Apple's iPhone 5 connector said to be a control freak Rumors that the iPhone's familiar 30-pin connector will be replaced in the iPhone 5 with a Micro-USB port have riled the fanbois universe, inciting charges of planned obsolecense and worse. New reports, however, point not to a standard Micro-USB port, but a new – and proprietary – Apple port. A bit of background: in case you …
They have messed with their 30 pin ports in the past, which is why some old accessories don't work with newer devices. I remember getting a new iPod at one point, and some of my chargers didn't work with it.
Even now, the power requirements differ between devices. My iPhone will charge from my pc USB port, but my iPad doesn't.....
Wouldn't surprise me at all if they changed it all again, but that's the great thing about rumours, we won't know for sure till the 'new iPhone' is launched...
Erm, I think you'll find that the PC USB port will adhere to the USB standard. USB 2 according to the specs will supply up to 500mA. USB 3 will supply up to 900mA. The power adaptor for the ipad supplies up to 2A. So even if you have a USB 3 port, that is still less than half the power of the ipad charger.
You're absolutely right — specifically the port carried both Firewire and USB, the Firewire pins being one source of power that iPods could charge from. The Firewire functionality was removed so those chargers that supplied only via that connection ceased to function.
If they swap connectors, expect adaptors to flourish.
To be fair, that is because the first iPods were connected via Firewire, not via USB. There was not reasonable way they could have been USB, because that was the time of USB 1.1, which simply was not fast enough to put all your music on an iPod in a reasonable time.
When USB 2.0 became ubiquitous, iPods for a time supported both standards, then for a time they dropped the Firewire data connection but allowed Firewire charging, and finally went to USB only.
I find it hard to blame Apple for anything there - standards simply changed.
You're right, we forget how slow USB 1.1 was, but at the time we didn't mind because it was still new and cool to plug in a peripheral and use it without first restarting the PC! My digital camera at the time used standard floppy disks. Optical mice were still new. Getting a 3 MB Word file from a home computer to the Reprographics department could still be headache. CAD software had only been aimed at Windows machines for a few years, and often still looked like a UNIX port. Halo was going to be a game for Macs. Everyone had a Nokia; the battery lasted for weeks but your call-time top up lasted minutes. VHS ruled.
FireWire was already in Macs, because Apple only seemed to have survived the nineties by being used in specific sectors, those that used high resolution scanners, digital camcorders and audio interfaces. It gave them a bit of a head start when they wanted to introduce a device measured in GBs not MBs.
One of the many reasons I've given for not wanting to get an iPhone is their special connector. You can get just about anything, from a TV to a car, with a built in Apple dock.
But I've warned people over and over, once you go down the Apple road, its hard to get out as everything you have uses their special connection.
No doubt, they will sell a new to old converter for the next few years, before they make that redundant too, till you all rush out and by new junk with Apple connections, while everyone else who use different brands of phone and mp3 player can hop between manufacturers and not have to change everything they own to fit it.
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I work with accessories for the iPhone and over the years Apple has actually been substantially reducing the licensing costs and complexity for iPod/iPhone/iPad accessories. For most devices there is a cost, but it's small fixed amount, similar to a codec license. Recently for Bluetooth 4 devices they have dropped MFI licensing altogether.
If they do change the connector, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth, but people will still buy them because they're iPhones.
As an aside, I can't see a magsafe connector making the phone more secure in a car mounting scenario. I thought the idea of magsafe was to make them quick-breakaway so that you didn't pull your Macbook off the desk when you tripped over the cord. Or at least that's what the "I'm a Mac" guy told us.
Magsafe connectors are secure until a threshold level of force is applied- in an automotive situation, this would mean that the phone would't 'creep' off its mount due to vibration.
Somehow, I can't see Apple 'doing a Nokia'* without good reason- the abundance of kit for iDevices gives them the edge in convenience compared to other PMPs and phones. I guess it would have been too sensible for makers of rival devices to knock their heads together and come up with a rival dock-connector standard- Google could have taken a lead here, as Android leader. AFAIK only Sony have tried; bless em.
*go from having two compatible chargers in every home, to 'WTF is this skinny thing?' to 'its got a f^%^ing mini / micro USB socket, why isn't the wretched thing charging off it? FFS!'
We just need another Tesla. Electrical engineers hate us telling this but just imagine Tesla had access to computers with today's knowledge.
It is 2012 and all we talk is whether a magnet need for a copper or its plug standard. Typing this on a dual core htc which I will have to plug soon. Nobody sees how pathetic it is? :)
Uh huh.
So, still using VHS? USB1? Floppy disks? Cassette tapes? Buggy whips?
Part of the market, particularly in electronics and computing, is that when the latest and greatest is released, it's not really the latest and greatest because the latest and greatest's replacement is already in the lab and will be out within three years.
So you can recognize this and deal with it, and recognize that Apple is more of a leader than a follower in this. Or you can stick with older tech and then have to upgrade when you get left behind. Your choice.
The iGadget power cables always fall apart - the cable jacket separates from the docking connection even with careful use. The original cables supplied with the iPods and iPhones all failed within a few months. The expensive genuine replacement cables failed in exactly the same way. Now we buy "OEM" ? cables in bulk from an overseas supplier (DX) - at least they're cheap enough that we've mitigated the financial impact of this Apple design FAIL.
I've never seen such a poor and unreliable design. Shame on Apple.
If Apple is now planning to lock out the aftermarket suppliers of $3 power cables, and not fix the design, this one stupid thing will have me looking at other options.
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