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Apple Says "No" To Releasing New Dock Connector Specs
sl4shd0rk writes "According to sources, Apple hasn't offered any specs to developers for the new '9-pin Connector' to be used on the next version of the iPhone. Apple has also said it may use 'licensing agreements and threats of lawsuits' to prevent third-party adapters from hitting the market through at least 2012. There have been suggestions that this tactic is to allow Apple time to leverage competition and reap in revenues of $100 million for every 10 million Dock Connector Adapters it sells for $10. It remains unclear whether Apple will allow third-party developers to release competing alternatives after 2012."
Apple hasn't said a damn thing. Just speculation.
You mean instead "leveraging their position to unfairly stifle competition," correct?
It's a shame that they do not have a universal connector. Something that would work on any damn phone, like a simple usb. But oh well... it's apple!
It may be that they are walking straight into EU regulations with that kind of policy. Vertical monopolies in the supply chain is one of those few things the EU gets extremely aggro about, to the benefit of the market and consumers.
4 days after release the Chinese will be selling the things on ebay for 4 bucks a pop anyhow, as long as you can wait 2 weeks for it to ship from Honk Kong.
They haven't said or done anything, this is all just speculation. Slow news day on Slashdot.
Apple has never been a fan of cheap. Their products carry the undercurrent message "I can afford this", much like sports cars, suvs, rolexes and the like. They don't want everybody to provide cheap accessories to their products, because it diminishes the brand value.
Manufacture for $.10; sell for $10; sue anyone who copies. Mm...
No, Apple hasn't said anything about licensing. In fact, Apple couldn't possibly have said anything in public about the connector, because it hasn't even been officially announced yet! The submitter is a troll.
How can they prevent someone from reverse engineering the pinout based on published specs, examining whatever 9 pin adapter comes with the new phone, and trial and error? I don't it would be legal to take apart an Apple adapter and copy it, but if they can figure out how to make an adapter by other means using a cleanroom methodology without ever looking at the official adapter, and come up with their own connector design that fits the phone connector, can Apple stop them?
Innovative and good technology company
A. Innovative company might not have good technology
B. Companies that have good technology might no longer be innovative
Apple, Inc. used to be in "Category A" when Mr. Jobs were alive
Now, it's in "Category B" and soon, it might end up be neither
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
My comment Subject says it all. Apple used to have a cachet. Not just because of Steve Jobs, but for a certain ethic and care about the interface. Well, it was all Xerox Parc and F'n Bill Gates. They are now, behold, CORPORATE, and monopoly driven, and doomed for the gates of hell.
Accessory manufacturers (particularly case manufacturers) burnt all their bridges with Apple long ago. Since around when the iphone 3gs came out, nobody has gotten any advance notice of new hardware because of all the leaks.
Even now, many of the apple rumors come from case manufacturers who are attempting to bribe employees at the manufacturer for information.
Right now Apple has only even hinted that there may be an iphone 5, and if they are going to deprecate a decade of accessories with a new connector they want to do it on their own terms. There is no way Applw have confirmed or denied the dock connector except perhaps in controlled leaks to the media. Nobody making alarm clock docks is gonna know a damn thing until the rest of us do on the 12th.
the article says - " Some developers fear that Apple will corner the market for both the adapters and cables, much as it did with MagSafe connectors for MacBook laptops, using licensing agreements and threats of lawsuits to prevent less expensive third-party solutions from coming to market.".
The summary goes on to state that apple said that
1. Design new proprietary connector
2. Threaten to sue others making said proprietary connector
3. Manufacture connectors for cheap
4. Sell connectors at high markup
5. ??????????
6. PROFIT!!!!!!!!!!!
Just sayin'
Buy a (relatively cheap) Lumia and you can use the industry standard for wireless charging and also NFC + open data transfer standards (bluetooth to the speaker systems for instance). Buy a (relatively expensive) iPhone and you'll be stuck with even more expensive accessories, with god knows what means of communicating with them.
Excuse me while I say WTF???? People are fighting mad over an iPhone 5 that no one has admitted exists so far??? I might as well say the iPhone 6 will support Firewire 1600. Prove me wrong! Time people get a life!
I've been trying to find some good schematics for an ipod dock to analog audio in connector for those compact hifi boxes, has anyone been successful in buying or building one him- or herself? All I'd need is to feed analog audio into the system, no fancy play controls and the like. Thanks!
Ever wondered whats wrong with the world? http://www.ishmael.org/
So when do you think apple will give it to 3rd parties? It's coming out next week, so they are seriously running out of time to get production up and running. Or do you just blindly defend apple any chance you get, truth staring you in the face or not?
I'm pretty sure it's only called that when Microsoft does it.
The video isn't terrible sharp, but googling for better pictures, the new connector looks very much like micro-USB. Might it be that Apple is doing the right thing here?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Is it just me or are we getting damn tired of hearing about apple and it's typical BS?
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
And then there's the defunct Palm Pre 3 - with inductive charging and Bluetooth, the only time you ever need to plug anything in is for a system reinstall. That, to my mind, is the way it should be. The ideal mobile device does not require any connectors at all.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
What is it about ageing white conservatives and their fixation on other people's iPads?
According to retarded right wing thinking, if you own a $600 iDevice, you're rich, and therefore if you sympathise with liberal political causes, you're a hypocrite. These same idiots think that having an income of $120k a year is "rich" too, not realizing just how rich "rich" actually is.
Probably the same morons who think that if we just didn't buy that iPad, we'd be rich too. Sad.
If there was a need to, it would be easy to re-purpose the connector. Have a switch internally that can change the connectors form USB over to the analogue outs. Then when it detects that cable is plugged in (could be as simple as a notch on the connector or the like) it switches it.
That way if you really felt the need you could maintain connections for legacy equipment that doesn't so USB, and still have it on one connector.
Of course I think it would be easier to just do what most cellphones do: Have an analogue sound I/O port. My cellphone has a 4-pole jack that can hook to to an external mic/headphones, or any other analogue connector, should you wish.
Prior to Apple going "thermonuclear", it was just some good-natured ribbing. You like shiny white plastic? Good for you.
Now, it's different. It's kill or be killed.
And yeah, protesting corporate excess while contributing to the crazy gross margins of Apple is highly ironic (though totally lost on the protesters who still think they're sticking it to "the man" by buying iStuff).
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Take a purely speculative story and give it a headline stating something likely to excite your readership as a simple fact. result page hits.
A giant anti-trust lawsuit!
They don't last more than a few months for me. I'm on my fifth pair. And they charge me 25 fucking pounds for each replacement. And they sound terrible.
Just out of curiosity, why do you keep buying them?
Would it be possible for the 9 pin apple connector to hold an adaptor that is flush with the phone and take a micro-usb? I thought there was some EU directive that wanted phones to all have a micro-usb connector?
It's never a slow news day when you can just make shit up.
Since when is "not releasing specs of an unreleased product" considered leveraging their position to unfairly stifle competition? Please explain how this will stifle competition...or is Samsung also coincidentally also redoing their dock connector with an expected release date shortly after Apple's release date? If anything, Apple not releasing dock connector specs might slow down the release of products that support the iPhone/iPod (e.g. speakers, etc.) but that's Apple's business. Let's say they released the specs of their still unreleased product then they decided to change the specs to account for something they omitted...now what?
It's never a slow news day when you can just make shit up.
Especially if it's about the raspberry pi, bitcoins, iStuff, or a few other old faithfuls.
Slashdot is the New Fox.
Speaking of excitement-inducing stimuli, how's your tingling leg?
This kind of behavior worked a lot more in the 40 years ago (when the manufacturing cycle took a lot longer) than it does today. I'm not saying it is excusable, but the market for people who need to buy Apple accessories is so large that many companies buy the Apple Thing on day 1, reverse engineer it on day 2, and are receiving Accessories for the Apple Thing within a couple weeks from China. I work with a company that owns a Faro Laser Scanarm (3d scanner) and they frequently have multiple customers send them phones overnight on day 1. Each one of them is trying to get into the market for docks, cases, screen protectors, etc.
I'm not saying that Apple's tactics are OK, but they are generally futile in this case. You can't stop a flood of Chinese accessories from dozens of manufacturers.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
If apple made a change it had damn well better be a magsafe connector. If it's still a craptastic plug like the current 30 pin their engineers need to be beaten with socks that have doorknobs in them until they cant stand anymore....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Because it's a show of wealth. Only the rich buy apple headphones to display their wealth, anyone else with a grain of sense or any desire for audio quality will buy something better like senheiser.
Then you have the trendy kiddies they wear that "beats" crap.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Visual Studio? Fantastic?
Newbie developers are so funny.
Not sure if Apple shill or Microsoft shill...
Even though Apple hasn't released shit about unreleased products to the mass market except in rare exceptions for over a decade, everyone still thinks that it's news that Apple doesn't just up and scream aloud about features of unreleased products.
Guess what? When they released the 2nd gen iPod that has the dock connector we've been using for 8 years now, they didn't pre-release specs for that either. Yet I'm sure we had the same cynical speculation of "OMG it's not bone-stock FireWire! They're going to squeeze everyone out with proprietary bullshit and sue everyone that tries to use it!"
Never mind that today's dock connector only carries a few of the signals present in the original - gone is the FireWire and the 12v power, long replaced with USB2 and it's 5V DC. HDMI video has been added. Etc.
This is likely Apple deciding that it's time to have a change in the connector that coincides with a change of signal, rather than leaving the connector alone for so long to keep compatibility with 3rd party accessories at the cost of engineering simplicity, and reduction of product size.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I do own an iPhone, but only because I got it used & cheap from a friend and I'm outside contract. The only other iDevice I have is a 40GB hard disk iPod from 2003, the one with the firewire/1394...
The thing is that this idea of a connector that will fit in from either direction is actually very simplistic, yet has not been done from a mainstream point of view yet. I can't tell you how many times I've had a half second of frustration over "oops wrong way" when hooking up the cable. This happens with iDevices and with USB.
All the other vendors, rather than have to balls to apply this very simply concept, have focused on matching mini-USB or whatever other standards are out there... that's great and I'm happy that works for them and keeps their BOM costs low... but Apple is not so focused on BOM that they ignore an obvious improvement in usability!
I have no clue what will be available at the connector, but I'm guessing that analog audio will be there? That greatly simplifies what needs to be present in speaker docks... yes boo hoo your old dock will no longer work, but have you not learned that this is the nature of things? If it's a decent dock then there will an adapter developed for it.
Anyone whining about car chargers---seriously? I've been using a USB to iPod cable as my "charging" cable for years, as long as whatever comes with the iPhone has USB on the other side that's basically all I need... Do you hear me whining about all the 1394 to iPod cables I have? Or my Apple branded power bricks w/ 1394 connectors on them? No of course not because when they swapped from 1394 to USB people weren't being whiny bitches about it.
The people who may be fucked, and I have a degree of sympathy for, are those who have cars with built in iPod specific cables. I'd like to think that Apple has some intelligent solution planned, perhaps a short dongle that will allow you to convert between old and new connectors. They know there are a gazillion of these out there and I have a hard time believing that they are simply throwing their hands up in the air and saying "Too bad!", particularly when they may be able to get a slice of every dongle made to convert, and where NOT having a method to convert invites two things: 1) Sticking it out with older iDevice, 2) Switching brands since you have to switch around a bunch of accessories anyway...
So when do you think apple will give it to 3rd parties? It's coming out next week, so they are seriously running out of time to get production up and running. Or do you just blindly defend apple any chance you get, truth staring you in the face or not?
My guess is that the 9-pin connector is just a better USB 3.0 port (one where the orientation of the cable doesn't matter) and that anyone will be able to make one. It may not have Apple's Seal of Approval, but I'm guessing cables and accessories will be out within weeks.
E pluribus unum
Shhh, Apple does not want anyone to know yet that the new 9-pin connector is all part of a plan to introduce uber-cool, retro stylings. The connector will be DB-9.
Apple has also said it may use 'licensing agreements and threats of lawsuits' to prevent third-party adapters from hitting the market through at least 2012.
No, they didn't say that. Apple has not said anything (this is an unreleased product), let alone that they will use agreements and lawsuits to stop something. Is all of this stuff really true? Perhaps, but right now it's all "anonymous and unverifiable sources say the following hearsay", and attributing malice to statements Apple never made is silly.
So when do you think apple will give it to 3rd parties? It's coming out next week, so they are seriously running out of time to get production up and running. Or do you just blindly defend apple any chance you get, truth staring you in the face or not?
How do you know they haven't? NDAs have teeth.
So you're saying that Apple is going to start making all of its accessories itself without licensing to third parties? Because that's logical.
Then again anytime someone trots out the "fanboi" argument you can be pretty sure that all sign of rational thought has left the building, so perhaps you just can't help yourself.
That's kinda where the "licensing agreements and threat of lawsuits" comes in. You can bet Apple has patents on this proprietary connector and will use the courts to block any large-scale import of 3rd party connectors in the immediate future. Milking out extra money by controlling initial production and sales of the connector is largely why they aren't using something like mini/micro USB. It has proven so with the Samsung lawsuit that Apple would rather deal with judges than competitors.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
But they have "Sources." And, as we all know, "Sources" are very reliable.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
That would be very...un-Apple-like. They currently make money on every device legitimately sold by 3rd party OEMs (iHome, JBL) by requiring an NDA and licensing agreement through their MFi program. I found and interesting read here about the reasoning behind the Square CC reader using the audio port. They cite several valid reasons but one that sticks out in a big way is basically it costs Square US $1 to manufacture the device but it would have cost them $4-$8 per device in licensing if they had gone with the 30 pin dock connector.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
So far it has been speculation that there is a new connector. Now there is speculation on why Apple won't release specs for a connector they haven't announced yet. Maybe the day they announce the connector, they will release specs. Or the connector manufacturers have been sworn to secrecy about it considering the leaked cases of past models.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I've been saying no to Apple phones and tablets for quite some time now. Proprietary ports and all that comes with them being one of the reasons why. I'm glad we still agree that they do not want me as a customer.
Meanwhile, to anyone who whishes to enjoy their tablet with an USB port, may I suggest the recent additions to the overall tabletspace, Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10" and 7" (both very nice) or the new Google Nexus 7, also very nice, very cheap, very fast and ... Tadaa! ... also with a micro USB port. I personally am still enjoying my HTC Flyer very much and can asure you that the 7" form factor is a very neat one indeed. More than one would expect before using it every day.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I happen to like the old big and bulky apple connector as it seems to be way less prone to failure than micro-usb. I have seen people have to buy new cell phones as they've managed to destroy the charging port on their phone due to loose fitting charging cables leading to wedging the plug at an angle to get it to charge.
How many times did Apple say no? Is Apple, Shia LaBeouf?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I don't understand how the UUID event is a problem?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
> In every case Apple had a good reason.
I would agree with that sentiment too to *some* degree. It partially seems like Apple has NIH syndrome but they *also* have good reasons to invent new standards because they are interested in solving technical (practical?) problems.
* Firewire is definitely a dream compared to USB!
* It is debatable where Macs helped jumpstart the USB market, but they definitely played a part.
* Now that Thunderbolt is standardized, we'll start seeing more GPUs natively support it.
Regardless if you love / hate Apple, they seem to be taking the middle road. The left is use only standard connectors (and put up with the hassle of devices not having certain convenience factors), or the right of using only proprietary connectors (which the public has voted against.)
Gotta love articles based purely on speculation and random guesses.
That's comparing the two hatchback versions. Fuel economy is 5 L/100km in the first case, 8 L/100km in the second.
My guess is that the 9-pin connector is just a better USB 3.0 port
I'll confess that I don't know a lot about USB, but it seems like the existing connector has video out, audio out and signals to control the device (skip / volume etc.). Does the USB 3.0 spec include all that as well?
You can assign malice to their actions if you want, and that may well be a fair assessment. Nobody truly knows what is going through the senior bosses' heads if they aren't in the room. However, having been in the Apple ecosystem for over about two decades now in various professional capacities, I can say that they got to their current attitude towards product announcements by having those "partners" blab to the press about product features and specs before Apple is ready to announce them.
You get burnt by that enough times, and you start to just not tell anyone that doesn't need to know beforehand, and those that do get a 5-ton anvil of an NDA dropped on them.
Something like a dock connector can probably get you a long way towards seeing what features the device supports; much farther than physical dimensions given to prospective case manufacturers and such. I don't find it that surprising that they would NDA the shit out of the manufacturing partners that are making the stuff that absolutely has to be available on day 1, and then publish specs to everyone else on day 1 after the product announcement.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Um wait a minute, isn't this just pure capitalism? I mean, they are designing the product to sell, and they will design it to include the ability to charge the units. As far as I see this, it's a part of their product. I'm not a big fan of Apple stuff, but this just sounds like good business logic to me.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
I dunno, I have a feeling that they might be right with the thing about 10m * $10 = $100m.
So when do you think apple will give it to 3rd parties? It's coming out next week, so they are seriously running out of time to get production up and running.
They may have done it already. They may do it at the same time as the launch of the first device to use it. You won't know unless you are an Apple MFi partner. And if you are an MFi partner you'll be under NDA.
https://developer.apple.com/programs/mfi/
There is no story here, just speculation from people that don't know.
Apples only go to those stupid enough to buy a subscription to Apple only, soft and hardware.
Apple's are particularly popular with scientists. They tend to not be stupid people. So unfortunately for you, it's your post that's stupid.
Yes, but digitally (as opposed to analogue). Analogue makes the accessory more expensive, but since *everything* on the phone is digital to start with, digital gives you better quality and makes the PHONE cheaper.
I understand they can't use the same connector forever, but I don't know if that gives Apple a free pass from criticism about changing it and holding those details even from partners until release day, when Apple will (shockingly I'm sure) have a full assortment of accessories.
Clearly they haven't got such a free pass. There's no shortage of people criticising them, even based on no information. It seems what you're really asking is why there isn't a law against people pointing out the other side; the side where Apple is just a company looking to make a reasonable profit from what they do.
By the way, what brand of razor and printer do you use? Does the company even allow 3rd parties to manufacture blades or ink cartridges?
It depends what language you're using. But I certainly know top developers who've been developing C/C++ for decades that day Visual Studio is the best IDE with a fantastic debugger.
I won't comment myself because it's 10 years since I worked with it.
Then perhaps it's not him that's unreasonably attached to a particular platform, but you.
say they will sue? The article says "Some developers". While Apple is notorious for being pretty closed lets not accuse them of something until they do it THEN we can have the burn a turtleneck day party.
(basement dwelling, free WiFi hotspot using, jobless hipsters) != scientists
Riight. Apple is going out of their way to screw up their ecosystem to increase their revenue by 0.25%. Or maybe they're just being secretive, like they always are.
By the way, what brand of razor and printer do you use? Does the company even allow 3rd parties to manufacture blades or ink cartridges?
I see where you're going, but the availability of 3rd party toner seems to be pretty good, and razors are practically disposable.
Meanwhile, I enjoy the iPod dock connector in my car that lets me use the head unit to select music. The dock connector started coming on iPods since 2003 but I never saw any kind of control signalling in everyday goods until around 2007. My work around at the time was literally connecting the headphones out to a tape player adapter... as a consumer, it would have been awful nice to get the current 1st class experience back then, and it disappoints me that it's probably going to be another 4 years before I get that kind of control on the new iteration.
If I even decide to get another iPod. Funny thing is, my current vehicle also has a USB port that I can interface any old flash device or even a portable hard drive.
And while you bring up shaving, even if we're in disagreement, I'd like to take this opportunity to highly recommend having a professional shave from a skilled wielder of the straight edge. It's well worth the time and money IMHO.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Actually what Fox does is take actual news and put a correct headline on it but I can see where you might get confused.
It's just that it's got everything integrated. You can get the same amount of debugging help with gdb and an appropriate front-end, and the fact that those tools are command-line is actually an advantage, since it's easier to integrate them in other environments.
Integrated solutions do not work well because they're inflexible and force you to use their way to do things instead of special dedicated tools that might be better at what they do, can be run on their own, or simply might be more powerful since more specialized.
In particular, projects in visual studio do not scale at all, so it's impossible to do any sort of large scale software development with it unless you split everything in mini-projects. The file manager is not practical, nor are the search functions, nor is the text editor itself. Its refactoring is severely limited to simplistic things, and its integrated support for team work (vcs) is a joke.
About the compiler itself, its C++ language support is horrible, the compiler is riddled with bugs, is slow, and isn't even that good at optimizing as soon as you get out of the patterns for which it auto-detects things and cheats.
Nothing beats a good build system, a good text editor, a good standalone compiler, a good terminal and a good set of tools with adequate scripting.
I see where you're going, but the availability of 3rd party toner seems to be pretty good, and razors are practically disposable.
It's good for some printers, not for others. Some you have to refill old cartridges. But the point is that manufacturers aren't helping 3rd parties to supply these parts. They are making it as difficult as possible. Apple on the other hand have a track record of working with 3rd parties to supply items that attach to the dock connector.
I really don't see why they get such abuse for perfectly reasonable business practices. So perhaps they won't release specs for the dock connector until the first product with the new dock connector is announced. So what?
FINALLY !
If you can't cite the sources, then it is just pure opinion / speculation on the part of the author.
"according to sources", Steve Ballmer has taken over Steve Jobs' position at apple. With no mention of sources, its just FUD.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.