Couldn't agree more. I don't understand why the HN crowd is so supportive of government telling people what to do, as evidenced by your rapid downvotes. I don't use an iPhone but I'm disappointed Apple caved.
It's not much different than governments regulating electrical power oulets/plugs. And no one thinks that that should be a free-for-all.
Of course, there's still fragmentation among different continents/countries, but that was inevitable given the time periods these things were standardised. It's unfortunate that the world didn't decide on one standard, but at least almost all countries are internally consistent. There's no need to make the same mistake with USB.
We should allow electrical and networking companies to innovate again. If Cisco wants to use something else instead of RJ45, they should be allowed to be.
hacker news was overrun with non-technical people (with no real engineering or economics knowledge) long ago (like 6+ years). hardly any interesting discussion or deep understanding here anymore
