Apple to add USB port to next-generation iPad - rumor - Page 2

I'm not sure I understand your ? ....

The Dock connector has 30 contacts; the USB B-mini has 4, and one must be used for ground. So, it would appear that the iPod dock connector is vastly more capable of a myriad of functions than a simple USB B-mini.

1. Submit a bug report to Apple.
2. Make an appointment with an Apple Genius. You might even be able to get somewhere over the phone.

Most likely this is a bug in their software/hardware that needs an update to resolve. I say that because Apple has little interest in disabling their own hardware.

Ahhh...

Not used it yet, but it doesn't seem up to the par. That being said, Apple's idea of Beta is very different from Google's idea of Beta (and what people have come to expect of Betas, for that matter). Hopefully the issues will be worked out when it graduates from Beta.

Stereo analog line out, stereo analog line in (iPhone only), serial accessory communication and detection, composite video out. Which can all be performed simultaneously, USB can't handle all that.

Personally, I think it unlikely that Apple will add a USB port, partly due to it marring the iPad's clean exterior. Steve just wouldn't allow an extra port that isn't completely necessary, and will only have limited uses. I don't know anyone who downloads photos to their iPad directly from a camera, and certainly know no one that uses it for MIDI. Perhaps it'd be useful to transfer media between iPads and/or computers when WiFi isn't available, but due to copyright, I'd say that's unlikely.

Why do people constantly talk about USB as if it's a binary feature? I see so many comments such as, "I won't buy one until it has USB" or "without USB it's useless to me".

A USB port on an iPad in of itself does nothing.

What do you want the USB port to do?

Connect to printers?
Drivers would be needed.

Connect to networks?
Drivers would be needed.

Additionally software and the essence of the UI itself would need to be radically changed in many ways to accommodate everything we use USB for on desktops and notebooks.

I hear people all the time talking about how they want to connect cameras to bring HD video over directly to the iPad without thinking it through on exactly what that would mean (with files being larger than the storage of the iPad itself).

Instead of thinking "slap a USB on that sucker", how about talking about what use case you have and see if there's a better way to implement it with this new device type. For example, USB for printing isn't the way to go.

Hey Liverlips, how do we qualify for your "ignore" list? I wanna join the petite coterie you've listed!

I believe it is a voluntary standard, not a requirement. And for phones and not tablets.

LOL gotta love the passive-agressive personal attacks in the names hes listed.

A seamless and invisible support...... named SIS.... not visible in photos so there would be none, you just have to believe it exists when you order. BTW I don't want to be a computer expert, so i am quite happy that even a moron can use a Mac. Makes it so much easier for normal people.

I'm actually quite honored to be on his ignore list!

Analog signals. Plus can handle a higher power load (i think).

lol you people crack me up. what would be SO bad about Apple adding a USB port to iPad? it would provide an easy way to offload data. what's the downside?

Signaling other than USB comes to mind.

Could they even add optical to the current Dock Connector design so that its backwards compatible with USB and LightPeak? How wiill Apple make the transition from copper to optical when itll be years before all their iDevice users have PCs that support optical connectors?

No, they are not. They are saying the charger must connect via a micro-USB plug. The cable itself could be a simple 2-wire DC wire coming from an AC adaptor, having nothing in common with USB other than the plug at the end. Sure, you could use a USB cable plugged into your computer, but that is not what they are saying. Only that the connector at the end of the wire be a micro-USB type B connector. In that, Apple's dock connector does not meet the standard.

You lost me. If its the charger that needs to have micro-USB, and obviously a cable that can attach to micro-USB then how does Apples dock connector even come into the picture?

It is really cool, if iPad coming with USB and blu-ray (as "sflocal" mentioned in this post).

Dont forget the flux capacitor

I'm sure you've heard the anecdote "Never Say Never," let alone saying it 3 times in the same sentence!

It will happen when enough people demand it!

@Bugsnw... As for a built in kickstand, I'm with AppleStud on that one. Jobs would allow cockroaches before he'd allow it.

I also read it the way he took it!! Your explanation doesn't really change things. Subliminal slip? or just poor gammer (jk) ;-)

Why did they turn down the backlight time so drastically with 4.2? There's no setting for it that I can find. It turns off in 30 seconds or so. No sense in reading a PDF or admiring a picture for very long unless you keep touching the screen. Seems like a backwards step to me. It would have been cool if they added a feature to 'control' the backlight time instead of just dropping it off to preserve battery life...

Beta=not ready for prime time incase you didn't know.

HAHA- you figure it out. Read all of their 25,000 posts and tell me what they're all full of.

You're on track regarding the offloading of data. Sure, it makes sense to virtually everyone on earth. Except of course, Apple.

You're trying to delineate between devices & data and Apple cannot help you there (yet). Eventually in their epic battle with Google (still to come), Apple will be forced by the market to assist their customers with their data. But right now, Apple only cares about their devices, not your data.

The real question is: will Apple wait to be forced into a corner to then move from being a device-centric company to a more customer data-centric company, or will they take the reins and plow their own path?

Right now, we may all have various iPods, iPads, iPhones and laptops & desktops. While Google works to move data between these devices & sync to all, Apple works very hard to restrict the flow of data from one device to another. See iTunes & their restrictive policies if you don't understand this. When Apple introduced the 11" MBA with only 64BG of storage, it was mostly because Apple doesn't give a rat's ass about your data, and so, they don't have an application or utility that would enable a User to sync a subset of the User folder from a desktop to this mini-laptop. Like giving a Gift Card for Christmas, Apple basically tells you: "Do it Yourself."

Eventually, this philosophy will become a losing proposition.

Ask any Mac.com customer how much they just damn love Apple for mucking (or wiping completely) their photographs between a number of mobile-me-dot-com "upgrades." What a horrendous P of S. And shame on Apple for shafting customer's data. But Apple doesn't really care about your data, they only care about their devices.

For Apple to survive and prosper, they will eventually be required to assist their customers - such as you and I - to be able to sync all our data between a myriad of their devices.

It will be market forces - such as Google - that finally will force Apple to do this. And this is also why Microsoft can be viewed as being so totally incompetent, e.g., Apple allows (actually, they created it themselves) a gigantic hole in their business model to expand and fester & what used to be their chief rival cannot even recognize it in order to launch a counter attack. Pathetic.

There WILL be a USB B-mini port on the next gen iPad. It will be for power only, and you will NOT be able to up or offload data via this physical IO.

And it will be yet another spike Apple drives into their own coffin. If they would awake and switch to a view that their customer's data is much more important than their own devices, they would - in remarkably short order - leave Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Sony, et al, far behind and dominate the interconnected electronic landscape for years to come.

We'll see what they do...

Hate Apple and its strategies much? Thanks for venting your spleen here. It seems that whatever you feel about Apple and its strategies, millions and millions of satisfied users can't be wrong. I'd source that statement but not right now.

Hey, I even have a suggestion for you regarding my nic: Dreckforizer.

Absolutely 100% wrong. Been a Mac guy since 1988. Please note you can now get great taste in a decaffeinated coffee :-)

We're brainstorming here, try to follow along with us because it seems like you're a Mac supporter, so your experience, input and thoughts would be valuable.

One question for you: can you successfully & completely move and share all your data between your desktop Mac, your iPad, your iPhone and your MacBook?

Yep. I have a USB-powered portable hard drive where I keep files that I know I'll be using and editing and curating when I'm on the road with my MacBook. I get home and synch them up with my desktop Mac Mini. I don't have an iPad (yet) and don't need an iPhone. Been doing this since about 1988 when some outfit came out with a portable SCSI 40MB drive that I used to transport stuff between home & work. My wife also had one. They were from laCie if I recall correctly. Over the years we've had various similar hardware. Now we've got space on a host that holds such stuff for wireless syncing.

While it isn't keeping me form buying right now; a USB port, if easy driver support is had, can allow one to implement a lot of cool features that would enable new uses for the iPad.

Well no as we already know that the USB port on the camera connector kit can do useful things.

Well not in my case.

Specialized networks for sure but ethernet wouldn't hurt either.

Drivers are an issue no doubt but a solution is not impossible.

Why do you think this?

Many of us have mentioned that storage is a problem on iPad. In any event I suspect you are the one not thinking it through. The ipad provides a platform for doing old stuff in new ways. That is the key.

You are sitting there making a decision when you may or may not be taking every use case into account.

For example an iPad could make an excellent point of sale terminal with a USB port. That turns the device into a stationary machine but frankly a very capable machine that could effectively lower the cost of point of sale terminals.

Other ideas:

1. Use the USB port to connect to an adpater for connection to an in care computer. This to get diagnostic info. Frankly the Touch screen iPad would be prefect for tis usage.
2. Turn the iPad in to a mircoprocessor development system and use a RS232 adapter to do that communications.
3. IPad would make a great paltform for various roboitcs kits and programs on the market if a USB port was there to communicate with. This would give iPad a huge boost in the educational market.
4. Industrial uses about especially in regards to connection to various industrial newtorks. Again may of these networks are accessible via USB adapters.
5. Cameras! Cameras!, Cameras! There are all sorts of possibilities here. Agian you need to look outside of the home market into the industrial.
6. External GPS recievers. Again this should be obvious.
7. HAM radio. All sorts of possbilities here.
8. Keyboards. It should be a snap to connect one to the iPad, a standard USB port would allow for this.

In some case a USB port is the ideal solution for certain uses for the iPad. Such a port would allow for an even larger array of apps and uses for an already very versatile machine.

It kind of amazes me that people still don't understand the new EU charger regulation.

It's really quite simple. Every device that seeks to conform to this standard must include a physical micro-USB port so that a standardised charger can plug into it to charge the device.

Let's go through it again.

Hotels, airports etc will have chargers available to people. These chargers will have 2 ends. One end will be connected to a power source. This could be a socket in a wall (mostly), or on occasion it could be a standard USB port on a laptop or desktop. So far so good?

The other end of the charger will be a micro-USB plug. Here is an image of a micro-USB plug (note, it is even smaller than the mini-USB plug that most folks are familiar with).



Now is where we really need to pay attention. This micro-USB plug MUST plug into a micro-USB slot that is physically located on the device itself.

Many phones have already started to incorporate this (to meet the new EU standard). Here is a picture of one...



To be perfectly clear then... to meet the EU standard, the device MUST have a physical slot on the device that looks like this. Forget the Apple 30 Pin connector, it is not relevant to the discussion other than to say that the micro-USB slot will have the potential to duplicate some of its functionality.

I have no point of view as to whether Apple will choose to conform to this EU standard with the iPad, they may or may not. (It's unclear whether Tablets would be covered under the agreement, which was made before the iPad was launched). I assume they will have little choice but to comply with the iPhone 5 however, so you should certainly expect to see the micro-USB slot physically present on the iPhone 5.

I thought so, but then you posted something completely opposite from what the tech world is saying. If you have actual content to quote from the specs then do, but making smarmy posts and using Google Image to cables and devices with Micro-B (which obviously have existed for awhile) doesnt help any argument you may have.

Here is what the specs state.

http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/newsr...fm?doc_id=5272 Thats all about the power supply, and that makes sense, but youre saying that both ends of a detachable cable have to be micro-B plugs and both the power supply and smartphone have to have micro-B socket. That doesnt make sense. Its a foolish redundancy.

Due to the ambiguous nature of a lot of the text Im willing to entertain your notion that its both the plug and device, but youll have to post something that backs it up.

You go on about how much of an expert you are on Micro USB and then you show a picture that clearly is not one. You credibility is suddenly in question.

For those interested, this is what Micro USB looks like...



And here's another...



And another...



I own a device that has Micro USB... do you?

Perhaps it's not USB but LightPeak which reportedly may be implemented using a USB plug.

In any case, this seems like a sign of the impending death of the 30-pin connector that debuted on the iPod. More on my reasoning on my blog.

Nope, i don't own any Micro USB devices. And yep, i just grabbed the pic from Google images (the same as you did). Apologies for grabbing the wrong one. My eyes are not so good these days! A lot of these small slots look similar with my old glasses :-)

Jeepers Solipsism, for a seemingly intelligent guy, you really surprise me sometimes. Read the text you quoted - it's there in black & white, and it's really not complicated. I'm not sure how you managed to misunderstand my post - i really tried to make it ridiculously clear but obviously failed. Let me try again...

Firstly, no, there won't be any cables that both end in micro-USB plugs. I'm really not sure where you got this from.

Let's start with the phone this time. The phone MUST have a micro-USB receptacle. It will look like this... (this is hopefully the simple part to understand)



Ok, now let's move to what plugs into the phone. This will be a cable. The "B" end of this cable, (the bit that plugs into the phone) will of course be Micro-USB and look like this. You must be with me so far?



Now, let's see what is at the other end of that same cable pictured above. There are 2 options for this, and maybe this is where you are getting confused?
1. it will often simply end in the "brick" (or "EPS") per this Blackberry charger. Simple right?



or, alternatively

2. it will be what the European standard refers to as a "an EPS with a detachable cable". This is per the current Apple iPhone chargers where the cable can actually be detached from the brick. In this instance the "A" end of the cable (ie, not the end that plugs into the phone) must be USB-Standard A (as per the current Apple syncing/charging cables). You are obviously familiar with this, but for completeness sake, it looks like this. (To reiterate, micro-B on the "B" end, Standard A on the "A" end.)



The "A" end of the cable will then plug into the EPS. For this reason, the EPS "shall be equipped with a USB Standard-A receptacle". Which will look like this...



It's really fricking straightforward. For some reason people on this forum can't seem to get their head around the fact that for Apple to conform to this standard, they will have to add another port to our beloved, minimalist phones (and perhaps iPads).

(Note also, I have no idea whether Apple will choose to conform to this standard for any of their devices or not, I'm simply trying (really hard) to make it clear what will be required should they wish to conform to the standard.)

Ignoring your smarmy comments and still saying that Im willing to entertain the notion that you are correct youve still failed to prove it.

Youre still grabbing images of USB plugs from Google and not actually using the USB-IF site to backup your argument. Youre failing to acknowledge that many other sites are saying that Apple doesnt need to do what you say they need to do and that they could include a simple coupler in future iPhones to address the issue.

Now, I can see how adding a coupler doesnt reduce waste the way the adding a Micro-B port to a device can, but thats not the point, the point is you havent proved your case. Its not what you know, its what you can prove.

It is really fricking simple. Re-read:

"Above requirement also applies to detachable cables used as adaptor i.e. where the Micro-B is replaced by a proprietary plug"

The A side is what the Apple chargers already provide. The B side can be replaced by an adaptor with a proprietary plug. I wonder what fricking proprietary plug Apple might use?

At most Apple will provide a docking to microUSB adapter in the EU market if the current adapter meets the EPS specs. It'll probably looks like a smaller version of the Camera Connection Kit with male dock connector one side and female microUSB-B on the other.

Mostly this is to avoid more chargers in landfills so the spec is mostly focused on standardizing the wall wort part. The preference is probably to have most chargers be USB-A and not have an attached cable since you probably have one for sync anyway.

Agreed, you don't understand the new standard. It does NOT require a micro USB connector on the phone. That's quite clear. But most phone manufacturers don't have a proprietary connector to do additional functions as Apple does. All they need to do is to change theirs to this micro size. Apple doesn't need to do this. There are a lot of articles about this. I linked to the first one I found. It will correct your misconception

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/new...phone-adapter/

You can post all you want, and continue to confuse the issue, but you're still wrong. Why don't you Google "micro USB recharger requirements Apple", and see what you come up with? You'd be surprised.

that was seriously the stupidest reply i've ever read on here. notice you couldn't refute a SINGLE point he made, because everything he said is (unfortunately) true at the moment.