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Apple Now Shipping Lightning To 30-Pin Adapters
hcs_$reboot writes "Apple has started shipping the iPhone 5 Lightning connector to 30-pin adapters. Some iPhone 5 owners complained about its new connector being incompatible with the previously well known 30 pin connectors (iPhone 4S and before, iPod, iPad, and chargers). From the article: 'Apple's accessories page shows the adapter as available to ship in October, while one MacRumors reader said the e-mail notice pointed to a delivery day of October 9.'"
How is this anything but a money grab??
What do you mean? The act of charging money for a product and/or service? Yes, I suppose that could be boiled down to "a money grab".
If you mean why change the dock adapter in the first place? Well, that's been done to death and it had to happen sometime. The old one still had pins for Firewire data and power - no iOS device has shipped with a firewire controller for almost 5 years!
That can still be ambiguous. Sure, after using it for a bit, users would learn by feel which way is the right way. But how do you know which way connector should go into the device without trial and error?
There may be an arrow on the device to help you align it, but that's still only part-way there (especially with how many people put their mobile devices in cases).
Apple has you by the balls. They make you believe that it's so inconvenient to spend an extra 2 seconds looking at your device that you should spend an additional $30 an adapter rather than using a standard.