EU Sets Official Deadline for When iPhone Must Switch to USB-C

[dwaite]

I'm hearing a few inaccurate takes, so I'll attempt to clarify for people:

• The EU mandate is for devices introduced after the given date. Phones introduced before 2024 do not need to suddenly be redesigned to have USB-C to continue to be manufactured.
• It would be feasible that Apple would not need to upgrade to USB-C to release a new product until the 'iPhone 17', e.g. the September 2025 phone.
• They could also hypothetically just not release a lightning-based 'iPhone 17' in Europe, continuing to sell previous models for some period of time. It would be somewhat interesting to see what the market reaction to this would be (in particular, how much or little it would impact EU sales)
• The mandate is to support a standard set of chargers and cables, utilizing the USB-C style port and USB Power Delivery. There is no mandate that requires or forbids any other use of that port. For instance, Apple could decide not to support data at all outside of what is needed to negotiate power delivery.
• Continuing the prior point - there are rumors that if the base iPhone 15 has a USB-C port, that the Axx SoC used might not have support for USB 3.x speeds and it would be limited to USB 2.0 speeds.
• There is no mandate to eliminate other charging-capable ports as long as USB-C charging is one of the options. It is unlikely Apple would release a phone with both USB-C and lightning ports for the EU market. However, when USB-C is mandated for new laptops, this will not require the elimination of the magnetic MagSafe port. Likewise, it shouldn't impact the iPad Pro and its Smart Connector.
• USB4 is a different protocol than you would expect from prior versions of USB. The 4 is part of the name and not a version number. USB4 1.0 will eventually be replaced by a USB4 2.0.
• A USB4 device AFAIK does not have to support USB 3.x and earlier.
• Thunderbolt4 is not really a separate protocol anymore, but a licensed certification tied to a set of higher minimum requirements on top of USB4 1.0 (and Thunderbolt 3, and USB 3.2). You'll never buy a Thunderbolt4-certified cable then find out it can only support USB 2.0 speeds.
• Because of this, a device could meet all the requirements for Thunderbolt 4, but decide not to use the brand or pay for certification/licensing.
• So far, Apple has only used the Thunderbolt 4 mark on the Mac Studio.
• Thunderbolt 5 will likewise be USB4 2.0 with extra requirements, certification, and licensing terms/fees on top.

 

[gregmancuso]

Unpopular because they make unified charging jack mandatory? Everyone in the world should be happy that the EU has finally forced Apple to abandon the slow and outdated Lightning connector!

Not saying they would do it, but there is nothing mandating a higher speed connector. The law is for a common charging port. The usb-c port specs includes a usb2 data profile.

Given the rumors of solid state buttons coming next there is a chance that Apple will opt for the port-less option and eliminate all case openings.

 

[Reason077]

This is incorrect, there are USB-C cables that are 1A, 2A, and 2.4A.

Nope. You are thinking of USB-A.

The minimum spec for any true USB-C cable (ie: USB-C connector at both ends) is 3A.

 

[Vlad Soare]

This intrusion you talk of, they talked a lot about that in the UK, but no-one could ever name a single law the union created that affected their lives negatively. Can you?

It's not necessarily a matter of affecting it negatively or otherwise. It's a matter or principle, that it should not exist in the first place. Even if I happen to use white toilet paper, I would not be happy if the EU banned pink one. It would not affect me in the least, but the very fact that I couldn't use pink toilet paper if I wanted to, and for the sole reason that a politician decided it on a whim, would bother me.

But if I must name one thing, then here's one off the top of my head: plastic drinking straws. Now every time I go to Starbucks I must use a paper straw, which is absolutely hopeless. Utterly useless when it gets wet, and a complete bugger to use. And for what? Because Asian oceans and beaches were full of plastics, that was their justification, for God's sake! As if banning plastics in the EU would do anything make Asia cleaner.
Plastics can be recycled. If I throw them into the correct recycling container and they don't get recycled, then the problem isn't on my side. They should make sure to fix this issue and to enforce the recycling to actually take place, rather than depriving me of them altogether.
Another example is the relentless war against normal cars (even though a modern Euro 6.2 engine equipped with a particulate filter doesn't pollute at all, but quite the contrary, it often expells cleaner air than it takes in) and forcefully shoving EVs down our throats whether we like them or not (despite the fact that they pollute more overall, and that 90% of the population can't use them).

Sometimes I wonder if travelling without a visa, nice as it may be, is really worth the trouble. I hate the EU more and more as time goes by. Having to get a visa before a trip is starting not to look like such a chore after all, considering the high price we're paying for not needing one.
Besides, even this free travel isn't without quirks. How freely we travel depends on one Nazi politician's personal agenda, as we saw yesterday. But that's a different story, and this isn't the place for it.

 

[deckard666]

You’ve lost if you mention Nazis, which you have …..

 

[Reason077]

• Continuing the prior point - there are rumors that if the base iPhone 15 has a USB-C port, that the Axx SoC used might not have support for USB 3.x speeds and it would be limited to USB 2.0 speeds.

This is not a rumour, it’s a known fact: the current A-series SoCs do not have support for USB 3.x.

Only the iPad Pros with M1/M2 SoCs support USB 3.x and/or Thunderbolt through their USB-C ports.

Of course, the iPhone 15 could have a new or revised A-series SoC with USB 3.x/Thunderbolt added, but given recent practice of reusing last years Pro SoC in the next years base model, that seems unlikely.

 

[Vlad Soare]

You’ve lost if you mention Nazis, which you have …..

Well, how else would you call a politician who openly uses hate towards migrants as a justification for his actions, in the hope of appeasing right-wing nationalists for boosting his own political capital?

Besides, I don't care if I've lost. This isn't about winning or losing. I'm just expressing my feelings, that's all. I don't expect to win any prizes for it.

 

[Danfango]

Just a note for anyone here who doesn't know. Apple are actually on the USB implementers forum, actually contributed to USB-C design and engineering and Thunderbolt. Apple were also the first company to deploy USB only desktops back in the day. The only products that don't have USB-C are the iPhones, AirPods and 9th gen and earlier iPads. Everything else is USB-C.

The reason Lightning existed was that USB-micro, the previous standard, is absolutely mechanically and electrically ****.

I suspect the reason the USB-C iPhone transition hasn't happened yet is not because they don't want to or are hell dragging but there are engineering or supply problems around chipsets at the moment. Due to the high power transmission requirements of USB-C the SoCs can't directly implement the entire electronics on the single chip. That means outboard controllers / bridges / power management ICs which are incredibly difficult to engineer, source and get manufacturered when there's a lithography embargo against China. Especially when you need to buy a few hundred million of them, they need to come from a verified supply chain and need to be in house engineered for security concerns (thunderbolt has bus access capabilities). Bit more room to put things in an iPad too.

 

[bob24]

Let’s be honest here. If Apple wanted to have USB-C iPhone for the EU and Lighting ones for the rest of the world, their manufacturing partners we could do it pretty easily and for virtually no additional cost
looks like you never worked in manufacturing, i work in high volume manufacturing, it is nightmare to maintain supply chain.
Apple is doing with and with out SIM is because they will eventually get rid of physical SIM.

I am not saying it doesn’t add complexity to the supply chain. I am saying that given the volumes and the cababilities of manufacturing partners, this wouldn’t be a major challenge and wouldn’t cost much.

It it was such a challenge (or costly) to have slightly a different model, why did Apple specifically remove SIM slots for US phones instead of waiting to be ready to do it globally? It is at least as complex to implement as two charging ports (probably more complex), it isn’t required by any regulator, and it brings absolutely no benefit to anyone aside from Apple sending a signal. Additionally, at zero cost they could just have disabled sim slots in US phones via software and achieved the same result. Yet, they chose what you describe as a supply chain “nightmare”? It doesn’t add-up.

Note this is not the only time Apple have had region-specific versions. Depending on regions they regularly have different phones which support different frequency bands. They also introduced dual-sim iPhones in China a while back. As well as phones with a specific chip for Japanese public transports. This is what I remember but there might be more.

PS: and to be clear, of course I understand that of you were the head of supply-chain at Apple or the lead Apple manufacturing person at Foxconn, this type of thing would create a large project for you and some of your staff would have a tough job arranging/maintaining the relevant supply chains and assembly lines. What I am saying is that eventually it would get done and in the grand scheme of things it wouldn't be terribly relevant to Apple's bottomline.

 

[Pilot Jones]

The only reason Apple has dragged on the dead corpse of Lightning for so long is because of the boatload of money the MFi program makes them. This should be plain as day to anyone who hasn't chugged the Apple kool aid.

I don't care much for government intervention, but I'm also not gonna throw a tantrum when they do finally do something good. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

 

[Reason077]

The only products that don't have USB-C are the iPhones, AirPods and 9th gen and earlier iPads. Everything else is USB-C.

Also the Magic Mouse, Keyboard, and Trackpad products, and the Apple Pencil. (The latter results in a very silly adapter situation considering it’s primarily used with USB-C iPads)

The Apple TV Remote did recently switch from Lightning to USB-C.

 

[Danfango]

Also the Magic Mouse, Keyboard, and Trackpad products, and the Apple Pencil. (The latter results in a very silly adapter situation considering it’s primarily used with USB-C iPads)

The Apple TV Remote did recently switch from Lightning to USB-C.

Fair points - forgot about them!

The pencil is unforgivable. I want to upgrade my kids' 7th gen ipads but that was a deal killer for me. No way!

 

[Reason077]

I suspect the reason the USB-C iPhone transition hasn't happened yet is not because they don't want to or are hell dragging but there are engineering or supply problems around chipsets at the moment.

No, there are no different chips or complex ICs required to support basic USB-C instead of Lightning on iPhones. All they have to do is swap the physical port itself. Thunderbolt is a different matter, of course, but it’s a safe bet that non-pro iPhones won’t be supporting that.

The real reason Apple has clung onto Lightning this long is because of the MFI program and the licensing fees that Apple collects on Lightning cables & accessories.

 

[bob24]

The only reason Apple has dragged on the dead corpse of Lightning for so long is because of the boatload of money the MFi program makes them. This should be plain as day to anyone who hasn't chugged the Apple kool aid.

I don't care much for government intervention, but I'm also not gonna throw a tantrum when they do finally do something good. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

100%.

Do I think it is appropriate for government agencies to impose technical solutions? No.

But do I think Apple retaining Lightning instead of USB-C has been in the best interest of product users? Absolutely not.

I'm not going to reject a change which I think makes sense (and probably a large majority of Apple users want), just because of how it was forced upon Apple.

 

[ForkHandles]

It's not necessarily a matter of affecting it negatively or otherwise. It's a matter or principle, that it should not exist in the first place. Even if I happen to use white toilet paper, I would not be happy if the EU banned pink one. It would not affect me in the least, but the very fact that I couldn't use pink toilet paper if I wanted to, and for the sole reason that a politician decided it on a whim, would bother me.

But if I must name one thing, then here's one off the top of my head: plastic drinking straws. Now every time I go to Starbucks I must use a paper straw, which is absolutely hopeless. Utterly useless when it gets wet, and a complete bugger to use. And for what? Because Asian oceans and beaches were full of plastics, that was their justification, for God's sake! As if banning plastics in the EU would do anything make Asia cleaner.
Plastics can be recycled. If I throw them into the correct recycling container and they don't get recycled, then the problem isn't on my side. They should make sure to fix this issue and to enforce the recycling to actually take place, rather than depriving me of them altogether.
Another example is the relentless war against normal cars (even though a modern Euro 6.2 engine equipped with a particulate filter doesn't pollute at all, but quite the contrary, it often expells cleaner air than it takes in) and forcefully shoving EVs down our throats whether we like them or not (despite the fact that they pollute more overall, and that 90% of the population can't use them).

Sometimes I wonder if travelling without a visa, nice as it may be, is really worth the trouble. I hate the EU more and more as time goes by. Having to get a visa before a trip is starting not to look like such a chore after all, considering the high price we're paying for not needing one.
Besides, even this free travel isn't without quirks. How freely we travel depends on one Nazi politician's personal agenda, as we saw yesterday. But that's a different story, and this isn't the place for it.

The EU is a trading block, your freedom of movement is great, we lost ours as people thought over-powered vacuum cleaners more useful.

Bucharest for the first time can export to 26 other countries without any paperwork, the companies that profit from that, in turn creating jobs, that is immense. The fact that you can go and work anywhere you want in Europe, except the UK is amazing, you want a bar job in Ibiza, just turn up and ask for one. You want a tech job in Italy, just get an interview and migrate.

Additionally, as Romania has lower GDP per head than most of the EU, the inward investment from EU funds is sizeable.

Romania's huge EU funding net gain revealed

Romania's contribution to the EU budget over the last decade only totalled €13 billion, according to the country's very first European Commissioner. EURACTIV Romania reports.

www.euractiv.com

But sure if you're more worried about drinking straws and what powers the wheels on your car then go ahead demonise an organisation that gives you unprecedented freedoms. Additionally pin the blame on the EU for all the 27 countries that are trying to combat the climate crisis.

They say that you don't know what you have till it's gone. The UK knows what it had and we are much the poorer for it being taken away from us.

Best wishes

 

[bob24]

So you like monopoly ?
Finally one mobile OS to rule them all ?
finally one desktop OS to rule them all ?

A standard is not a monopoly. Standards can encourage competition as they level the playing field in term of access to consumers (of course there needs to be a balance so that they don't prevent innovation, but USB hasn't been that bad).

And actually, proprietary connectors controlled by one company have been used as a way to support monopolies (back in the days, the proprietary 30-PINs connector on speaker docks and sound systems was precisely used to block competition for the iPod).

 

[unrigestered]

it's not forced upon Apple, it's forced upon the whole industry.
and this has been known for a very long time now, so it's not that it's now happening in all of a sudden for Apple.
it's just mostly Apple, at least on some of their devices, who for whatever reasons seem to insist to keep their proprietary standard running for as long as possible.
i don't know the pin assignment differences between USB C and Lightning, but unless a USB C connection is somehow using less wires / connections, they could simply still use their current "Lightning protocol" with a physical USB C connection and the only thing that would change is the physical shape of the connector.
everything else could stay the same and Apple could happily continue to sell it's USB2.0 data transfer speeds to the end users while 100% complying to the rules inside the EU.

 

[deckard666]

Well, how else would you call a politician who openly uses hate towards migrants as a justification for his actions, in the hope of appeasing right-wing nationalists for boosting his own political capital?

Besides, I don't care if I've lost. This isn't about winning or losing. I'm just expressing my feelings, that's all. I don't expect to win any prizes for it.

Fair point and I like anyone with a view tbh as us in the UK are so apethetic about most things !

When I told my french friends I had to stand on a train for 4 hours for a 130 pound train ticket recently as tickets dont buy you seats they said "How did you let that happen ? " We Would have burnt the station to the ground !

 

[Vlad Soare]

The EU is a trading block, your freedom of movement is great, we lost ours as people thought over-powered vacuum cleaners more useful.

I don't know. I wouldn't say you've actually lost it. You just have to show a passport when you enter a EU country (just as, if I'm not mistaken, you used to do anyway, since you weren't part of Schengen). You can still travel wherever you wish in Europe without visas. Having to have a passport instead of a national ID, or to fill up an electronic form, isn't much of a hindrance in my opinion. A bit annoying, yes, but not a show stopper.
Freedom of movement may be great for some, but from where I'm standing I can't quite experience that greatness. You must keep in mind that not all EU members are equal. There are first-class and second-class members, and Romania is among the latter - and will be for the foreseeable future. And whether you're first-class or second-class doesn't depend on what you do or what criteria you meet, but only on the internal politics and personal ambitions of first-class members.

But sure if you're more worried about drinking straws and what powers the wheels on your car then go ahead demonise an organisation that gives you unprecedented freedoms. Additionally pin the blame on the EU for all the 27 countries that are trying to combat the climate crisis.

Yes, I'm more worried about my personal life and freedoms than about sparing some companies a bit of paperwork, or appeasing an insane Swedish girl who should be in a mental hospital, or travelling without a visa (which, although I won't deny is really nice in itself, isn't so much help when you must go through passport control anyway because you're regarded as a second-class citizen).

 

[jlc1978]

Wrong...

"Apple is a public company, meaning its ownership consists of shareholders. According to Macrotrends, Apple had over 16 billion shares outstanding as of March 2022. Apple's largest share quantities are owned by organizations.Jul 27, 2022"

Who owns the most shares of Apple? Here's a look at the company's biggest shareholders.

As of February 2021, Apple's biggest shareholder was the Vanguard Group, which owned more than 1.3 billion shares of the company's 16 billion.

www.usatoday.com

Sounds like an agree to disagree.

IMHO Apple saw the writing on the wall with the EU mandate on charging ports and implemented both. I don't see how it could be argued that USBC is a superior charging platform for laptops over MagSafe, I hope Apple keeps it while being forced to support a separate and inferior technology.

I hope everyone enjoys rules on having to use a certain connector, but no rules on labeling these connectors with what the capabilities are! Everyone get your label makers ready or on order because if you thought how HDMI is handled is bad this is worse.

Since the directive only defines minimum power requirements, manufacturers will be free to customize the connection as they see fit; with teh potential for one connector but many incompatible cables.

The biggest issue I see is requiring a diagnostics port for hardware issues. Maybe a Smart Connector style port similar to iPads and Apple Watches?

Wireless diagnostics would cover most cases except a compltely dead phone; and an internal diagnostic port requiring opening teh phone would deal with that.

So, as some have speculated, if Apple goes to all wireless charging and a port-less design for some of their iPhones, they would still be in compliance.

They could even go wireless only via Magsafe for the EU and keep a port eslewhere, much like they do with eSIMs now. I doubt that, for a variety of reasons; and am guessing Apple has been working on the transition for a while.

 

[Denzo]

iPhone 15 with USB-C, confirmed.

Can’t wait for an iFold

 

[jlc1978]

iPhone 15 with USB-C, confirmed.

Can’t wait for an iFold

Will be interesting to see. It could come as early as the 15 or as late as the 17. It all depends what Apple has in development.

 

[ericwn]

☝️😳

Exactly. It’s outta hand and gonna get worse.

Nonsense.

 

[baryon]

What next? EU demands all phones have an EU flag displayed at boot up?
No wonder the EU is increasingly unpopular.

Unpopular with who exactly? As an EU citizen it's quite popular with me and most people I know or have heard of. I'm glad that when a company refuses to do something that makes sense by taking advantage of their privileged position in the market, the EU can step in and make it happen as a last resort. This would never happen if we just waited for people to "vote with their wallets" because people aren't going to switch brands just to reduce their reliance on a proprietary cable. While you'd think companies would be less dumb, they're not, and this is exactly what governments are for: to quickly organize change that very obviously benefits everyone without having to wait for individuals to organize it themselves.

And Lightning is useless for literally everything except charging iPhones, and USB-C is useful for literally everything including charging iPhones all while offering exactly zero disadvantages:

1. You probably already own a USB-C cable and charger whether or not you use Apple products
2. Anyone can make USB-C cables, not just Apple, so healthy market competition in their pricing and quality can happen which is good for everyone (except Apple)
3. You produce less e-waste since the cables can be used for anything, not just charging iPhones.
4. When you ask a friend for a charger when your phone unexpectedly dies, they'll be far more likely to be able to help you and vice versa.

Oh and Apple is free to sell iPhones with Lightning in the US for as long as they want if you really like USB 2.0 that much. Or to pull out of the EU market. They won't do either, but that's not the EU's fault.

 

[ericwn]

I know this is more on Apple, but by 2025 what if new technology better than USB-C comes out? Are they then forced to go to the older technology, instead of straight to the new standard. That’s why I think Apple will just go straight wireless.

Nobody stops them from supporting multiple charging standards.