This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Looking forward to seeing If companies will just do the bare minimum to pass or if we'll see some actual innovation. It would be cool to be able to buy spare batteries, that are quick to replace and easy to carry around along with a charging station or something so you can always have a full battery with you.
I bet The Apple battery, just a replacement or a dedicated module like I said above, will be starting at like $249
Apple will figure out a way to DRM batteries so that no one but them can sell them and they'll cost as much as a new phone.
EU citizenship is a dream.
Not a bad idea but there are flaws and this also doesn't seem to address the issue of pricing or availability.
We already have regulations about spare parts availability and pricing for some devices (mainly household appliances) - and it is planned to slowly enforce regulation for other device types over time. They'll watch the market, and if apple decides to be stupid that'll come pretty quickly.
Just like with the appliances where some vendors had their shops ready way before regulation we already have some phone vendors prepare for that - like Nokia selling some spares via ifixit. So if apple decides to play stupid games it'll be up against vendors that'll be completely fine pushing regulation through quickly as hurting apple will only benefit them.
I had a washing machine where the price of the replacement motherboard (ludicrous this is this even a thing, btw) was triple the price of the entire washing machine.
Making parts available doesn't make it realistic to repair stuff.
The neat thing about EU regulations is that they are iterated over constantly, so even if they don't get it 100% right the first time, they're able to nail things down in subsequent iterations. Look at how quickly they struck down any fantasies Apple had of still fucking people over with their own type c implementation fuckery. The direction the EU is taking is already doing plenty good for the entire world.
EU is killing it right now. Charging port regulation and now removable batteries in everything. If companies are forced to produce different models for the EU maybe just maybe it will be cost effective to just make all their phones with removable batteries. One can hope, cause you know the US wont pass that type of consumer protection regulation.
When Apple want to, they can design amazing things. So I look forward to see if they come up with a clever Apple-like way to do this. Or maybe they just make it easier to remove the back.
Now will companies also offer this in the usa or will they have 2 models for sale
I see something like this every few years.EU has to make a fine so heavy that it's impossible to just pay as a tax of doing business.
Unless that's all it really is.
God bless the European union, doing the kind of consumer protection that America won't.
I remember when apple put out a software update to intentionally throttle the phone's processor, to save charge on it's irreplacable battery. I hope this prevents companies doing this sort of shit as well.
I tried Ctrl+F searching to see whether anyone here had pasted the link to the law, and didn't find anything, so I went to Presearch and found this, which appears to be the official European Union log for it, and has attached PDFs at the end with what seem to be the nitty-gritty for further reading...
If I've found an errant page that just looks official, please link something better for those looking for the legalese
I think apple will comply by including a dongle battery that can be replaced but no one will actually carry with their phone
The law says, "Designing portable batteries in appliances in such a way that consumers can themselves easily remove and replace them;"
Key part being "in appliances".
