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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."
Oh, and before you accuse me of being an Apple fanboy. I'm still on a non-Lightning iPhone and if it wasn't my employer who paid for my phone, I wouldn't even have a smartphone.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Is a design that requires an authentication chip in the cable really superior? It doesn't protect you from unsafe cheap power supplies and means you have to buy these cables from Apple, or someone whom Apple has blessed with a license. I accept the physical design is safer, but why does it have to be proprietary?
Because Apple's cables are proprietary, and even contain a chip with the sole purpose to prevent third-parties from making their own. Apple overcharges users for the cables, while preventing the competition from building cheaper alternatives.
Reason for Lightning: see this hideous microUSB 3.0 cable what sort of shitty design is this? I know it's backwards compatible, but the USB standard was not future-proof as one can see from the picture, so it deserves to die.
Apple uses the charge port/connection for handling all of the accessories and controlling what goes on the market for their phones while also getting a nice chunk of change in licensing fees.
If they are forced to comply with the European regulators, my bet is they will just add a micro USB-B port to the side of the device that is only connected for charging period while keeping their proprietary connector for everything it does now. I predict it will also be in an inconvenient location say the right side of the phone. And it may only be done for phones intended for orginal sale in Europe (although that is more dependant on sales volume their vs. supply chain cost/impact).
Either way they are going to do their best to comply with the letter of the law, and keep every bit of their business model and revenue streams intact.
I'd actually be willing to put money on this one,
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
How important are cables going to be when everything your phone does is wireless (including charging) ?
I'm working on a design that lets me suck power out of people's phones on the train and transfer it into mine. I'll never need to charge again!!
No sig today...
5-pin MHL adds video.
11-pin MHL (samsung only atm unfortunately) adds OTG capabilities.
The connector is awful though, no other usb cable type breaks as easily for me.
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?
If you're asking for the rationale behind the EU charger harmonisation, it's waste. If every device uses the same charger then fewer chargers have to be manufactured and ultimately recycled. For example you never have to go out and buy a "spare" charger for your smartphone to keep at the office, or a replacement for the one you left behind on holiday, if you already have four mutually intercompatible chargers that originally came with different products.
Of course whether that rationale makes any sense is up for debate but that's the logic.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Only Apple fanbois want a connector that can double as a butt-plug
A charging cable combined with a butt-plug! That's shocking!
If Apple's issue really was that micro USB was too fragile, well they could have introduced a new, standard, connector to fix that. Design a "mobile USB" standard, that is durable, orients either way, integrates pins for HDMI, etc. Get it all nice n' designed and tested, then hand the design over to the USB Group, royalty free (like all USB standards). Particularly if it was going to be part of new Apple phones I don't imagine that there'd be a lot of resistance to adoption.
The EU's mandate doesn't come from a love of micro-USB, but rather the need for a standard, whatever that is. Micro-USB is the best we've got and the most prevalent, so that is what they are going for. If there was a better one out there, particularly if you could show how increased durability could lead to longer life and less waste, I think it'd have a good chance of being the standard.
However Apple has no interest in that at all. Their new connector wasn't made because micro-USB is so bad, it was made because Apple desires to be the only place you buy Apple accessories.
If Nokia wants to fix this, they should get together an industry group to design and agree to use such a connector
XKCD tells you about what happens when you promote a new standard to supersede previous ones.
Esli epei etot cumprenan, shris soa Sfaha.
"Other experts say Apple cannot continue to go it alone"
Cannot. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Nokia. Nokia. Where have I been reading about Nokia lately? Oh yeah, that was the world-dominating handset company whose senior team decided in 2007 that the Apple iPhone was not a serious threat to their existing business. And a few years later killed their potentially iPhone-competitive product line. Good source of techno-business insight without a doubt.
sPh
Because nobody will every try to make another new kind of USB connector.
There's a difference between "the existing standard connector doesn't have the features we need, so we will colleborate with the rest of the industry and design a new connector for everyone to use" and "the existing standard connector is unsuitable*, so we will develop our own connector and patent the hell out of it so no one can ever be compatible".
(* Why Apple thought the micro USB connector is unsuitable is debatable... many suspect it was considered unsuitable *because* they couldn't patent the hell out of it).
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Usually those extra accessories will try to take advantage of a unique feature in the phone, so even if the cable fits it doesn't mean the software will work with it.
USB is a standard. The USB on my kyocera will work on your HTC. That's what STANDARD means. "Sticking it to the Americans" is just stupid. Remember, Google's Nexus uses the same STANDARD mini-USB as everyone else's phones... except Apple, who seem to be taking a page from Microsoft's playbook.
Introducing the iLamp (requires iBulbs). See the problem?
Free Martian Whores!
Most of these phones become obsolete before the need a new cable. Usually those extra accessories will try to take advantage of a unique feature in the phone, so even if the cable fits it doesn't mean the software will work with it.
Bullshit, every single usb charger I've ever owned has worked with every single non-Apple usb device without any issues. The whole point of this standard is so that every phone does work, hassle free, with every charger (in fact the only devices I've seen complain about usb charging are Apple devices, go figure).
Also just because almost all phones come with a charger doesn't mean you won't need to either replace it or buy a 2nd charger, and if you had a previous phone you already have a perfectly good 2nd charger with no need to buy another one because your new phone is incompatible.
You know what? I count being able to borrow anyone at work's usb charging cable and have it work on my usb phone as a good thing.
The EU Law on this is just one of their Lets just find a way to stick it to the Americans law, because they had a fit that Apple took over Nokia lead.
Or maybe the EU cares about doing what's good for consumers and not just what's good for the company that pays them the most money.
If Apple "needs" a proprietary connector then they can put both a micro-usb connector and their expensive proprietary DRMd cable.
in america we believe in something called private enterprise. where people can make products and sell them.
Rubbish, the US has plenty of standards. Would you like to see every home and apartment have its own proprietary mains power sockets? Every car manufacturer have its own type of filling nozzle? Every wi-fi router require a proprietary wi-fi adapter? Every TV and DVD player have its own proprietary video connector? No, I didn't think so. Why should phones be any different?
Remember that this was the free market's answer to phone charging, the EU decided that it was in citizens interests that a standard be set up so we don't have to deal with endless proprietary cables any more.