Apple's Lightning to 30-Pin Adapter Torn Apart, Reveals Several Chips and Copious Glue

[objc]

I don't understand this whole either-or attitude I always see here. Why can't it be both? The engineering side of me is impressed with the technical aspects of this interface. The frugal side of me is irritated that Apple is using it to extract as much money from their customers as possible. Yes, they're a for-profit company, everyone knows that. But I doubt anyone would be saying much if the price of connectors was more reasonable or they hadn't gone to the effort to thwart third-party connectors.

Even Apple seems to understand -- sometimes that treating your customers fairly is ultimately good for business. Take my S.O. for instance. She has a MBP that had the NV8600MGT fail after 4 years and a few months of ownership. The AASP therefore said the repair would not be covered by Apple and would cost $850. But we called Apple and asked if they would help; they agreed to cover parts (but not labor). When she went to pick it up, the AASP said Apple had covered the labor as well. What a nice surprise. Three months later, she bought her first iPhone. Had Apple refused to help, I doubt she would have bought the iPhone and may not have bought another Mac. Instead, they sold a mobile phone and will be selling her more computers in the future. See, treating your customers well is good for business.

 

[bilibug]

...I still think it was suspicious that the Lightning to 30-pin adapters weren't on sale for two and a half weeks after the device went on sale. That totally seems like they were trying to maximize sales on Lightning cables from people who couldn't wait for the adapters.

I can't help but also think it was to prevent people from finding out just how many of their accessories will still not work - even with the adapter - until most return periods were expired.

This reminds me of the AT&T bait and switch with the original iPad +3G. Touted as having an unlimited data plan that you could turn on and off at will on demand, AT&T changed to the tiered plan a month and a half later - too late for most people to return their devices.

 

[Macboy Pro]

Good grief, here we go again. Made-up costs followed by a bunch of statistics based on the made-up cost. Macboy obviously has no idea what goes into developing, manufacturing, and distributing products.

What is the cost to you of materials you put into what you create each day compared to what you get paid? Think about it! Very likely it's far more than a 2800% markup.

Good Greif Hanky, if you want to challenge that I do not have the actual cost and that my opinion doesn't matter, please do not use your opinion of the actual cost. So your made up estimate is better than mine? Com on, get with it.

 

[Sandbag1]

A consumer survey from ChangeWave Research shows most people don't care about the negatives on the Lightning adapter nor the iOS Maps issue. Demand remains strong.

http://tinyurl.com/93n2dv4

 

[Glideslope]

Some people (for example, you) will believe anything someone tells you. Then you will evangelize the party line on some blog and feel good about yourself.

I find this so amusing.

.

Thanks Jesus.

 

[ZipZap]

What a huge design failure. Apple should have been able to anticipate that users use cases.

 

[citi]

What a huge design failure. Apple should have been able to anticipate that users use cases.

They did, hence the $39 adapter with cable.

 

[Glideslope]

A consumer survey from ChangeWave Research shows most people don't care about the negatives on the Lightning adapter nor the iOS Maps issue. Demand remains strong.

http://tinyurl.com/93n2dv4

They don't care about Maps at all. It's good enough for 90%. The other 10% are here in MR.

Best place to find a Lighting Cord right now is an at&t Brick and Mortar, IMO.

 

[morespce54]

They made a better device that simply would not have been possible with the 30-pin connector. Quit your whining. There are other options for people like you.

Totally.
Like that new thing that you couldn't do with the old 30 pins connector...
You know...
That thing...
The new one...
You know... That thing...
You see which thing I mean, right?

 

[pcharles]

[url=http://cdn.macrumors.com/im/macrumorsthreadlogodarkd.png]Image[/url]

My wife would kill me if I did that to the two we ordered!

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Totally.
Like that new thing that you couldn't do with the old 30 pins connector...
You know...
That thing...
The new one...
You know... That thing...
You see which thing I mean, right?

I do not understand why people are getting so bent out of shape about the Apple connector. Have you seen how many different USB connectors there are? Even if you ignore the multiplying effect of USB 1, 1.1. 2, 3, etc. There is full, mini-A, mini-B, micro-A, Micro-B, and each of my cameras (Fuji 3D, Canon Powershot, Canon EOS, Panasonic Lumix FZ5, TZ7, and FZ200) seem to have their own slightly different one.

Apple has changed theirs ONCE in ten years!

 

[Fruit Cake]

[url=http://cdn.macrumors.com/im/macrumorsthreadlogodarkd.png]Image[/url]

My wife would kill me if I did that to the two we ordered!

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I do not understand why people are getting so bent out of shape about the Apple connector. Have you seen how many different USB connectors there are? Even if you ignore the multiplying effect of USB 1, 1.1. 2, 3, etc. There is full, mini-A, mini-B, micro-A, Micro-B, and each of my cameras (Fuji 3D, Canon Powershot, Canon EOS, Panasonic Lumix FZ5, TZ7, and FZ200) seem to have their own slightly different one.

Apple has changed theirs ONCE in ten years!

It's because of this, they didn't, so all of apples devices were interopable with their accessories people had purchased over the years. Even the budget minded, not just the high rollers with cash to burn who troll these forums with their "opinions" shooting down everyone with a valid or semi valid argument.

I think the change was coming but apple should have facilitated this change by including this adapter free of charge with their idevices, it would be in their best interests to facilitate this change in ecosystems.

Instead people will need to buy new accessories or dock connectors, people will buy, others will consider the alternatives, since their new iPod or phone won't work with their existing speaker dock, why not try a Samsung? I know I am.

 

[repoman27]

I didn't proclaim to be smarter than Apple engineers. I just said it seems like a money grab right now. It probably won't seem like that if we see the new connector do more things than the 30-pin was capable of. I know people who were clammering for a larger screen. I don't know anyone who thought the 4S was too thick. Therefore, I think if the Lightning connector was developed primarily to make the handset thinner, that's pretty pathetic. As I said, though, once we are able to see the Lightning connector making things possible that weren't possible with the 30-pin (as I hope we will), the pain of the switch will be lessened.

I still think it was suspicious that the Lightning to 30-pin adapters weren't on sale for two and a half weeks after the device went on sale. That totally seems like they were trying to maximize sales on Lightning cables from people who couldn't wait for the adapters.

In order to create enough internal volume to allow for the addition of LTE without reducing battery life, the 30-pin dock connector and micro-SIM were ditched in favor of Lightning and nano-SIM. It's all a trade off, if you cram more stuff in there, something else either has to go or get smaller.

It is very hard to test an accessory if you don't have a final shipping product to test with. The testing and production ramp-up of accessories almost always trails that of the primary product. If Apple shipped $29-$39 adapters that didn't work reliably, they would be even more hated than if they just waited until they were ready to release.

I think many people are irritated by watching Apple, a very healthy company, generate what appears to be a significant amount of additional revenue with this iPhone launch from add-on sales of cables and adapters before third party alternatives have a chance to reach the market. There seems to be a generally held suspicion that they are using this brief period of monopoly on a new proprietary interface to charge higher than natural prices and derive unnecessarily high gross margins for these products. This in turn is causing people to refer to the Lightning interface as a "cash grab" by Apple.

Perhaps it is appropriate to deem Apple's current tactics a "cash grab", but if so, it only goes to offset a massive expenditure over the course of the past several years. Why is it so hard to see that a couple hundred million dollars worth of additional revenue in the current quarter from Lightning accessories does not necessarily translate to any net income for Apple? The Lightning interface cost a lot of money to create, and Apple did not choose to raise the asking price for the new cables, thus they opted to take a lower margin than what they currently have on their 30-pin dock connector cables. Only 25% of Apple's revenue was booked as net profit last quarter. Even if every iPhone 5 customer buys multiple cables and/or adapters, there is no way that revenue would ever translate into more than 1-2% of Apple's net income.

AT&T and Verizon did essentially nothing to make the iPhone 5 a great product. In fact, the hardware barely manages to achieve its potential in most US markets due to lack of LTE support, ridiculously low data caps, double dipping on every item they can possibly charge extra for, oversubscription, inadequate backhaul, etc... And yet they will book $20 billion in new iPhone contracts this quarter and they will make more revenue off of "upgrade" fees than Apple did off of Lightning adapters. Why does nobody see the gross misdirection of animosity here?

 

[MacSince1990]

http://www.talkandroid.com/119937-jelly-bean-brings-usb-audio-support-to-android-devices/

Windows has done it for ages as I'm sure OSX has also.

Your points still don't make me think that Apple had customer's best interest in mind.

USB audio for the Mac predates Mac OS X..... back to Mac OS 8.6

 

[seungrok]

OK, I'll spell it out for you. When ifixit does their tear down, they know exactly what they are seeing. They see a chip, they know exactly what they are seeing. If they see unknown components, they look how they are oriented to other known components to figure out what the unknown components are. If they see writing on a chip, they know what it means. They usually can find out the chip maker from the writing and then figure out what the chip does.

If you don't know what your looking at or what you should even be looking for, you don't publish your findings. You don't make bumbling comments like "They [the chips] all appear to be custom and trying to figure out what does what is fruitless."

That said, I will say that this was the first adaptor tear down, so the fund of existing knowledge was just not there. ifixit's iPhone tear downs, for example, are so knowledgable partially due to their past experience tearing down past iPhone models. Still, when they see a new component, it doesn't take much for them to figure out what it is.

It was a blog post, offered for free, on the Internet. You seem to be under the impression that it's from a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Took the words, right out of my mouth, Carouser.

Do you see my point now, kas23? I get where you're coming from, but you have to realize the original intention of the teardown Double Helix Cables did. It was not intended to be some sort of analysis, just a tear down and report the findings to the internet sort of thing.

----------

IDK, I think they look fine, however I totally agree with the complaints on pricing, and comments on type of materials.

Judging by the antique website, I don't know that sales are that not at the moment though.

You have to realize that pricing for each individual 'tiers' of cables are based on the norm/average pricing of that specific tier in the headphone community. Further, tiers are there to cater to all types of customers and budgets, from people looking for the very basic, or people who can justify highly priced, highly refined and unique cables.

I was under the impression that the "types of materials" are your basic, most practical materials for the outer: heatshrink, PVC, etc. For the lightning cables, wasn't the chip directly in the way of the wires, not allowing the wires to be desoldered and ripped out?

What really makes for a 'premium' iPhone cable? It's just an iPhone cable, but with a better gold-plated USB plug, dampening, and a nice looking sleeve. I think that's really enough to make it premium, but that's just my opinion. Maybe you guys are expecting diamond and ruby encrusted jewellery for an iPhone cable?

 

[wesk702]

As someone else pointed out, it depends on if you are talking about a shirt or jacket pocket vs pants pockets. I generally put it in a shirt pocket, in which case putting it in upside down is even more cumbersome. Having it oriented right side up gives you access to the mute, power, and volume buttons, and allows you to slip it out slightly to see notifications, etc. Even when putting it in my back pants pocket (never put it in the front), I put it in right side up.

It's all a matter of opinion, but to say the jack "belongs" on the bottom is silly (using your word). For me, it is an inconvenience, and just one more reason not to upgrade. (Not having LTE in my home or work area is #1)

I stand by my "belongs" comment and I'm sure the engineering department does as well, which is why you see it there, I would definitely say you're in the minority putting your phone in your front shirt pocket. The minority is not how products are geared towards.

 

[kas23]

Took the words, right out of my mouth, Carouser.

Do you see my point now, kas23? I get where you're coming from, but you have to realize the original intention of the teardown Double Helix Cables did. It was not intended to be some sort of analysis, just a tear down and report the findings to the internet sort of thing.

So basically you guys are just relenting now and, in terms of the quality of the "tear down", are agreeing with me, but now with the caveat that it's "just a blog". I get it. It's just some dudes blog and like most blogs, it's just a bunch of garbage. Until then, like I said earlier, I'll wait for the ifixit tear down if I want to learn anything meaningful.

 

[Carouser]

So basically you guys are just relenting now and, in terms of the quality of the "tear down", are agreeing with me, but now with the caveat that it's "just a blog". I get it. It's just some dudes blog and like most blogs, it's just a bunch of garbage. Until then, like I said earlier, I'll wait for the ifixit tear down if I want to learn anything meaningful.

No, this is completely wrong, neither relenting nor agreeing with you. Hope that is completely clear.

Your critique of this tear-down applies an unreasonable standard, one which the poster was not obliged to meet. Your criticism of it has little merit, and there is no way to reasonably interpret my comments the way you have. Either you suffer from a comprehension problem, in which case you can ask for clarification, or you just post in bad faith.

 

[kas23]

No, this is completely wrong, neither relenting nor agreeing with you. Hope that is completely clear.

Your critique of this tear-down applies an unreasonable standard, one which the poster was not obliged to meet. Your criticism of it has little merit, and there is no way to reasonably interpret my comments the way you have. Either you suffer from a comprehension problem, in which case you can ask for clarification, or you just post in bad faith.

OK, you tell me, regardless of the source, was it a quality tear down? It's just my opinion, but I consider ifixit the gold-standard for tear downs. Did this blogger meet or exceed the quality of an ifixit tear down? Yes or No. If not, I'll assume that it's importance or quality is then no different than a post in this thread. Maybe my expectations were falsely elevated when it showed up as a front page story on MacRumors.

 

[repoman27]

No, this is completely wrong, neither relenting nor agreeing with you. Hope that is completely clear.

Your critique of this tear-down applies an unreasonable standard, one which the poster was not obliged to meet. Your criticism of it has little merit, and there is no way to reasonably interpret my comments the way you have. Either you suffer from a comprehension problem, in which case you can ask for clarification, or you just post in bad faith.

It's a crap teardown. If the point of a teardown is to show the internals of the device in order for others to see how it was manufactured and what components it contains, this one fails on several levels. Many of the interesting aspects of the device are damaged, obscured or illegible in the provided photos. Publishing teardowns can be a great way to crowdsource information that one may not be privy to themselves, but in this case Peter hasn't really given anyone enough to go on to provide much help.

While perhaps rarely upholding accepted scientific standards, blog posts are nothing if not peer reviewed. Peter has published first and gained wide exposure, and for this he deserves credit. I just really wish he had found a way to remove the adhesive from the circuit boards in a less destructive fashion, provided clearer photographs of the components, and maybe even thrown in something that could be used as a scale. It's also nice to include the full text of the chip markings so that others can look them up with a semiconductor cross-reference search.

Perhaps your standards in this instance could be considered unreasonably low by some.

 

[iSayuSay]

I don't understand this whole either-or attitude I always see here. Why can't it be both? The engineering side of me is impressed with the technical aspects of this interface. The frugal side of me is irritated that Apple is using it to extract as much money from their customers as possible. Yes, they're a for-profit company, everyone knows that. But I doubt anyone would be saying much if the price of connectors was more reasonable or they hadn't gone to the effort to thwart third-party connectors.

Even Apple seems to understand -- sometimes that treating your customers fairly is ultimately good for business. Take my S.O. for instance. She has a MBP that had the NV8600MGT fail after 4 years and a few months of ownership. The AASP therefore said the repair would not be covered by Apple and would cost $850. But we called Apple and asked if they would help; they agreed to cover parts (but not labor). When she went to pick it up, the AASP said Apple had covered the labor as well. What a nice surprise. Three months later, she bought her first iPhone. Had Apple refused to help, I doubt she would have bought the iPhone and may not have bought another Mac. Instead, they sold a mobile phone and will be selling her more computers in the future. See, treating your customers well is good for business.

Agreed. In fact I might add based on my personal experience that Apple products are not really that durable. I owned 4 Macs machines so far and each one of them need at least one repair job during ownership.
To my surprise, my old trusty PCs had been going on well for averagely 4 years before something went wrong. That's at least double MTBF on my Macs.

The only thing why I vote my wallet for Apple .. Yes, the great and excellent customer services. Still I don't think their premium stuff is much more premium than competitions.

 

[MartiNZ]

We were all so dumb to buy products with the jack connector ontop.

Not at all, there was no iPhone available with bottom jack. Now there are plenty of other reasons to buy the new one over an old one, but bottom jack is certainly a decent one! This will be like dropping the floppy drive for the iMac or the optical drive - eventually we will wonder why it was ever any other way; and then it will never have been, 1984 styles.

 

[tom123]

Did I miss something here

Reply number 38. I think he s Got a good point

IC chips in the socket not in the cable
Any comments on why this would not work?

The mini USB cable gets smashed a lot - Bad idea

 

[MrXiro]

the very article youre responding to is my source of data -- it's not a dumb connector, and its certainly not a buck. im sure ifixit will do a second one if youd like another. you, otoh, have yet to provide any data to back up your assertion that its a $1 device.


ah yes, thats it. "halp! ive been brainwashed!" sorry dude but im an enterprise microsoft .NET developer....but even i can see and evaluate the value that this new connector offers. its smaller, more durable, reversible, and it offers all the functionality of 30 pins in a mere 8. that holds value to me. maybe it doesnt to you for whatever reason, but that doesnt mean it's brainwashing that my milage varies from yours.



i think youre mistaken -- i think this feature will immediately be utilized by third-parties...of the 30 pins currently available certain devices will need to pick and choose in order to get their functionality in just 8. for instance, i have a Pioneer AppRadio -- besides charging and audio in, this product line offers the iPod controls/UI, an external display, and the ability to register tap events on the external display. these are different pins than my clock radio base station.



why would anyone abandon USB for TB? the two serve different needs. TB offers me the highest thru put for external drives...it would be a crying shame to attach an external SSD to USB.

just admit it -- you dont like it because you dont like it. you think theres a grand conspiracy going on all around you. evil corporations. evil product designers and evil engineers. all out to get you...nasty stuff!

No it's a $5 dollar device... One that Apple is charging 6X-8X the cost of to the consumer.

Nobody claims these cables are crap. People are accusing apple of creating their own monopoly on the cables and then price gouging.

 

[mdelvecchio]

No it's a $5 dollar device... One that Apple is charging 6X-8X the cost of to the consumer.

Nobody claims these cables are crap. People are accusing apple of creating their own monopoly on the cables and then price gouging.

it's not a monopoly if its a proprietary connector for your own proprietary product. it's just your company's cable. you are free to license it to others or just build them yourself. its not a monopoly because you, as the consumer, are then free to either buy the device, or choose one of the many alternative devices available.

i love how so many people are tossing the "monopoly" term around when they have no idea what it means....apple's products are not majority market share, remember?

 

[MrXiro]

it's not a monopoly if its a proprietary connector for your own proprietary product. it's just your company's cable. you are free to license it to others or just build them yourself. its not a monopoly because you, as the consumer, are then free to either buy the device, or choose one of the many alternative devices available.

i love how so many people are tossing the "monopoly" term around when they have no idea what it means....apple's products are not majority market share, remember?

Just for posterity sake:
Definition of MONOPOLY: The exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service.

I'd say Apple is firmly in control with a vice like death grip right now on the Lightning cable market.

Do you see any 3rd Party cables? I don't... in fact it seems Apple has put in security measures preventing 3rd parties from creating the cables even with simple reverse engineering.
This in itself prevents the free market. - Source


Not to mention, I think at this point Apple products ARE (or should be considered a part of) the majority market share.

You can only claim to be "the little company that could" for so long.