John Gruber: ‘Democrats Want to Outlaw Apple From Thinking Differently’

Charging-port-regulation proponents often tell me the regulations are no impediment to progress at all. If someone comes up with a better-than-USB-C charging port, they can just bring it to the industry’s USB consortium and it’ll get approved and then all devices will use that new superior charging port. But that’s not how industry consortiums actually function. What actually happens is that consortiums entrench the current standard, because most companies have no interest in raising the state of the art.

I have three quick thoughts about this.

1. I think it speaks to how annoying Lightning can be that people who would normally oppose this sort of legislation are expressing support in it.
2. I absolutely want Apple to put a USB-C port on the iPhone, and I want them to have done it 2 years ago, but I don’t think legislation is the way to do it.
3. It’s objectively a little funny to poke fun at companies who have “no interest in raising the state of the art” when we’re talking about Apple, the one phone company who has not improved their connector in a decade.