> The standards are really bad and it’s not just about protocols but hardware.

Okay, if their hardware is esoteric, open the protocols for interacting with hardware.

> Should they give away every hardware design needed too?

Yeah probably. It would be a lot better, more like x86. We would actually get repairable phones instead of landfill fodder. But that's a different issue.

> Lighting was an incredible boon in an era of micro usb, people just seem to forget how shit everyone else was. Now we have usb-c where companies are required to supply the port but doesn’t have to follow any actual specification, yay for standards.

And then it became a cheap scam, whereby Apple made a few dollars off of every single lightning cable produced by anyone on Earth due to licensing.

Also, as for USB-C - doesnt matter, still better. My chargers work across multiple devices. Yes, there's some standards noncompliance, this is still a huge improvement over ZERO cross compatibility.

▲

techpression 4 days ago | parent [-]

Last time I checked x86 is not open, it’s licensed just like the lightning cable, och and USB-C.

▲

const_cast 4 days ago | parent [-]

Its comparatively much more open, with interface and protocols specified and open source firmware implementations widely used in the wild. I'm also including BIOs/UEFI in this.

ARM and phone manufacturing is a hot mess in comparison. We're still trying to reverse engineer M series MacBooks and iPhones are off limits. Android is also not open source, no AOSP does not count.

There would be a lot more competition in the space if the hardware had proper specs, like x86 does.

	▲	techpression 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		What competition has x86 seen? I’m old enough to remember when there was more than Intel and AMD. When did they last license x86 to a competitor, 30+ years ago? It’s great that documentation exists, but it doesn’t make for competition. ARM is at least licensing out to more than two manufacturers.