On Tuesday Tim Cook is expected to sound the death knell for hundreds of millions of Apple charging cables. The company is finally ending the anomaly of the iPhone using a different charger to every other smartphone.
Apple loves controlling its ecosystem from top to bottom: hardware, software and accessories. Regulators hate it, and this year the European Union passed a law that sought to force all consumer tech manufacturers to use the USB-C charging system.
Brussels has long argued that different chargers are confusing and expensive for customers and create 11,000 tonnes of waste and €250 million in unnecessary extra costs.
At one point there were 33 types of smartphone chargers but this has now been reduced to USB-C and lightning.
Apple, which uses