Take electric tools. If I have a Milwaukee setup (lawn mower,leaf blower etc) and I buy a new drill. If I want to use the batteries I currently have I’ll have to get a Milwaukee drill.
Yes this is good business, but not all industries do this. Why?
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There’s an episode on the podcast, Unsung Science (David Pogue) about how it happened. It’s pretty interesting!
Problem: Companies like Apple think they can make more money by being different and selling exclusive products that only plug into Apple devices using the Apple port.
Solution: Europe made it illegal for mobile devices sold in the EU to contain any adaptor different to the standard USB-C. Because it’s expensive and confusing for Apple or others makers to produce two different models, they have decided to use that standard worldwide.
To answer the second part of your question, there are two schools of thought around standards. One is that it makes it easier to make all devices compliant, accessible, easy to understand or work with (in the case of phones it reduces number of cables you need to buy, fast transfer speeds, etc.). Great for the consumer. The second is that standards stifle the evolution of technology as the standard may not be the best solution, and it stops further research or development. Likewise, a single standard can almost never cover all niche cases and can therefore be detrimental sometimes. It also homogenizes the products in question. Both have their merits, and I tend to lean to support the first argument, but for this reason you have companies arguing one way and consumers arguing the other. As usual, the answer is somewhere in the middle ground.
Here’s another one for you. Why do trucks have curved windscreens? It’s not for aerodynamics. It’s not for safety. It’s because you can’t not go and purchase a glass panel cut to size and instead need to spend 8x the amount on the manufactures special curved spec glass.
Because they are allowed to currently.
I think it should be illegal similar to what the EU did for the cables for phones.
I’m fine with unique proprietary batteries.
There is no excuse for those batteries needing a unique proprietary charger though. It’s anti competitive and it hurts the consumer.
The opposing forces (or benefits) of standardization and competitive advantage are present in all industries. But the details of the effect those forces have, and the results in technology and products, is different in every industry and case. How much these things are arbitrary, stochastic, or the physical efficiency of engineering issues is a rabbit hole full of spider webs.
I mean, in some industries it is but you don’t think about it because standardisation is so much obviously better for consumers. You can fill up your car at the same pumps all over the country as someone with a different make of car. You can plug in the other end of your phone charger into a socket in your house, or your friend’s house, or in a different state. It can be worse for businesses though – it keeps people captive if there’s a high additional cost to move away from one business’s ecosystem. And if you legislate a given standard, you make it harder for a better one to come along, so it’s a balance – USB-C is clearly better than USB-A (rectangular one with only one orientation that works), for example.
Relevant xkcds, as always: [https://xkcd.com/2830/](https://xkcd.com/2830/), [https://xkcd.com/1406/](https://xkcd.com/1406/), [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)
Usb-c is small, reversable and has lots of pins so it can be future stable. It’s an open standard so it doesn’t need royalties. It has room to grow. So the EU chose it as the mobile device charging port.
Universal batteries are not good for business. They’re good for consumers but not business. If the batteries were universal then people wouldnt buy new incrementaly improved tools with the different battery connections and the company would make less money.
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