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Nokia Design Guru Urges Apple To End Cable Chaos
An anonymous reader writes "Nokia's former head designer has called on Apple to work with the broader technology industry and end its policy of having proprietary connectors for its device chargers and accessories. Other experts say Apple cannot continue to go it alone with Lightning Connectors and ignore Micro USB."
Seriously, what's the problem? The important thing are charges that you can plug into the wall and that should be safe and powerful, with a USB outlet. And then you have cables that you plug into devices - what's the problem with having different cables? And why should a company producing _better_ cables switch to an inferior one?
You can get a Lightning to Micro USB adapter, pretty much everywhere you get an iPad.
The Lightning connector, for all its many proprietary ills, is so ridiculously better designed for actual usability compared to the nightmare that is Micro USB that it isn't even funny.
Now we have people complaining of cable orientation and defending and defending closed proprietary products...
It's called maturity, something the /. crowd has a lot more of since the site's inception. Sometimes good proprietary stuff is better, sometimes small things like cable orientation matter. Sure beats the "if it's not open-source / Linux / GNU it's automatically crap" attitude of yore around here.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Unlike the Dock which contained a whole load of dedicated video and audio connectors, the Lightning connector's just an 8-pin connector that gets its video and docking capability from sending a digital stream that's interpreted further down the line. There's no a lot that Lightning can do that microUSB can't do by a similar system such as MHL.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
1000 Insertions is way to few. I connect my phone (for charging or data transfer, 2-3 times a day. It would be out of design spec in a year. I use my devices longer than that thank you. (Although in many I am capable of replacing the jack, most others are not).
Silence is a state of mime.
"...a fragile mess." What are you people doing to your phones? I've never had a micro USB connector fail, either in the cable or on the phone. Maybe I'm just lucky?
There already is a standard. Apple is choosing to ignore it. That's sort of the whole point of this argument.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It doesn't appear owners are very happy with them... http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD818ZM/A/lightning-to-usb-cable?fnode=3a
Also, Apple discussion forums are pretty scathing but happy people don't post there.
You'll find similar ratings on a majority of their other adaptors and cables, stuff made for a pittance and sold for $25+. Check out the fail that is Mini-Display Port (-> VGA or HDMI) for example.
On the upside, they do try new things and bring ideas to market. I've thanked Apple numerous times for the Mag-Safe power connector which they definitely popularized. (Whoever said the iMac popularized USB is wrong.)
Also, I thought I blew a MacBook Pro a year or 2 back when I plugged in a Chinese knock-off adaptor. The PSU brick popped right away and the notebook instantly powered down. It turned out to be OK but that's an experiment you don't retry so after that I always buy the less crappy, safe and warrantied chargers from Apple. A chip in the cable may have come in handy there, otherwise it does seem like a money grab.
Less *is* more.
The high quality of video output over it compared with no video over Micro USB suggests that it is universally "better".
Fixed that for you.
I've not had that problem with either connector design and nor does anyone I know.
I'd say the sole problem with the current crop of tiny USB connectors is purely that whole four dimensional thing (where you have to turn it around twice to get it to fit.) Since the great switch over, I cannot think of a single device I've had where either USB standard has failed on me. They don't break, and they're difficult to disconnect accidentally - you really have to give a hard tug to unplug a microUSB cable.
I'm not surprised you were modded Insightful. There's a post on the Clinton thread that's modded +5 Insightful that repeats conspiracy theories about her so absurd not even Glenn Beck is making the same claims. But what you've posted is counter to reality. It's not a perfect connector, but it's become exceedingly rare any of us have had to throw out a USB cable because of a failure on the microUSB end, and the sockets themselves are close to indestructable.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Hanging devices by connectors? Sounds like a terrible storage solution.
So just to be clear, you complained that the cables have poor retention, which is bullshit, but you don't actually care if the cables have poor retention, you just wanted something to complain about so you made something up? Got it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"