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iPhone 5 Scorns Standards Promise To European Commission
WebMink writes "Back in 2009, Apple signed an agreement aimed at reducing electronic waste resulting from mobile phone accessories. But this week's launch of the iPhone 5 shows them reneging on that commitment. Instead of including a micro-USB connector on the iPhone, as they agreed to do along with the rest of the phone industry, they created yet another proprietary connector. At a stroke, they have junked earlier iPhone accessories, forced a new industry in Apple-only accessories to arise and broken their promise to the EC. It's a huge missed opportunity both for their customers and for the environment."
Someone should sue them for this shit.
Apple ships a Micro-USB adaptor with every iPhone in the EU.
The new connector is not a missed opportunity. Micro-USB sucks, the cables suck, the connectors are weak and prone to failure - not to mention by any measure it's superior to have a directionless connector. How is it better for the environment to buy cables more often?
And what about the NUMBER of micro-USB connectors. There are at least three that look nearly alike, I'm sure one of them is the official Micro-USB connector but how can you tell when you have multiple cables each with slightly different tiny connectors?
I would say the EU has failed you all by locking the nation into a poor standard for all phones to have to use, instead of allowing companies to continue to iterate over better connector designs. Instead you wound up with the least common denominator of connectors, dooming yourself to poor power transfer abilities and as I said badly designed connectors prone to breaking.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I still don't really understand the rationale behind the new connector. It seems the whole motivation for it was to make the iPhone thinner... which, I don't see as a real selling point at this point, especially given all the frustration with having to replace accessories or buy a new set of $30 adapters, and the fact that the iPhone 4s is really thin enough. As for simplicity, it really goes against the Apple aesthetic. One picture from the event made that evident.
Meanwhile, the rest of the industry seems to be moving away from wires and toward wireless. Wireless payments, wireless charging, wireless audio, etc. with NFC and other related technologies. Apple is for some strange reason the last to adopt these innovations, and it will be a whole year before they come up with an answer. In the mean time, they're piling on connectors and dongles galore. It's very strange.
How happy will he be when the EU bans import?
The law wasn't a suggestion.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
If you invest in accessories for the new connector, you'll be less inclined to buy a non-Apple phone.
Perhaps their connector has additional pins for HDMI, but they could have placed a real HDMI connector beside the USB connector for easy docking. Alternately, they could sell a dongle to pipe HDMI video out from USB2 as other manufacturers already do.
But then they couldn't lock their customers in and charge exorbitant licensing fees for their connector.
Geez, nice hyperbolic story.
First, Apple is keeping to the requirement by offering a micro-USB cable.
Second, the reason they didn't use micro-USB is because it doesn't have the requisite number of pins. As we saw with Thunderbolt, the USB folks will *not* allow you to add non-standard pins to their connector.
This connector must support at least 2 amps of charging for the iPad (in the future presumably). That puts micro-USB right out of the picture.
It must also support digitally sending all the data necessary to support the 30-pin compatibility, including the upcoming HDMI and VGA adapters. Building any sort of intelligence into the cable or other end would require an actual USB interface chip and would require extending the USB specification in non-standard ways... not that you could push enough data on the 2 data pins to run a 720p HD display anyway, unless you piggy-backed some custom protocol on top of USB, then had some sort of hand-shake mode to figure that out... assuming the USB people didn't sue you for abusing their standard to begin with.
The connector itself is far better designed than any USB connector ever; it is reversible and it has self-cleaning contacts, yet it is stronger than micro-usb.
It's OK though; I expect a barrage of anti-Apple FUD every time they release a new device. I'm used to it by now. If you want a legit complaint, the price of the 30-pin adapters is ridiculous.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
USB is better because I have a bunch of USB cables right here. When my son loses his apple charging cable I have to go out and buy a new apple licensed cable.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
My Galaxy Tab's cable looks similar to Apple's pre-Lightning cable.
So are we ready to sharpen our pitchforks and light our torches at Samsung?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
No, that is not what they want. That is what _you_ want them to want.
If that is what they had wanted, they would have said so. How hard would it have been to say, "everyone phone should include a micro-usb port that you can use for charging and syncing"?
The idea is that if you forgot your charger cable, you could still charge your phone without buying a high priced proprietary charger.
No, the idea is to get rid of the proprietary charger. The wall wart. Apple have always charged off USB, and Apple USB chargers can be used to charge any device with a USB cable.
Who cares if it's not really microUSB (besides the USB forum)? It works with anything designed for microUSB, and adds a couple of useful features. Sounds like win/win to me.
Switching to just a micro-USB would have been stupid as you can't get analog audio or HD video through USB 2.0. Still I feel for all the people who've invested in accessories that use the standar Apple 30-pin. Expensive accessories like docks, iHome clocks, etc.
Actually, the new dock connector is said to eliminate analog audio anyway, so that's BS. Second, for USB speed, nothing says it can't be USB 3.0. Third, that's all a moot point to video, MHL devices do HDMI out out of a physical port that is micro usb compatible. In most cases, using the same pins as USB, but in the case of Galaxy S 3, through 6 additional pins that are accomodated without breaking micro usb mechanical compatibility.
Apple's use of a proprietary connector is exactly because of one reason: because they can get away with it. It's part of their business plan, plain and simple. When they sell an iDevice, they don't take a loss, but they also endeavor to maximize ongoing revenue potential. One mechanism is by using a proprietary connector and forcing third party accessories to pay a license fee for the privilege of supporting iDevices. Bonus: vendors largely end up ignoring Android compatibility since they have to pick *either* Apple or other devices if they can only afford one device.
It's a very anti-consumer move, plain and simple.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
citation needed, only phones i know the battery life off of the top of my head piss on iphone battery life, for eg the galaxy 3: Talk Time Up to 10 hours
Standby Time Up to 500 hours
iphone 5:
Talk time: Up to 8 hours on 3G
Standby time: Up to 225 hours
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
Switching to just a micro-USB would have been stupid as you can't get analog audio or HD video through USB 2.0.
Indeed this is a shortfall of USB. I propose we create a new technology one which is pin for pin compatible with USB devices and yet allows vendors to plug digital devices into the phones and tablets which then have the ability to convert to analogue. I imagine a device like this may cost all of $0.45 in bulk and can probably be purchased in a TSSOP package so the devices would not need to be any bigger since we fit these components in the same space as the old dock connector.
I envision a kind of Universial Serial Bus which allows pretty much any functionality on the other end of the cable. We could attach better GPS receiver, better wireless devices, media converters, camera, card readers, laptops, mice, keyboard, video cards, TV tuners.
I've even thought of a fancy name for this. We can call it USB-Host mode.
No, you're missing a small but important detail. In regions where the agreement applies, Apple ships the phone with the required adaptor.
So most people is the street don't currently have even an iPhone 4S, but when they're given the chance to play with it they realise t's better in some ways that the phone they do have.
The very last guy on the tape says he does currently have an iPhone 4S. But hey, you video people all day long and you're bound to find saying something that isn't true. Either because they are trying to impress, or because they just don't actually know the right answer.
You want me to show you a YouTube video showing that Americans don't know where Australia is?