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Death to the Trapezoid... Next USB Connector Will Be Reversible
TheRealHocusLocus writes "Extreme bandwidth is nice, intelligent power management is cool... but folks should be spilling into the streets in thankful praise that the next generation miniature USB connector will fit either way. All told — just how many intricate miracle devices have been scrapped in their prime — because a tiny USB port was mangled? For millennia untold chimpanzees and people have been poking termite mounds with round sticks. I for one am glad to see round stick technology make its way into consumer electronics. Death to the trapezoid, bring back the rectangle! So... since we're on roll here... how many other tiny annoyances that lead to big fails are out there?"
The new connector will be smaller too.
That's immoral
Big fails? How about small connectors? I greatly prefer regular-sized USB to micro-USB, they sit much better in the slot.
USB, developed from the Atari 800's SIO technology (1978/79!) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_SIO
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
I'd like to see the back of these. They pull out too easily.
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
Reminds me of the notebook's keyboard position, then the trackpad, then the clean designs etc etc...
Is the fact that the standard USB connection (rectangle) is not really 180 degrees symmetric (despite a shape that indicates it should be), usually takes 3+ attempts to get it in. Damn it, Jim, a spin-1/2 connector!
and just after The EU mandates micro-USB as a common phone charger
They are not actually redesigning the mini USB connector (if I'm passing reading comprehension 101...), this is a redesign of the full size USB Type-C connector to become a mini type connector. They don't say if the existing mini is changing so it seems like this may not effect cell phone style connectors?
The spec explicitly includes video output now. I know MHL and the like have become almost de facto standards but this will finalise it. Basically you've got all the advantages of the Lightning connector in a standardised design. I liked Lightning when it came out, but score one for universality.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Europeans have. Every time they plug something into a power outlet.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Unlike Lightning, this is just a connector for USB 2/3, not a whole new interface. A dumb, cheap adaptor should suffice. (Unlike Lightning to 30-pin adaptors which are basically tiny protocol droids translating between the two.)
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Um, dude, US/North American power plugs traditionally have been the same. Today most plugs have grounds or polarization that prevents them from being reversed, but theoretically they still can reversed.
Proof that USB cables are 4 dimensional.
Apologies if this appears twice. It looks like slashdot ate the first attempt.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Someone finally sat down and studied Yoka-yoke design principles.
Now that Europe is mandating the existing micro-USB for all phones are they going to modify the mandate to include this connector or is it too late for that and Europeans will not be able to enjoy this marvelous new connector?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not in the UK. Our plugs are very well designed. Even the sockets include covers over the power holes which can only be retracted by inserting the (Slightly longer) earth pin first.
Think of them as opportunities
Hope is the currency of fools
Connectors that are (un)plugged often should either be symmetrical or clearly indexed. The original (big) USB plug was almost right (in the sense that the plug wouldn't go in the wrong way), except that it was difficult to tell which way the index should be facing. Firewire was a decent implementation of an indexed plug.
The current micro USB plugs are ridiculous, though. It can takes three tries to plug it in and every time you get it wrong you stress the socket a little. The difference in feel between a correct and incorrect fit is very mushy with some plugs/sockets.
While we're on the subject, a pure rectangle (a la the USB A plug) is even worse. The USB connector design over the years has been so bad that I wouldn't be too hopeful about what they come up with next.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Very well designed until you step on one in bare feet, anway.
Cost. What's acceptable on a $1000 laptop is not affordable for $100 tablets.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Another way to sell us yet another cable to replace one we already have that works just fine.
It's not easy to pug the connector in upside down, so if someone forces it in in the wrong direction and breaks it, it's not the fault of the connector.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
You really think that those are well designed? It looks like russian solution for me. While it's harder to die from an electric shock, one can easily kill somebody else with such plug :-)
Completely non-standard and proprietory, but I quite like these.
But what will I do with the 600 or so micro USB cables I currently own?
"I do love the headphone jack. Simple, easy, and universal." And as doomed as POTS and broadcast NTSC. The headphone jack is currently the constraining design factor that prevents phones and tablets from getting any thinner. I guarantee you that Apple is working on a flat (reversible) replacement for the iPhone 6 or 7 or 8; the only question (other than when) is whether it'll be an open standard that will (over a few years) be embraced by the rest of the industry, proprietary to Apple, or something halfway in between that gets adopted by some manufacturers but not others and splits the media-playing industry into VHS and Beta again.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Good thing we can have adapters. In the EU, micro-USB is required on devices so they will have to keep using the old connector until the law catches up with th enew one...
This. The crusty AT keyboard needs a redesign. While you are at it, make it so that it will automatically tell the operating system which language's layout it is.
US Patent Pending
A Method To Allow Device Insertions In Any Orientation
A device being any device that can be held in the hand between two fingers, too large to be grasped by two fingers yet small enough to be grasped by the whole hand, or too large to be grasped by a hand, an insertion being a process by which a device is brought close to another larger device with a receptacle and the first device placed into the receptacle to facilitate mutual operation, and orientation being the angular position of the first device relative to the second device along the common axis defined by the midpoint of the first device and the receptacle of the second device or being the skew position of the first device major or minor axis relative to the major or minor axis of the receptacle of the second device. This patent asserts a new method covering insertions of devices into receptacles of other devices in any orientation, and if it just works, whatever it is, you owe us a million dollars.
headphone jack. hmmm. inherently shorting!
as you insert or remove, the ground (larger band) shorts to the other contacts and for amps (and worse, psu's!) this is horrible.
I first learned this when I was building a diy bipolar (plus and minus) psu. I need a 3 conductor connector. hey, 1/4" phones jack has 3! so I used it.
took the box into work and it was immediately pointed out to me that for power use, it was really bad! yet I can remember audio alchemy (long gone company but they were well known once for audio gear) used 1/8" trs jacks for power! talk about ZAPPP!! when you insert or remove them. I was just a dumb kid at the time and I realized right away it was wrong; but a full company was doing this for years before they stopped.
for high end audio gear, they often remove protection circuits and if you remove the phones jack while music is playing, you can often blow the final output transistors or chips. this is well known on many diy designs (some people went with locking trs phone jacks to avoid this problem).
xlr (for audio) does not short as you insert or remove. but the banded trs or trrs does and for that reason, its one of the worst connector designs, ever.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
... as easily as the current microUSB connector?
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
A tweak that USB would need is to remove the requirement of having to "safely remove device". It would be much more streamlined and user-friendly if I could just chuck the device out any time.
This thread is useless without pics.
Making it reversible too would save millions of collective hours of fumbling. At the very least, standardize the plug just above the connector in such a way that the orientation is easily determinable by feel, rather than by use of a flashlight, magnifier and dust in one's contact lenses.
The WORST connectors are the trapezoidal HDMI connectors. Not only are they orientation specific, but they are often used on heavy cables that pull on the connector causing it to lose contact, and even bend the pins in the socket.
Add in the fact that the data rate is like a zillion bytes per second and there is an encryption handshake that must go just right at the start and you have a clusterfuck.
HDMI connectors seriously need an upgrade.
afaik the device is compliant as long as there's a converter for the device..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Yeah, of dynamite... I definitely think the same tools should be applied to computers.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I noticed that my old throwaway Tracfones all had 2.5mm headphones jacks, but all higher-end tablets/phones I've seen use 3.5mm jacks... I know the 3.5mm is much more universal but the 2.5mm standard is already there, with plenty of adapters for 3.5mm devices, any time someone wants to make a slightly thinner device.
Lighting's also just a connector for USB 2/3 - the data wires in the Lightning-to-USB cable go straight through. The reason the cables are so expensive is because they have to have a special Apple-supplied lockout chip or iPhones and iPads will refuse to work with them.
I remap CapsLock on every computer I regularly use, usually to Shift or Tab, on rare occasions to Enter depending on what works best for that keyboard.
It would be amusing to have a 7 or 8 layer concentric circle connector, but probably relatively expensive to produce.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Tip-{ring,ring,...}-Sleeve. Easily handles the 3 or 4 connectors needs for just about any modern digital serial connector. Need power? why not modulate the signal on top of the power carrier? Easy to connect, proven reliable (can't count how many times I've broken a mini/micro USB or worse those umpteen pin pico/nano pin connectors that are only used for power or maybe a simple serial connection)
I'm in my right mind and I have the answer to everything!
Unlike Lightning, this is just a connector for USB 2/3, not a whole new interface. A dumb, cheap adaptor should suffice. (Unlike Lightning to 30-pin adaptors which are basically tiny protocol droids translating between the two.)
The image I get in my head is a miniature C-3P0 inside the connector talking very quickly.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Really? Wow. I've never had an issue. I just stick it in. In and out, in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out...
Also Apple patents, probably.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
...
I do love the headphone jack. Simple, easy, and universal.
It was, at least the 1/8th" version, until they came up with a tip, ring, second ring, sleeve version to add video to the 2 audio channels and then some companies decided not to leave ground where it's been for the last half century or so.
I'm not really in favor of people being taken out and shot, but it's stuff like that which causes the thought to cross my mind.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Yes, they are well designed. Compare to them to the standard EU and US designs which are flimsy, often left to be self-supporting (which they fail at), and have a tendency to just fall out of the sockets in my experience. A UK plug is solid when plugged in, makes an earth connection before a live/neutral connection as it is plugged in, disconnects the live/neutral before the earth is disconnected, and as the poster stated has a shuttered outlet so that the socket is only opened *after* an earth connection has been made. If you think that is a "russian solution" then maybe you think good engineering is communist, and flimsy make do is the american way.
It's using the USB protocol to communicate, but it sure as heck isn't a USB connector with all that silicon between the two devices.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
8 pole concentric circle connectors exist - do a search for Speakon NL-8 connectors.
I'd just as soon see QWERTY itself redesigned.
The question mark gets used more often than than the "frontslash", but you have to hit shift for it.
The colon gets used more than the semi-colon, but you have to hit shift for it.
And why doesn't the number pad have a backspace key?
And if it's not going to be in alphabetical order, M and N should be nowhere near each other.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
This was a solved problem with the original telco 1/4" plugs - the tip (and rings on more complicated versions) were narrower than the sleeve, and the insulating rings between segments had high shoulders. The design made it impossible to short the plug when jacking in/out (although you could still short a live plug tip to a live socket sleeve e.g. when plugging one piece of powered equipment into another separately-powered piece of equipment - later socket designs solved this problem too).
This basic common-sense feature was forgotton somewhere along the evolutionary line between the telco versions & the familiar consumer 1/4", 3.5mm, & 2.5mm versions. But the telco versions continued to have the sensible design (at least right up until at least the 80's).
But anyone who designs a device using a live consumer-style phone plug for power deserves all the warranty & incidental damages claims they'll inevitably get...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
A Neutrik PowerCON seems better thought out than that design. I've used it and it's easy to work with.
Why not make the connector circular similar to a headphone jack? Then you won't be able to mess up insertion.
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
I've no use for a protocol droid. What I do need is someone who can understand the binary language of moisture vaporators.
Turns out it's just a strong suggestion, not a requirement...
Shouldn't take too long for it to become the standard once it arrives, the switch from mini to micro USB on phones was relatively quick.
Maybe not as bad as that, but a new USB connector does mean yet another USB cable to carry in your go-bag. I already carry four different kinds.
www.wavefront-av.com
If there's a chip in the middle controlling it, it's definitely not USB. It may blatantly copy some USB elements (not that that's a bad thing), but it's not USB.
That's certainly one way to keep the janitor from plugging his floor buffer into the UPS outlet at night!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
The article provides no pictures of the connector, and all it says is that it's in the draft phase right now, with the draft due to be finalized by the middle of next year.
As someone who sticks almost entirely to software, I'm also curious how they're able to do this. My understanding with Lightning was that it has to have some logic in place to determine which way it's oriented, but if the pins for USB are already defined and (presumably?) can't be changed for a new connector for an existing standard, I'm unclear how they'll be able to determine its orientation. Or do they not need to for some reason?
If we used that same plug here in the US, we'd probably rate it at ten times the current*! We have 50A 240V plugs that are very definiately a lot flimsier, with prongs
(*The UK plugs, for the uninitiated, are rated 13A at 240V and have solid brass prongs that are about 4mm thick and 7mm wide. They are a beauty of engineering.)
www.wavefront-av.com
it's the regular sized ones that are awful. I can count on one hand the number of times I've managed to plug a full sized usb plug into a socket on first attempt. Usually I have to flip the thing over and try again and if that doesn't work, flip it again and try the first approach which for some reason works on the second attempt but almost never works on the first. The dope who designed that connector should be put up against the wall along with the dopes who decided to make it a standard.
It will be a great day when the USB connector is finally relegated to the dust bin of computer history/infamy.
There is no silicon between the two devices if you're using USB over the Lightning connector, that's the point - early on in its life, someone tore the cables apart and the data lines are wired straight through, the authentication chip can only communicate with the iPhone and then only at speeds slower than USB 1.1 Low Speed.
Oh right, from Apple.
You mean the Apple who helped pioneer the first USB connector which everyone hates so much. Seriously people have been whining about the USB connector from about day 1 and reversible/rotationally symmetric connectors have existed for even longer.
To claim Apple "invented" the idea of a reversible USB connector is utterly just plain silly. Even if you claim it is invention to do something blindingly obvious, you'll be disappointed to hear that Nokia's DKU2 cable was (a) reversible (b) carried USB and (c) existed on the 2002 eara Nokia 6100, a full 5 years before even the first generation iPhone and a year before the iPod's reversible connector supported USB.
So no, it's not an invention and even if it was Nokia had it before Apple.
Seriously what is it with Apple Fanbois assuming they invented everything? You know it's possible to enjoy their products *without* having to make up random shit about how they did everything first.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Apples blade style connector for iphone really nice. about as small as it can be, strong, reverisble.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Plus it has a fuse in the plug itsself, and can handle higher current (and with the higher voltage, more than twice the power) than the nasty US plugs.
The design also makes it much harder to accidentally knock a plug out by pulling on the cable.
There is a simple fix for most wall-wart power strip issues: getting a power bar with transformer pads like APC's SurgeArrest 11 which has six sideways plugs spaced far enough apart to accommodate just about anything that might reasonably hang off a wall. I have two of those and do not remember running into an adapter that does not fit - though I did have to shuffle adapters to squeeze smaller ones next to oversized ones.
Unlike Lightning, this is just a connector for USB 2/3, not a whole new interface. A dumb, cheap adaptor should suffice. (Unlike Lightning to 30-pin adaptors which are basically tiny protocol droids translating between the two.)
Another difference is that USB cables and chargers are commodity items, and often chargers are completely separate from cables these days, having the full size USB connector on them, hence taking the same data cable you would use to plug into a computer. (So the charger is still useful even if the cable changes.) Instead of a trendy white cable you can only get from the device manufacturer, it's just a cable, used by hundreds of different devices, as common as dirt.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Good thing we can have adapters. In the EU, micro-USB is required on devices so they will have to keep using the old connector until the law catches up with th enew one...
Didn't Apple get an exception to that?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
My patent based on yours:
All that on a computer .
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Didn't Apple get an exception to that?
Apple didn't _need_ an exception.
First, chargers and cables should be separate. You can take an Apple cable (Lightning on one end, USB 2 on the other hand) and plug it into an iPhone and a Samsung or Nokia USB charger and it works. And the charger is the expensive bit, not the cable.
Second, Apple sells a Micro-USB to Lightning adapter, so if you have a charger with a Micro USB cable that cannot be removed, you can still use it to charge an Apple phone. Not that I think Apple is selling many of these⦠So that's why Apple didn't need to get any exception, because selling that adapter means they are within the law.
But in the end, there are plenty of people with several Apple devices, and using any charger with any device, so there is nothing here that would be against the spirit of the EU directive. The point isn't Micro USB, the point is using the same charger for more than one device.
My biggest gripe are the small AC to DC wall warts. Try as they might with different orientations of their bulbus shapes, they always take up to much room on my power strips.
Try some short (30cm or shorter) extension cords to get the wart off the strip.
Or alternatively, use a flexible power strip.
http://www.quirky.com/shop/44-Pivot-Power-Flexible-Power-Strip
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
That connector appears to be keyed to only go in one way. However with a circular connector it would be easy enough to twist the thing in place.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
The image I get in my head is a miniature C-3P0 inside the connector talking very quickly.
Don't you mean "C-3P0 talking slightly slower than he normally does"?
After all, even USB 3.1 is only 10Gbps.
At the moment, my average attempt to plug in a USB cable takes three attempts: First, try it the way I think it should go, but doesn't work; Second, flip it over and try again; Third, double check that I had it flipped the correct direction the first time and press a little harder.
I hope they can avoid that issue with the new design.
And another dab coming (underhanded) at Apple in TFA:
"will also be tailored to work well with emerging product designs and will scale for future USB bus performance", said the group
Unlike Apple's Lightning port, current and future USB connection have decent bandwidth, and thus can drive a HDMI-out USB-chip to display HD (when they're not directly speaking 'MHL' instead of USB, directly to the display over a dump cable).
Unlike Lightning to 30-pin adaptors which are basically tiny protocol droids translating between the two.
And the Lightning port actually isn't a connector, just a direct internal bus. Whatever the iPhone speaks to the outside world is handled by a small chip in the cable or dongle.
In theory, the "pros" given by Apple are:
- evolutive. If a new form of connection arrivers (say for exemple USB3.2 over these new reversible connector), no need of any change in the iPhone itself, just get a new different dongle with an USB3.2 controller inside and a new-gen connector.
In practice, there are tons of "cons" :
- Non standard. (of course, that's apple)
- Mandatory chip (controlled and licensed by Apple) in every single thing that you connect. There can't be a dumb cable, you need a controller.
- Awful bandwith. Lightning's bandwith sucks, it can't be used to drive a display. Current HD-video out dongles have been found to be sorts of "AirPlay": video stream is (destructively) compressed using the accelerated hardware inside the iPhone, the compressed stream is output through the lightning port, the HD-Video out dongle contrain a full blown ARM SoC with integrated graphics which decompresses the video stream and outputs it on its own HDMI connector.
(Cue-in problem with generational compression, over expensive dongle hardware, etc.)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Is the fact that the standard USB connection (rectangle) is not really 180 degrees symmetric (despite a shape that indicates it should be), usually takes 3+ attempts to get it in. Damn it, Jim, a spin-1/2 connector!
Protip: The USB emblem goes "up". The logo is trademarked, and without it the cables are too frustrating to use. An interesting feat of human engineering indeed.
Now, let us travel through time far enough into the future that we come to appreciate the greatest connector design possible:
First, consider the connector with zero lines of symmetry, such as USB, or a polarized pronged plug. There is a 2D plane that the connector travels orthogonal to and which it must breech in order to complete a connection docking sequence. Consider this plane slicing through your connector and receptacle's contacts. Note that there is one receptacle surface for one connector pin passing through the docking plane.
To the Future! Copy and rotate your receptor 180 degrees in place along the docking plane. Eliminate any conflicting isolation surfaces, and move the pins such that they do not interact with each the other's connection surfaces. Now you have a reversible connector with one line of symmetry in the receptacle. The connector pins can occupy both sets of receptacle contact surfaces, but need only occupy one position to complete the electrical circuits.
Advance! Now we will perform the same step again, but with a 90 degree increment. Behold! A square connector!
60 degrees? Hexagonal connectors! Note that just imagining it we can nearly taste the hex filled future!
Onward, to 45 degrees, and to victory! Octagonal connections even mirror our futurist desire to slice the corners from our square UI windows, and tabs.
Oh integration, you foul beast. Clearly to see furthest into the future we must have infinite lines of symmetry in our docking plane -- BUT HOW?! With all pins occupying all positions across the USB connector, the left side interacts with the right side. Since connector pins need only exist in one position we need only make the connector pins have zero lines of symmetry -- move all the connector pins to one side. Simultaneously we have a perfectly round receptacle -- Ah, but all intersecting isolation surfaces are removed, this leaves us with only a flat ring of contacts and several pins.
So, now we will enter a new Dimension! We can stretch the docking plane in the 3rd dimension along the orthogonal connection axis! BEHOLD! We have discovered the most futuristic connector of all time! The Head Phone Jack!
Now, what's old can finally be new again. Story time is over, now get off my lawn.
The "large band" (the one nearest to the cable/grip) is the last in and first out so that part of the plug itself does not cause the shorts since it never contacts anything else but contacts inside the jack may short across rings during insertion and removal.
A live 1/8" plug is certainly very short-prone - imagine if AC outlets were switched around so we had exposed live copper lugs in unused outlets. A live 1/8" jack is much safer with no exposed live metal bits. As for audio accessories that used to use 1/8" plugs for power, those adapters usually were simple iron core transformers and these things can take a fair amount of abuse... particularly those without built-in rectifiers - but even rectifiers can take some abuse too, as long as they get some time to cool off between events.
If it can be fitted upside down, let's make it square, so there will be now 4 ways of plugging it in, only 2 of which will work. After few iterations of that, maybe we will finally end up with round connector...
This story reminded me of this story.
Not sure if the new standard will help with extreme user-idiot issues like that one (no time to RTFA). Nothing to chisel out of the port, I take it? :)
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
About bloody time....
Even Apple got it right on its last cable update. Granted, it only took them like 10 years.
First, chargers and cables have been separate for some time for devices with micro-USB. Hell, the generic power strip I just bought for the headboard in the master bedroom has two conventional USB charging ports. That isn't the issue. The issue is that micro-USB is a commodity product, and Apple doesn't do commodity. The second point is really the only point, that Apple got around "micro-USB is required on devices" by providing a micro-USB to whatever-apple-uses adapter.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It the plug is reversible, I wonder how that will work electrically ? Maybe there will be a pin to indicate connector orientation.
It's a known point of wear. It should be designed to be replaced- not part of the motherboard of the phone.
WIll be less true- but still true of the new connectors because of sideways pressure on the cord.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Apple: With rounded corners.
Have gnu, will travel.
Let the British design the next standard. I have yet to see anyone pick up a BS 1363 and not figure out which way to insert it.
Have gnu, will travel.
... because what we always need is another standard.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Are there major hurdles to using round connectors like for sounds? There could be bands (how a stereo setup works) for the same functionality of the pins.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
They should be outside of the bathroom so you can wash your hands without touching a door and peer pressure could enforce mandatory hand washing.
Apple already has patents on a 3.5mm jack that is half as thick by using pogo-pins internally. The thickness requirement is reduced to little more than the diameter of the headphone jack itself plus the top and bottom walls. As a result, it's not yet the bottleneck on device thickness, as the thinnest tablets and smartphones on the market are a few millimetres thicker than the minimum from the new connector style.
I guarantee you that Apple is working on a flat (reversible) replacement
Here's the /. article from two years ago http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/08/18/1736235/apple-patents-cutting-35mm-jack-in-half The link in the summary is broken.
And yet, during the hysteria few months ago about the iPhone charger that electrocuted a customer in China, Apple kept insisting people needed, oh they badly needed, to buy only Apple's branded cable. The shock risk was entirely in what the cable was plugged into, but they insisted otherwise, and it's doubtless that thousands of compliant Apple customers threw out their third-party charging systems (the evil ones that didn't have the Apple branding information on the packaging) and dashed to the Apple Store waving plastic.
So the authentication chip provides no value whatsoever to the customer, only negative value for cost-conscious customers who cannot purchase third party 'straight pieces of wire' that indeed should perform the function of a cable perfectly.
Hey Apple: I'd rather have a phone with longer battery life than one that is so thin I have to wear glove to avoid being cut by the edges and uses an obnoxious 2.5mm headphone jack.
I read the internet for the articles.
And it didn't take long at all for the cables to commodify, to the point now where there are bins of very inexpensive cable/charger components near the cash register at Walgreens, and ridiculously cheap bulk-purchase options on eBay.
Apple made sure to step away from that possibility for THEIR cables. There's always a bin of the older iPod/iPhone chargers with the others at the Walgreens counter, but never for the new Apple charging scheme.
I don't care, whatever they come up with, fine let it be. But the fact that there are so many different kinds of USB plugs now, totally negates what "USB" stands for. Whatever they come up with, just. fucking. keep. it. that. way - and on both sides!. The whole reason that I originally bought an iPhone was due to the salesman that told me that the charger was a USB charger.
Didn't the UK implement a law that requires some devices (phones?) to use a universal connector of some kind, in order to stop the madness of shitting on the public, requiring them to keep purchasing new proprietary cables every year, trashing all the old ones? What a good idea that was.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
I tell you, Apple marketeers are absolute genius. That first they can say "branded cable" with a straight face, and that consumers actually buy into it... it's an amazing thing.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
A place that I worked at back at the very beginning of the USB standard made muscle-stim devices. Basically high voltage pulse generators to stimulate muscles through skin electrodes.
We were a smallish company and connector development is expensive. At the time we were out looking for new connector ideas to replace the 2.5 mm jack. One engineer actually proposed adopting the USB connector for the high voltage outputs for the patient electrode leads. I'm pretty sure nobody ever asked anybody outside the company associated with the USB standard about it, and it obviously would have been prohibited.
I'm in the UK, I use these in my home. They take up far less space than normal 13A sockets.
Now, powerlock. One for the home.
No, they didm't insist people needed "only Apple's branded cable" - they said that to ensure safety, you should only buy certified chargers and cables, and to emphasise this they initiated a trade in program where they would give you an Apple charger and cable if you sent them a cheap knockoff one.
Don';t let the facts get in the way of a good bash though, eh?
Oh, that's right, you're just "the rest of us" - you're not at all unbiased when it comes to discussions about Apple. My mistake!
Carry on with your gross inaccuracies presented as fact!
So the authentication chip provides no value whatsoever to the customer, only negative value for cost-conscious customers who cannot purchase third party 'straight pieces of wire' that indeed should perform the function of a cable perfectly.
Goodness, you're on a roll today with your "facts".
The chip is not used for normal USB communication (because it's simply not necessary), but is part of the Lightning specification for other uses if the device is connected to something other than a USB port.
Bullshit. They squarely placed the blame on the charger, and instituted a discounted trade-in program for 3rd-party chargers. It had nothing to do with cables and Apple never claimed that.
When you posted above saying "there are only Apple zealots and normal people," where does that put people like you who post lies and FUD? Honest idiots?
Precision wire twisting eliminates crosstalk and unequal induction.
Seriously. It's all in the twist.
Probably because USB is an evolution of serial communication between two endpoints (think RS232c and friends, or the ancient and beloved 20 mA loop) which isn't remotely the same paradigm as CSMACD networking.
Really, a smaller rectangular connector, as compared to the current micro-usb trapezoid connector is going to somehow make everyone dance in the streets because it is less likely to be mangled? It would seem that the problem with mangled connectors is not because of the trapezoid shape but the fact that the smaller they become, the thinner the material and therefore the more delicate they are.
This sounds more like a marketing decision to make people go out and purchase new adapters when they get new devices.
Let me go back to the last discussion we had here about Apple's lightning connectors and find all the people who said a reversible connector was too difficult to manufacture, expensive, and fragile for anything but overpriced shiny hipster fanboi Apple gear...
Also, olbig. XKCD
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
It's a horrible design. Large, bulky, and prone to be prongs-up on the floor, ready to puncture the bottom of a foot.
Awful.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
And it didn't take long at all for the cables to commodify, to the point now where there are bins of very inexpensive cable/charger components near the cash register at Walgreens, and ridiculously cheap bulk-purchase options on eBay.
Apple made sure to step away from that possibility for THEIR cables. There's always a bin of the older iPod/iPhone chargers with the others at the Walgreens counter, but never for the new Apple charging scheme.
Exactly. Micro-USB cables and compatible chargers are so common that we haven't thought about what accessories we need to take with us on trips in a very long time. The charger in every vehicle (including the one plugged into the accessory outlet on my motorcycle) will fit every portable device we own, with the single exception of my daughter's ipod touch, and she doesn't use that anymore (her Galaxy Note has more storage and plays music just fine). If someone forgets their charger, they just use someone else's or buy a new one for the cost of a soda at the nearest quickie mart.
That said, Apple is absolutely brilliant in this regard. That they can make cables/chargers a high margin, boutique item, and that people will actually put up with it, is a stellar piece of marketing. Nothing says "exclusive" and "cool" like paying extra for a trendy product when everyone else is buying generic commodity items, even if they serve the same purpose. (I think this is called the "Monster Cable phenomenon".)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
"the next generation miniature USB connector will fit either way
..
What an innovative idea, who would ever have thought that USB connectors you could plug-in the wrong way round was a bad idea
O, and make it magnetic too, please!
Apple may never have claimed the cable restrictions had anything to do with safety, but it's easy not to realise that due to all the Apple fanbois in the tech media and on /. who were insisting that the two were related and that Apple was somehow graciously protecting users by forcing them to buy official Apple cables.
The process goes something like: gently push. Doesn't work. wiggle a bit. Still doesn't work. Flip over and try again. Neither of those work either. Then repeat a little bit harder until eventually it goes in or breaks.
Wait, we're still talking about USB ports here, right?
You can keep your brontosaurus sized UK plugs which are over designed for 99 % of all needs. You need half a meter to be able to have multi-socket with 6 plugs! I find even EU plugs to be over sized & well engineered (not the folded sheet metal plugs of my youth) US plugs are more than sufficient for 220v operation.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Quarter inch headphone jacks I'll agree with, but not the little ones. The plugs are sturdy enough, but I don't know how many headphone jacks I've replaced. If one goes bad in a phone or a tablet or a notebook, bye-bye having headphones for that device. Too damned hard to work on.
Gotta agree about wall warts. God but I hate those things. Wall warts for non-battery devices like printers, scanners, antenna amplifiers and so forth are especially stupid. If there are two devices that do the same thing in the store and one has a wall wart, I'll buy the other one even if it costs more. Wall warts for battery powered devices should be wire warts; put the wart in the wire, not the plug, there just aren't enough sockets to waste them.
Free Martian Whores!
It sounds good, but flat rings may not always make a solid connection, though they could be made to be grooved or wavy like a car clutch. But there is the problem that the magnet could lose strength over time.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
...I remember when USB and Firewire first came out, one look at the plugs and it was obvious that one team was a little clueless.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
___________________
| + # - |
| =============== |
|__-_____#_____+__|
+ positive
- negative
# ground
each is interconnected with its match
To claim Apple "invented" the idea of a reversible USB connector is utterly just plain silly. Even if you claim it is invention to do something blindingly obvious, you'll be disappointed to hear that Nokia's DKU2 cable was (a) reversible (b) carried USB and (c) existed on the 2002 eara Nokia 6100, a full 5 years before even the first generation iPhone and a year before the iPod's reversible connector supported USB.
The original iPod dock connector was not reversible. I'm pretty sure that the Lightning connector from last year is the first reversible connector that Apple has ever used.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Yes, they are well designed.
The UK BS 1363 connector is well designed, well over designed.
The need to put the fuse in the plug makes the plug large, heavy, unwieldy and frankly, a complete pain in the arse to carry around. It might not fall out of the socket and after the effort it takes to put it in you'd expect that.
The Australian AS/NZS 3112 connector is far better, polarised in a 2 or 3 pin configuration, impossible to put in backwards, capable of staying in the socket unsupported without being a problem to plug in or remove and a 6 port powerboard isn't the size of a small boat. The Chinese adopted a similar design for their domestic plug.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Actually, a collegue (she's not a techie) bought a bunch of cheap lightning cables.
Each of them broke within a couple of weeks of usage.
Anecdotorama notwithstanding, cheap crap is in some cases annoyingly crappy.
Nothing is wired straight through - electrically it's impossible, because the Lightning plug isn't palendromic. Everything has to go through the chip so that orientation detection and appropriate rerouting can occur.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I agree on the technical merits of UK plugs, but they are simply overkill for many low-current applications. For instance phone chargers, which I imagine people want to be able to carry in a purse, without shredding everything else in said purse ;)
In Europe, we generally have two kinds of plug/socket for these reasons. The larger, grounded one is equally robust to the UK one - the ground rails are supported from the sides. The smaller one, which obviously fits in a large socket too, is slim enough that it doesn't look awkward in a small USB charger.
Having the fuse in each plug is a nice idea I'd like to see in the larger plugs, but then again, a lot of devices have their own internal fuses, and for the really power-hungry behemoths you use something else like three-phase power instead of regular consumer plugs.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Yes, I could. Unfortulately, adapters tend to add one more place where things can go wrong, and they increase the stress on the ports where they are used. I just want to end the proliferation of new styles of USB connectors. So it won't go in both ways? Turn it over! This isn't rocket science.
www.wavefront-av.com
Of course, there's a big wide range between "cheap crap" and boutique items. "I bought a generic replacement and it broke, so all generic replacements are cheap crap" is a rhetorical gimmick, not a hard and fast rule. There's even a good chance that some generic copies were made in the same Chinese factory, by some of the same people, as the "real" item.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Finally, a bit of sanity in the USB world. Take *that*, people on this forum who said it couldn't or shouldn't be done.
Now let's see if they can retain the only good quality of current connectors - the spring action that keeps them from falling out like other connectors (I'm looking at you, HDMI).
Perhaps for an encore, they can have the next version of the USB spec make HID events produce real IRQs, so we don't need to keep PS/2 hardware to generate PME events.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
What about ddr memory? How many mother boards or sockets have been damaged through forced attempts to install one the wrong way? Why could not the smart people put a dimple or red dot on the dim and on the socket to indicate alignment. Why not have hermaphroditic everythings where everthings are possible.
They were successful with long florescent tubes, and more. Do they do this to meet a cost opportunity, or a time constraint.
Why why why, a thousand examples to use to ask why.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
The pin remapping seems to be handled within the iPhone itself somewhere, no-one's quite sure where. (It wouldn't be terribly difficult to integrate it into the normal USB controller - there's vey little difference between the two USB2 data pins electrically.)