One of the people in the Super 14 party yesterday, commented that one of the nice things she likes about her new Apple iPhone is the "standardised connector". At first pass, this sounded rather wierd - but she explained that both her iPod (about 4 years old), her kids' iPod (more recent), her husband's iPod (very new) and her iPhone (also new) - all used the same connector, and for that matter same charger system. In comparison, her Nokia phones she had used previously all had different chargers; while her husband's Blackberry (he is on his third or fourth one now) has also had different chargers.
In the IT world, we think that standardisation is a globally agreed set of principles - but maybe, just consitency in usage and design within a manufacturer is enough! Maybe, the whole concept of long standardised, interoperability - which is often long winded, compromised and even more often, ineffective, would be rather better served by stadradisation and consistency within the manufaturer?
2 comments:
Now imagine the awesomeness of not only her ipod and iphone using the same connector as each other, but also the same connector as her Nokia, her laptop, and her new android phone. That would be great. Otherwise the convenience of manufacturer-level consistency becomes only another form of brand lock-in.
Sure it would be better - but commercially, there is no push from the manufacturer to do so. Remember, manufacturer lock in commercially advantageous to the manufacturer. Unless there is a commercial reason for the manufacturer to not have lock in; there would be no reason to support such a move.
There was an agreement last year on the implementation of mini-USB as the standard for chargers - nothing has come of it; and I don't really expect much.
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