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Apple Meeting With Accessory Makers to Promote Lightning Integration
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Are those official Apple-branded cables? Licensed 3rd-party cables? Or unauthorized "copies"?
How do you legally import unauthorized, unlicensed, patented devices into the USA and other western countries? Just cross your fingers and hope they don't get confiscated in customs?
My understanding is that a a regular Lightning to USB cable is indeed a dumb connector and wires. It's when extra functionality is wanted, like converting from Lighting to 30-pin, etc that you need all these chip and protocol conversion. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I'd love to learn something new also.
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Update and correction to myself: My bad, there is a chip on the USB side.
Thank you for this, I lol'd
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Cables are only $19 btw, not $30.
Ty. <3
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No. No. Annnnnd...no.
And...yes. I do cross my fingers quite often.
according to what ive read the speed bottleneck in a transfer to the iphone is not the USB but is the onboard storage; in effect usb3 would net no speed gains. this could be why the Surface is also usb2.
that isnt how apple typically rolls -- partners leak. when have we known apple to let case makers in on the secret pre-launch?
thats incorrect: ive not been inconvenienced and really like the new connector.
...but there already are products in the pipeline, and they will be here by christmas.
just admit: youre upset because you didnt get what you wanted when you wanted it. oh dearz.
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The more I see these depressing post-Steve Jobs announcements from Apple products it makes me sad and happy. Sad that Apple now seem to be losing the impetus it once had in being one step ahead of the competition - and happy I got a 4S instead and saved myself £££s in pointless connector 'upgrades', duff Maps, scratchy cases and one issue after another .... lets hope 2013 is Apple's year again and quality comes before the quantity of 'major announcements'
youre living in a world born of fear. Jobs released plenty of questionable products in his life time. thats documented fact.
the iphone5 has been hailed as the best in the biz, not one step behind.
the maps are fine (maybe some people have issues but id wager most people dont; for those that do MapQuest is free); the case doesnt scratch more than any metal objects rubbed against other metal objects (hint: dont do that); and im unaware of the other issues after issues.
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the logic isnt saying chinese = crap. its saying cheap-chinese = crap. the iphone was not designed nor built by cheap chinese companies.
Oh, so I only need to spend $60 to have a cable at work, at home and have an extra in my bag or something? You're right, that's a fantastic deal and doesn't at all seem like a ripoff compared to the $5 each that they can be had for now, or the fact that I can buy a perfectly usable one practically anywhere (not just the Apple Store).
The factor people seem to be forgetting (and that Apple is actively squandering) is ubiquity. Up till now you could carry any iPhone or iPod into a friend's house, car, office, hotel room and have a pretty good shot of finding a compatible charging cable because there's a decade's worth of dock connector devices and cables out there.
That's out the window now. If you own an iPhone 5, for now you're on your own. There aren't going to be expensive authenticated cables kicking around because Apple has done a poor, late job of licensing them Want to obsolete millions of devices? Make the adapter cheap and make it everywhere. We've got neither.
As a consumer, you get to either blow a bunch of money on cables any time you lose or lend one out, or just want an extra — and/or guard your one precious cable with your life. Two crappy choices.
If complaining about that is "whining", then don't read the posts about it. Apple can probably get by without you defending their stupid choices.
MR said:
Hahaha. I can just imagine a roomful of Chinese businessmen balking at Apple's prices. Some things don't change, no matter which country you're in
You always need to convince yourself that it's worth the price. Inside, your head always tells you that this is an absurd amount of money.
you just answered your own complaint -- it took a decade to make the 30-pin ubiquitous. what do you think the state of the world will be in 10 more years? these things will be everywhere and youll have forgotten what a pouty face you made about it.
its a short-term problem. seriously, wipe those big boy tears away -- it will get better. youll make it, i know you will.
yeah, judging by the millions and millions and millions and millions of happy customers who value the tools they buy from apple, i think youre probably right...
You're coming in halfway through the discussion. Start at page 1
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Five dollars a cable? That's ludicrous. I can get them at $5 a cable. However, I have to order 1000 pieces at a time and they're not Apple branded or authorized. $5 is just unreasonable of a consumer to ask. While we're at it, I'd like a Skyline GTR at a "reasonable" price... somewhere in the $10-15k price range. Possibility? Never.
2. Next year iPhone 4s will be entry level, then it will be completely out of the picture.
Same goes for iPad 3rd and iPod touch
Better never than late. They could have done this 6 months before the iPhone release without discussing iPhone details at all. This is a full year late.
For those of you complaining about Apple's license fee for their custom cable, forget it. This is a free market. They can charge whatever they want and they probably have a custom chip for it.
For those complaining about incompatibility with 10 years of 30 pin connectors, you're right. You agreed to that when you bought the device. You have a converter. Others have converters. There will soon be widely distributed new cables. Far faster than the originals BTW since the uptake rate is almost 50m a year on iPhones alone, plus the other devices that will use it this year going forward. It might take 6 months or so to have them everywhere you go, but that part isn't so bad.
For those of you complaining about Apple's license fee for their custom cable, forget it. This is a free market. They can charge whatever they want and they probably have a custom chip for it.
For those complaining about incompatibility with 10 years of 30 pin connectors, you're right. You agreed to that when you bought the device. You have a converter. Others have converters. There will soon be widely distributed new cables. Far faster than the originals BTW since the uptake rate is almost 50m a year on iPhones alone, plus the other devices that will use it this year going forward. It might take 6 months or so to have them everywhere you go, but that part isn't so bad.
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Hi Apple, welcome to Shenzen, the city where over 90% of the worlds knock off electronics are manufactured.
I think people are missing a potentially nastier possibility
Since there is a smart chip there, what's to stop Apple from releasing a firmware update that disables or refuses to work with these knockoff chips.
It would suck to buy something like a speaker dock and then have apple release a firmware update that kills it.
Of course Apple will say that it's unauthorized, but the end user still gets screwed
Since there is a smart chip there, what's to stop Apple from releasing a firmware update that disables or refuses to work with these knockoff chips.
It would suck to buy something like a speaker dock and then have apple release a firmware update that kills it.
Of course Apple will say that it's unauthorized, but the end user still gets screwed
There's no such thing as "best possible User Experience" (did that really need to be capitalised?) when it comes to a charger or a dock. It either works, or it doesn't. My car charger doesn't need to cost $30 or make me a cup of coffee for my to have a good "User Experience", it just needs to charge my phone. Funnily enough, $5 supermarket cables are able to do that just as well as a product sold in an Apple store. Odds on it came out of the same factory anyway.
Apple managed to include MagSafe 2 -> MagSafe 1 adaptors in the first run of new macs that included MagSafe 2, are you seriously telling me that they couldn't figure out a solution for 30-pin -> Lightning that would provide a better "User Experience" than the expensive, supply constrained garbage that we have to put up with now?
Hah, yeah they really should have.
Another obvious solution: Hire the hackers.
Instead of imposing tariffs and hiring lawyers to keep China from "cheating."
I'm all for protection of private property, patents are good. But you can't patent the ONLY way to do something, or shut everyone out from accessory production.
Overprotection, overcharging, and unobtainability ensure the existence of a black market.
i.e. Film Studios.
Not only are they disappointing the customers, they're also ruining the business while doing it.
Tsss.
Possibly, but Flash memory faster, even much faster then USB 2 is available and in use.
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AMEN!
Compared to MAP-gate, this is worse.