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Comment by rangibaby | Hacker News Reader

Lightning is a replacement for Apple's old and huge dock connector. You're probably thinking of Thunderbolt.

Thunderbolt definitely is designed as a replacement for Firewire, USB, 10 Gbit Ethernet, HDMI, and all other current wired connections. It's been advertised as such for a while.

I first heard about Lightning just 2 days ago. I'm now confused between Thunderbolt and Lightning, and frustrated that I'll have to go learn about their differences.

All that setup and no "very very frightening" joke?!

Nicely done. The very very frightening for me is the clunky move to wireless. There are about 20 Macs in the office, and when half the keyboard batteries go flat after a long weekend and you need to quickly check something, scrounging the building for a USB keyboard is tiring. This combined with airplays momentary drop outs and refusal to start (infrequent but annoying) make me sad. It's like we're so close to the cableless world, but just far enough away that its awful.

So Lightning is an 8-pin replacement for the 30-pin connector.

And Thunderbolt is still the all-in-one replacement for all wired connections. So apparently the purpose behind the Thunderbolt connector subsumes the purpose behind the Lightning connector, yet the existence of Thunderbolt does not obviate Lightning's existence.

Sorry for the slow uptake, Galileo ;)

TB requires active cables, which are hideously expensive (for now, at least?). Even a 50cm one is $29 from Apple. http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD862ZM/A/apple-thunderbol...

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