I think Apple genuinely believe that they can provide a better product, and I believe they can too. I just don't care.
The inability to borrow cables or swap them between devices in the past was a not insignificant hassle. Keeping boxes of cables, not being able to borrow a friend's charger when visiting, not being able to replace cables except by ordering a new one from the manufacturer half a world away. Constant minor irritation.
The EU's first round of cable standardisation remains one of my favourite quality-of-life laws. No slightly more reliable cable is worth more than me than knowing I can use the same cable on as many devices as possible, and that I'm never going to be stuck in the middle of nowhere unable to buy a replacement charger for my phone.
It's also a point which the invisible hand has a great deal of trouble solving, because phones are such a vital part of life that you're unlikely to refuse to buy simply on the basis of its charger. It's an easy bit of revenue for manufacturers to jump on, because they know it's probably not quite annoying enough to significantly affect device choice. I love me a free market solution, but it's important to recognise where the market fails, and we've already seen it fail to solve this problem once.
The inability to borrow cables or swap them between devices in the past was a not insignificant hassle. Keeping boxes of cables, not being able to borrow a friend's charger when visiting, not being able to replace cables except by ordering a new one from the manufacturer half a world away. Constant minor irritation.
The EU's first round of cable standardisation remains one of my favourite quality-of-life laws. No slightly more reliable cable is worth more than me than knowing I can use the same cable on as many devices as possible, and that I'm never going to be stuck in the middle of nowhere unable to buy a replacement charger for my phone.
It's also a point which the invisible hand has a great deal of trouble solving, because phones are such a vital part of life that you're unlikely to refuse to buy simply on the basis of its charger. It's an easy bit of revenue for manufacturers to jump on, because they know it's probably not quite annoying enough to significantly affect device choice. I love me a free market solution, but it's important to recognise where the market fails, and we've already seen it fail to solve this problem once.