alt.hn

3/28/2025 at 1:13:04 PM

Cross-Platform P2P Wi-Fi: How the EU Killed AWDL

 https://www.ditto.com/blog/cross-platform-p2p-wi-fi-how-the-eu-killed-awdl

by stusmall

3/28/2025 at 6:36:20 PM

I really wish there were some write-ups for doing wifi-p2p aka wifi-aware (the wifi alliance's proprietary branding for it) on Linux! Incredibly sad that it's just so so so undocumented; such a neat sounding suite of capabilities.

Haven't looked in 2-3 years, but found so little ehm last I looked. Very dismaying. So many folks doing "p2p" file sharing apps, but generally they assume you have setup networking already. We really need to own the means of connectivity. Especially now!

by jauntywundrkind

3/28/2025 at 7:16:42 PM

Unfortunately I believe it requires your WiFi firmware have the ability to switch channels with microsecond timing precision.

That means you couldn't do it with off the shelf WiFi hardware.

You might be able to do it whilst dropping existing WiFi connections during the transfer.

by londons_explore

3/28/2025 at 7:41:56 PM

The article links to a Linux implementation that does it with off the shelf WiFi hardware. You do need specific features in the hardware/firmware, but there are consumer devices that have that e.g. Atheros AR9280.

https://github.com/seemoo-lab/owl

It currently drops connections to an AP, but the authors of the implementation seem to believe this could be fixed:

> OWL does not allow a concurrent connection to an AP. This means, that when started, the Wi-Fi interface exclusively uses AWDL. To work around this, OWL could create a new monitor interface (instead of making the Wi-Fi interface one) and adjust its channel sequence to include the channel of the AP network.

by snops

3/29/2025 at 12:05:34 PM

I believe most android smartphones can actually do it: I often rely on having my phone connected to wifi and also being an AP at the same time (exactly to make up for the absence of simple direct connection between my devices, using adb and some other software you can "emulate" what apple is doing with AWDL, this wifi-aware thing looks like an answer to some of my problems). Sample size is around 5 but from different brands and price ranges so I'm pretty sure it's on basically all devices.

by hollow-moe

3/29/2025 at 5:52:48 AM

I'm fine having a second wifi card for wifi-p2p on Linux. Ideally the situation gets better over time, as wifi-p2p becomes a better used better travelled system.

Ideally the second wifi adapter could be USB based! For years usb cards were very second tier; I haven't tried again lately but I assume that's still largely the case.

Given that there are some pretty affordable (below $70) barebones thunderbolt docks for GPUs, it'd be neat to see some thunderbolt docks designed for one or multiple wifi cards (or other m.2).

by jauntywundrkind

3/28/2025 at 2:59:49 PM

I recently wanted to do point-to-point Wi-Fi for transferring some data but apparently support for the ad-hoc IBSS mode wasn't available on my MT7925. Wi-Fi Aware is completely new to me and didn't come up while searching on the topic at all. I can't find anything about using it on Linux now either. Anybody have any references on its support?

There's a single kernel commit referencing Wi-Fi Aware from 2023 [0]. iw supposedly supports a few commands pertaining to it [1].

  [0] https://web.git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?h=v6.14&id=9b89495e479c5fedbf3f2eca4f1c4e9dd481265e
  [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53594406/implementing-a-wifi-aware-application-outside-android

by tambre

3/28/2025 at 6:55:04 PM

The WiFi Alliance has a habit of always have a marketing name and a different name in the spec, you'll a lot more references to it in places like WPA supplicant if you search for Neighbor Awareness Networking (NAN). Also here is the link to the spec https://www.wi-fi.org/system/files/Wi-Fi%20Aware%20Specifica...

by zorgmonkey

3/28/2025 at 10:00:07 PM

>The WiFi Alliance has a habit of always have a marketing name and a different name in the spec

What, the same people that named a consumer facing product 802.11g?

by DecentShoes

3/29/2025 at 3:09:44 AM

That would be the IEEE, and I don't think the marketing people in the Wi-Fi Alliance participate at that level.

by dwaite

3/29/2025 at 1:50:55 AM

They didn’t name it that, IEEE did.

by chipsa

3/28/2025 at 3:47:25 PM

Any WiFi operation besides STA is in general a crapshoot, especially if the card is not meant for use in an AP. WiFi hardware vendors can't be bothered to provide fully usable stacks for anything else (if even that).

For example Intel's broken Location Aware Regulatory completely breaks any use-cases where your device is not the STA (on anything besides 2.4GHz). Most cards also have no DFS support, meaning you'll be left with a microscopic usable segment. Then there's also the problem with incorrect regulatory information.

All of which in the end makes reliable high-speed point-to-point operation very annoying to achieve. Even if it'd be totally legal. Leaving you with a terribly slow link.

by Avamander

3/28/2025 at 5:52:34 PM

Adhoc was the coolest thing, I still miss it. One day in 2002-ish, I was showing a friend some photos on my laptop and noticed a crowd had gathered over my shoulder, and there simply wasn't enough room for everyone to get a good view.

"Fire up adhoc, set it to this ssid, vnc to this address"

Two minutes later, my photos are on five screens around the coffee shop and everyone can see.

Adhoc just worked, and that's more than I can say for a great many things before or since.

by myself248

3/28/2025 at 11:43:26 PM

My windows laptop supports creating a wifi hotspot. It even allows sharing my upstream wifi internet connection over the hotspot, which I wasn't aware was a thing until recently (my Pixel 7 also supports this). I'm sure you could do the same thing with Linux with the right incantation. Not as cool as adhoc but it's also a paradigm people are very familiar with these days.

by apitman

3/28/2025 at 8:28:11 PM

What stops you from using it today? A wiki claims it is just 3 commands and IP configuration:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Ad-hoc_networking#Manual_me...

by ryao

3/29/2025 at 3:21:45 AM

Last time I tried it I got some error that made me think the driver didn't support it, but it's been a while. I wonder if my new card is any better...

by myself248

3/29/2025 at 12:01:05 AM

i think this is most important post of all

people hail apple for what is essentially 3 line script XD

i do understand that it does much more. but 3 line script is closer to what it really is, then what people think it is.

by Calwestjobs

3/28/2025 at 7:30:34 PM

[flagged]

by KennyBlanken

3/28/2025 at 2:40:58 PM

WiFi Aware looks interesting but there seems to be very little information out there beyond Android related docs and associated links. It seems to be hidden away behind the doors of WiFi alliance.

Can anyone familiar with the topic chime in what it would take to utilize WiFi Aware in let's say a Raspberry Pi (maybe using a different wireless chip connected via usb)? Maybe even to connect to Android smartphones

by simfoo

3/28/2025 at 11:34:27 PM

I frequently play Age of Empires 2 with my wife and her brother. Remarkably, this game still supports LAN play in 2025, even though the netcode has been completely overhauled since 1999.

However, we decided to try it on a recent flight, and it turns out it still requires an internet connection, both to satisfy Steam, and to connect to some sort of LAN coordination server. I ended up paying $20 for in-flight wifi.

We've lost a lot in the last 30 years, but tech like wifi aware might help bring back local-first networking. I choose to believe that if solid APIs exist, developers will use them.

by apitman

3/29/2025 at 12:04:00 AM

> and to connect to some sort of LAN

this is actually kind of a hard UI/UX problem for game developers

many p2p+local auto recovery protocols are very bothersome, partially due to some of the protocols being bad or incomplete and a lot due to all kind of hardware & OSs partially or fully crippling them

so game devs often have to fall back to a coordinator server to provide reliable and easy to use functionality for most which also happens to often be the easiest thing to implement and maintain, and then in addition they could also implement work-arounds for the no-internet case

but that is additional cost for a overall niche use case (local co-op without internet), so it ends up in the backlog with low priority at best or gets outright killed. To make that worse steam provides tools to make it much easier to implement co-op (focused on non local co-op), and the easiest way to use them is in a way which always requires internet even for local co-op

so as long as steam doesn't put in a lot of work to make no-internet local co-op close to free to implement for most games it will never happen for most games

by dathinab

3/29/2025 at 5:59:37 AM

What's the problem with just sending some UDP beacons to the local network broadcast address? (or multicast all-hosts address)

by fulafel

3/30/2025 at 10:41:46 PM

- middleware in the networks not forwarding broadcast messages

- depending on device and application type you not even being able to send broadcast/the OS silently dropping them

- firewall blocking incoming TCP/UDP without hole punching

- p2p in games having security implications (unsafe network stacks, game engine etc. allowing RCEs and similar) so you want to make sure only "more trusted" communication can happen, so TLS is needed, but without actually fully secure p2p TLS is not easy, mainly there are issues with establishing trust (you either have to involve some side channel (i.e. a pin, QR code or similar) or pre-established trust.

The biggest thing is still that as a steam game you have a reliably, proven, easy to use "solution" as part of your normal steam integration which you anyway want to use to be able to use the friend invite system which has the drawback of needing internet for local coop which is niche use-case likely not selling any games. Why would a company implement an additional solution and handle all the UX issues of switching between them?

by dathinab

3/29/2025 at 12:08:28 AM

All good points. This is why I'm so excited about this development. Maybe wifi aware will provide a reliable means of local discovery. At that point we're just missing an open source library that makes the devex for implementing LAN support as good as Steam's, and baby you got a stew goin.

by apitman

3/28/2025 at 3:58:59 PM

>A quietly published EU interoperability roadmap mandates Apple support Wi-Fi Aware 4.0 in iOS 19 and v5.0,1 thereafter, essentially forcing AWDL into retirement.

Whats stopping Apple from doing both?

by lawlessone

3/28/2025 at 4:10:54 PM

I think the EU mandate forces them to do both, so that devices with AWDL are not advantaged over non-Apple devices with Wi-Fi Aware, so my read is that mandate will mean Apple devices will do both modes until they can transition AWDL off entirely.

by bigfish24

3/28/2025 at 4:18:15 PM

Nothing, but since Apple is the only user of AWDL and WiFi Aware makes it redundant, why support both (in long term)?

by 0x457

3/28/2025 at 10:40:52 PM

Because they could want to offer WiFi Aware in the EU and AWDL anywhere else, even in the long term. And switch back to AWDL everywhere if the EU stops mandating interoperability some day in the future.

by pmontra

3/28/2025 at 11:25:12 PM

I’ll bet $100 that AWDL is better designed and will work better. It isn’t like Google didn’t have all the time and chances to do this right. Android beam worked 50% of the time. IIRC half of the failures were BT and half were WiFi. Airdrop is much more reliable than 50%

by dmitrygr

4/3/2025 at 8:14:49 PM

I think it's an android problem and not WiFi Aware problem

by 0x457

3/29/2025 at 12:11:58 AM

nothing excepts it doesn't make sense for them

basically the mandate requires them to not hamper WI-FI Aware in anyway which pushes developers into using AWDL instead, i.e. they require it to be as good +- some technical differences in features not so relevant for 3rd party use cases

and if you provide something which works as good why should they keep AWDL around, it's just double the dev cost and AWDL is getting older and Wi-Fi Aware is getting nice WiFi7 improvements soon

so as long as they don't have some use case outside of what Wi-Fi Aware is supposed to do which happens to work with AWDL they keeping both around long term is not a very good decision economically

by dathinab

3/29/2025 at 3:17:52 AM

That seems to be based on the assumption that a fully compliant Wi-Fi Aware implementation would be equal or superior in every case to an optimized, proprietary protocol.

by dwaite

3/28/2025 at 2:07:49 PM

The interesting question is authentication/authorization - at the moment, macOS greatly simplifies this as long as both devices belong to the same Apple ID. On the opposite side, Samsung does the same.

How will that work out?

by mschuster91

3/28/2025 at 3:30:53 PM

That's certainly a nice feature, but in comparison to the elephant in the room, i.e. wireless file transfers between Android and iOS being completely impossible at the moment, it's completely insignificant.

by lxgr

3/28/2025 at 4:46:56 PM

> wireless file transfers between Android and iOS being completely impossible at the moment

P2P proximal wireless transfer, sure, but there's half a dozen apps on your phone that'll let you punt a document, a photo, an invite to someone on the other phone OS platform.

Maybe I'm an edge case, but probably 90% of my Airdrop usage is between my own devices, so the platform taking care of the authentication story is of more utility than cross-platform transfers. If someone isn't on iOS I'll just send them the file on Signal since, if the source is my phone in the first place, it's probably not a huge transfer anyway.

by tsujamin

3/28/2025 at 5:30:56 PM

> there's half a dozen apps on your phone that'll let you punt a document, a photo, an invite to someone on the other phone OS platform.

That's exactly my point: Apps – which users have to install, which requires an Internet connection.

Also all of them routing data through some centralized server, often not end-to-end encrypted.

> If someone isn't on iOS I'll just send them the file on Signal

Approximately none of the people that I've Airdropped photos to in the past have Signal installed, and even if they do, there isn't always an Internet connection available. Airdrop also sends the original photo including all metadata and resolution, which is another big reason I like it.

On top of that, I've Airdropped photos to complete strangers (e.g. if I managed to get a nice shot of something on a tour) with which I didn't have any desire to exchange numbers, and I just would not have been able to send the photo to Android.

by lxgr

3/28/2025 at 11:50:13 PM

> On top of that, I've Airdropped photos to complete strangers (e.g. if I managed to get a nice shot of something on a tour) with which I didn't have any desire to exchange numbers, and I just would not have been able to send the photo to Android.

Comments like this are one of the few things that can make me jealous of Apple users. I just can't stomach how locked down the platform is as a developer. Android is also getting worse though.

by apitman

3/28/2025 at 5:11:23 PM

> P2P proximal wireless transfer, sure, but there's half a dozen apps on your phone that'll let you punt a document, a photo, an invite to someone on the other phone OS platform.

Yeah, via their server, which means it's slow even if you have wifi, requires valuable data credit if not, or it requires the installation of a companion app on the other device and putting the other device in the same network.

by mschuster91

3/28/2025 at 5:30:32 PM

The biggest point for me is privacy. I don't want to upload private data to some server just to send it to another device that's next to mine.

by MaKey

3/28/2025 at 11:50:56 PM

Most quality apps should be e2ee right?

by apitman

3/29/2025 at 12:33:08 PM

Do you have an example for such an app? I don't know anybody using 3rd party file transfer apps. Usually files are uploaded to some cloud service (iCloud, OneDrive, ...) and then shared with a link if they can't be sent via messaging apps like WhatsApp or Signal.

by MaKey

3/28/2025 at 11:27:54 PM

Nice of you to state your option as fact. Now let me try. Compat with Android is “completely insignificant” but magical auto-auth based on Apple ID is the “elephant in the room”. See how that works?

by dmitrygr

3/29/2025 at 3:02:03 AM

I meant the opposite: Cross-platform compatibility is what’s sorely missing, and authentication is only a cherry on top, so I don’t think it ought to be a blocker.

by lxgr

3/29/2025 at 3:25:46 AM

The reason iMessage has less spam than SMS is that it has a cost associated: the cost of an apple device. It is our gated community and we do not want it force-opened to the public. Better?

by dmitrygr

3/29/2025 at 3:57:25 AM

Not sure if you’re being ironic, but I use an iPhone too (and as such “own property in the gated community”), and I very much do want iMessage force-opened to the public if that’s what it takes to get Apple to make it interoperable.

Compared to a decade ago or two, there are too many silos in communication these days as it is.

by lxgr

3/28/2025 at 2:39:20 PM

Vanilla P2P Wifi is amazing for the possibilities it unlocks, but unfortunately most developers can't do security to save their lives. There will be a lot of insecure apps.

by api

3/28/2025 at 2:23:32 PM

For something like AirDrop this will need to be sorted out, but already work occurred to reverse engineer this: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop

Would be cool if an open standard on auth forms on top of this.

by bigfish24

3/28/2025 at 3:09:14 PM

For this to succeed I think we need a C implementation that can be used by many languages and runtimes.

by fire_lake

3/28/2025 at 3:33:25 PM

Not in C, please, since this is something that by definition will handle at least some unauthenticated low-level protocol traffic.

by lxgr

3/28/2025 at 11:51:55 PM

I'm impressed you managed to not use the R-word

by apitman

3/28/2025 at 3:32:37 PM

How would an open implementation be compatible with this, given that Apple's implementation is based on an Apple-operated PKI?

Note that this is only a conversation about sender identification, which allows sending to a "non-world-visible" receiving device and confirmation-less sending to devices with the same iCloud account on them. Anonymous sending isn't cryptographically gated by Apple, to my knowledge.

by lxgr

3/28/2025 at 9:58:42 PM

Their documentation suggests that is only needed by contacts only mode and they wrote some code to get the needed certificates from macOS:

https://github.com/seemoo-lab/airdrop-keychain-extractor

by ryao

3/28/2025 at 10:34:33 PM

That still requires you to have (access to) a Mac and an iCloud account.

It might be possible to reimplement the required Apple API, but as demonstrated by the iMessage/Beeper saga, they usually shut such things down pretty quickly.

by lxgr

3/28/2025 at 10:52:21 PM

If you've never heard of Ditto before, they're one of the leaders in cross platform small-scale mesh networking.

If they're excited about this, I'm excited about this.

by apitman

3/30/2025 at 4:18:29 AM

There is a new alternative p2p mesh wireless in town, and suprisingly it was introduced by IEEE Wi-Fi Alliance rival 3GPP. It's the very first non-cellular standard for 5G namely DECT NR+ [1]. Since it's backward compatible with DECT it will be very supportive of real-time traffic for voice.

[1] What is DECT-2020 New Radio (NR), and how big a deal is it? (2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39849335

by teleforce

3/29/2025 at 12:02:13 AM

> Wi-Fi Ad-hoc. It never gained widespread use.

I don't think this is true. In the early 2000s, in Germany, the alternative, now vastly used "infrastructure mode" was rare because Wi-Fi basestations were rare and expensive, e.g. DSL modems didn't have built-in Wi-Fi.

So the only way of wirelessly sharing internet at home / files with friends at university (which also didn't have Wi-Fi yet) was with ad-hoc mode.

by Eduard

3/28/2025 at 3:43:46 PM

This is good news

by rubatuga

3/29/2025 at 3:20:05 AM

My understanding is that Apple already does have Wi-Fi Aware support (as it is required for interoperable implementations of things like ISO 18013-5).

Is this about mandating a version upgrade, or about adding some developer API surface for it?

by dwaite

3/28/2025 at 5:32:14 PM

I dunno what the site is doing (mining crypto?), but it takes two cores to fullest throttle for me.

by formerly_proven

3/28/2025 at 5:34:52 PM

I think it might be the css animation that moves the dots on the background.

by ecshafer

3/28/2025 at 5:40:57 PM

It's not a CSS animation, it's canvas with p5. It probably renders every frame, even though the rendered result doesn't change if there hasn't been a click.

by Timon3

3/28/2025 at 3:43:26 PM

Interesting!

Basically the EU is now able to force american companies to do things that the US regulator will not do, probably because Apple can manage to lobby US congress but not the EU parliament.

That probably means that US companies can probably help "counter" Apple on certain things as long as the EU sees that it benefits the consumer.

I don't know if Trump somehow caused this situation.

by jokoon

3/28/2025 at 4:37:09 PM

Standards are essential for a common market and competition and drivers for prosperity. This is nothing new. Your Iphone probably also says "RoHS", which marks compliance with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive. Mostly manufacturers try to comply with both EU and US standards at the same time. Typically the EU environmental and safety standards are a bit stricter. For example, in medicine, you first get FDA approval and then EMA approval, not just because it's a bigger market, but also because it's easier.

by bux93

3/28/2025 at 5:09:46 PM

You know in a parallel world this headline is just "EU mandates Apple-designed P2P Wi-Fi standard". They did submit it for standardization after all, keeping to their proprietary one was just a transparent segmentation play.

by stefan_

3/28/2025 at 4:00:21 PM

EU has been regulating tech companies at least since the MicroUSB charger mandate. This has nothing to do with Trump, but once he hears about it he'll make sure everyone else knows too.

by anilakar

3/29/2025 at 6:29:15 AM

So Apple has to drop UWB until the spec catches up?

by sroussey

3/28/2025 at 3:31:49 PM

Sounds like they’d keep it as yet another Apple exclusive instead of y’know, introducing a new industry thing

by yapyap

3/28/2025 at 4:19:10 PM

Good bye free market.

If a "new industry thing" is far superior and what customers want, why other vendors don't do it?

Now, if government sees a benefit in driving and sharing technology I'd be happy the government would actively participate in R&D.

by renecito

3/28/2025 at 4:29:58 PM

What do you mean? The government does actively participate in R&D, in the form of research grants, development subsidies and tax benefits.

by tremon

3/28/2025 at 4:45:00 PM

>The government does actively participate in R&D, in the form of research grants, development subsidies and tax benefits.

They do, it's only bad when China does it.

by FirmwareBurner

3/28/2025 at 8:29:31 PM

They could develop ALSO their protocol and offer both.

I don't recognise Apple as the proponent of the new open standards. They didn't offer lightning to everyone, hell, even to make the lightning cable I'd have to pay a heavy licensing fee.

Apple is not open and proponent of the common standards, hence they must be forced to adapt open standards in the name of interoperability.

Personally I'd prefer lightning port on my phone instead of this stupid and fragile USB-c, bit since Apple wasn't interested in opening their standard.

by subscribed

3/28/2025 at 10:14:17 PM

> If a "new industry thing" is far superior and what customers want, why other vendors don't do it?

The other vendors do it. The problem is that we then end up with a dozen of solutions that do the same thing, but are incompatible with each other.

by int_19h

3/31/2025 at 5:42:01 PM

Wait until you see who funds most of technological progress. (Spoiler, it's not tech companies)

Examples: ARPANET, semi-conductor industry, human genome, LIGO, ITER, etc. etc. etc

by gessha

3/28/2025 at 7:03:06 PM

" It took the concepts Apple pioneered (timeslot synchronization... "

Pioneered does not mean inventing, never seen before concept. Pioneered means in this context - taking concepts already used in other radio networks and using them in their "wifi stack". Concepts used for decades before Apple even had iphone.

I am not sure what / why is there difference between speeds of AWDL vs NAN in that table, my understanding was it can transfer at same speeds. Speed being limited by upload capability of "wifi chip".

by Calwestjobs

3/28/2025 at 2:19:57 PM

[flagged]

by gyudin

3/28/2025 at 3:39:15 PM

I do love bureaucrats who could not tell Wifi from InfraRed deciding what comms standards are to be used.

by dmitrygr

3/28/2025 at 3:42:46 PM

Indeed, it's a lot better when the EU bureaucrats in collaboration with industry experts decide what comms standards should be used instead of profit maximizing megacorporations!

by carlhjerpe

3/28/2025 at 3:54:12 PM

For what it's worth, the bureaucrats did just fine with USB-C and Lightning.

by lxgr

3/28/2025 at 6:27:06 PM

I don't care how dumb the bureaucrats are so long as the end result is that when my parents ask me to "AirDrop" them a file or picture, the conversation doesn't end with...

- I texted it to you, but it looks like crap, because MMS is crap

- I tried to email it to you but it's over 2 megs and I have to walk downstairs, get it off my phone and onto a Real Computer™, then scale it down

- I emailed you a Google Drive link, wait what do you mean you don't know how to sign into that? Yeah just use that app... oh wait no that's a different Google Account from the one you have your Gmail on

- No, I'm not using Messenger, I don't like getting my data zucked by Facebook

- Hey, there's this very easy way you can send files, you just need to install this app - what do you mean you forgot your Apple ID password for the third time this week?

- Let me run downstairs and get my special USB-C flash drive - oh god damn it you still have the phones with Lightning ports on them

- Let me run downstairs and grab my iPad, chuck the image over to it using Dropbox, then AirDrop you

AirDrop just works, not because it's Apple, but because having a direct P2P transfer utility built into every phone and laptop cuts out all sorts of setup and permissioning issues. Apple just decided their protocol was going to be the only one they'd support, and that everyone else who bought the wrong phone should pound sand.

by kmeisthax

3/30/2025 at 7:34:24 PM

“I do not care how dumb the bureaucrats are, as long as I get the result of you spending thousands of hours designing something almost magical for free without paying you”

by dmitrygr

3/31/2025 at 3:44:23 AM

Apple is being paid, the cost of the software is bundled into the device. That's their entire business model.

by kmeisthax

3/28/2025 at 6:04:17 PM

Competent government workers are able to rely on experts to deal with various issues. There's lots of regulation around tech, environment, animals, health, building requirements, etc. that we can't realistically expect everyone to have a deep understanding of.

by viraptor

3/28/2025 at 8:16:20 PM

Come on, man. I can't say I miss the trillion charger types of the late 1990s and early 2000s. We have the EU to thank for USB-C. It may not be perfect, but being able to use the same charger to power/charge my phone, headphones and laptop is awesome. I can't say the same of my retro gear, until I modify it myself to have a USB-C charging port. Having a compatible wireless communication standard is along the same lines, in my opinion.

by selfhoster11

3/28/2025 at 10:01:29 PM

> We have the EU to thank for USB-C

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C

> The design for the USB-C connector was initially developed in 2012 by Intel, HP Inc., Microsoft, and the USB Implementers Forum. The Type-C Specification 1.0 was published by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) on August 11, 2014.[1] In July 2016, it was adopted by the IEC as "IEC 62680-1-3".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Implementers_Forum

> USB Implementers Forum, Inc. (USB-IF) is a nonprofit organization created to promote and maintain USB (Universal Serial Bus), a set of specifications and transmission procedures for a type of cable connection that has since become used widely for electronic equipment. Its main activities are currently the promotion and marketing of USB, Wireless USB, USB On-The-Go, and the maintenance of standards and specifications for the related devices, as well as a compliance program.

> The USB-IF was initiated in 1995[1] by the group of companies that was developing USB, which was made available first during 1996. The founding companies of USB-IF were Compaq, Digital Equipment Corporation, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC and Nortel. Notable current members include HP, NEC, Microsoft, Apple Inc., Intel, and Agere Systems.

We have mega corporations to thank for USB-C. Notably none of these companies are European. None.

by latency-guy2

3/29/2025 at 2:27:45 AM

It would never have been universal of not for the EU

by HeatrayEnjoyer

3/29/2025 at 6:52:20 AM

Like the Micro-USB?

Are you sure this will last a decade? The EU has a tendency to demand without thinking. Just like the last time, the modern world will move on, and the EU will pretend like it had anything to do with the next time.

by latency-guy2

4/3/2025 at 1:52:47 AM

>The EU has a tendency to demand without thinking. Just like the last time, the modern world will move on, and the EU will pretend like it had anything to do with the next time.

I have no imagination of what you're talking about. EU is more modern than the vast majority of the planet.

by HeatrayEnjoyer

3/28/2025 at 9:12:14 PM

> We have the EU to thank for USB-C.

USB-C was the default connector on most devices long before the EU mandate.

by DaSHacka

3/28/2025 at 3:01:22 PM

So it's lightning all over again? Lightning was better than micro-usb, then USB-C came out and was even better and people get pissy at Apple for creating something better than the standard (and donating some of that back to the standard).

I know this will not be popular here but I really do not like the EU's most recent round of "no, you have to open up this feature".

by joshstrange

3/28/2025 at 3:27:23 PM

I absolutely love it. USB-C is easily among my top 3 changes for the better on iPhones in the last 10 years.

If "Wi-Fi Aware" (almost as ridiculous a name as "Bluetooth Low Energy", but that's a different topic) ends up allowing Android to iOS file transfers without any third-party apps or network connectivity – like feature phones could, 20 years ago – that'll make the top three too.

by lxgr

3/28/2025 at 3:31:43 PM

Apple was bringing USB-C to their entire line well before the EU "mandated" it. They were one of the first to put it on their laptops.

by joshstrange

3/28/2025 at 3:33:49 PM

Yes, and they even co-developed the standard to my knowledge.

Still they were stubbornly refusing to bring it to their phones, which are their most popular product line by far, until the EU forced their hand.

by lxgr

3/28/2025 at 3:59:44 PM

You say "refusing to bring it to their phones", I say they were cautious about changing the port for the second time ever. I'd bet my retirement fund that Apple was going to bring USB-C to the iPhone that year already or at most 1 year later. It was slowly working its way down the line and I understand them being most hesitant about touching their golden goose.

But I understand your viewpoint and, again, I love USB-C (and my iPhone). My biases are absolutely playing into my viewpoint on this. I just don't think they were dragging their feet due to wanting to make more from MFI/Lightning as some suggested, it was mostly just being slow to change something that would annoy people (and the change did annoy many people, even though I don't think they should have been annoyed).

by joshstrange

3/28/2025 at 4:25:53 PM

Wasn't Apple super "courageous" when they killed the headphone jack?

I tend to view Apple's actions (and those of any company really) first through the lens of their own self-interest. Killing the headphone jack, which was an open standard, benefited wireless headphones. And, unsurprisingly, Apple's proprietary integration with Airpods help make them the best wireless headphone choice.

While I don't wholly disagree that Apple would have eventually switched to USB-C, I doubt they were slow to migrate out of an abundance of caution. Apple is a huge fan of lock-in, and never gives in to open standards easily.

by 3D30497420

3/28/2025 at 7:11:17 PM

Apple did switch to USB-C on the iPad, as Lightning was showing its age both in max power draw and data rate. Putting it on phones was inevitable at that point.

I’m not a huge fan of the EU government making specific demands of specific companies to adopt specific technologies, but this is Wi-Fi and telecom tech has a long history of adoption through legislation. So it’s not at all unprecedented and is probably the lesser evil in this case.

by chuckadams

3/28/2025 at 10:02:31 PM

They had usb 3.0 speeds over lightning on some models (e.g. the iPad Pro), but they kept introducing models that were usb 2.0 speed only for no apparent reason other than cost savings on the rest.

by ryao

3/28/2025 at 10:17:49 PM

And they still do it with USB-C. iPhone 16 and 16 Plus are restricted to USB 2.0 speeds; you have to shell out for 16 Pro or 16 Pro Max to get USB 3.0.

I don't think it's about cost savings, even. It's just a way to differentiate the products, Apple-style.

by int_19h

3/29/2025 at 5:12:38 PM

Even better, the iPhone 16e has DisplayPort support on the USB-C port. Even the necessary pins are blank. So we have at least three different USB-C capability levels on iPhones now.

by realityking

3/28/2025 at 4:03:00 PM

The longer they waited, the more (now obsolete) Lightning accessories were produced and sold as a result, no?

by lxgr

3/28/2025 at 6:44:30 PM

The longer they waited the longer we could use our existing Lightning accessories we’ve had for years that are now trash and often don’t have good replacements (e.g. docks).

by Uvix

3/28/2025 at 4:27:22 PM

We could spend all day debating this back and forth ("What about all the lightning devices that got thrown out due to the new iPhone" - A somewhat silly argument but...) but I think we probably need to just agree to disagree. I absolutely disagree with Apple on a number of things but there is a lot of nuance here IMHO and teasing it out is well-trodden ground.

by joshstrange

3/28/2025 at 5:45:09 PM

While Apple might have switched to USB-C on their own, they would have done so using propriety cables again. Thankfully the EU thwarted those plans.

by MaKey

3/28/2025 at 6:47:24 PM

Citation needed.

There is quite literally no evidence for this theory and mountains of evidence that USB-C is what they were always going to switch to. They had already switched checks note almost every other device they make to USB-C. The few that weren't USB-C at the launch of the iPhone 15 have been moved since then (specifically keyboard and mouse). I'm not sure if there are any Lightning devices left at this point.

by joshstrange

3/28/2025 at 10:06:01 PM

Not quite. Apple could have removed the port entirely as a form of malicious compliance. They would have been in compliance with EU regulations without putting USB-C on their phones.

A second option would have been to make lightning a data only port that would not charge phones.

In either case, the reactions to “in order to comply with EU regulations, wired charging capability has been removed from iPhones sold in the EU” would have been hilarious.

by ryao

3/31/2025 at 5:45:45 PM

The only thing they had with USB-C were the tablets. Literally everything else came out after the mandate. Apple also didn't communicate any intent on switching their connectors to USB-C.

by gessha

3/28/2025 at 3:13:37 PM

> I know this will not be popular here but I really do not like the EU's most recent round of "no, you have to open up this feature".

The EU did not ask Apple to open up AWDL to competitors, they asked Apple to comply with the Wi-Fi Aware 4.0 standard.

by fransje26

3/28/2025 at 3:41:55 PM

"Asked" might not be the correct word here, "demanded" is more fitting.

I'm pretty torn, and I know this conversation has been beaten to death on HN, and I have nothing new or novel to contribute to it, but even though this pushes Apple in a direction I'd personally like to see them move - it just feels like regulatory overreach.

by joshuaturner

3/28/2025 at 3:48:30 PM

In Europe we like our regulators to step in and force megacorporations to do the right thing every now and then.

What makes this overreaching? We already regulate RF heavily since it's a shared space that would all go to shit if everyone could roll their own incompatible thing

by carlhjerpe

3/28/2025 at 7:47:41 PM

The "right thing" is, of course, subjective, but you're completely correct in the wider point. This is something European elected officials have enacted; they were voted into office _by_ Europeans, and if Apple wants to sell their products there, they have to abide by the rules passed there. I completely agree with that. People have the right to decide how companies behave in their countries/regions.

I just personally don't like the idea of governments dictating product decisions when no harm or risk is involved. If Apple wants to sell a product without a feature, it's my belief that they should be able to do that. This is doubly true when Apple developed and patented the feature they're being forced to drop in favor of an implementation they would rather not adopt.

by joshuaturner

3/28/2025 at 7:23:04 PM

Apple isn't technically forced to do this, they're an American company. They could instead withdraw entirely from the EU market and then they don't have to follow any EU laws. Of course, Apple will never do that because selling their phones in the EU makes _way_ more money than complying with the regulations will cost them.

by connicpu

3/28/2025 at 10:07:10 PM

Were you also against the FCC implementing local number portability after Verizon etc refused to hand over your number to a different provider?

The point is that capital incentives alone do not drive interop, and when interop is low, you get stagnating innovation and stifling competition, which leads to customer choice being limited and high prices during the value extraction phase. Just look at the VC world - competition with better product is for losers, all that matters is dominance and ”market share”.

Corporations aren’t alive, they can’t exercise freedoms, they move wherever their incentives dictate. Good regulations like DMA is a tool to make these entities step out of local optima they’re stuck in. (It even helps the affected companies, long term)

by klabb3

3/28/2025 at 3:38:50 PM

Apple said it didn't ship chargers with their 1k+ phones in order to reduce waste right?

Then having the EU force usbc for the same reason shouldn't be a problem.

by OptionX

3/28/2025 at 3:07:57 PM

Lightning is still better than USB C in terms of physical connector design (Lightning puts the male part on the more easily replaced cable side). Annoying that it’s not a strict improvement being imposed.

by fire_lake

3/28/2025 at 3:54:16 PM

So let me get this straight, the male part which is the most durable one is on the cable side on lightning while on USB-C the durable part is in the phone and the easily ruined female pins side is on the cable?

You can keep tooting the Apple horn, Lightning was better than micro USB but saying it's better than USB-C is incorrect on every measureable point. Lightning is dead, long live USB-C!

by carlhjerpe

3/28/2025 at 5:16:28 PM

> while on USB-C the durable part is in the phone

the problem is, it can snap or be sheared off under unfortunate circumstances - say, someone laying their phone on their belly in bed, putting strain on the connector, a chonky cat deciding to jump down right onto the charger cable while the phone is plugged in, or someone dropping their phone while it's attached to a power bank.

With Lightning, it's a matter of removing the broken connector of the cable and that's it. With USB-C, you gotta replace the socket, tough luck on that given that these things generally don't come as single spare parts.

(IMHO, that is the next thing the EU should tackle - parts that often need to be replaced such as sockets and buttons should be mandated to be on a dedicated flex cable that can be easily replaced)

by mschuster91

3/28/2025 at 6:30:31 PM

Port replacement on recent MacBooks is quite easy to do since it is a separate part connected to internal port. I wish more laptop manufacturers followed Apple’s steps

by yisonPylkita

3/29/2025 at 5:36:45 PM

Yeah, and so it is on many laptops I've encountered as well. But unfortunately, almost no phones and tablets have that, or it's a ridiculously populated sideboard with matching prices...

by mschuster91

4/1/2025 at 9:42:10 AM

The physical lightning port and connector are far superior than any USB-C. It is not even a contest.

The only thing usbc has going for it is wide usage.

Lightning can do usb3 things if designed for it. So software side is not an issue between the two.

by CrimsonRain

3/28/2025 at 9:05:39 PM

It’s really not, I’ve had disproportionately more USB-C ports go dodgy because there was repeated tangential force on the cable plug than I had with lightning

by thowawatp302

3/28/2025 at 3:29:11 PM

At least as far as I can tell, this seems to be a solved problem. USB-C ports on iPhones are holding up just fine.

I'll take a 1% higher chance of a port wearing out over a 100% chance of needing to always carry two cables and not being able to share accessories with Android users any day.

by lxgr

3/28/2025 at 4:20:47 PM

The port connector is more reliable on USB-C.

The fine springy wiry bits that are impossible to clean and easy to damage are on the cable, which is a massive improvement. See: the super common broken Ethernet ports.

by literalAardvark

3/28/2025 at 7:10:39 PM

For those of us who used to fix PCBs and wire breadboards, it’s nice to see the traces are still there, like knowing where your food comes from, even if any hope of an analog baseband project is long past. Lightning is one of Apple’s hits.

by emchammer

3/29/2025 at 7:12:13 AM

Yeah, let's make more things the wrong way for the nostalgic aesthetic.

I'm old enough to have done that, and to really miss the old world, but an improvement is an improvement.

None of the stuff I grew up with is "hackable" anymore. None of the design constraints of small, sleek, performant, high battery life and secure are amenable to that.

Even (production) Linux has stopped being a hacker's paradise and is tightening the rope.

And that's what the iPhone is: a production phone.

You want some cool toys? Get Arduinos, hacker laptops, RPis, Arch.

It's all still out there, but not every device needs to have its guts out.

That being said I will always miss SoftIce, being able to look stuff up in memory, being able to look stuff up in network traffic... alas, it's gone, and the truth is we're better off for it.

by literalAardvark

3/28/2025 at 3:34:51 PM

The male part isn't necessarily the key here, the idea is that you put a softer alloy and/or any sprung contacts onto the wear side such that springs and contacts will wear on the replaceable bits. This is the key problem micro USB got wrong, and it's also what Lightning gets wrong (although I'd agree that it was loads better than micro USB).

by luma

3/28/2025 at 3:52:57 PM

> Lightning is still better than USB C in terms of physical connector design (Lightning puts the male part on the more easily replaced cable side).

Yeah, basically just repeating what luma said but you have this backwards. USB-C does have the female part on the cable side. Its just also enclosed in a metal cover for protection.

by kaibee

3/28/2025 at 7:18:00 PM

Lightning’s form factor is nice, but there are still a few issues with it. Look at any Lightning cable you’ve used for a few years and you’ll probably notice one of the contacts is darker than the others. That’s from arcing every time you plug it in, and that just cannot be a good thing.

The springs being on the socket is also not a great feature of Lightning, though usually the device itself has a shorter lifetime than the socket.

by chuckadams

3/28/2025 at 3:03:52 PM

...what use is "donating" back to the standard if you don't adopt the standard, practically preventing its adoption through your position in the market?

by meibo

3/28/2025 at 3:08:11 PM

It wasn't really prevented, though, right? Apple was late to the game, yes, but that by definition means that its adoption was already well on its way; most of my non-Apple acquaintances were mocking me for having a non-usb-c phone (such an important issue!)...

by jeffhuys

3/28/2025 at 3:36:15 PM

> mocking me for having a non-usb-c phone (such an important issue!)...

It really isn't that irrelevant in a world in which being able to charge a phone can mean the difference between being able to get on a flight/train etc. or missing it.

Apple switching to USB-C has doubled (or more, based on the country) the odds of finding somebody with a compatible cable and power bank in a pinch.

by lxgr

4/1/2025 at 2:27:29 PM

Right, I get the usefulness. Absolutely. But would you just randomly mock a person for not having a USB-C connection? They just saw my phone, I didn't even ask for a charger.

Besides, I always carry a collection of cables, even for those who mock me.

by jeffhuys

3/28/2025 at 4:49:29 PM

> non-Apple acquaintances were mocking me for having a non-usb-c phone

I've not mocked an Apple user purely for having a non-standard port on their device, though I have more than once mocked the arrogance of an Apple user being put out because when they were wanting to borrow a charger/battery/cable I only had standard parts, those needed to support my devices, in my kit.

by dspillett

4/1/2025 at 2:30:20 PM

Yeah, that's arrogance. I wish people were less simple-minded and throw everyone under a label; multiple times I've gotten the comment (irl) in the vein of "you actually know a lot about computers for an _apple user_". I always tell them that it's the reason I switched.

I'm not accusing you of being simple minded btw! It's just that most people are like that. Dumb people use windows. Dumb people use apple. Reality is more complex than "X = Y".

by jeffhuys

3/28/2025 at 4:10:10 PM

lightning was worse by nature of being proprietary

by beeflet