After a slow but sure legal process, a regulation was finally approved last Tuesday that establishes USB-C as the only charger in the European Union. A move that will in fact mean no change for the vast majority of manufacturers from the affected industries, with one notorious and more than significant exception, Apple. And it’s because the company resisted this regulatory change like a cat with a belly.

We have been thinking for some time about how we expect the reaction of Apple, which would have been conducting tests in this regard for some time and in which some analysts assume that Cupertino would have already done the necessary market analysis to get the most out of it. that transition. Of course, with two years left until It is possible that the company decides to take to the mountains And for those devices where you don’t want USB-C, opt for 100% wireless. It doesn’t seem the most likely, but we can’t completely rule it out either.

From the beginning, Apple has appealed to innovation as the reason it doesn’t want to adopt USB-C. According to its postulates, market regulation by establishing a uniform charger goes against innovation and therefore hinders technological development. And if we look at Apple’s history of cable standards, we shouldn’t fail to appreciate that it makes sense for the company to be in a position to make such claims.

Let me explain, for a while and by far the fastest device connection format on the market for private users was IEEE 1394 ie. FireWire, the option adopted by Apple, versus USB 1.1, which is already widely used in the Windows environment. If the standardization of USB 1.1 as the only data connection port were forced then, it would be a huge drag. Of course, in reality, the comparison of the PC connection interface with the charging port of the device type is in reality comparison of incomparable items.

And yet, in these times, we’ve seen this comparison used on many occasions to try to justify Apple’s stance on Europe’s only charger. What we have not seen so far, and it is remarkable, is to see this argument refuted by our name, which is history in the history of Apple. And it is because in a tweetwho was Apple’s vice president and is considered the “father” of the iPod, Tony Fadell, was in favor of a unified USB-C port and also stated that the only thing the European regulation does is force Apple to do the right thing.

And so it is that before the tweet making the argument I mentioned earlier, comparing FireWire to USB 1.1, he responds as follows:

«I don’t see a problem with that. The world has come together with USB-C. Physical and user limits have been reached. The next step is a wireless connection, not another physical connection. So I’m not too worried about this regulation. It’s just pushing Apple to do the right thing… frankly, it’s overdue.»