall plates. You wouldn't even necessarily have to upgrade every 10-20. If an appliance is working fine on an old appliance to cord standard or a cord to wall standard, you can leave things alone.
It was this interface approach that allowed Apple to have one dock connector for the longest time but many different shaped devices, since all that had to be done is replace the plastic dock insert [0].
This approach wouldn't work for cellphones and laptops, but should work swimmingly for 120v mains since space isn't at a premium except in the appliance.
[0] http://km.support.apple.com/library/APPLE/APPLECARE_ALLGEOS/...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60906-1
[1]: http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MD820ZM/A/lightning-to-mic...
That's why everyone else uses usb ports.
They signed, but most refused to extend beyond 2012 (partly because they saw apple not really playing game), so here come the law. As long as I can keep a single cable to charge everything, I'm happy.
> The Common EPS Memorandum of Understanding expired at the end of 2012. The European Commission reported that all of the MoU signatories, "have met their obligations under the MoU," but that most of the signatories declined an EC request to extend the MoU beyond 2012
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_External_Power_Supply
I'll bet that the new EU standard adapts that, rather than enshrining some current solution. In fact, the sort-of-non-mandatory previous EU standard (which was micro-USB) was allowed to expire, since they were working on the next one.
As for whether this is possible - yes, it's certainly possible to require compliance with a certain standard as part of product certification for marketing in the EU. To what extent they want to make it mandatory (extra fees, or outright requirement if you want to market in the EU) - we'll see.
[1] http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/12/04/next-gen-usb-conne...
I do find this odd though. I thought everyone else had standardized on USB-micro because of a previous dictate by the EU. I'm not sure why they're doing it again.
I'm always on the side of standard connections. Which is one of several reasons I never choose Apple products. Having it imposed by law feels vaguely wrong, but Apple's behavior (on this front, and several others) also feels vaguely wrong to me.
USB 3.0 micro plug is order of magnitude inferior to Lightning in arguably the most important part - experience of plugging and unplugging, which you'll do at least twice a day.
Until we can survive on wireless power, I'll take reversible Lightning over that ridiculous oversized Micro-B USB 3.0 (even the name is ridiculous) plug any day.
I don't think that's the case. First, they were coming off the older 30-pin dock connector. Second, the connector needs to do far more than just syncing and charging. It's also used for video out, audio out, sensor input, and who knows what other future updates. Apple designed Lightning to be very flexible for future use.
Honestly I don't believe that if USB 3 was more common Apple would have gone with it.
Basically as usual, it's Apple and everyone else.
I'll stick with my USB charger thanks as it is 100% ubiquitous as I will my Internet Printing Protocol, DLNA (which doesn't even require an Apple box to talk to my TV!) and bluetooth that works properly across all devices I've encountered.
Edit to add: I have 3 Lightning iPads in my house (none are mine personally). The male connectors aren't durable - two dead ones so far. I'm not sure about the sockets either which are way more expensive to replace.
I've seen tons of dock connector issues with broken ports, but none with lightning so far.
Last time I checked you can plug the USB side of the Lightning connector to any USB charger and vice versa, I'm pretty sure you can use the Apple charger to charge anything that also charges from a USB port. Seems to me that Apple would already be in compliance...
So I may be wrong, but I think this is about actually forcing Apple to provide micro-USB directly.
As we can see market standard for charges was "every company has its own standards, and charge customers more", after UE and China decided ruled at created regulations for charges it was short time and every (except one) producers started to support microUSB/minuUSB as standard. Strange, don't you think? ;-)
Additionally, I said in my comment that maybe the government should regulate it, I just proposed alternatives that would allow for some reasonable exceptions.
