Claude code asks you permissions for every command. It also gives you the possibility of marking commands as safe so next time it can use them without asking .
So these agents that people are so excited about spawning in parallel stop and ask you before executing each command they choose to execute? What kind of life is that. I'd rather do something myself than tell 5 AI agents what I want and then keep approving each command they are going to run.
I'm not saying it is better if they run commands without my approval. This whole thing is just doesn't seem as exciting as other people make it out to be. Maybe I am missing something.
It can literally be a single command to ssh into that machine and check if the systemd service is running. If it is in your history, you'd use ctrl+r to lookback anyway. It sounds so much worse asking some AI agent to look up the status of that service we deployed earlier. And then approve its commands on top of that.
I think it's something you have to try in order to understand.
Running commands one by one and getting permission may sound tedious. But for me, it maps closely to what I do as a developer: check out a repository, read its documentation, look at the code, create a branch, make a set of changes, write a test, test, iterate, check in.
Each of those steps is done with LLM superpowers: the right git commands, rapid review of codebase and documentation, language specific code changes, good test methodology, etc.
And if any of those steps go off the rails, you can provide guidance or revert (if you are careful).
It isn't perfect by any means. CC needs guidance. But it is, for me, so much better than auto-complete style systems that try to guess what I am going to code. Frankly, that really annoys me, especially once you've seen a different model of interaction.
I do not think that is a good thing in the long run. More people in fields they know absolutely nothing about? That does not sound like a good thing to me. I am going to become a chemical engineer (something I know absolutely nothing about) or some shit and have an LLM with me doing my job for me. Sounds good I guess?
He has a point, that's quite depressing that a work you had to think and act in order to solve hard problems now became almost the same as scanning barcodes in any supermarket, and it's outright sad that most people are happy about it and being snarky towards anyone that points the hardships that come with it.
Philosophically speaking (not practically) it's like living the industrial revolution again. It's lit! But it's also terrifying and saddening.
Personally it makes me want to savor each day as the world would never be the same again.
I mean most software engineering jobs are not especially exciting. I have done web dev for smaller companies that never had more than a few hundred concurrent users. It is boring CRUD apps all day every day.
Still at least you could have a bit of fun with the technical challenges. Now with AI it becomes completely mind numbing.
I'm with you on this. I'm pouring one out for human skill because I think our ability to do a lot of creative work (coding included) is on the brink of extinction. But I definitely think these are the future
The interesting part of my job is unchanged. Thinking through the design, UX, architecture, code structure, etc were always where I found the fun / challenge. Typing was never the part I was overly fond of.
The TUI is from gdb.[1] Nothing from GDB is compiled in your binary. My guess (might be wrong!) is that the ShowCrashReports() call added in your program's main function sets up some signal handlers, so that in case of segfaults it starts GDB in a separate process and attaches it to your crashing process.
As an EU citizen, I am really happy with this decision.
I am an iPhone user, but having an iPhone is not ubiquitous here, almost all of my friends/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.
As for the e-waste generated by "having to throw all of those lightning cables", 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'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't have to think about the cable type, for non-tech savvy people, that would be "the regular charging cable" and that's it.
I would also add that all lightning cables won't suddenly go to the landfill in 2024. Many people will keep their iPhones/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.
There's nothing wise or moral about this decision.
Mandating a technology standard, purely for personal preference and convenience reasons -- not for reasons related to safety, or pollution, or security -- especially for things that change as fast as phones, is one of the most short-sighted and naive things any government could do.
There's a long history of Apple using proprietary connectors to achieve performance specifications above what the currently available standardized connectors could provide. Hell, in all likelihood, Apple is likely to ditch a charging connection altogether in favor of wireless charging in the near future. The EU is mandating technological stagnation. They will always be behind the market.
> There's a long history of Apple using proprietary connectors to achieve performance specifications above what the currently available standardized connectors could provide.
Lightning was good when it came out (compared to the various micro-USB options), but it's not held up. Even Apple knows this and they've moved away from it on their iPads.
As others in this thread have mentioned, the "unofficial" regulation that drove most non-apple phones to micro-USB, and then to USB-C did not prevent progress.
The laws are not going to mandate USB-C of a certain revision, etc. The laws simply mandate cooperation in a market that has been mostly cooperative, save for a single participant.
If I'm reading it properly the law does mandate certain USB revisions. For example devices that pull more than 15 watts but less than 100 have to support the 2021 version of IEC 62680-1-2.
Lightning was a design put forth by a company that wasn't Apple during the USB IF's design stage of USB-C. It was rejected because the pins were on the outside, not the inside, and would allow easy damage of both the cable and the connector. It was rejected purely on completely sane technical and mechanical reasons.
Apple shipped it anyways, and all Lightning cables have failed or will fail for exactly the reasons it was rejected. Apple chose the cable because of how easily it fails.
Lightning was never good, and Apple has a long history of fucking customers, period.
> Lightning was a design put forth by a company that wasn't Apple during the USB IF's design stage of USB-C.
Do you have some references for this? I had never heard of Lightning having been developed anywhere but at Apple and specifically for their iDevice line and a check on Wikipedia's Lightning connector page has no references to anything that can substantiate this claim. Either a great example of historical erasure, or you're making this up.
"during" ≠ "as part of", so technically they're as-written right either way, albeit I do suspect they did mean "as part of", so, I'll second that source request
It gets kind of lost in the summary, but only devices that are rechargeable via a wired cable have to be chargable via USB-C. So going fully wireless is perfectly legal. It's also perfectly legal to offer other charging ports in addition to USB-C, though that's less likely to happen in phones.
And while this regulation puts some limitations on innovation in connectors, Thunderbolt shows that there is lots of room to innovate within the USB-C format (in a way that's compatible to normal USB).
I’m not in a hurry, I can charge slowly during the night.
Remember when people said they’d never use an phone that needs to be charged every 2 days? Now we all charge our phones every day. Habbits change with technology.
Personally fast charging changed everything. Plug phone at random occasion (few minutes before leaving home or during short ride) and never have to think of overnight charging. I've mounted magsafe thing on my car dashboard and it was somewhat of disappointment. Sure it's convenient but slower charge was def noticeable.
But the whole point is being able to depend on a cable that just about everyone has. All of your gear has USB-C. Apple just being cocky.
Like this you waste charging cycle. I doubt this "few minutes before leaving home" can charge your phone up to 100%. Every cycle you do not charge from 0% up to 100% can be considered a wasted cycle. And in wasting things we are good ;)
That is not accurate, as far as I understand. The opposite might even be the case.
From what I understand, the battery is damaged most when close to 0% or close to 100%.
So, if a phone could do, say, 1000 full cycles until the battery reaches a certain stage of degradation, and now you used an identical phone, but with shorter cycles only down to 20%, then charge to 80%, you could not only do 1000 of those short cycles, but even 1000/60% = 1667, and still have the battery in a better shape than the one with 1000 full cycles.
I have the MagSafe battery and if your iPhone is hot it won't charge wirelessly at all. It was frustrating to come prepared with a 100% phone and 100% battery pack, and leave an event with a dead phone and 60% still in the battery pack.
Fast charging is bad for the battery. I’d actually be happier if the wireless MagSafe charger was slower, say around 5-8W. I have all the time in the world while asleep, why would I care if it finished charging in 1 hour vs 3 hours?
Well i dunno, it worked tremendously well for USB 2, don’t you think? Might be my age, but I distinctly remember having heaps of different charging cables. Gone, thanks to EU legislation.
You're not completely honest here, though. It was either Type A jack for power supplies without a cable, or Type B micro jack for fixed cables, and the latter very much specifies the port on the device.
Sort of. Standardizing on a USB-A charger did slightly push people to use a USB form plug on the other end - but data transfer is what really killed the proprietary connectors.
The multitude of USB connectors has been pared down - mini USB was withdrawn due to its design flaws, micro USB was obnoxious for 5Gbps data transfer, as was the larger USB-B plug. The convenience and capabilities of USB-C have slowly replaced them both on the device side, as well as the capability to go higher than 5 Gbps.
If anything has slowed adoption of USB-C, I'd point at desktop PCs and the reluctance to put 'real' USB-C ports on them. This is mostly because of what I consider to be a design error on the USB-IF's part - they added backward compatibility, allowing a USB-C dongle to supply a USB-A connector, when they should have supplied forward compatibility instead. This left a lot of bundled cables as well as hardware dongles like wireless mouse adapters stuck on USB-A.
The decision passed today also talks about harmonizing wireless charging in the future, to make sure it's compatible across brands and device types. Presumably that would happen once the technology has matured a bit more.
Move to wireless only is shame since charge is slow, not good for battery health, breaks many compatibility like wired only CarPlay, and not fixing big file (high quality 4K video) transferring issue.
Apple hasn't changed the 'fast-changing' lightning connector since 2012, and USB-A lasted from 1996 to, well, present. USB-C came out in 2014 and is likely going to outlive us both. Connectors simply don't change that fast, and I'm not sure why people think they do.
I think even the EU can regulate on that kind of schedule.
I think with the size of USB-C and Lightning, we are pretty close to the point (if not there already) where structural limitations are not going to let us go much (if any) smaller. No one wants a connector that will break after 10 uses.
USB-C, electrically, has enough headroom that performance should not be an issue for a very, very, very long time. Already you can push more data over a USB-C cable than a phone can meaningfully handle.
The only thing that really comes to mind is we could go to fiber core for crazy data speeds but those are so delicate I don't think the improvement would be worth the hassle unless we have a big improvement there.
I think C could easily adopt a fiber, there's the "tongue" bit in the middle of the socket, and empty space in the middle of the plug, could easily have a fiber run down the middle there.
iPhones don't even ship with a charger anymore and they definitely did not lower their prices when the decision to leave them out. It's a win-win for them – they can claim to be more environmentally conscious etc. while reducing their BOM cost.
Apple and other phone companies don't depend on selling cables and chargers. If they did, they would have been doing a much better job and they'd be more like Anker and Griffin.
One end of the cable changed but I think the point was that the other end, the part that was built into your laptop, didn't.
I still have a stash of USB-B, mini-USB, and micro-USB cables with the USB-A because I've got a printer, a camera, and devices (Kindle, older battery) that use those ports. I have a USB-C -> USB-A hub. In 5-10 years from now, I might have gone all USB-C.
There is, for example the fact that the standard is set by comittee means large players have more say but cannot dictate the market. This allows innovation that doesn't benefit one party.
> purely for personal preference and convenience reasons
Not the reason behind the move
> not for reasons related to safety, or pollution, or security
Those are some of the benefits but not all
> especially for things that change as fast as phones
Connectors are standards, plus phones do not change that often, they get marginally better but most of them have looked largely the same for a decade.
> There's a long history of Apple using proprietary connectors to achieve performance specifications above what the currently available standardized connectors could provide
Previously there was also a long history of interoperability between Apple designs that no longer exists. And before that there was a long history of Apple being a tiny company constantly on the verge of bankruptcy. Long history is a pretty short time nowadays.
> Apple is likely to ditch a charging connection altogether in favor of wireless charging in the near future.
I cannot wait to have the slowest charging phone on the market as a selling point.
> he EU is mandating technological stagnation.
The EU mandating GDPR has increased security protection on data around the globe, and decreased bloatware. A large player like europe setting a standard means that companies follow that legislation to not have 2 products one for Europe and one outside.
> There's a long history of Apple using proprietary connectors to achieve performance specifications above...
Oh please, Apple has barely improved Lightning since its introduction a decade ago (2012!). Yes, back then, it was better than what was available, but the industry has moved on, and Apple has stagnated.
> Hell, in all likelihood, Apple is likely to ditch a charging connection altogether in favor of wireless charging in the near future.
Unlikely. For one thing, wireless charging is still much slower than what you can get with a cable, and for another, users will not tolerate needing to lug around a charging pad (with its own cable), or hope that someone nearby has one. Yes, I know similar things about tolerance were said about the removal of headphone jacks, but I don't think this is quite the same situation.
> The EU is mandating technological stagnation. They will always be behind the market.
I haven't read the text of the law, but I would hope that it's flexible enough to allow for embracing improvements to technology.
But even if that process is slow, I don't think that's a bad thing. Fast-changing technology generally does not really help users (it can, but I think more often it does not). Yes, benefits can be realized over time, but these sorts of changes create confusion and waste if not done well. I really don't care if Apple wants to put a new connector on iPhones, but it takes them 3 years instead of 1 year to do it because of legal/regulatory issues.
> Mandating a technology standard, purely for personal preference and convenience reasons -- not for reasons related to safety, or pollution, or security
Pollution is* a concern here, though I agree that's probably not the primary reason this law was drafted. I'm with you on the general discomfort around regulations targeted toward preference/convenience. But I think it's a little unfair to call it "personal preference". Lighting is inferior to USB-C in almost every way (the only advantage Lightning has is that it's slightly smaller, but not to a degree that really matters). Apple continues to use Lightning out of stubbornness and NIH syndrome, and that hurts consumers overall.
But consider all the places that have two cables. I've seen dual-cable setups in Lyft/Uber vehicles, and at friendly coffee shops and stuff like that (hell, I still see a few places that additionally have micro-USB cables). What a huge waste of material! And yeah, you can buy single cables that have multiple "heads" on them, but I very rarely see those in the wild. If there was actually a good technical reason why we have this split, then sure,
> especially for things that change as fast as phones
I don't think that's really true anymore. Most smartphones are basically the same as they were 5 years ago. Incrementally better camera hardware, incrementally better display technology, more RAM, faster processors, more storage. But I see very little change year to year. Maybe there will be some big new changes coming soon, but I don't see any evidence of that.
> is one of the most short-sighted and naive things any government could do.*
Heh, I think you underestimate government capacity for short-sightedness. This particular thing seems pretty middling and mediocre to me on that scale.
> Unlikely. For one thing, wireless charging is still much slower than what you can get with a cable, and for another, users will not tolerate needing to lug around a charging pad (with its own cable), or hope that someone nearby has one. Yes, I know similar things about tolerance were said about the removal of headphone jacks, but I don't think this is quite the same situation.
But users do accept carrying charging pads. Smartwatches, electric toothbrushes and shaving apparatus have charging pads/cables and no one complains about carrying those when going on a trip.
For the average consumer, the iPhone really doesn't need a port of any kind anymore. What it needs is all day battery life. As Apple doesn't really care about "pro" smartphone users who use external devices like DAC-s or IR cameras they will ditch the port at some point. If they cared about "pro" smartphone users, they would've come out with a USB-C iPhone in 2018 or 2019.
> no one complains about carrying those when going on a trip.
I kinda think "going on a trip" is a minority subset of the times when people bring charging gear with them. Regardless, I personally would find it a huge annoyance to have to carry a charging pad. Right now I just bring my laptop charger, and use it for both my laptop and (Android) phone. I don't want to bring a charging pad in addition.
The devices you list are not used/charged in a moving vehicle, but rather at its destination. A phone is considerably different in this very relevant regard.
> Oh please, Apple has barely improved Lightning since its introduction a decade ago (2012!). Yes, back then, it was better than what was available, but the industry has moved on, and Apple has stagnated.
You mean: in 20 years Apple has had only two connectors, and they worked and work extremely well. Meanwhile the industry "that moved on" invented 6 different incompatible connectors, didn't even specify a charging standard until 2010s (IIRC) and is now busy inventing USB 4 Gen 1x15 revision 16
All the USB data specs are irrelevant for this legislation. All it says is: Use a USB-C connector and support the USB PD charging standard. In fact many cheaper android phones use USB2 since the port is purely for charging.
That's a bit of an unfair argument, since you're mixing various things together that are not connectors (USB 4... etc.).
Bottom line is that the industry has actually been converging on USB-C for some time now. And again, I think it's unfair to compare an industry with tens (hundreds?) of players having trouble agreeing on something, when we're talking about Apple -- a single entity -- obstinately refusing to drop their obsolete, outdated "uniqueness" in this case.
I get why Apple chose to do Lighting instead of microUSB back in 2012 (I have lost track of the high number of microUSB connectors I have broken), but the funny thing is that Lightning didn't really offer any technical benefits beyond the more sturdy form factor at the time. Lighting was USB2 (and more or less still is), and microUSB carried USB2 signals just fine. They went their own way there for pretty dubious reasons. Well, ok, one obvious reason: they wanted to restrict who could build an iPhone/iPad accessory, because using the Lightning connector required licensing it from Apple.
So basically Lightning exists for one physical sturdiness reason (which, alone, probably would not be justification to do something new), and one anti-competitive reason.
Apple should have just stuck with microUSB, and then switched to USB-C once that made sense. But no, that would have reduced their iron grip on what people are allowed to do with their phones.
So, force people to have more stuff and use the less power efficent option. As well as the glued-in non-replaceable batteries that were such a wonderful futuristic idea before.
Thank the flying spaghetti monster that the EU is "behind the market", because the market is consumer-hostile garbage.
Not a fan of metric screw threads? Mandates were needed in some countries to change from imperial to metric because the market can't make such a non-incremental move on its own even if it's good for everyone.
Why? I can definitely see Apple rolling this out to the Pro line first, then the regular iPhones, and then the SE. It could be like the home button, which disappeared on the X and then rolled through the 11s, and the SE will be the last to go.
The benefit will be better water/dust-proofing, and slightly more internal room for battery or whatever else. I have only just started charging wirelessly, but I find it works great for me. I know wired charging is faster, but only a handful of times a year do I care about that.
There's the magsafe wireless charging now though right so you could slap that on and hold the phone maybe? I don't have an iPhone so I'm not aware how thick those pucks are off the top of my head but seems doable.
Those other two use cases of music creation and thumb drives are a tiny market on iPhone I could see Apple abandoning them entirely.
You're right, that is an important caveat! I've not run into an issue, since I mostly charge at night, and rarely is my battery in perilous territory (even though it's the diminutive 13 Mini). On the few occasions where I was using the phone and needed to charge it, I just switched to using my computer, which I usually have with me.
And if I were charging at a Starbucks or something, I could use the phone while charging, just flat on the table.
If we follow this logic, the EU should also mandate which aspects of USB-C PD are required to be supported and enforce that. Otherwise we'll end up with a slew of devices without even the required 5.1k resistors, which can't charge from PD-compliant adapters, but can be charged using a USB-A to USB-C cable.
As an EU citizen, while I do agree that regulation is often required (it did wonders for our roaming charges!), I do not like this development.
> In so far as they are capable of being recharged by means of wired charging at voltages higher than 5 Volts, currents higher than 3 Amperes or powers higher than 15 Watts, the categories or classes of radio equipment referred to in point 1 of this Part shall:
> 3.1. incorporate the USB Power Delivery, as described in the standard EN IEC 62680-1-2:2021 “Universal serial bus interfaces for data and power - Part 1-2: Common components - USB Power Delivery specification”;
> 3.2. ensure that any additional charging protocol allows for the full functionality of the USB Power Delivery referred to in point 3.1., irrespective of the charging device used.
As to devices supplying less than 15 Watts: the 5.1k resistors are already mandatory in the USB-C connector spec.
I'd argue this is actually great. It's extremely unlikely that type-C connectors would charge from anything other than the in-built charging standard (if for no other reason than physical compatibility) but all the extra pins make it extremely flexible. The Lightning pins can just be routed out of the USB-C connector in a compliant way via alt-mode.
Lightning is a better connector for small devices and it's more durable in my experience. USB-C is way better than micro as a connector but you end up with the issue of many kinds of cables that look similar but are not interchangeable. What speed? PD support? Power only? Who knows!
Maybe switching to a less durable connector or no connector is fine given that Qi support has gotten pretty good. Most of the Lightning cables I've purchased are still in circulation, I'd prefer not to replace them.
If the EU really cared about solving a problem they'd ban micro, that connector is really fragile and totally superseded by type C.
I already have three kinds of C to C cables, some that will work with my laptop+monitor and some that won't, then some power-only ones for random accessories. We can no-true-Scotsman all day but so far type C hasn't simplified my life and as far as I can tell it won't in the near future. iPhones switching for me will just mean throwing out a decade of Lightning cables and buying USB-C cables.
They are charge cables that come with random accessories, I think I bought some long ones as well. Also A to C cables. As long as they're only used for low-draw devices it should be safe but requires keeping track.
The vast majority of C to C "charge" cables are USB 2 cables. I don't believe I have ever received or even seen a "charge only" non-captive C to C cable. A to C cables are a lot more common.
Do you have reason to believe that the C to C cables you got/bought don't support USB 2?
It doesn't make sense for a random accessory to come with a charge only C to C cable because USB 2 C to C cables are a dime a dozen. They're almost certainly paying more money to produce a spec violating cable.
They could have data support, I've never actually checked. The wires are pretty thin so I only trust them for charging the lights they came with. I have a bundle of similar looking A to mini or micro B cables of which I know many are charge-only. As long as they're super short I only rely on them being useful for charging.
In that case they almost certainly do have data support.
Keep in mind that power dissipation scales with the square of the current. That means that, as a first order approximation, relative to household 15 amp wiring, a 3 amp cable can be 1/25 of the size. You can get away with really thin wires for that.
The reason why you end up with thick USB C cables is because of either 5 amp support (requiring 2.8x bigger wires) and/or USB 3 support (requiring a bunch of extra higher spec wires). It is quite normal for plain old 3 amp USB 2 USB C cables to be thin.
I'm curious, next time I'm charging devices I'll check. Either way they're still not useful for anything beyond accessory charging, they're short and won't carry the power+signal necessary for my laptop (which, sigh, has two kinds of cables because the one Apple provided with their charger won't do Thunderbolt).
They're not interchangeable, of the C cables I have now some will drive my monitor and some won't, and some don't even carry data. The type C connector is a big step up vs the older micro and A+B connectors, it just doesn't really make using USB simpler or easier to figure out.
The large hole in the lightning female port traps lint, I have to clean it out with a toothpick every couple of weeks. USB-C's gaps are too small for lint to collect.
That's not true, as my phone would be happy to attest. However, I think I cleaned it in the 12-18 month range, when charging stopped working and the cable no longer clicked. There's almost certainly lint back in there, but not enough to necessitate cleaning.
The cable stops working in one orientation, so I'd expect it to be quite noticeable. There's a few posts in that regard, so I suspect it has the same or similar problems.
Certainly doesn't seem in favor of Lightning cables being any more durable.
What just happened is, EU, a political organization enforcing the use of a technology on a company which operates on free market. It's Apples best interest to make technology that the consumers want so that they can sell more units of that. A political organization like EU has no say in this. EU citizens already make this decision for themselves by voting with money and choosing to buy/not buy an iPhone.
Today is one of the dark days of EU. In short sight it's a victory. But in long sight it's a hinderence to progress by enforcing a technology on the market instead of letting the free market decide the technology.
You probably shouldn't have based your argument on this statement, which is generally regarded as a myth. It is a myth in the sense that Apple exists in a free market: it is a near monopoly but is savvy enough not to wade into the area other companies did in the 90's and were penalized.
Second, governments have the right to enforce environmental protection acts to protect the health and safety of its people. Technology companies are subject to this from day one at many levels (e.g., fabs have limits on how much toxic waste they can pump into the air).
The EU is leading the way for cracking down on trillion-dollar companies who choose to treat you as a product rather than a person. I hope the rest of the world follows.
In the market of mobile phones for consumers who actually buy apps. That’s why everyone wants Apple to lose that monopoly. The problem of course is that exactly that monopoly is a large part of the reason why it’s the market for consumers who actually buy apps.
Oh? When did I become able to carry my Apple software, purchases, addresses, backups, pictures, etc. over to Android? When did I become able to buy a phone that functions in the Apple ecosystem that isn't made by Apple?
Oh, right, I can't.
A Pixel and a Galaxy are direct competitors. An iPhone and a Galaxy are not direct competitors because of lock-in effects.
Now, if you are saying that the EU should mandate that I be able to switch my purchases between those ecosystems, that would change. However, even as much of a fan as I am about anti-trust, I believe that would be a bridge too far.
Furthermore, from what we have seen in the past 36 months with respect to supplier consolidation, I would argue that ANY market with less than 5 real competitors should get broken up recursively until that gets fixed. That should apply to phones, food, toilet paper, disinfectants, etc.--everything.
Part of what is allowing all the economic price hikes to stick is that even in markets where there is "competition", there is some single upstream supplier that can't (mostly) or won't (rarely) increase production. This prevents any of the "competitors" from being able to gain significant market share since they can't increase their production since everybody is blocked.
A lot of businesses figured this out through Covid. So, they raised prices. What are you gonna do? Go to a competitor? He can't absorb your order and you'll be at the back of his queue. Good luck.
So because iOS apps can't run on Android phones, Apple is a monopoly and should be forced to use USB-C? I'm very confused by what you're trying to say. If apps not running on other OSes is enough to count as lock-in, then every OS creates lock-in. I've bought many Windows apps over the years, but they don't run on my linux laptop, and vice-versa. Does that mean both linux and windows should be regulated as monopolies? I don't think so. What you call "lock-in" are just software incompatibilities. Or do you think Apple should be forced to write drivers for every Android phone out there, and sell and support their OS on those platforms?
And Apple doesn't run an app store on Android. Does that mean Android is also a monopoly? Heck, Sony doesn't run an app store on the Nintendo Switch. Does that mean Nintendo is a monopoly? We could play a similar game with streaming services. Yes, you can give money to people in different ways and get software that works on different systems. That's how it has always been. Nobody is being deceived or coerced. Well until now, since the EU is coercing everyone to use USB-C.
Apple should be coerced into adopting USB-C on iPhone. Their refusal to do so has been an explicit, repeated failure on Apple's behalf. The iPhone is one of the only remaining Apple products that does not use USB-C, and it's exclusion is entirely unnecessary since USB-C's base-spec was designed by Apple and well-exceeds the capabilities of Lightning.
At the end of the day, it's a serial port. People should stop acting like Apple is being asked to re-engineer the Death Star, and recognize that this is a change so rudimentary that people on YouTube do it for a fun weekend project. It's the textbook definition of a failure, and the EU has every right to hold Apple accountable for the insane things they call 'innovation' in the US.
Apple make billions every quarter and at this point no one can realistically unseat them.
They collect pretty much all the profit in the phone market.
They don’t technically have a monopoly, but they are in an incredibly strong position which is close to being guaranteed for the short and medium term.
Was just trying to explain that although they don't technically have a monopoly in the phone market, they do hold a huge amount of power.
In a basic sense, monopolies were outlawed to try to keep markets fair, but Apple are in such a strong position now that they have pretty much the same level of influence that a company with an actual monopoly would have.
It's not about profit, directly at least. A company making twice the profit while selling half the product of their competitor is not in any violation of anti-monopoly/trust/whatever laws.
> A political organization like EU has no say in this.
This is the short-sighted view. The unguided free market very often makes "decisions" that are detrimental to society as a whole, and it is absolutely necessary for political organisations to correct for this.
Obviously not. If doctors can't take care of their patients within a normal working day, the answer is to have more doctors rather than make the existing ones work unsustainably long hours.
I wasn't suggesting that we do so, I was pointing out the absurdity of saying that not doing something for social benefit is the same as harming Society
You stated categorically that "society and legislators should only forbid harmful action" rather than "compelling helpful action" and then chose a particularly nonsensical example of "compelling helpful action" to prove your point. There are plenty of (much more realistic) examples of "compelling helpful action" which don't lead to "absurd conclusions."
Yes, I chose an extreme and absurd example to illustrate the point. I said as much in the post.
I agree that there are many realistic examples of compelling action. If you provide some I would probably disagree that the government should be doing them.
It seems to me like the EU considers companies making their own proprietary phone charger connectors as “harmful”. So I’m having trouble understanding what you take issue with here.
Plenty of folks in this thread disagree with you, not only the EU legislative branch. You seem to be missing the fact that we have a society here and it demands concessions and compromises to be part of one.
Please don't refer to the "legislative branch" of the EU. The EU doesn't implement separation of powers like most governments do. Laws like this originate with, are passed by and are enforced by the Commission.
There is a so-called Parliament. It's more like the US House of Lords power-wise. It can slow down legislation or tweak it a bit. It can't actually change the law, which means it's not a Parliament.
There is a set of courts. You can appeal to them against the decisions of the Commission after the punishment is enacted. Unlike in normal democratic systems of government, the government doesn't have to prove guilt in a neutral court of law. They assert guilt, fine you a few billion dollars and then if you have enough money left over you can appeal in the courts. Years will pass and if you eventually win, you might get the money back. Of course the Commission might then just fine you again - the rules are vague and being in compliance essentially political. The courts also have a history of activism and 'discovering' new laws in the texts of existing laws.
The EU is structurally and philosophically a Soviet-style system, which makes sense given its origins in the Ventotene Manifesto. Like all such systems it has institutions that use the names as western democratic institutions, but on close inspection the rules are sufficiently different that they aren't effective.
"we have a society here and it demands concessions"
"Society" doesn't care about phone connectors or make demands. Governments do that. Survey the populations in EU countries and their top priorities are nowhere even close to this. They mostly care about the economy, immigration and climate change.
I can't wait for the EU to become a federation. I don't see it happening in my lifetime but who knows what the next crisis will bring. But I digress...
> "Society" doesn't care about phone connectors or make demands. Governments do that. Survey the populations in EU countries and their top priorities are nowhere even close to this. They mostly care about the economy, immigration and climate change.
If you asked me what the top issues in the EU are, my top 3 answers would be:
1. energy policy
2. energy policy
3. idiots at the helm of ECB (how is the new hermes scarf, mrs Lagarde?) who can't comprehend energy policy
but! if you asked me specifically if I want to see phone charging cables standardized by legislation, I'd say yes, why now and not 10 years ago. Call me a Soviet for that, I don't care.
Cool. As soon as Apple relinquishes all monopoly on IP, then we can talk about if governments can interfere here.
These companies hold a craptonne of legal power to force me and you. I'm sorry that I have zero regrets when it comes to just a common standard... Just like I have zero regrets that all power outlets in EU are 220v/50Hz
> Compelling helpful action leads to all kinds of absurd conclusions.
No it doesn't. Besides, "not doing something helpful" vs "doing something hurtful" is often simply a matter of perspective.
> For example, that we should we compel doctors to work more hours because anytime they spend at home is to the detriment of their patients.
To use your own language, this example is completely absurd. Here is your logic applied to forbidding harmful actions: "Setting speed limits on roads leads to all kinds of absurd conclusions, for example that we should forbid people to walk too fast in their homes."
This is a false dichotomy. The government and politicians makes and mandates decisions that are detrimental to society. Often to their own benefit.
And they have no competition. It would be too political to list these. But, I am sure both sides of the political spectrum can come up with innumerable examples.
> The government and politicians makes and mandates decisions that are detrimental to society.
Thats a RELIGIOUS statement. The government and politicans are elected by their people. They take decisions that were mandated by their people. If the people mandate something, that's that.
In Anglosphere, where FPTP system prevents the people's will from being reflected in actual politics may be causing such an environment in which what the politicians do and what the people want have little to do with each other. And it does seem to be so.
But in any country with proportional representation, its as it should be: Its the democratic will of the people that something happens.
"The people" does not need to have 'competition'. The people are, well, the society. Proposing that they need 'competition' or their power to be curbed is reactionary.
Firstly, with your government, you get a vote. But just about competition: the competition is that you can move to a different jurisdiction (i.e. country). And there's a lot more competition there than there is with phone makers or phone OSes.
If a Frenchman doesn't like French laws he can move to Germany and haul all his stuff there (and his pension, etc). But if you don't like the Apple ecosystem anymore, Apple will make it as difficult as possible to move.
The free market isn't the utopia libertarians think it is. You don't get to protest inside Apple, you can't petition for redress of grievances, if Apple terminates your account, you don't get a judge or jury of your Apple peers to rule if it was right or wrong.
> If a Frenchman doesn't like French laws he can move to Germany and haul all his stuff there (and his pension, etc).
A bit offtopic but this is still something I find very lacking in the EU.
For all the good it's brought us, we still have extremely different social security in each country and if you've lived in many EU countries throughout your life it's a complete PITA to reconcile things like pensions. Some countries have state pensions, others only voluntary corp plans.. I have no idea how this will turn out when I retire.
IMO these different systems should at the very least be talking together.
At least between Finland and Sweden it seems to work fine. My mother is from Finland and lives in Sweden now. She got a phonecall from Finland when it was time for her pension. Just confirmed with her and set it up so she gets her pension transfered to her account every month. She had just about forgotten about it since it was 40+ years ago she moved to Sweden.
As is stated below countries with similar systems cooperate easier, Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands are more or less automatic. This is slowly getting better, EU is working on it. Some key words: EESSI with RINA (stands for reference implementation..), and more generally "single digital gateway eu". The pessimist in me says that it will not be done for all countries with in 20 years, unless we give some countries lots of infrastructure for free.
Ah ok I've not seen the benefits of this. I'm from the Netherlands but lived in Ireland and Spain. I don't think they have these setups.
But I think this needs much more priority than the 'one market' benefits for big business they're working on. It's really a mess if you move around in the EU now, it's not at all like in America.
They should fix the voting too: Right now as an expat I can only vote for my home country which has zero bearing on the country I live in :/ And changing nationalities takes 10+ years.
For other stuff like health I don't mind as much (especially as Spain has a much better state health system than the Netherlands' privatised crap :) )
These are the rules for elections in Sweden; one year until you can vote in local elections, five years for national elections. You should always research this when entering a new country for work, applying for citizenship is usually a very rigid process, and it will depend on the time you send in you application. I do not know if these rules are the same all over EU.
About cooperation between countries; At least the gears are turning, even if it is not somethings that is high on the political agenda. The biggest issue is to have a central database that maps one identity in one country to another. We have not even figured out Inter-country Electronic IDs (via EIDAS) yet, there is no way to even do a manual match of identities between countries using eID. That makes it impossible for you to log on and check your pensions if you work in the wrong country.
Respectfully, I would claim it's short-sighted to believe that the individual consumer has any real say in what they want, need or get with respect to offerings by trillion-dollar international conglomerates.
There is no such thing as a free and unregulated market. Well, it exists but we call it the law of the jungle.
This is not to say that any regulation is sensible, but this kind of standardization to avoid vendor lock-in and waste is one of the prime examples of sensible stuff.
> Respectfully, I would claim it's short-sighted to believe that the individual consumer has any real say in what they want, need or get with respect to offerings by trillion-dollar international conglomerates.
Whole heartedly agreed. If I, as a consumer, had my say then my flagship phone would still have a headphone jack, an SD card slot, and a replaceable battery. Yet here we are.
If there weren't such anticompetitive behavior by monopolistic behemoths, one could "have a say" by choosing to buy or produce the product which offers demanded features. These specific customer demands are common and well-known, yet their effectively "not having a say" has indeed occurred, given the fact these options are not made available anywhere in the behemoth-controlled market.
It's not. The EU tried to do it the easy way, where companies would agree amongst themselves. This was finally accomplished in 2009[1] by every one except Apple.
The interesting thing there is, the connector discussed in 2009 was the micro-USB connector. Had the EU forced tech companies in 2009 to use a micro-USB connector, would that mean they would still be on it now, and not using the (far better) USB-C connector?
I think I'm for this decision overall, but otoh I'm really glad that the EU didn't force everyone onto micro-USB back in 2009. If they EU hadn't done this now, I wonder how I would feel about the possibility when 2035 rolls around?
> Had the EU forced tech companies in 2009 to use a micro-USB connector, would that mean they would still be on it now, and not using the (far better) USB-C connector?
> We're also voting with our votes and most of us agree with that the EU is doing here.
Never voted for crap like this or the GDPR. I voted for strong leadership against Russian aggression or not becoming energy dependent of an evil regime, but I guess mandating trivialities is so much easier.
Yes, we don't have a direct democracy (although you can vote for parties advocating it), but it's a lot more than you get with Apple. You don't get a vote on anything. "Voting with your wallet" isn't a vote at all. You can just choose to leave, but Apple makes it every difficult.
"voting with money" or "voting with your wallet" is a complete non-sense. There is no -absolutely no- way for anyone in the industry to attribute a lost sale to a "missing" feature.
I think this also a symptoms on how Americans view the world through means of consumption. Everything HAS TO be consumed one way or another.
Every time somebody says to "vote with your wallet", there is an implicit command to shut up and stop complaining about the product. The argument goes that the only legitimate way to respond to a product you don't like is to "vote with your wallet" (not buy it), implying that voting against the corporation's practices at the ballot box or on a soap box aren't legitimate. "vote with your wallet" is a fundamentally anti-democratic utterance that attempts to de-legitimize dissenters' participation in government and public discussion.
> There is no -absolutely no- way for anyone in the industry to attribute a lost sale to a "missing" feature.
There's a whole idea around it called market research. It goes as far as... surveying people post-purchase to find out what features became the deciding factors. So yes, it is possible, just with very small sampling rate.
It's not math. I've been asked about a purchase while exiting a shop. If they wanted to know why I didn't buy X, they would find out. (or specifically why I bought Y and not X, which covers the missing feature)
I'm happy to give those out for free: I didn't buy oneplus 6t, because it's missing the audio back. <- that wasn't impossible.
Look at it this way. If you enter an Apple Store, see that iPhone doesn't have a audiojack - you leave. There's no record or way of asking you anything.
"Big Box" stores will not question you for the reasons why you bought a Nokia over a OnePlus. Their market research doesn't focus on that. They also don't share customer data with Apple, Nokia or OnePlus.
Neither does Apple have it in their culture to ask, what people want.
How long did it take for Apple to get on contactless payments?
So voting with my wallet not only works, but it is an order of magnitude more powerful than "regular" voting - where I am not even represented on the political spectrum.
Exactly, which means the political system is doing its job. Politics was invented to most efficiently express the desires of the people. If the people want more political control, then it is the job of politics to do so. If they don't, then politics should avoid it.
The only reason this is muddled in America is because the people don't agree on to what degree the politics should control things.
And yes, if power delivery was still a relatively new industry, EU absolutely should have mandated a single universal outlet that's "good enough". But existing designs predate EU by decades and are already so well-entrenched that changing them all to standardize on a single plug is too much effort to justify the gains.
But it ain't so with USB-C. Mobile rechargeable devices are a relatively recent tech, and the market has already largely converged on a single design. At this point, making it into a real standard, with the result that it's guaranteed to work everywhere, is a no-brainer.
Given the state of the world it’s never going to happen but I honestly think that there should be an attempt at standardising plug sockets across the world. It is kind of ridiculous that that there are 15 different types of socket. What is anyone gaining from this madness?
A one-to-one mapping between standard plugs and standard wall power makes a lot of sense. But different standards of wall power should not share a single plug; that's just asking for trouble.
As for global standardization of wall power; maybe in an ideal world. But in reality, it would cost a ton (way more than merely replacing plugs and outlets) and doesn't seem worth it.
While entire countries will keep the imperial system versus the metric system, I'll never believe in global standardisation. Even if it's strictly better, there will always be a cost to changing, and therefore not everyone will agree.
> in any case, power plug type G is by far the safest and best.
That's utter crap. We had this argument multiple times, and somehow people without proof call it "best and safest"... when facts state that it is just not the case.
Not the OP, but the current high inflation is partially caused by Covid-related measures.
The people who were saying early on during the pandemic (me included) that we have to put into balance the number of covid casualties with the longer term economic consequences of imposing harsh and long lockdowns were treated as assasins of our collective grandmas, and worse. If it matters I’m triple vaccinated.
Because surely you were an expert on covid and its consequences early on during the pandemic, and surely you have proven (and published) that the measures taken (given the knowledge at the time where they were taken) were counter-productive in the long run, right?
Didn't need to be an expert to see where all of this was going. Again, there were many calls of "you're locking us down -> very shitty economy going forward -> things will be shitty for everyone in terms of their physical existence, not only for grandma".
If anything, this should have put another big dent in experts' expertise, meaning if they knew what they were getting us into with their decisions (after all, they're experts) and they choose this high inflation route nonetheless.
> Didn't need to be an expert to see where all of this was going.
Sure, there is never a need to be an expert to claim knowing more than them.
Also, I'm not completely convinced that it's exclusively related to the Covid lockdowns in Europe. For instance, many companies were very quick to restart (or were not even stopped) in Europe, but struggle with the IC shortage... which is not coming from Europe, is it?
As far as I can tell it’s mostly related to the increase in the money supply that was generated/caused by the strict Covid measures, I’m talking both about the US, through the Fed policies, and Europe, through the ECB policies.
That increased money supply was at first not really felt because of the decreased money velocity caused by lockdowns and restrictions, but once things started getting back to “normal” in terms of lockdowns and travel restrictions and all that then money velocity got back closer to its pre-covid levels, and coupled with that increased money supply left us in the current situation.
Of course, the increased money supply is not the only explanation, there’s also the war in Ukraine which has put a tremendous pressure on energy prices, plus the supply crisis, but imo it’s still one of the main causes of what we’re going right now.
The amount by which the EU is better than the US in environmental protection is basically a rounding error relative to what’s actually necessary to stop climate change. You might as well say they’re equal.
The solution for climate change would come from technology. Not random politicians virtue signalling and signing useless agreements which doesn't make any meaningful difference.
I'm surprised people still bring up carbon capture tech as a solution.
It happens a lot around here lately but it's just such wishful thinking IMO.
If you have that much carbon-neutral energy, carbon-neutral materials, space, maintenance to really make a dent... And all those things don't displace green resources that could have been used for other necessary things instead... You wouldn't have had any problem to begin with.
See how much shit we get here when we get a few % less natural gas here in
Europe. We're in a huge crisis over just that. That's a promille of what we'd need to capture enough carbon for 0.01 degree cooling.
It's just some distraction from the hard things that are needed to solve it. And a big paycheck for the industry behind it obviously.
It's simpler to think "technology will save us" than "we as a species screwed up and have already destroyed 2/3 of wild life (not talking about the consequences of global warming, that's yet to come), maybe we should change drastically".
The continent that provides companies like ASML and plenty of machinery in general, and is regularly in the news - not just now with the Nobel Price - when it comes to bio-tech?
Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, sure, but there is plenty of IT inside the machines. You are too concentrated on some very hip consumer companies and don't see the vast ocean of important businesses in the middle, that don't have much or any consumer contact.
Where is your evidence? What a horrible contribution to the discussion, both divisive (and without reason, out of nowhere), and of the lowest quality.
I actually went through the trouble and looked for the evidence missing from your post. If anything we need to look at Asia most of all. Also because at least for Germany, where through decades long contacts I witnessed some of it personally, we (Germany) transferred significant know-how to China quite voluntarily, and our big companies still insist on continuing to invest there even when many smaller businesses have become far more cautious. Link: https://www.reuters.com/world/german-dependence-china-growin... (German dependence on China growing "at tremendous pace" - paywalled)
Here's some, mostly opinion pieces so YMMV (I'm missing rigorous data and statistics with explanations of what they
measured, these article are all too "freeform" for my taste):
> Sure. It also explains why EU is lagging horribly behind the US when it comes to technology.
Probably because the EU (government(s)) doesn't sink as much money in to research as the US government. The technology of the US was built on Cold War spending:
I think you would have a very hard time proving this without leveraging monetary policy. Sure some low level components are and companies built on top of that but it doesn’t mean the tech I’m using is supplied by the US government.
Pretty much all the tech I use comes from the private sector
Or maybe every EU tech company approaching success will voluntarily move to US, since that is where the (free) market is and that is where it can become successful.
There are multiple markets and varying degrees of regulating them. But the universal constant is that the less regulated a market is the better for consumers and society.
That's a bold statement and by no means a universal constant. If your rivers are on fire because there is no environmental regulation, then that is not good for society.
Good example! Environmental regulation managed to drive manufacturing out of developed countries making them vulnerable to less scrupulous, unfriendly regimes while merely shifting the environmental impact elsewhere.
The correct solution was, of course, taxing externalities like pollution and CO2. That would've allowed the free market to search for solutions naturally and locally.
That is my main qualm with regulations: they are a brute force imposed solution which solves the perceived problem on the short term while doing damage and 2nd order effects on the long term.
Well the stupid popup is coming from the stupid website. If they stopped collecting data they mostly don't use (let's be honest, most websites probably don't do anything useful with most of the data), then they would not have to show the popup.
> A political organization like EU has no say in this. EU citizens already make this decision for themselves by voting with money and choosing to buy/not buy an iPhone.
I think it's important to point out that most EU countries do not subscribe to the exact same free-market vision that the US does. And the biggest country that did has recently left it.
Most of Europe is totally happy with a much more restricted free market than the US would ever allow. This is not something imposed on us people. It's what the majority wants, aka democracy.
> It's Apples best interest to make technology that the consumers want so that they can sell more units of that.
This is so hilariously wrong. It's in Apple's best interest to do whatever makes them the most money. Sometimes that happens to coincide with what customers want, but it often doesn't, _especially_ in a market with a duopoly with an incredibly high affinity for lock-in.
It's the market standardizing around two platforms. No governmental intervention necessary. Turns out consumers prefer a familiar, predictable platform with plenty of 3rd party offerings. No surprise there. But also no monopolies.
> It's Apples best interest to make technology that the consumers want so that they can sell more units of that.
It's Apple's best interest to do what makes them money, and it often aligns with what customers want.
> A political organization like EU has no say in this.
Standards bodies in the EU have be defining things like this for decades.
> EU citizens already make this decision for themselves by voting with money and choosing to buy/not buy an iPhone.
As an Apple customer I might be voting with my money, but not on the connector specifically -- just on whether the product's collective pros outweigh their cons (and whether it's better than the competitor's, ofc). If I could vote, I would've voted for USB-C a long time ago, but I just get to choose between a set of products with varying compromises. Don't know why you try to make it seem like a democratic choice.
> Today is one of the dark days of EU. In short sight it's a victory. But in long sight it's a hinderence to progress by enforcing a technology on the market instead of letting the free market decide the technology.
If the free market had its say, it'd be choosing profits over the environment, consumer safety and worker rights every time. Or..? Why hasn't the US, with much laxer regulations free-marketed itself to utopia?
>But in long sight it's a hinderence to progress by enforcing a technology on the market instead of letting the free market decide the technology.
No, it's not in any way a hindrance to the market, merely one player who desires rent seeking. What it is doing is enforcing standards on manufacturers instead of the other way around.
It's a phone charging port. It's not that serious. It's better for consumers if we all have the same one for everything, if possible. Unless you can tell me why not?
Imagine this happened a few years ago, and the EU had instead demanded micro-USB. Then we would still be flipping plugs twice, and I wouldn't be able to use my laptop charger to charge my phone. It's not clear to me that USB-C is good enough to be the "final" connector, especially with the mess around USB versions, Thunderbolt, Displayport, etc. Unlike e.g. power sockets, where I am pretty confident that the current design can last another 15 years. (But which is not standard across EU countries!)
I believe the exact wording was that the industry was required to standardize on a connector, which at the time turned out to be micro-usb. Now the industry is shifting to usb-c, which is objectively better.
The current law already includes provisions to switch to a potential superior connector in the future. If the industry comes up with something better, the EU is not going to demand they stick with usb-c forever.
But it didn't, and it may very well be because those people are not as incompetent as betting on making something a standard prematurely. They id it only now.
Be careful with hypotheticals as basis of an argument.
In this case the counterfactual is a stronger argument than you saying "they did it only now" with appeal to authority. Unless there's a well reasoned approach to this policy, we are practically stuck with the current standard until the EU bureaucrats decide everyone needs an upgrade.
I don't really see how this is any worse than the current "do whatever you want regardless of what everyone else is attempting" that manufacturers currently go by.
But as other commenters point out, provisions exist to assist with this.
USB-C only exists because Apple proved to everyone how nice a reversible connector is, and USB caught up years later. Lightning has some other advantages like being thinner and less difficult to break. If Apple caves and moves to USB-C everywhere it’s very unlikely that future innovation in connectors will happen.
To me this is a really good proposal. USB is already the winner here. Apple is making life harder for consumers. To me the real short-sidedness of this is that wired charging might be completely irrelevant by 2024!
> It's Apples best interest to make technology that the consumers want so that they can sell more units of that.
And in the absence of a competitive advantage, you create a captive market. Apple was smart in quietly creating a captive market as they built out their ecosystem because they saw this eventuality. One of the ways they created it was by making the ecosystem both expensive to enter and leave. You're heavily invested in proprietary hardware and all of your digital assets are locked to the ecosystem and cannot be utilized outside it.
The Lightning port was innovative at the time it was introduced but it has been eclipsed in most ways by USB-C. Now it's just a DRM'd lock-in mechanism.
My partner recently switched to an iPhone. I bought a USB-C Charger, and some *certified* Lightning to USB-A cables in various lengths from various manufacturers to enabled the device to be charged all over the home and in the cars. Suddenly after 3 months the iPhone refuses to charge from any of the cables or using the USB-C cable that came with the phone plugged into the USB-C Charger. The cables work however when I use an old iPhone 6 or if I plug the new iPhone into a computer using one of the cables. No errors, no warnings, just nothing; the iPhone just refuses to charge from them.
Apple says the DRM exists to protect users from dodgy or counterfeit cables that might pose a risk to the users. Unsurprisingly [this official Apple cable](https://i.imgur.com/icsPxJx.jpg) will charge the iPhone just fine at full speed.
I for one welcome this regulation though I'm sure Apple will find a way to nerf it.
Can't speak for the person you are commenting to. But I live in the US and there are many industries that are not regulated for the benefit of the consumer. Telecom being a big one. Companies get away with a lot of anti-competitive practices here. Starbucks snuffing out ma and pa stores, eating loses just to become the only game in town.
> Can't speak for the person you are commenting to. But I live in the US and there are many industries that are not regulated for the benefit of the consumer. Telecom being a big one.
That's a poor example, telecoms are heavily regulated for the consumer. That's the reason why different operators are able to place consumer's calls to other operators - that is regulated.
Says who? USB type-XYZ will be even more beneficial to the consumer in 5 years and the EU governing body is going to what... ? update the books with that? Force all consumer electronics companies to switch? Will they be the new guiding light for all things tech deciding what is "good" for the consumer?
This is a bad take and others who might find it convenient for Apple to forced to do this are looking at this too short-sightedly.
> USB type-XYZ will be even more beneficial to the consumer in 5 years and the EU governing body is going to what... ? update the books with that? Force all consumer electronics companies to switch?
Sure! Why not?
More practically, it wouldn't be hard to designate a list of standardized form factors. The average smartphone also has plenty of real estate on its edges to ship multiple connectors (especially now that so many phones are dropping 3.5mm jacks), so if some fancy-shmancy USB-D or USB-J or whatever comes out it wouldn't be the end of the world to ship both until the EU updates its legislation to allow the fancy-shmancy one as an acceptable single port.
As it stands, the EU's decision represents a strict improvement from the consumer's perspective. That's worth celebrating, even before the longer-term kinks have been ironed out.
To say that "because consumer devices are already regulated" is not a defensive position to say that gov't "should regulate this new thing." That is merely an argument for precedent. In my view the gov't should demonstrate that the injury is overwhelming enough to necessitate intervention. This is not. It is a mere inconvenience to have two connector types. The EU should err on the side of conservative intervention so as not to cool innovation or even signal the cooling of innovation. This does not overcome that burden of proof for me.
What is the injury to the consumer they are really solving for? To buy a 3rd party USB-C or Lightning cable is comparable. They both charge your phone. They both allow for USB-A,B,C, MP3 adapters ad-infinitum. Is the injury that someone has to carry, wait..., 2 DIFFERENT CABLES!
Yes. Plus the environmental cost of all those extra cables. And the mental overhead of keeping track of extra cables, or losing them. The time and effort expended when you don't have your cable around and can't use your friend's or co-workers.
There are only three numbers: 0, 1, n. We want one charging cable standard. USB-C is objectively better than lighting - if it wasn’t, MacBooks would have a lighting charging port…
EU is not trying to impose regulation or standardization on highly innovative areas of hardware or chipset design or software design or anything of that matter. They are imposing it for something that has largely been understood and comoditized (electric charging of phones via cable and data transfer using open communication protocol) where there is little room for getting any kind of competitive advantage or differentiation or some significant innovation. Speaking about hindrance of progress is largely far fetched and not based on reality. Things like this are really not blocking any meaningful progress but they indeed are largely abused by enterprises to push proprietary things to consumer so that it can be monetized and consumer locked in the vendor ecosystem.
>It's Apples best interest to make technology that the consumers want so that they can sell more units of that
Consumers wants? More like Apple wants to use one of the few proprietary technologies that they can get away with, so they can sell you cables, whilst fostering an almost cult-like adulation of their company & what they do so that any time Apple's decisions are questioned, legions of people defend them for no reason.
The lightning connector is outmoded. The cables Apple makes are designed to fail, mostly around the heatshrink area. The digital standards that lightning supports are outdated: 0.480Gbps vs 20-40Gbps for USB C/+TB.
> any time Apple's decisions are questioned, legions of people defend them for no reason.
Maybe because your arguments are very one-sided and border on cult-like anti-Apple beliefs, like
> The cables Apple makes are designed to fail
All cables will fail with use eventually, there's no question to that. But suggesting somewhere inside Apple is an evil mastermind that's trying to get me to buy stuff that's deliberately engineered to be bad to get me to buy more is an accusation of which I've yet to see convincing proof.
I respect your decision not to shop Apple, but I really don't like that fact you're spreading false or unverifiable claims.
(n=1, I've had 1 lightning cable break in the last 10 years)
Then what about EU enforcing more energy efficient buildings and home appliances, electric vehicles and more?
EU is not a political organization, it is a political and economical union. If companies are left alone, they will never make a decision that does not benefit themselves. This is why we need EU, to make the decisions that benefit the planet and the people, thus leveling the field, so companies can compete within sane limits.
I don't care about private companies, if they want to operate with people they must follow a standard and so the news is good. All the time these companies do whatever they want like ditching headphone jack, fixed batteries, even if people don't want it. They force the change and we have to comply.
Do you, or any consumer, have perfect information about the phone market? No. Does your phone comply with FCC and EU rules? Yes. Does it contain mercury? No. Are there any taxes or tariffs on them? Probably. All of those and more mean we don’t have a free market.
Corporations exist because we let them, and they play by the rules we decide.
It's hilarious, if you have an iphone, an apple watch and an ipad you need 3! different cables. You can't even get around 2 of them with wireless because the apple watch doesn't support qi charging, so you need 2 different pads for iphone and watch. I will never understand how apple let it come to this...
> A political organization like EU has no say in this. EU citizens already make this decision for themselves by voting with money and choosing to buy/not buy an iPhone.
Surely this goes both ways - if you don’t want to play by the rules you can vote with your business and not sell in to that market?
Oh please - Apple had more than a decade to improve on the lightning cable - you somehow infer that progress will be hindered now because of this ruling? You do realise why standards actually exist?
Political organizations like the FCC already control parts of what an iPhone is and isn't allowed to do. Apple's never been in a position where they can offer exactly what the consumer wants without any political regulation, they've always had to follow some rules.
I don't think this will go down as an important or sector-changing decision. I remember hearing the same thing online about the 2009 common external power supply law and if anything it feels like the consumer is better off.
As others have said much more eloquently than I could, the answer for a happy market probably isn't total unregulated capitalism _or_ full government control, but likely somewhere in the middle. I've been an iPhone user since the 3GS and I'm pleased with this decision.
depending on your definition of "free market", if you're looking for the benefits of a free market, apple's monopolistic behavior is also a source of market failure
This is the problem I have with this choice. USB-C isn't one cable. It's a big variety of poorly-labelled possible cables, complying with a ton of different standards.
USB-C can be just USB2.0 capable, 3.1 Gen1, 3.1 Gen2, Thunderbolt 3 capable, etc. Some cables can carry 3A. Some 5A.
When your 'universal' charging cable doesn't provide fast charging, is it because your charger doesn't provide the right voltages/wattage? Is it a broken USB-PD implementation (eg the Nintendo Switch)? is it that the cable is underspecced (and a lot of USB-C cables on the market don't actually meet the spec)?
I think the intention is good but USB-C carries so much complexity that I don't think this helps consumers as much as everyone is making out.
USB-A had a similar problem (but on a much smaller scale). There also was heterogeneity in build quality. But over time features and quality converged. I think we should expect something similar here.
I didn't have to keep separate sets of visually identical cables for USB-A to do different things - that's already a reality with USB-C -> USB-C cables.
I can tell at a glance if a USB-A cable supports USB3.0 for instance.
> I am an iPhone user, but having an iPhone is not ubiquitous here, almost all of my friends/special other, use an Android phone with USB-C.
yes, this is an interesting statement. and it's true.
basically in the countries that form the European Union Android has a higher market share than iOS. in some big countries like Germany, Spain, France and Italy Android has between 60% to 70% of the market.
but what's more interesting is this:
in the UK, Canada, Australia and the US the iPhone has more market share (and in NZ it's very close).
anecdotally, in the UK pretty much everyone in big cities have iPhones. i very rarely see an Android device.
i do wonder why. it could have to do with cheaper prices for Android and a general lower penetration of technology in those countries, but i think this seems too facile.
I have a feeling the iPhone market penetration, in the named countries (Central EU vs Common Wealth) has a strong correlation with other aspects of the daily life in said markets (for example Facebook use, MSN Messanger --ok, some 10 years ago-- use of cash in daily purchase) At least that is my feeling, which of course can be completely biased. I would find really interesting a study in that.
Not only that Android is cheaper but also the mean income in countries where Android is prevalent is lower than those where iOS is, with exceptions like Germany, France (I'd need to see market share data from these exceptions)
iOS popularity correlates more with the use of English as a first language than mean income: Germany and France are huge "exceptions" for income.
In all likelihood, iPhone popularity is cultural (i.e. popular in the Anglosphere), which has an incestuous media/advertising landscape where Apple is seen as cool/hip.
Going wireless charging only is probably not gonna happen anytime soon. Wireless charging is significantly less efficient than wired. The difference might not matter much if you are using power from the wall*, but if you are charging off a battery bank you want as much efficiency as you can--you don't want to waste power!
*(being less efficient while charging from wall might not matter to you as an individual but consider if everybody was charging with such an inefficient means... that might add up to a lot of waste)
> The difference might not matter much if you are using power from the wall, but if you are charging off a battery bank you want as much efficiency as you can--you don't want to waste power!
Wireless power banks are already a thing, and they're great because you don't have to mess around with cables. For those of you not using iPhones, they support standard Qi charging as well as faster and more efficient MagSafe charging.
I care about wireless charging efficiency as much as I care about plug-in USB charging efficiency, which is not a lot. If wireless charging is half as efficient, it's costing me a couple bucks extra per year.
For wireless power bank, the problem isn't cost but efficiency. Half transferring efficiency compared to wired means that you need double capacity power bank to charge same amount of energy. I want small and wired. Wired is also useful because power bank can be separated so I put it on pocket or bag while I have a phone on my hand.
The main problem I have with USB-C is that it is not a particularly good standard for power delivery. For one, USB-C is not "IP rated" for use in the kitchen or the bathroom, so you still need separate chargers there. Also the USB-C connector supports fast data delivery, which makes it a lot more expensive than a connector that focusses on power only.
A standard that would do just power delivery <100W and works in damp environments, so it could cheap and universal, would have been so much better.
The breaker box is a last line of defence if things have gone wrong. Plugs designed for use in a bathroom will not short out if they get a bit damp, etc.
Agree on the IP rating, that is definitely not ideal - although excusable in practice.
Regarding cost: the fast data is optional. Charging-only usb-c receptables are available for $0.025 / each. To be fair, a micro-b can be found for $0.015 so it is more expensive, but it's not exactly going to bankrupt anyone.
The irony of, e.g., Brazil, passing laws that Apple can't leave the cable and charger out of the box.
Meanwhile, who with a current phone uses a cable to charge any more? Even before MagSafe the wireless is far more convenient, now with MagSafe and a zillion brands of stands that do phone + watch + AirPods all wireless, not to mention even MagSafe for cars that charge and don't drop the phone on bad roads, cables are redundant. And while they won't all do the same top speed, in general the coasters charge both Android and iPhone happily.
But, speaking of docks, that's the real issue -- lightning works beautifully when docking a phone into a stereo or alarm clock or etc, USB-C not so much. Basically, on lightning if the tab breaks you get a new cheap cable, on USB-C if the tab breaks, you need a new dock.
Raises hand. I don't have an iPhone, but I find wireless charging to just be kinda annoying. The only place I use it is in my car, which has a built-in charging pad, with good mechanical design that keeps the phone from moving around (and possibly losing the wireless charging "connection"). Otherwise, everywhere else, I'm always wired when I charge, and I kinda don't care about wireless charging.
> But, speaking of docks, that's the real issue -- lightning works beautifully when docking a phone into a stereo or alarm clock or etc, USB-C not so much.
I mean, there are still docks out there that have the old 30-pin Apple iPod/iPhone/iPad connector (not many; I think I saw one in an old hotel last year, but that's it). If USB-C is the primary connector used, then that's what dock manufacturers will use. And, bonus, manufacturers that actually support more than one connector can eventually drop Lightning as an option, and save on costs.
> Basically, on lightning if the tab breaks you get a new cheap cable, on USB-C if the tab breaks, you need a new dock.
Er, what? If the tab in a dock breaks, you need to get a new dock with either connector. The Lighting connector tab is just as breakable (if not more so, as it's thinner) than a USB-C plug, and if the one in your dock breaks, you're just as out of luck.
> Er, what? If the tab in a dock breaks, you need to get a new dock with either connector.
To be clear: iPhones do not have a tab, so iPhones don't break, the lightning cable does. iPads now have a tab. Hopefully it won't break.
A USB-C standing phone dock effectively has a tab on both dock (to insert into a phone's socket) and in the phone (the tab that sits inside the USB-C socket), so that's 2 tabs for one docking experience.
You're living in a bubble. Cable based charging is still far more common than wireless. There are still people who refuse to use bluetooth headphones. I am not carrying around another device that requires charging
> Cable based charging is still far more common than wireless.
All old things are more common than new things until they're not.
I narrowed the audience to "current" phone, whatever the most recent model is. Folks carrying those tend to be the early adopters and tend to be using the new capabilities.
tbh it's kind of ridiculous that I need a different dongle for my ipad and my iphone. I know that Apples makes money selling dongles, but that's a crap UX.
This whole discussion is only a thing because Apple's tech isn't changing rapidly enough for regulation, the exact opposite of your scenario. Also good luck producing a functioning smartphone that's too thin for the USB-C connector before the EU can react (the new iPhone 14 has exactly 3 times the thickness, so it'll take a while).
The much more realistic reason for a new phone not being released here is the new proposal to enforce 5 years of replacement parts for all phones among other things.
Serious question, why is is it a problem to put a tiny cable in a landfill? The amount they leach is essentially zero. The EU would have done more for the environment by spending $20k cleaning up an extra few car batteries. This is so obviously pandering and protectionism and it's surprising to me people believe the "e-waste" justification.
Seriously, is there an accounting of the environmental damage caused by cell phone cables (not power converters)? Everything I've seen points to the damage being substantially less globally than a single digit number of cars or batteries.
The problem is that it is a lot of tiny cables, and a lot of chargers with them.
Additionally, it also protects the consumer by preventing companies from locking consumers into buying device-specific chargers at greatly inflated prices. It might even become common for devices to come without chargers: why have 10 chargers lying around when all your devices use the same charging connector?
But no, this is not true. The iphone charger is already USB. I use them with my Android phone all the time, and iphone users charge with my pixel charger. Those already interoperate.
I understand the e-waste and consumer protection argument for the charger (power converter), but why the cable?
Up until recently everyone used USB-A on the charger end, with a dozen different competing fast charge protocols. Chargers had the same connector, but they weren't fully interoperable. USB-C is slowly trying to fix this.
I completely agree that the cables aren't a massive deal. But on the other hand, if you are already standardizing chargers, why not do the cables too? Personally, I see no overwhelmingly good reason not to do it.
Because the connectors still suck and there's a ton of room for innovation. Imagine if we were stuck with USB-C forever, that would be bad. It's already worse than lightning as a connector for cell phones.
The default shouldn't be to place arbitrary restrictions unless there's a good reason not to. Governments should restrict behavior when the restriction is justified. It should be the EU government's responsibility to demonstrate that banning lightning cables is good, not the other way around.
> 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.
There is nothing about a USB-C cable or port that mandates SuperSpeed (err, 5GB or higher) data transfer rates. Most compliant charging cables are still Hi-Speed (480 mbps), and capped at 30W (higher requires an active component in the cable).
Similarly, there is nothing about Lightning that restricts the transfer speed to Hi-Speed. There were iPad Pro models with lightning that supported a USB 3 adapter, which had (I believe) 5 Gbps transfer speed. However, the decision was made to switch the subsequent generations of Pro models to USB-C, leaving that part as a bit of a curiosity.
I suspect because of the sheer volume of lightning cables out there, Apple simply doesn't want to cause confusion by creating 'tiers' of certified cables that have the same set of plugs on the ends and which thus look identical, but which have different properties. If only the USB-IF considered such things.
> If we want to really be more environmentally friendly, wouldn'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?
One could hope! This should also shrink the packaging down further, having a measurable cost reduction on shipping as well as packaging waste.
I go through a lot of phones, but have relatives who are on a 3-4 year upgrade cycle. Thus, I've been able to find good homes for any excess USB-C to lightning cables (and they've been ecstatic when I've given them powerful multi-port USB-C chargers as gifts as well).
Hopefully we'll see countries continue to change their laws so that you don't need to bundle cables, chargers and/or headsets with purchases. France I believe finally changed their laws requiring a bundled headset, and it went into effect this year.
> I would also add that all lightning cables won't suddenly go to the landfill in 2024. Many people will keep their iPhones/AirPods for a while after that date. Many would probably donate their old lightning cables to whoever needs them
I'd expect the vast majority to be trashed by 2029, along with the majority of USB-A chargers. I've had support issues where family has thought their devices had bad software or failing batteries, but it turns out they had accidentally switched to some cheap, low wattage USB-A charger.
I somewhat expect the wide array of differences between USB-A, USB-C power delivery support, and active vs passive cables will mean that devices may start to give troubleshooting guidance for slow charging. At this point, I would expect quite a few USB-A chargers and cabling to go to the trash.
I want to keep the number low (I don't like e-waste):
Laptops:
- Macbook Pro (2021), M1, 16Go: my only personal machine. I play video games using services like Shadow or GeForce Now, I want my setup to be small.
- My work laptop, employer issued.
Servers:
- 1st gen Surface Book: currently works as a home server, used to be my student laptop, soon to be retired with...
- Core i7 3700 (something like that), 16Go DDR3: an old machine I got for free yesterday, than I will put in a small mini-ITX case to work as a full-time home server (mainly storage). It will end up at the bottom of a small shelf, and needs to be completely silent.
I use Nix + home-manager and keep my config in a git repository. Of course, that is less ideal if I need to use a machine on which I can't install Nix.
> Maybe that is difficult for people who haven't had an experience with pure/functional programming?
I found my understanding of the Nix language became a lot better once I started learning some Haskell. Specifically once I understood what currying was about.
My real gripe with Nix is the lack of a complete, easy to find, documentation of its "standard library". Nix Pills & a few wiki pages are far from enough.
> My real gripe with Nix is the lack of a complete, easy to find, documentation of its "standard library". Nix Pills & a few wiki pages are far from enough.
How hard have you tried? It's literally two clicks and one scroll away from the official home page: https://nixos.org/ -> click "Learn" -> Scroll down -> click "Full Nix Manual":
The other problem is the condescending replies from the higher tier nix folks while everyone else struggles. I almost think they garner a sadistic pleasure in watching everyone fail.
After months of "It's obviously this" and "you're not even trying" and "have you even looked?" and "there are plenty of examples out there already" and "you should start out by reading the introduction docs" and "you obviously don't know how functional languages work", I just stopped bothering.
I think the impedance mismatch is because some things are really simple, but are not documented in a way that is discoverable by someone who doesn't know, and is searching in the paradigm they do know.
I was trying to figure out how to install new machines from a central build host. Neither the straightforward install CD process, nor system.build.qcow2 made sense. I popped into the IRC channel to ask, and it turns out a 'nix build' 'nix copy', 'nix-env --store --set' and 'switch-to-configuration boot' did the trick. That's an extreme amount of power and simplicity that just kind of obviates a whole set of heavyweight processes (eg Debian automated-install). But if you are searching around for the usual type of automated install process, you just come up empty handed looking for it.
I'm still a long ways from understanding everything Nix/NixOS completely, but I've never gotten these kinds of comments apart from the extremely reasonable "you should start out by reading the introduction docs" - that the directions lead with.
And if you have a problem with that, I can see how you might have provoked that kind of response that seems so out of character to me.
I ask questions when I have them, and sometimes I get answers from them, and sometimes I answer them myself.
But I started off reading as much of the docs as I could tolerate before and while getting started, and always trying to self-help before asking for help.
This is a pretty good example the kind of victim blaming I'm talking about. It's a kind of insidious toxicity that permeates certain communities, although I've not been able to put my finger on what exactly brings it out, or why it's so tightly clung to as an acceptable behavior in some places.
I'm not trying to judge you harshly. I'm trying to understand.
In your first post in this thread, "high tier" NixOS users were called condescending sadists. This is a libel as far as I can tell based on my own experience.
Then was a list of disliked phrases, and second to last in that list was the instruction to read the manual. I believe in reading manuals, as difficult and time-consuming as the effort may be. This made me think expectations for using the project were wrong.
Now you're linking to a repo you made to attempt to give new users a guide to getting started.
You clearly made an effort to be part of the solution. This is admirable.
I'm trying to connect dots here - what I think happened was, in the course of trying to get help filling in the blanks, you probably exhausted the patience of others trying to help you.
I question if what you've been trying to do works at this point in the project's lifecycle. What you're trying to do is hard enough in a completely mature project. In an environment where we acknowledge the incompleteness of documentation, new command line APIs that are evolving, and new ways of doing things (I'm currently thinking of containers after looking at your guide, and flakes as well), communicating a true North is extremely difficult especially if you aren't one of the core developers immersed in the current state of change.
I don't think the project is mature enough to declare a "right way" to do all the things. I don't think we have enough mature users to support filling in all the blanks, yet, either.
I'm sorry you've had the experience you've had. Maybe after taking a break, you can resume your efforts, but with tempered expectations. We're all asking a lot of people who volunteer their time to build what should be acknowledged as a strategically important approach to computing.
We need more experts. The experts we do have are over-worked and under-appreciated. Perhaps you can help us there one day too.
Yes what you say absolutely all makes sense. My main gripe is that of culture, not substance.
It's understood and well communicated that the project is not mature enough to be an easy experience for a new user, and that's perfectly fair. But unfortunately, there's a degree of gatekeeperism going on in this community that is making the environment toxic for newcomers.
I've only seen it a few times before, but in every case, the longtimers seem unable to see it, and dismiss complaints by newcomers out of hand. Of course it's to be expected that a certain cohort of newcomers will be toxic and entitled, in which case one would absolutely be justified in dismissing them.
But that is not the case here, especially judging from the sheer number of upvotes my comments on this matter have received, and the number of blog posts in the wild about this very topic.
This is not a problem of maturity, but one of culture. And this is what exhausted me and made me give up on my attempt to make things better.
I hope my original comment doesn't read that way. I mean more "the Nix language isn't much different from something you're familiar with".
> "you should start out by reading the introduction docs"
This one I kinda buy, though.
With programming, with many things, you can get quite far without having to understand all the details. And many tools do quite well by being intuitive to use.
Nix is quite weird. And can be quite difficult. And it's got a small community, so it's under-documented and you won't always be able to find someone who's run into the same problem with a good explanation as to how to fix it.
This right here is enough for me to not even bother tying this OS. I'm always interested in operating systems (and the adjacent config systems that live on top of the Linux kernel, Arch Linux is one of those, Gentoo is another). But I'm not so interested in adding vitriol to my life, no matter the technical excellence. I'd rather live with a mundane kludge than deal with knowledge elitism.
> The other problem is the condescending replies from the higher tier nix folks while everyone else struggles.
You may not like the reply, but the fact remains: the comment I replied to was a lie. It says there's hardly anything but Wiki pages and Nix Pills and that there's no "easy to find, documentation of its "standard library". And the exact document has been two clicks away from them for a long time.
> I just stopped bothering.
Another problem is your impatience and inability to perform searching and research for necessary information without anyone's help. The lack of focus and motivation to spend a little extra time to discover, learn, and build an intuition around a new toolchain is on you. How much time have you spent on useless media content on youtube or netflix lately instead having another try with the tool?
It’s obviously anecdotal but I’ve found the Nix community extremely supportive and haven’t really had that experience when asking questions. I typically stick to IRC but I have asked my fair share of dumb questions without any replies I’d call snarky…
Nix is wonderful, but absolutely is under-documented. (In part due to a small community, etc.).
A couple of examples I've run into:
https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/2259 showed people trying to make use of the "hello world" package which was given in the NixPkgs manual, but couldn't quite figure out how to get it to build.
e.g. if you want a package that's a simple script, "writeScriptBin" seems like what you'd want. -- But it's really not clear how to use it from the manual; you'd have to read the nixpkgs source.
https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable/#trivial-builder-wri...
Is it too much to ask from developers in 2022? At source, the function is well documented and is provided with an example [1]. The only missing part is a rendered HTML with the same information.
It's one thing to look at the source, it's another thing to know that you have to look inside `pkgs/build-support/trivial-builders.nix` to find the documentation. One of the main advantages of reference documentation is a central place to look up what things do.
`writeScriptBin` is the second topmost link on Google search that leads directly to that file in a central repository of nixpkgs. Unique function names have the advantage of being transparent references that you can find either via google, or github search, or grep on your local checkout of nixpkgs.
In 2022, I think it's a reasonable expectation that API documentation can be accessed as rendered HTML. -- e.g. Haskell's or Rust's documentation even links to the source for the packages.
On the other hand, I think it's fair to say NixOS will sometimes require a high level of involvement from its users. When something goes wrong on another OS, it's easy to search for the answer. With NixOS, you have to understand both the Linux part, and the NixOS part.
As a former Vim user I'm happy to see a post like that ! Some old problems mentionned in the post like asynchronous processes mostly, but also the lack of smart indentation with the TAB key that also takes into account the type of file you're editing really drove me out of Vim. I've since switched to Emacs (with Evil mode because modal editors rocks), and I haven't looked back since.
