Comment by jpxxx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jpxxx | Hacker News Reader

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Other gadgets? Like what? Describe this workflow.

Plugging in to your Kindle PowerFast adapter that only fast-charges a Kindle? Plugging in to a PMP that that supports USB-MTP or USB-MSP, which Apple doesn't support at all? Plugging in a HDMI or VGA adapter? Wait... they don't have those for micro-USB. Reusing your PDMI gear? Ooops, those are only pin-compatible with 30-pin and haven't gotten any real traction. Plugging into a USB audio device? Oh wait, THAT STANDARD DOESN'T EXIST EITHER.

So I'm begging you, tell me, my mind is OPEN on this: describe the benefit of Apple moving to micro-USB beyond "I can reuse my BlackBerry charger from 2005".

I can't come up with enough pros for anyone, including the customer.

MHL moves 1080p24 video and 8-channel audio over a micro-USB connector. The use cases for the 'dock port' in 2012 are docking in cars/alarm clocks/speakers/video docks and charging. MHL covers the first set, and any charger can give the right amount of amperage as long as they reverse-engineer Apple's hacky way of using a resistor grid on the data pins to control how much power the device can take.

Just because you don't hear about these things in the Magical Revolutionary Wonderful Apple bubble doesn't mean they don't exist. MHL to HDMI cables exist today and are usable today.

This is fascinating, thank you. I haven't heard of this standard.

CEC, video, audio, DRM, and power over a single cable, with two physically and electrically compatible micro-USB implementations. Hrm.... I am intrigued. I'll have to think on this.

S3 needs its own adapter for MHL. So much for a standard

That's primarily because it also supports sinultaneous USB OTG for some reason (likely Samsung's bizarre checkbox marketing team...) The GS2 supported MHL over the regular connector.

I hope companies start developing MHL compatible docks now that many high end Android devices are shipping with it. A good ecosystem of devices would prevent "improvements" like Samsung's from taking root. (obviously, Apple adopting it would have been enough to finally make one unified accessory ecosystem, but Apple can't charge exorbitant licensing fees for "Made for MHL" logos...)

It would seem that the 11-pin Samsung variant would have enough pins available for all of Apple's backwards compatibility needs. I too wish they'd gone in this direction instead.

You would be able to buy a cable for $2 and share it with other phone users?

And have another port on the phone for anything other than charging?

Yes, correct, that is a Customer "Pro". I am writing it on the board.

Now fill the entire board up with Pros and Cons, then matrix that across Apple, Regulators, Carriers, Engineering, and Third Party Concerns. And then get back to me on what you think the correct answer is if your name is Apple and you have 200M customers to serve.

That really is the only pro you need. The rest is just handwaving and shyster talk.

That is a completely valueless comment. Away you go! :)

In that case it was extremely well matched with the one which preceded it.

But if you are going to make ridiculous demands in lieu of argument, then you shouldn't really expect much of value in return.

I'm asking you to think critically about the tech industry and discuss it with me in a place where people who think critically about the tech industry discuss it.

So let's try again! Perhaps 4 out of 10 iPhones sold today are sold into the American market, where the 30-pin dock platform dominates. It's not a non-factor: compatibility with this platform was a key feature of the original iPhone.

Now we're in 2012 and Apple's gone with a similar but incompatible proprietary adapter for charging and media instead of an evolving global standard that has clear consumer benefits. "Why?" is an interesting question. "Because they're greedy gobshites" is an uninteresting answer.

Do you, ktizo, have some light to share?

The true answer doesn't have to be the interesting one, this is basic Design in the Commercial World stuff. If the change in dock connector for the new phone wasn't coupled to restrictions on 3rd party suppliers and an increase in basic costs across the board, including internally at Apple as it has been suffering from labour shortages, partly because of this decision to bring the cables in house, then I wouldn't necessarily put it down to pure profiteering. But from where I am sitting, there is no clear technical advantage to this behaviour, but there is a clear financial one over time.

[edit] Also, if I wanted to predict where this is headed, if all cable production can be brought in house, then why not go the whole hog and chip the cables [edit - I just looked up the spec, given that thunderbolt is an active cable, this has to be the direction they are headed], with some introduced functionality to sweeten the deal on the consumer side and then you can get total lock-in on peripherals, if you like.

Having to set aside less volume for the connector in your devices is a technical win, and I don't think the financial benefit adds up to enough to significantly matter to Apple. But I'm interested: by labor shortages do you mean internal engineering shortages or Apple being unable to source enough cables from OEMs for various reasons?

This was the main thing I was referring to about the labour shortages -

Additionally, last week Chinese state-run news media reported that several vocational schools in the city of Huai’an, in eastern China, required hundreds of students to work on assembly lines at a Foxconn plant to help alleviate worker shortages. According to one of the articles, Huai’an students were ordered to manufacture cables for Apple’s new iPhone 5, which is expected to be introduced on Wednesday.

http://m.sltrib.com/sltrib/mobile2/54873765-218/foxconn-stud...

[edit] Also, the financial benefit to apple of doing this is not just in the sale of cables, but also in the control of licensing for third party peripherals, which it is losing a grip on as there are so many people geared up to produce their old connector. There is also a possibly huge lump of money from content producers if you can sell them the promise of being able to restrict the devices you can plug their content into.

Well obviously one of the top reasons is control for Apple, nothing can be done here.

From the consumer perspective, and I could be biased because I have a ton of apple's hardware, I see trouble when making a dock. From my experience with microUSB it's fragile, you can sway it by pulling not exactly right, you will have to aim every time you put something in dock. Where as with new connector you don't have to aim - it will slide in, it will easily slide out because of locking mechanism.

At the end of June, in 2009, the European Commission started a movement to make micro-USB the standardized charging port for cellphones. It was subsequently backed by roughly 90% of the cellphone market holders, with Apple, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Samsung (among others) all agreeing to the standardization.

http://www.slashgear.com/micro-usb-formally-chosen-as-cellph...

Apple get around this by promising an adaptor for the european market.

Mandated standards can be useful if you want to waste less resources making duplicates of everything in slightly differing shapes. And consumers get to carry less tatt around and can borrow charging leads off each other and stuff. This isn't rocket science.

Correct, rocket science is easy. Satisfying the needs of a quarter billion customers is hard.

Micro-USB is used universally for charging and photo transfer, and in some platforms it's used for block-storage and/or file-transfer. On Apple's gear it's just used for the first two. So it's not as valuable for iOS customers.

Furthermore, Apple is in the unique position of also owning a dominant ecosystem of media devices that have nothing to do with USB, micro-USB, or any variant thereof. They have to service -that- platform too.

Apple is in the unique position of also owning a dominant ecosystem of media devices that have nothing to do with USB, micro-USB, or any variant thereof.

Umm... globally it doesn't, and most of it's market is outside the US, where it is forced to play ball to a degree by providing converters for those markets.

And if you think that consumer electronics companies have it harder than the space industry, then you are completely delusional.

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