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Do we know this for sure? The wiki page about that references an Ars Technica article which doesn't manage to actually show that there is more than one chip (the pin-switching one) there. The main argument trying to prove cable-DRM is Apple's MFi program to whitelist manufacturers for the cable.

The closest to circuitry analyses below neither mention a "security chip", much less discuss the internals of one.
http://brockerhoff.net/blog/2012/09/23/boom-pins/ and
http://www.macrumors.com/2012/09/25/apples-lightning-connector-uses-adaptive-technology-to-dynamically-assign-pin-functions/

A lot of people are thinking that the Apple Maps errors are just going to be shrugged off – that in a few months or a few years, they'll reach "good enough" status, and everyone will just forget this embarrassing incident. But I think it goes deeper than that. A major part of Apple's appeal, one big reason why they have been able to charge premium prices and get people lining up to buy their stuff, is that their devices "Just Work."

The thing to keep in mind here is that Google is the undisputed champion of mapping, whatever data Apple was going to use it just wasn't going to be as good as Google's. Google has sunk millions of dollars and man hours into their maps in the past few year and redefined people's expectations (a couple years ago who would've thought that having access to a nearly perfect global map at all times would be seen as a necessity ?) Google also knew of this advantage and used it as leverage. Sooner or later something would have to give and it has, unfortunately this means iOS users will have some minor inconvenience in the transition period.

Add that to the fact that the new Lightning connector on the iPhone has an IC designed solely to prevent creation of compatible cables

Actually the best analysis so far is that the chip negotiates the assignment of pins in the reversible connector :

"The controller/driver chip tells the device what type it is, and for cases like the Lightning-to-USB cable whether a charger (that sends power) or a device (that needs power) is on the other end.
The device can then switch the other pins between the SoC’s data lines or the power circuitry, as needed in each case.
[...]
I really see no justification for the “authentication chip” hypothesis"

That link is a summary of anouer summary of another summary, and is quite simply stupid and incorrect.

Instead, look at the source link: http://brockerhoff.net/blog/2012/09/13/boom-2/

and a follow-up post: http://brockerhoff.net/blog/2012/09/18/boom-a-follow-up/

Lightning definitely has advantages over micro USB. And one big disadvantage: it's proprietary. Most manufacturers, thankfully, have to go with something standard, but Apple has the clout to ignore standards to their own (and, arguably, their customers') benefit.

That link is a summary of anouer summary of another summary, and is quite simply stupid and incorrect.

Instead, look at the source link: http://brockerhoff.net/blog/2012/09/13/boom-2/

and a follow-up post: http://brockerhoff.net/blog/2012/09/18/boom-a-follow-up/

Lightning definitely has advantages over micro USB. And one big disadvantage: it's proprietary. Most manufacturers, thankfully, have to go with something standard, but Apple has the clout to ignore standards to their own (and, arguably, their customers') benefit.

Pretty good take on the whole cable thing. http://brockerhoff.net/blog/2012/09/13/boom-2/ From the article: People keep asking why Apple didn’t opt for the micro-USB connector. The answer is simple: that connector isn’t smart enough. It has only 5 pins: +5V, Ground, 2 digital data pins, and a sense pin, so most of the dock connector functions wouldn’t work – only charging and syncing would. Also, the pins are so small that no current plug/connector manufacturer allows the 2A needed for iPad charging. Note that this refers to individual pins; I’ve been told that several devices manage to get around this by some trick or other, but I couldn’t find any standard for doing so.

Also worth noting is that micro-USB is incapable of charging an iPad according to that article, which this new dock connector will surely be used for.

That article would be incorrect. I have an iPad 2 and an iPad 3 that I use for development. Both of them can (and do) charge via 1A USB port on my computer. I have never, in the 6 months since my company issued me the iPad 2, had to plug it into anything but my computer to keep it charged.

Secondly, the Nexus 7 tablet that I use charges just fine over micro-USB. Its adapter puts out the exact same 2A at 5V as the iPad 3 charger. In fact, I can swap chargers between it and the iPad without any issue. So if it can charge the Nexus 7, or the HP Touchpad, Asus Transformer, and every other android tablet out there, why can't it charge the iPad 1,2 or 3? Because Apple said so, and made their own special connector.

I don't care if my iDevice or android device has a separate port for TV, or whatever else I want to use it for, but I want all my devices to charge via micro USB or induction. Why? Because I don't want to have to dig out a special cable to charge my device while traveling. Or if I am at a friends house and need some extra juice. And there is certainly no reason for me to throw away a power brick that puts out the exact same power that an iPhone needs just because it doesn't have Apple's connector on it. So yes, there will still be Apple-specific accessories, but there should be uniformity for the most important accessory of all, the charger.

If you don't like it, don't buy one. It's that simple.

For actual reasons why Apple didn't go with a micro-USB connector, check out Boom.

People keep asking why Apple didn’t opt for the micro-USB connector. The answer is simple: that connector isn’t smart enough. It has only 5 pins: +5V, Ground, 2 digital data pins, and a sense pin, so most of the dock connector functions wouldn’t work – only charging and syncing would. Also, the pins are so small that no current plug/connector manufacturer allows the 2A needed for iPad charging.

Good that Apple has decided to go with a connector that preserves much of the functionality of the old connector, while providing the smaller form factor required by the new devices (with a micro-USB adaptor available for the European market, which ensures compliance with the standard).

Apple supplies adaptors, therefore they're not "scorning" the agreement.

Exactly correct. This agreement has already been in place for years, as the summary was quick to point out, but they failed to note the fact that Apple has been complying all along by including adapters. You can expect the same to be true for the iPhone 5 as well.

And even if they had they changed to micro-USB, they would have exactly the same problems as the ones being cited in the summary, so this strikes me as a bit of a double standard. Since the data handling via USB on smartphones is not standardized, meaning that there is not necessarily any interoperability between devices with a particular accessory, you'd still have an industry dedicated to making Apple-specific accessories, simply due to the volume of devices that they could work with. Similarly, you would have rendered all of the previous accessories obsolete by moving to a new standard, and you'd have also been forced to introduce a new adapter. Also worth noting is that micro-USB is incapable of charging an iPad according to that article, which this new dock connector will surely be used for.

The only argument left from the summary is that they've broken their promise to abide by the standard, and as you aptly pointed out, that is untrue.

Considering how often this stuff has come up on Slashdot (particularly with the fact that it was a major point of discussion when the new dock connector leaked a few weeks back), I'm surprised it's not common knowledge on Slashdot how Apple has handled that agreement, even for our non-European friends.

Like the $DEITY-awful transparent toolbar and the fact that you can't turn that POS of.

Here's an easy terminal command to get rid of the transparency, by first modifying the LaunchDaemon for WindowServer, and then, fix the permissions on it after modification.

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 0
sudo chmod 644 /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer.plist

Reboot, and what you get is the "opaque" menu bar that you would see on older Macs that don't have a high end video card. I get the "opaque" menu bar by default (no modification) on my PowerBook G4 867.

And nobody ever put anything besides /Applications in their Dock, especially nothing with more than thirty files or even subfolders. Uh-huh.

I'm not a fan of Stacks, however, you would be very surprised how many people aren't aware they can use the Dock for things other than Applications. Honestly, I think this is why Apple is going in the "Stacks" direction, to make more users aware of what they can do with the Dock. I think the main problem is there are a lot of power users out there that were already pretty happy with the functionality of the Dock, and Apple "went and screwed it up". I welcome the change. I didn't think I'd be using Spaces, Expose, or Spotlight either, but eventually, I got it working the way I wanted. It's not the end of the world, and I have the feeling the new Dock will evolve over time. If you don't feel like waiting, why not try out Quay which brings back hierarchical popup menus for the Leopard Dock without hacking or modifying any system frameworks or libraries.

Although the article discusses all the problems with Vista and Leopard, I want to make one very important point. Leopard is much faster overall on a clean install than both Tiger, and Vista. I have a partitioned iMac Core 2 Duo, and had fresh installs of Leopard, Tiger, and Vista installed for testing (just barebones, no additional applications installed). Leopard's performance noticeably faster than Tiger or Vista. You can't say that about Vista vs XP on a fresh install. XP will be faster with most benchmarks. Leopard has some bugs to get worked out over the next couple of months, but, I must say that PERFORMANCE is not one of them... and performance goes a long way in keeping users happy.

What is now becoming clear is that many unlocked phones come through the upgrade unbricked, albeit re-locked. Considering that recognizing an unlocked phone should be a simple matter of a checksum, it seems clear that Apple was not intentionally "bricking" phones. There are reasons to believe that this is likely an unintended side effect of an update designed primarily to enhance iPhone security. If it was not intentional, Apple is in the clear, as they are under no legal obligation to debug an update to work with phones that have been modified in violation of warranty. And indeed, it seems that while Apple is under no legal obligation to do so, Apple sotres are restoring "bricked" iPhones. Moreover, it is not as if Apple failed to warn owners of unlocked iPhones that applying the update would likely harm their phones.

http://brockerhoff.net/bb/viewtopic.php?p=2191#2191 Both on the technical front (as to why the 1.1.1 update might be messing things up for the unlockers), and the legal front. Mostly technical, which is what makes it more interesting. ^_^ The legal stuff has been bandied about enough already.

Actually, this can be done with a little fiddling. You can add an applescript to the toolbar:

This works well for local files, but may not update views of samba shares.

Or you can use a context menu extension called nudge, which may work better for network shares.

Never going to happen, eh?

Current MacBook Pros and MacPros do not even have a TPM.

That's some good pakalolo you got there, eh brah?

That is quite handy for new users, but apple doesn't make it particularly easy for those of us who want to access those folders from applications that use the mac file interface. They hide it in two ways, firstly there's a folder called '/.hidden' that contains a list of files to hide, secondly all of the hidden folders have an 'invisible' bit set. The only way I found to unset that is to use XRay.

CPU frequency: 512-fold
RAM: 4096-fold
Removable storage: 1792-fold
VRAM: 3066-fold
Network speed: 4551-fold
Mouse buttons: 1-fold
Price: 1.015-fold

As it happens, while advising a friend on how much memory to buy in 2004, I had just looked at how Apple's nominal RAM stacks up against Moore's Law. Pretty much confirmed, if you ask me:

1976: $ 666, 8 kB ( Apple I)
1980: $1200, 32 kB (Apple II+)
1984: $2500, 128 kB (Macintosh)
1987: $2000, 512 kB (Macintosh 512k)
1990: $1500, 2 MB (Macintosh Classic)
1993: $1440, 8 MB (Macintosh Quadra)
1998: $1300, 32 MB (iMac G3)
2001: $1500, 128 MB (iBook G3)
2004: ?

The add-on layout for US International can be found at http://www.brockerhoff.net/usi/.

This piece of software is absolutely necessary for typing in Portuguese (especially here in Brazil, where a common US keyboard layout is quite common, and the population is used to the US layout with dead-keys -- dating from the time of typewriters).

Please, do let Apple know that you need this keyboard layout.

I sent them my feedback about this quite a while ago (I think that I can post here the mail if I find it), but more people letting them know would promptly make them aware of its importance.

Even better coverage of anything whatsoever:

"The worlds most powerful metadisclaimer"