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Handset Vendors Plug Micro-USB Charge Ports
ketan324 points to a Register story touting an agreement among several phone makers to settle on Micro USB for their phones' charging ports, writing "It's about time for these cellphone manufacturers to wise up and design a universal phone charger. Although many manufacturers have already 'standardized' to a mini-USB interface, there are many more out there who use proprietary adapters. I wonder how Apple will feel about this? Will they finally realize that their oh-so-special adapter is nothing more than a fudged USB interface?" No legislation required.
So I don't know why the submitter has to turn this into an Apple-bashing thing. Apple actually uses standards pretty often.
Apple was the first to push widespread adoption of USB, IEEE1394, 802.11n, and MPEG-4, among many other standards.
On the other hand, they specifically implemented an authentication chip that prevents video output on newer ipods if you use anything but officially blessed cables. There are certainly reasons for the dock connector; but that doesn't change the fact that Apple's approach toward accessory makers has pretty much been "flip over and shake until money stops coming out".
Because that when the device is not identified by the OS, the power output is capped to 100mA. When identified, it can go up to 500mA.
The evident solution would be to use a standard passive driver.
Stupidity is the root of all evil.
Excellent point. Just to head off other people talking out of their ass (wishful thinking, I know), the pinout for the iPod/iPhone connector ought to be required reading before commenting on what it can and can't do. That connector provides interfaces for USB and Firewire, audio in/out, video out (composite and s-video), serial, and dedicated power.
It's not an ideal situation, but a single cable covers just about every possible use case. That's a big deal, ergonomically, and it means Apple can standardize internally on an interface across multiple product lines.
It's unfortunate: the knee-jerk reaction to "we need a universal charger" will miss the opportunity to standardize on a SINGLE interface cable for mobile devices, rather than using USB for power and data, a headphone jack for audio output, and who knows what proprietary arrangement for audio input and video output.
-Ed Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.
[Citation Needed]
I have a new iPod touch that works fine with some handmedown generic cables.
-Bucky
There is a very simple solution to this that does not involve any drivers - USB HID devices.
I create my own USB devices (http://denki.world3.net) and almost always use HID instead of a special driver. Even if the phone is not a "human interface device", you can just create a special kind of HID device that the computer will basically ignore. You can still do any custom communications you like but the device will install on Windows/Linux/Mac without the need for a driver, and you can specify the amount of current you want.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This and this are examples of the genre.
I've yet to see much in the way of technical breakdown of the issue; but it is unequivocally the case that they, deliberately, added proprietary secret sauce to the iPod video out process, in order to capture a larger percentage of accessory revenue.
This article is also worth a look. I doubt that they are doing anything illegal; but Apple is anything but a fuzzy friend of standards with respect to the dock connector.
Posting as AC because i can't log in from work, so i hope this gets seen. I have a USB modem from novatel wireless that has a small amount of memory onboard, and when plugged in mounts itself as a cdrom drive under windows or mac, and pops up to install it's own drivers. (under linux it uses the standard kernel driver for CDMA modems, no extra driver needed). I think it's a pretty cool idea, no matter what OS you're using, two clicks at most from plugging it in and it just WORKS, no driver cd, no needing to download drivers, nothing.