I recently got ready for a 6-day snowboarding trip to British Columbia, and the bag containing the charging cables needed to power all my valuable equipment turned out to be a ridiculously unsightly tangle of its own. I found myself growing up and getting frustrated.
For too long, consumers have been plagued with pointlessly incompatible ways to power and connect their devices. There are many reasons why one universal cable to rule them all is so elusive, but no brand is exempt from responsibility for this disruption.
Well, I’ve had enough. I don’t know about you, but I’m super pissed off about proprietary cables and won’t accept them anymore.
6 days, 10 cables, 4 power bricks, 1 dongle
My trip was only scheduled for 6 days, but along the way I was accompanied by over 10 cables, 4 power bricks, and a dongle.
2 USB-A to Lightning chargers for your phone and your partner, 2 USB-A to USB-C cables to add to your Fujifilm X-E4, and one of the best portable chargers in the world I packed the Anker PowerCore Slim charger. market. We also included a USB-A to USB-Micro cable for smaller gadgets like aging Bluetooth speakers.
My Polar Vantage V3, Theragun Mini massage gun, Bose QC25 Bluetooth adapter, and workout earbuds all use 100% proprietary cables. That’s excellent. The Theragun cable plugs directly into a wall outlet (which we’re actually big fans of), while the Polar cable requires a USB-C connection and the other cables require USB-A. How wonderful!
I also packed a USB-C to USB-C cable for my MacBook Air and four power adapters, two for the USB-C cable and two for the USB-A. Finally, a USB-A to USB-C dongle for use with a travel-sized SD memory card reader joins the party (it didn’t work in the end, sigh).
Could you have skipped one or two of these items? Perhaps. However, having had beds ruined by accessories in the past, this was the bare minimum I felt comfortable transporting across the border.
What can be done about the proliferation of proprietary cables?
So what can we do about this ridiculous plague of proprietary cables?
While this may seem like a lost cause, there are reasons to be hopeful about the future of wired charging and connectivity. A 2022 ruling by the European Union requires: All handheld devices sold in the EU require USB-C The same obligation will apply to all laptops sold in the EU from 2026.
The ruling has already forced Apple, a brand notorious for doing things its own way, to drop its own Lightning port from the latest iPhone 15 models in favor of USB-C.
What about obligations elsewhere? It may be a tough sell for the United States as a whole, and especially for ardent supporters of free markets. But California just passed a similar bill last spring. Other countries are following suit. And this legislative momentum could be enough to push other manufacturers to make charging port changes on a global scale.
The end of the endless cable depletion is in sight.
Finally, with the EU directive on the horizon, blue skies may be just around the corner. Imagine a world where every home, cafe, train station, and school is full of USB-C ports, and everything from your smartphone to your blender uses the same ubiquitous cable. . (Of course, this would require some very serious gadget upgrades, but oh well). Now, that’s the society I want to live in.Until then, here it is Best wireless chargers of 2024.
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