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Comment by nwh | Hacker News Reader

The iPod dock connector is actually an industry standard that Apple happened to use. They didn't create it.

Really? Could you provide a source for this? I was under the impression that the 30-pin connector was (yet another) proprietary Apple hardware standard.

I'm struggling to find any source that directly confirms it, but it's most certainly the same plug used in this standard, and the Dell Streak which conforms to it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDMI

You're saying that Apple's 30 pin connector, introduced in 2003, was a copy of a "industry standard" that was designed in 2010?

Maybe that's why you're struggling to find a source that "directly confirms it".

The standard is for the specification of the pin layout not the plug. As all the links on the wikipedia page are broken and I can't remember the name of the plug itself, we're at a loss here.

even if that is physically the same 30 pin connector, that isn't even remotely close to being electrically the same.

PDMI has USB 3.0, displayport and high current power.

the ipod dock connector has firewire and composite video.

PDMI certainly seems to be a copy of the Apple 30 pin connector, but it was introduced long after it. It wasn't electrically compatible, of course. To add confusion, certain Samsung tablets used a physical PDMI interface which was not electrically compatible with either PDMI or the Apple thing.

That article actually says "PDMI aims to replace the ubiquitous iPod cradle connector".

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