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Reports Say Apple Is Shrinking Its Docking Connector With iPhone 5

Posted by timothy on from the hope-bluetooth-dongles-come-quickly dept.

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.

31 of 427 comments (clear)

  1. Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by GameboyRMH · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm sure MicroUSB and other industry-standard connectors weren't considered. For how many years now has Apple been the last holdout with proprietary connectors?

    Even if they did they'd still find a way to make it proprietary with something like the charger resistor trick or the headphone recess.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    1. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by johnlcallaway · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I was thinking the very same thing. How sad that Apple continues to want to keep an iron fist over their product instead of admitting others may have better ideas. Of course, they didn't really 'invent' anything other than a style. Everything they have done has only incorporated incremental improvements over existing tech. I have yet to see anything truly innovative come out of Apple, other than innovative ways to convince people they have a product worthty the Apple tax and lack of options.

      --
      I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
    2. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by GameboyRMH · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Apple going through the trouble of abandoning their old proprietary connector and MAKING A NEW PROPRIETARY ONE instead of going to a standard one like every other phone has had for years sounds at least a bit nefarious to me.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    3. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by Guspaz · · Score: 4, Informative

      The "proprietary charger resistor trick" was made part of the USB standard in 2007 (USB Battery Charging Specification), three years before the article you linked to purporting to have discovered "secret resistors" that enable Apple to "artificially restricts iPhone chargers"...

      Apple's no saint, but if you're going to call them out on something, maybe try to stick to stuff they actually did wrong instead of making stuff up. The headphone recess thing might be one, although I'd argue that that was just a dumb design decision rather than an attempt to introduce a proprietary standard; it was still a standard 3.5mm jack, just rendered mostly useless.

    4. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by tripleevenfall · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Do we know there won't be any adapters available? They have produced adapters for their products in the past, such as the numerous display adapters.

      It's kind of "heads I win, tails you lose".

      If Apple moves to a slimmer profile device, people say they are just trying to make people buy new cables. If they stay on an old one, people say they won't give up on their proprietary cables.

      If they produce an adapter, people will say they just want to cash in by selling the adapters. If they don't produce adapters, people say they just want to make you buy new cables.

    5. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by bjackson1 · · Score: 5, Informative

      You realize that the dock connector is more than just a USB cable with a weird connector at the end, right? The new 19 pin connector would presumably do the functions of the current 30 pin dock connector, which allows full digital video and audio out, analog audio and video, and control data simultaneously over one connection. I don't believe that this is part of the USB standard.

    6. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem is Apple phones are kind-of a primadonna about how peripherals can interact with them.

      If Apple put a standard port on their phone users would expect anything that will fit to work with the phone. That includes devices that use protocalles iOS does not support.

      Now there is an argument to be made that Apple could simply start supporting more protocalles. However that's never been how Apple rolls. They'd rather say "No it doesn't do that." than have something that "sort of works".

    7. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's really sad that you're a fucking piece of shit moron. But we don't really care.

      I can appreciate that people get crazy-sensitive about their mobile phones, but "you're a fucking piece of shit" might be a tad over-the-top.

      Why does it matter to you in the slightest that Apple is using space and components efficiently, instead of creating huge devices with half-a-dozen ports?

      I don't know of anyone advocating half a dozen ports. What I do see is people saying it'd be nice if they used micro-usb like everyone else instead of a proprietary connector.

    8. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by GameboyRMH · · Score: 5, Informative

      Gonna need a source on that. There are standards that use resistors on the data lines but not in Apple's configuration:

      http://blog.curioussystem.com/2010/08/the-dirty-truth-about-usb-device-charging/

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    9. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by chispito · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why is it that stupid people hate Apple? Is there something about being stupid that I just don't get?

      And yet many of us prefer the company of the decent and stupid to the condescending and average.

      --
      The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
    10. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by tlhIngan · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm sure MicroUSB and other industry-standard connectors weren't considered. For how many years now has Apple been the last holdout with proprietary connectors?

      Even if they did they'd still find a way to make it proprietary with something like the charger resistor trick or the headphone recess.

      Rumors have it that the port IS micro-USB compatible. As in, you can plug in a micro-USB cable into it and connect/charge via USB. This would make sense as Apple right now supplies an adapter for EU iDevices for micro USB. This would get rid of the adapter, but not the funtionality of the port.

      If you want the additional connectivity (line-in/out, component video, HDMI, etc) you need the other pins, which would be used for say, a connector adapter. (There are way too many 30-pin accessories out there).

      As for the resistors - they are a brilliant way to do USB charging - because USB chargers do NOT communicate how much power they can provide. If you plug in a USB charger, a device can't tell if it can pull more than 500mA (even then it shouldn't assume it can - USB spec calls for 100mA until you positively identify a charger or get enumerated and told you can draw 500mA). But the charger can provide 800mA, 1A, 2A or more, and you need a quick-and-cheap way of telling the host device that fact. The resistors do that (by pulling the D+/D- lines certain ways).

      FYI - the USB charger spec shorts D+ to D-, and special resistors inside the device detect that (usually through a special line state). But again, it doesn't tell you how much you can draw - a tablet might want 2A, but it can't tell for sure if you plugged it into a wimpy 500mA one. (We've blown a few during development - notably the cheapass chinese crap adapters with no protection).

      An even more proprietary way would be to include an enumeration chip that tells the device over USB what it can draw (which Apple does with its Macs to do "high-speed" charging - the ports negotiate with iDevices to provide I think 1A current).

      The USB spec is violated so often that you can make a rather useless USB host if you adhered to it, for example. The 100mA one is routinely violated (embedded devices with USB host often only provide 100mA). USB hard drives count on the fact most PC manufacturers are cheap and put only one overcurrent switch for a gang of ports (e.g., a 4 port might use a 2A overcurrent switch) so they can draw 1A+ when spinning up without tripping the switch (see this a lot).

      Or USB chargers that provide 500mA, and overheat/explode wen some device goes right ahead and tries to draw 1A.

    11. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by jo_ham · · Score: 4, Informative

      The current 30 pin has all sorts along with USB - composite video, stereo line out, firewire data and power (now unused), ipod accessory control, etc. It's much more than just a micro USB port, but it is overkill now that there's no need for the firewire pins, for example.

      The same sources that have said there will be a new port have also said that an adapter is also in the works.

    12. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by v1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      For how many years now has Apple been the last holdout with proprietary connectors?

      OK then clearly they should have gone with the other industry standard cable that supports power, usb, video, remote volume and play selection, etc. Oh wait, that's right, there isn't another one!

      Your argument is only valid when there are other non-proprietary options. It works well when talking about say, Sony's "i-link" proprietary firewire connector, or any of those proprietary USB connectors on cameras, where they're using a special connector to force you to buy cables and other accessories directly from them at some absurd mark-up. But that's not the case with Apple's dock connector.

      This is the only connector that does it all in discrete pins, vastly simplifying construction of accessories. Even cars are coming with Apple's dock connector in them nowadays. Apple's not being an ass and forcing you to use their connector to do what they could have done with another standard connector. They just happen to have pioneered the market and have been using this one connector for the last decade, with a crapton of accessories being made by other vendors. You don't have to buy your dock from Apple. Try getting an iLink cable from someone besides Sony. (for $35 or so) That's how you abuse proprietary connectors

      --
      I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
    13. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by cpu6502 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      >>> 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"
    14. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by FrankSchwab · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You have a simple life, eh?

      I have a charger at home, one at work, and a 12V one in each of my family's cars. Still pretty simple, but causes an issue if I change phones. Of course, I picked up a wife too, and if her phone didn't have the same charger as mine, I'd have to divorce her. Then, through mechanisms still somewhat mysterious, we ended up with two children. They have Nintendo DS's, and a portable DVD player for the car (all seperate proprietary chargers). My wife bought an iPad (30-pin), and the kids are getting old enough that we're considering getting them iPods (which, if we wait for the new ones, will have the 19 pin).

      Have you kept count of how many charging cords I need to have yet? Wouldn't it be nice to have one or two identical chargers in each car and in the house, and anyone could charge anything, as opposed to having 5 or 6 different chargers?

      This is a situation where Apple has their head firmly inserted into their rectum. An innovative, customer-oriented company would have put a micro-USB connector with standard USB charging protocols. If you want Audio out, or Video out, or whatever else comes out their dock, have it come out digitally and convert it in the dock.

      --
      And the worms ate into his brain.
    15. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by sglewis100 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Apple going through the trouble of abandoning their old proprietary connector and MAKING A NEW PROPRIETARY ONE instead of going to a standard one like every other phone has had for years sounds at least a bit nefarious to me.

      Is it possible that a standard micro or mini USB cable didn't do everything they wanted?

    16. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Informative

      The real issue was that Intel put USB controllers on south bridge chips. This meant that motherboard makers got USB almost for free - they just needed to put the sockets on the board and connect them to the chip. To support FireWire, they needed to add another chip and connect it to the south bridge via the PCI bus as well as to the socket. The south bridge already had traces going to the PS/2, serial and parallel ports, so adding USB did almost nothing to increase motherboard complexity - they just had to run a few extra traces alongside existing ones. Adding FireWire meant a lot of effort in board layout.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    17. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by jo_ham · · Score: 5, Informative

      ...and clearly it all converts to USB.

      No, it doesn't. When the USB cable is plugged in (the one that comes with the phone and has a USB port on one end and the 30 pin port on the other) only the USB data pins and the USB power pins - 4 out of the total 30 are connected.

      Actually, the ground pin is probably also connected to the shielding. Five pins.

      The other pins connect when other things are connected, like a docking port on a music system will have the power pins, the accessory control and the line out pins connected. The HDMI adapter will connect to other pins, the video adapter will connect to the line out pins and the video pins.

      The USB cable with the standard USB port on the end *absolutely does not* convert all those things down so that they work over USB. It connects the two data pins and the 5V power only.

    18. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative

      The EU regulation has an loophole, which means that as long as Apple puts a dock to micro-USB adaptor in the box they comply. As to the dock vs micro-USB issue, most people seem to be missing the fact that the dock connector does a lot more than USB. It also contains audio line in and out, component and s-video, serial, USB, and FireWire (not in recent ones). USB is a step backwards. A modern replacement for the dock should ideally contain display port or HDMI video and a switchable line out / S/PDIF or similar. Personally, I'd love to see Thunderbolt ports on mobile devices.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    19. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by ceoyoyo · · Score: 3, Informative

      Only for charging and data transfer. Any device that uses any of the extra functions (and there are a LOT... any speaker system that has a dock connector, or car kit, for example) is definitely NOT USB on the other end.

    20. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by s.o.terica · · Score: 4, Informative

      I don't know of anyone advocating half a dozen ports. What I do see is people saying it'd be nice if they used micro-usb like everyone else instead of a proprietary connector.

      I think his point, however poorly made, was that if they did switch to micro-USB, there would have to be more ports to supplement the additional capabilities the dock connector is used for (line-level analog audio, analog and HDMI video, additional power options, etc). At the very minimum, there would have to be a second minijack connector to provide line-level audio, in a standardized location across all their devices so that it could still be placed in a dock, along with a separate stabilizing mechanism since otherwise you would have to rely on the minijack connector and micro-USB connector holding the device in place. This sounds like a less elegant solution by far. And is likely the reason that no other manufacturer has a docking standard that works across all of their devices.

    21. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by itsdapead · · Score: 5, Informative

      I have yet to see anything truly innovative come out of Apple,

      Well, not if you define "innovation" as actually inventing a completely brand new idea from scratch, and don't give any credit to the hard part - selling it. "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door" is an aphorism only exceeded in utter wrongness by "look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves".

      The story of Apple's life has been "they may not have invented (x) but they were one of the first to turn it into a desirable product and successfully market it..." where X includes the GUI and mouse, local area networking, the laser printer, PostScript - and hence desktop publishing, full motion video on PC (Quicktime was at the cutting edge of this) - and hence nonlinear video editing... some of us were around when these things were taking off and people sure as hell weren't using IBM PCs for them (Amigas and Acorns maybe).

      And the original Mac is something of a design classic...

      Then you have the modern laptop - with the keyboard set back and a central pointing device in front, as debuted on the first Powerbooks. Maybe not the Manhattan project, but virtually every other laptop since has copied it. Pretty sure that the previous Mac "Portable", though deemed a flop, was the first portable to use an active-matrix (TFT) display.

      Using a RISC processor? RISC vs. CISC is almost irrelevant now (since modern CISC processors have assimilated the good bits of RISC design) but it used to be the Next Big Thing and Apple were the second to market with a RISC-based personal computer (Acorn were first by a long margin, but not really significant outside of the UK, although the ARM processor they developed didn't do badly - Apple played a big role in the later development of that, too). Then there's Digital Cameras - again, not the first but one of the first viable consumer products.

      Of course, the Newton wasn't innovative at all because some guy at Xerox had sketched one on a beer mat 20 years before (and anyway, Steve Jobs planted the whole Newton thing when he was using a time machine to set up the great iPhone conspiracy).

      Then there's USB. Apple certainly didn't invent that, but before the iMac the only use for it was the slightly increased airflow from those two funny square sockets on the back of your PC that Windows 95 didn't really support. There was a reason why most of the first mass-market USB peripherals had translucent blue cases...

      So, what have Apple done for us this century? Well, every year in the 80s and 90s was going to be The Year of Unix on the Desktop. Apple finally did it with OS X (yes, there's Linux - which succeeded on servers, embedded devices an Android but has yet to get large scale adoption on the desktop). They managed to fairly seamlessly switch from PPC to Intel using emulation/recompilation (quite an achievement) and popularised Small Form Factor computers. We've had vastly improved trackpads on laptops (seriously - I always had to carry a mouse around until Apple introduced the new multitouch trackpads). Now we have an external PCIe bus (thunderbolt) which may or may not take off, and they've just doubled the linear resolution of their laptop display at a time when everybody else had decided that 1080p was enough.

      I won't mention the iPod/iPhone because everybody knows that they were invented by Samsung after being inspired by the "news pad" in the film 2001, and that Apple copied them and then used a time machine to go back and launch the iPhone at a time when Android phones looked like this.

      So please suggest some other companies with anything like that track record. Microsoft/IBM? Well, turning the personal computer into a commodity was pretty damned significant (not so sure that it was progress), but apart from that...

      --
      In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
    22. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by ceoyoyo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      All the ones I found for Android used the headphone port for audio (not line out, which is much higher quality), couldn't control volume and/or playback, or was very expensive because it had to do everything over USB (and required a special app) or Bluetooth. If you can find one, please share.

      Some Android devices can do analog video out via their headphone jacks. Which means if you want to charge at the same time you need two cables. And again, if you want to have off-device controls you need a full USB implementation.

      I found a couple of Android speaker docks. Like this one: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-gadgeteer/finally-a-universal-speaker-dock-for-android/5506. It requires connecting a couple of cables, and using a special app for playback control.

      From the review:

      Again, if you have an iPhone or iPod dock, this may not sound like a huge feature set, but if you have an Android phone, this is heaven.

      Given the scarcity of speaker docks for Android, the $100 price is worth the experience.

      Perhaps you should try again? Or not....

    23. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by acoustix · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I think his point, however poorly made, was that if they did switch to micro-USB, there would have to be more ports to supplement the additional capabilities the dock connector is used for (line-level analog audio, analog and HDMI video, additional power options, etc).

      At the very minimum, there would have to be a second minijack connector to provide line-level audio, in a standardized location across all their devices so that it could still be placed in a dock, along with a separate stabilizing mechanism since otherwise you would have to rely on the minijack connector and micro-USB connector holding the device in place. This sounds like a less elegant solution by far. And is likely the reason that no other manufacturer has a docking standard that works across all of their devices.

      Why not provide three ports at the bottom of the device: 1/8" headphone jack, micro USB and micro HDMI? Use those as the docking ports. Viola! No proprietary connectors needed. You can use each of the three ports independently when not docked. The dock would then consist of one, two or all three connectors depending on the functionality of the dock.

      Problem solved.

      --
      "A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
    24. Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish! by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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).

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. Re:Just switch to USB by GameboyRMH · · Score: 4, Insightful

    To Apple that isn't a feature, it's a bug.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  3. Re:Just switch to USB by Kenja · · Score: 5, Insightful

    USB lacks video & audio out as well as other feature connectors. So its one custom connector, or several standard ones. Apple wants fewer connectors, so a custom one is used. Not a big deal really.

    --

    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
  4. Yeah, but... by Antipater · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's not about how big the connector is. It's how you use it!

    --
    Everything is better with chainsaws.
  5. Thinner! by SuricouRaven · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why this relentless drive for thinness at Apple? They switched to displayport because VGA/DVI ports were too thick, and now they dropped ethernet from their new retina laptops because the RJ45 connector is too thick. Every time Apple bring out a new iThing, I see the fanboys celebrate how this is the slimmest iThing yet - another 0.25mm shaved from the thickness! Really, once a phone reaches the 'fits in pocket' size, what advantage could be gained for the user in making it slimmer? It's just became some sort of Apple dogma that thinner is better and thinnest is best.

  6. Why have any connectors? by Animats · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  7. Propriatary connectors are proprietary by Shompol · · Score: 3, Insightful
    From TFA:

    New standards are always rough on the early adopter

    Standards? What standards? Maybe if you stuck to the standards this would not have happened to you.

    All electronics stores everywhere overstocked on Apple peripherals to the point that speakers connecting to non-Apple device are hard to come by. This is the payback time! My turn to walk with a gleeful grin, as millions $ worth of equipment finds its way to the dumpsters worldwide.