How monopolistic and anti-competitive of Apple to have a diagnostic port that isn't open to all third parties to use. A lawsuit should be started on this!
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Proprietary Dock Apple Uses to Wirelessly Troubleshoot Apple Watch Series 7 Surfaces in Regulatory Database
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I don’t think from Apple’s perspective this is overdone at all. They are experimenting because they are headed to their goal: a Portless iPhone, and this looks like the first steps in that direction. What they learn from here will shape that future iPhone
Overdone as in, alignment, for instance, the top part is where the Watch would go in, it could be done in a much-simplified design, as in, you don't need the top part, just add alignment to the base.
It's overdone.
Isn’t it good that we have an expert like you here to explain how these things should be done
You know nothing about me, as a matter of fact, engineering is what I do.
Eh, it looks like it's designed to get sub-millimeter-accurate placement, and to hold the Watch in that position for long periods of time without moving, to be quick and secure to set up accurately without any fiddling (thus the tapered pins), and to withstand hundreds or thousands of uses without that accuracy degrading. I see something a bit over-designed, but intended to stand up to a lot of use, without wasting employee time ("oh, the transfer failed partway through because the watch got bumped").
It also looks like you could potentially have one base and multiple top parts, so multiple watches could be secured into top parts while waiting their turn to be hooked up to the computer that's connected to the bottom part. It's designed to be able to quickly take one top part out and drop the next top part in, without a lot of alignment needed.
If it were more fiddly, if it took more time to align, or occasionally let the watch slip out of alignment during the procedure, or lost accuracy to wear of adjoining surfaces over time, that would lead to it, on average, taking longer to repair any given watch, meaning either a larger backlog of watches to repair, or having to build more testing rigs and hire more technicians to repair the same number of watches. I don't think it's overdone, I see a nice tool. Maybe not the way I would have designed it, but well designed for the intended purpose, nonetheless.
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I believe strongly that this is the very first work of LoveFrom 😁
Is there normally a cover of some sort over the diagnostic port? I don't see one on my Apple Watch 6.
Its the R&D gateway to a similar dock for future portless iPhones.
Just checked on my Apple Watch 5, and it looks like it's covered. I'd hate to have to take that cover off - it's not just tiny, but inside a tiny, hugely convex channel.
Maybe the LG = large/grande. They might have an SP (Small/Petite) dock as well. And a What's Up dock and a Hickory Dickory dock.😋
Ports take up space. If they can do the same diagnostics/repairs wirelessly, it saves space for battery or whatever.
Neat diagnostic tool. I wonder if it was designed by Rockley Photonics; and thinking ahead to Watch 8, that's probably when their Laser sensors for Blood Pressure and Sugar will be ready. I think Rockley already designed/made sensors for the current model?
That's because the post is extremely misleading.
This is not some weird proprietary protocol. WiGig is a standard (like WiFi) operating at 60GHz. It has some advantages (throughput!) with some different characteristics -- specifically it's limited to short range and can't go through walls, which has upside or downside, depending on the use-case you have in mind.
But, like most new protocols, it has been a very slow burn, starting around 2009, and still basically unused.
It looks like Apple (in their usual Apple way) have decided to at light a fire and somewhat kickstart the protocol. Using it in this way is an interesting experiment. It allows them to get a feel for the strengths and weaknesses of the existing chips, and for the protocol, while not promising anything for users. This can ultimately play out one of two ways:
- either Apple concludes the protocol is problematic (uses too much power, is really short range, whatever) and never makes it public (but continues to use it for this sort of use case) OR
- they conclude it's actually a great protocol and in a few years they're talking about WiGig everywhere -- as fast data transfer between your iPad and a nearby mac, as the protocol between an Apple AR headset and the iPhone that's driving it, as "wireless USB" for hard drives and printers, etc etc.
Obviously one first part of this is having WiGig HW in the aWatch7. Is there also WiGig HW in the iPhone13 that nobody noticed?
This has happened before:
-Apple seeded the market with HEVC hardware for a year or two before they made it known, so that when they moved to HEVC and HEIC, there was already a critical mass of users.
-Likewise with UWB and AirTags (and the whole talk to a nearby iPhone mesh network idea).
There are a bunch of use cases (like printers or hard drives) where having a fast *local* wireless protocol could be valuable. Of course wireless printers exist, but can be something of a pain to set up precisely because of the generality of TCP/IP; something like BT which only operates within a room could be made simpler to use. Likewise for hard drives (sure, you'd still have to plug them into power of some sort, but you could put a stack of them somewhere in a corner and just leave them there).
So don't see this as "weird pointless PROPRIETARY" Apple; it's not. This is "clever, pragmatic Apple testing a new wireless spec in the real world", just like they kickstarted USB and WiFi, and (still happening, still a slow burn...) Thunderbolt.
We know about this through regulatory filings, so I would assume there would have been similar ones for other Apple devices if it had been used elsewhere.
LG is Lucky Goldstar. It can’t ever mean anything else, ever.
Guys, this isn't as super secret as you make it sound 🙄,..they are literally just a piece of diagnostic equipment to hold, charge & enable data transfer. They are in EVERY Apple Store in the world.
I like the way the first image, the generated one, has the four screws perfectly aligned.
Then reality intervenes and they are at all sorts of angle in the photo.
Then reality intervenes and they are at all sorts of angle in the photo.
Removing a diagnostic port and locking down the ability to reinstall the OS at home or via 3rd party is just another blow to right to repair. Look up how many OG Homepods are bricks now. Apple refuses service and they removed a user facing diagnostic port. How do you own a product if the manufacturer ensures you cannot repair it? What if the manufacturer refuses to repair a device that a software restore could fix (eg. OG Homepod)? Crossing my fingers for more movement on the Right to Repair Act to move forward.