EU Exempts Apple Watch and AirPods From Battery Removal Requirement

So a mostly pointless regulation seeing as most products it might have applied to are now exempt - how much fecking money was wasted on this!?

Still at least we have the cookie banner pop-ups ruining the web browsing experience so it hasn't't been a complete waste of time.

Congrats!

"a mostly pointless regulation seeing as most products it might have applied to are now exempt"

Nintendo just replaced their products in Europe with ones with replaceable batteries, which is super cool. I don't understand why there is such a need to be so cynical about everything.

The battery of the Pixel Watch 4 is replaceable.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Google+Pixel+Watch+4+Battery+Replacement/197169

This is pretty disappointing, but I guess a tiny bit understandable. Two pairs of PowerBeats Pro earbuds gave out for me after just two years (luckily the first pair was barely inside the warranty period), mainly because of the batteries, and I'm forced to buy another $250 hunk of junk to get longer than 10 minutes audio playtime. I opted instead for a $35 pair of knock-off earbuds, so at least I get 14 years instead of just 2 for the same amount of money now.

I was hoping that I would be able to finally get away from the e-waste of standard wired earphones that always seemed to get frayed wires after a few years, but nope, now we have a different problem that still basically requires replacement pretty frequently.

It would be nice if the EU actually *incentivized* replaceable batteries on all kinds of electronics so that manufacturers would be more likely to provide them even if they had an exemption. Earbuds and smart watches in particular are terrible for the environment in terms of e-waste.

No where does it say that websites need cookie banners.

You could also not harvest personal info and sell it to 200+ "legitimate business interest companies" for a pittance.

@Kristoffer My understanding is that cookie banners are also required for sites that don’t sell personal info.

You do *not* need a cookie banner for cookies that are essential for the site to work, i.e. "if the service would genuinely fail without it and the user specifically requested that service." So if, for example, you have an online store and need a cookie to store the contents of the shopping basket, you do not need a cookie banner.

You *do* need a cookie banner if, for example, you do some kind of cookie-based analytics, even if you don't sell the data.

@Plume Yes, exactly.

Plume is absolutely right.

I'm just tired of the kneejerk "EU regulation sucks because there are annoying cookie banners" argument.

My point was that companies can choose to not be scummy and use annoying cookie banners, or you can do it in a nice way.

That a majority of companies do it in a scummy way is not the fault of GDPR.

That the banners have become less annoying, with quicker access to a "No, don't track me" alternative, IS thanks to the eu though

I think it's also worth noting that most cookie banners don't comply with GDPR anyway. The whole cookie banner thing is pretty weird; it's as if companies added them not to comply with any regulation, but to be as annoying and useless as possible just to get people upset at the EU.

Much like Apple trying to get their European customers on their side in the fight against DMA.

Some people appear to have fallen for it, though it's so rare, and so consistent in wording, that I suspect it's mostly paid plants and bots

Something about this doesn't sit right with me. At the risk of sounding like "We can put a man on the moon but we can't ___" or "A trillion-dollar company can't even ___", are replaceable batteries actually difficult?

What exactly is the "safety risk" here? The Apple Watch battery has less than 1/4 the energy of an AAA battery, and barely more than an actual watch battery. (AirPods are even smaller.) We trust ordinary people to handle those.

Even weatherproofing isn't *that* hard. Lots of IP-rated devices have replaceable batteries, including pretty much every other watch in the world. The quartz watch industry didn't need decades to solve this.

The computer industry has a long history of claiming that something was impossible or undesired, and then as soon as a law changes requiring it, they switch to provide the feature that users were asking for all along.

I think the EU's heart is in the right place, but it's making exceptions big enough to drive a bus through. Can anyone name any example of a current product which would not already pass or be exempt from this new rule?

I agree that these exemptions are needless. Watches have had replaceable batteries since they have had batteries. It's absolutely possible to make a waterproof watch case that can be opened and resealed properly. I do not think these exemptions were needed.

But it's also true that this still covers a ton of devices. A major one for me personally is videogame controllers, which are essentially $100 disposable products that die after three or four years, which is absolutely asinine. This also still covers laptops, e-readers, digital cameras, handheld game consoles, wireless keyboards, mice, remote controls, and so on. It's false to claim that it does nothing with these exceptions.

Which digital cameras? Phones are apparently exempt. Every DSLR/mirrorless already has replaceable batteries, because pros demand that. So does every compact digicam I've ever seen. So does every wireless keyboard (e.g., my Logitech uses AAA's), and every remote control (again, AAA's).

I guess I haven't kept up with video game consoles, so that's one.

From the devices I've seen in my house, in my friends' houses, and on the market in general, I'd say this new regulation is 70% what the industry was already doing, 25% exemptions, and 5% actual products which must be updated.

I'm sure the Germans have a word for that feeling of dissociation you get when somebody makes a counterfactual claim with such conviction that you start to wonder if it is you who has become untethered from reality. Oh, wait, they do; it's fremdgewissheitsinduzierter Wirklichkeitszweifel.

There are definitely digital cameras, wireless keyboards, and remote controls that have sealed batteries and a USB port to charge them. I have a bunch of them. For example, my GoPro has a sealed battery, and I'm typing this on a wireless Cherry keyboard with a sealed battery.

I'm happy that you don't, because you made better purchasing decisions than I did, but they still exist.

The sealed batteries in videogame controllers aren't a new invention. I have Move controllers from 2010 that I'd like to revive for nostalgia's sake, but they use Mini-USB for charging and are completely dead. That's not the first controller that shipped with a sealed battery, either. They've existed for at least 20 years.

Again, I agree with you that these exceptions are stupid and should not have occurred. All I'm saying is that there are still lots of devices that are covered by this.