Apple’s Reasoning on USB-C Charging Ports and Privacy | WSJ Tech News Briefing

foreign [Music] briefing for Thursday October 27th I'm Zoe Thomas for The Wall Street Journal apple has a problem legislators in the European Union approved new rules this month that will force the makers of portable electronic devices like smartphones and laptops to equip them with a USBC charging port the aim is to have a common charging standard but Apple's iPhones use its own lightning charging port so what do the new rules mean for the future of iPhones around the globe at the Wall Street journals Tech live conference this week wsj senior personal Tech columnist Joanna Stern put that question and more to Apple's senior vice president of software engineering Craig federighi and Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing Greg joswiak here are highlights from their conversation I've called you both here to talk about really a big problem it's really it's a global crisis at this point and I'm gonna I'm gonna bring it up here we're gonna start with you jaws what do you what do you see when you look at this I see two really cool connectors yeah kind of the two most popular connectors in the world I think right now okay yeah Craig I know you're a software guy but what do you see I gotta really agree with Jaws on this one oh yeah great connectors two great connectors okay I see a little bit of a mess and so I'll tell you right so this charges the iPhone now this charges the mac and iPad and various other products around the world and so that's creating a little bit of friction in fact the EU has approved legislation to create a common charger in fact they said in a press release in 2024 a USBC Port will become mandatory for a whole range of electronic devices such as mobile phones tablets and headphones is Apple moving to USBC well maybe I can step back a little bit you may uh you've probably heard me say for years that I don't mind governments telling us what they want to accomplish but usually we've got some pretty smart Engineers to figure out the best ways to accomplish them technically and an example of that that I love to give is for years and years mobile phones had to satisfy a hearing aid compatibility spec very prescriptively described by you know regulation that said here's what you have to do to be compatible with hearing aids the problem is it didn't work but all of us had to do it and so we came up with a new way of doing hearing aids made for iPhone so what we were accomplishing is what the government wanted what we did in a way that worked better and you know we've been in an argument over this one for well over 10 years and over 10 years ago the push from the EU look they're well-meaning I get you know I get the fact that they want to accomplish a good thing what's to do my career USB and standardized as a micro speed and so we have been in this little bit of a disagreement and but part of what of course they wanted to accomplish is why should people have all these different power adapters so we got to what we think was a better place right which is power adapters that had detachable cables you know but all of them usb-a or USBC and largely moving USBC but you choose the cable you know that was appropriate for your device whether that's one of ours or somebody else's and so we preferred that path uh governments you don't get to do what they're going to do and obviously we'll have to comply but you know we think the approach would have been better environmentally and better for our customers to to not have a government be that prescriptive we're going to move to privacy so back in 2021 You released app tracking transparency or ATT and it gave users more Choice over sharing their data with other companies we have these tiny pop-ups all coming up on our phones right a big big business impact right knocks billions in Revenue off of companies like meta Google others did you anticipate this domino effect I'd say we we couldn't be sure uh I think we were truly just focused on doing the right thing we'd been working for so many years to try to bring more transparency and control to so many areas of experience and years before we brought intelligent tracking prevention to Safari and so we we'd seen the problem of tracking on the web and we'd been able to counter it to in large part and we felt the world of apps should be no different and you know I think there was uncertainty about what the short-term impact would be I think we felt in the long term that quality advertising and privacy could coexist there would be Innovation some of it from us some of it from others but that Journey had to start it's a simple question Joanna and it's just getting the user to say yeah that's okay I mean how many times have you shopped for something and all of a sudden you are now getting emails from other you know shoe companies when you buy shoes or you're seeing you know web ads everywhere sometimes that creeps people out and sometimes it's not as simple as shoes right and as you know data Brokers are building profiles on you you know based on what can be sent to them that you have no idea so all we're saying is look advertising is cool just get the user's permission if you're going to send it to other companies there's been this feeling though that a little bit of the move has been hypocritical as there are reports that Apple wants to move more into advertising is that any part of the motivation is Apple have well I should I should say first Zero part of the motivation this was driven by our privacy team as part of a long agenda that you could watch in Apple's business year after year after year how we were stepping up privacy Protections in area after area this was our team going you know we feel protecting apps consistent with what we've done Safari makes sense we brought this to business and just said heads up everyone you know what you're doing this year after your privacy agenda here's what's coming that is where this feature came from Full Stop and by the way again just to clarify we're not against advertising and by the way we're hearing by all the same rules right we're not sending any of your information you know to anybody without your permission as a matter of fact we don't set it period and we give you options to even opt out of what we're keeping within you mean in your own app in our own apps yeah okay well we're gonna end there but I wanted to thank you guys so much for coming we really appreciate it thank you thank you guys and that's it for today's Tech news briefing for more coverage of this year's Tech live conference visit our website wsj.com I'm Zoe Thomas for The Wall Street Journal thanks for listening [Music] [Music]

Channel: WSJ News

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Keywords: apple, apple interview, greg joswiak, joz, craig federighi, craig federighi interview, greg joswiak interview, joz interview, apple exec, iphone, apple iphones, apple privacy, data privacy, apple data privacy, wsj interview, wsj tech live, wsj tech live 2022, tech live 2022, marketing, software engineering, privacy, product design, apple product design, apple leadership, apple innovation, joanna stern, joanna stern apple, apple news, news, usbc, usbc vs lightning, apple usbc

Id: j_IbDqHwQvQ

Length: 7min 8sec (428 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 27 2022