Comment by jpxxx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jpxxx | Hacker News Reader

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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?

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.

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.

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