I get your point completely. And I hate Apple's constant plug antics. I gave up on Apple completely after they willy-nilly rendered my $350 Bose docking station obsolete overnight. But I think there's a middle ground. Industry standards exist in all sorts of industries, and I fail to see why electronics is any different. I don't think the government need to get too involved here (though I get kleinbl00's point about safety). Apple is continually taking a market risk by trying to make their stuff proprietary. I think that's a bad long term idea, but clearly it hasn't hindered them yet. However, we all know how fleeting brand equity can be. So as soon as they're not the cool kid anymore, which will happen eventually, no one's going to put up with that any longer. So I think the industry just needs to set the standard in consultation with safety regulators, and let the chips fall where they may. For now, I'm sure happy with my $49 Moto G power ($62 all in, since I had to replace the screen once).
Let's be clear - the only reason Apple cares about this is they're assholes. - Apple went hard into "firewire" (IEEE-1394) when nobody else did because it was pretty obvious that USB2 solved all the USB problems. Do you... really need eight channels of synchronous uncompressed digital audio out of your two-channel MP3 iPod? Well guess what sparky that's how you charge it anyway. At a time when an Archos Mini Jukebox had a USB-mini, Apple put fucking Firewire plugs on their smallest devices... because they're assholes. - 'member how MagSafe was dope and kept you from tearing the power plug out of your computer? And how Apple changed it three times, just because, while also being so fiercely protective of their patents that nobody else could do it? And then they just fucking abandoned it for - wait for it - USB-C? I've got "mag-safe" chargers for all my tablets'n'shit (including Apple's!) that are made illegally in China. Thing of it is, you can't slap a chip in the charging connector of a MagSafe to make it a proprietary must-pay-ten-percent-to-Apple "iDevice." So MagSafe had to go. - Apple has limited the Lightning connector to the iPhone and iPad because really, it's an utterly worthless piece of shit for anything real. It charges. It transmits data at USB-2 speed. Yeah you can get "audio" out of it... by buying a tiny Apple-compliant USB-audio adapter. You can get "video" out of it, by buying a tiny Apple-compliant USB-video adapter (tops out at 1920x1080/60). Meanwhile I have a Quadro laptop with a USB-C port on it that is driving video AND audio AND data AND USB which is - wait for it - why Apple puts USB-C ports on everything but phones and iPads. - Let's not forget what Apple switched to the Lightning port FROM: ...I mean, let's talk "fuck-you" connectors. Luminance and Chroma? dafuq your iPod needs S-video for? SERIAL? What is this fucking thing a dial-up modem? Here's the thing tho - it's a 30-pin connector yet Apple only ever used 15 pins on the fucker. The other 15 were "reserved for future use" like, I dunno, hooking up a Simon Says or some shit. And let's not forget that every single proprietary plug Apple has ever used is fragile as fuck. Jonny Ive hates strain relief. Apple brand language has been "ignore all connectors" since the fucking Bondi Blue iMac, unless it's some proprietary garbage that they'll be able to RDF you into believing is superior for exactly one and a half Keynote addresses. Look at this shit. LOOK AT IT! "Let's do our own dumb-ass version of DVI only with radically worse specs and almost but not quite enough power to drive our displays! yeah! That's a great idea! We'll put CRT power... on our video cards! GENIUS! 'cuz here's the thing any professional will tell you: iDevices of all kinds suck donkey balls. Ever go to a conference and the speaker is sitting there embarrassed because his laptop won't make the room's projector work and everyone sighs and complains about how shitty Windows is or some shit? It's not windows. Apple's audio and video standards are always between 80% and 85% of spec. They NEVER kick out enough signal to actually meet the requirements of the protocol because if they had to size their connectors to actually meet UL and CE listing for the standards they'd look like everyone else's. So they undersize everything and tell the regulating bodies "no no it's a proprietary signal" and then at the Apple Store they tell you it'll work everywhere look we'll sell you a dongle for $59 and it is utter premeditated bullshit. I've got two fucking plugs IN MY CAR because Apple needs a special USB port to run carplay. Android? Either. Apple? BETTER BE THE GRAY ONE! And they're allowed to get away with this because people go "oh, well but Apple needs room to innovate" without recognizing that left to their own devices, Apple would populate the world with G4 Cubes.
I guess my selfish point was that I hate Apple and I don't use their products specifically because of their asshole-parading-as-innovation approach to everything. I've made that choice and I think the world will, too, eventually as soon as your friends no longer make fun of you for carrying a Android. Even Apple knows a sea change is coming, and that's why they will go to the ends of the Earth to protect iMessage.
There's a misconception at the heart of your argument: They're not. They're absolutely not. Apple realized early and often that proprietary hardware mattered way the fuck more than proprietary software and built their entire business model around it. There was a brief shining moment in the Sculley era where you could buy an Apple clone, but it was the Sculley era so you were paying extra for shitty software that nothing ran on and didn't accomplish anything and was also beige so why would you do that. Theoretically you could build a "hackintosh" but you need to start with a DVD of Snow Leopard which says a lot. Did you know that the market cap of Airpods is greater than the market cap of Roku? Shitty tinny little lithium pills that die every eighteen months and people buy those things like they're pacemakers. Now - Apple could make the batteries detachable (lol remember when phones had spare batteries? thanks, Apple!), put an extra slot in the charging case and double the useful runtime. They could even sell spare batteries. The connector has been standard for 30 years. it is used widely for headphones. But if Apple did that shit you'd see a million MMCX batteries that are cheaper than Apple's and Apple couldn't sell you a new set of AirPods every eighteen months. And the thing about Apple? Is they're the dicks that fuck over their customers first and then eventually everyone else's life sucks. Things Apple took away first: - disk drives - batteries - memory card slots - keyboards - headphone jacks And every time, Android (and Windows!) users went "WTF" and twelve months later, Android users were just as fucked as Samsung and Motorola and everyone else went "look, people pay eighty gajillion dollars for iPhones without keyboards so obviously people who don't buy iPhones don't want one either." Apple's lack of innovation punishes everyone else because they flaunt the fucking law.Apple is continually taking a market risk by trying to make their stuff proprietary.
What I meant by "market risk" is that the reason they can get away with being different is that no company maybe ever has enjoyed their brand equity. Brand equity is fleeting. And when theirs fades it's going to be way harder to convince anyone to buy a Firewire 6.0 or whatever.
And what I mean by "flaunt the fucking law" is that Apple's brand equity is protected by the fact that their anticompetitive practices have so far avoided regulatory scrutiny. 'member when Microsoft got in trouble for bundling Internet Explorer? And Barnes'n'Noble got busted for trying to buy Ingram? Misty water-colored memories.