Fel's Art Dump

happy pride month 🩷 had to draw this scene as it canonically happened…

Nature is nature and the forces we've been taught to see as "light" and "dark" exist year round. The summer is full of rattlesnakes and parasitic insects. The sun is high but the heat can be as deadly as the cold. The winter is teeming with softness and life, and things are sleeping softly underground. The night is dark and the sunlight is short, but the snow glows and the ice sings.

The European Union already forced Apple to abandon its proprietary charging port and adopt USB-C across its entire iPhone lineup. It just did something bigger. A new EU mandate requires every smartphone sold in Europe including Apple devices to feature a battery that can be replaced by the user without specialist tools, without voiding a warranty, and without sending the device to a manufacturer approved service center. Batteries must maintain a minimum capacity threshold after a set number of charge cycles and replacement parts must remain available for up to ten years after a model goes on sale.

The consumer electronics industry built its current business model around batteries that degrade, cannot be replaced at home, and create a natural upgrade cycle every two to three years. The EU just legislated that model out of existence in the world's largest regulatory market.

Apple, Samsung, and every other manufacturer now faces a choice between redesigning their devices for the European market or accepting that their current hardware architecture is no longer legally sellable there.