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Reports Say Apple Is Shrinking Its Docking Connector With iPhone 5
jones_supa writes "Two sources have told Reuters that Apple's new iPhone will drop the classic wide dock connector used in the company's gadgets for the best part of a decade in favor of a smaller one. The refresh will be a 19-pin connector port at the bottom instead of the previous 30-pin port 'to make room for the earphone moving to the bottom.' That would mean the new phone would not connect with the myriad of accessories playing a part in the current ecosystem of iPods, iPads and iPhones, at least without an adapter. On the upside, a smaller connector will allow for more compact product designs. Some enterprising vendors in China have already begun offering cases for the new phone, complete with earphone socket on the bottom and a 'guarantee' that the dimensions are correct." Gizmodo writer Adrian Covert says it's for your own good.
Connectors are obsolete on a device that has at least three radios in it. Charging should be inductive, video should be WiFi, and audio should be Bluetooth. Then the thing would be hole-free and could be made waterproof.
Now this is what Apple should be shooting for in ruggedization.
>>> I have yet to see anything truly innovative come out of Apple
I can think of two things:
1984 - mouse based OS (yes they copied it from Xerox, but they were first to put it in a home desktop)
1988(?) - FireWire. A damn fast serial bus. Was used in HD VCRs and camcorders in addition to Macs. Sadly Apple failed to let anyone else use it (so the PC world developed USB instead).
1991 - PowerPC... though I'm not really sure how much Apple really "contributed" to the design beyond the operating system. PPC is the heart of all modern settop game consoles (and also Amiga computers).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
FireWire was already dying by that point. I had a couple of drives that had FireWire 400, FireWire 800 and USB 2. FW800 was clearly superior: I could plug both of them into a single port on my laptop and still not be bottlenecked by the connection. USB2 couldn't quite match FW400 in real-world usage. But there were very few computers with FW400, let alone FW800, so there was little incentive for device manufacturers to use FireWire (and produce more expensive devices, since FireWire was no host-device model).
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