Rumor: Apple ready to retire iDevice dock connector - Page 2

If people on this site call you crazy there's a good chance you're onto something because they hate ideas and they certainly won't tolerate common sense criticism of Apple.

If they're going to do it they'll just pull of the band aid. Will be sore at first but you'll get over it. As for customers with third party speakers etc. Someone will produce a new to old connector, and so people will use this as an excuse to upgrade to an AirPlay speaker. It's just a damn shame they are so expensive currently.

That's the dream. Should have happened 3 years ago. Besides, if it's MagSafe it doesn't even need to be that small.

And flying cars.

You might get your wish. Thunderbolt is a strategic technology for Apple. If Apple switch from USB to Thunderbolt for wired syncing, it will provide further motivation for iOS device owners to replace their PeeCees with Macs. Those without Thunderbolt-equipped computers would still be able to use slow wireless syncing.

The writing on AI has been getting really bad. I read the second paragraph a few times to make sure I wasn't missing something.


If you don't think this is news, your crazy. Apparently, Apple has temporally moved its production facilities back two years. This has tremendous advantages, like knowing exactly when supplies will be short or what team will win the Super Bowl. I do wonder why they don't start producing from an earlier date, and avoid "the fiasco" completely.

Maybe you should actually check to see what comes out of the 30 pin dock connector, like:

Video - VGA/component/HDMI
Audio - Line in/out

Did you really thing it was just for power and data?

The USB 2 micro USB connector is limited compared to the 30 pin connector, but what about USB 3? I think there was also a rumor of magsafe-like connectors a while back, these two go hand in hand. But I'd still prefer something I don't need to keep unique cables and accessories for.

re:thunderbolt, meh, none of these devices has fast enough NAND to saturate USB 2 and won't for a while, let alone USB 3 if they finally switch to that after Ivy Bridge macs are out. I guess it could charge them as fast as a 10W power plug, but you would not see crazy transfer speeds just by changing the connection.

They may have used the same physical connector, but they've added and deprecated features over the years as they see fit. For example, anyone that had an adapter or accessory that charged through the Firewire pin, and of course, dropped the FW data connection too. It seems like they've done that for other things too.



802.1g has 20MBps practical payload rate. n should be considerably faster. I don't think iPods ever achieved anything close to the Firewire practical max payload rate.

Yeah, I don't know where people keep getting this idea that faster connection = faster transfer, the NAND in these devices only reads and writes at 15MB/s as an upper limit, its not the same high performance stuff in SSDs. That doesn't even saturate USB 2.0, which limits external hard drives to 40MB/s.

The 30-pin to microUSB DOES limit the connector. Just because it is an 'adapter' does not mean it provides the same functionality- it does not. Apple sells that adapter to appease the EU who mandates that all cell phones be able to charge over microUSB- CHARGE is the key word there.

You're still crazy and I'm laughing now.

Now what?

apple retail makes their money like everyone else, on the accessories

there will probably be some adapter and i bet bose and ihome will have new accessories ready to buy if it comes out

what about in the car?

when i had android for 6 months last year i couldn't play it via my car's USB port. iphone works via USB and no need to buy the bluetooth option for the car

You mixed up the ratings. FW is 400/800Mbps, USB 2 is 480Mbps, 802.11n is 150-300Mbps.

We don't use Mbps for filesystem data but MBps or MB/s, which is 1/8th of the Mbps ratings as there are 8 bits in one byte.

FW400/800 is therefore 50/100MB/s, USB 2 is 60MB/s, 802.11n is 18-38MB/s.

In real-world scenarios, FW400 gets 30-40MB/s, FW800 gets 60-70MB/s, USB 2 gets 20-30MB/s (it is faster on Windows) and 802.11n gets about 10-15MB/s.

I think 802.11n is fine for wireless transfers. It's mainly just syncing so the transfers are small. I like the idea of having magsafe but it will still be connected to USB for Windows compatibility.

USB 3 will help out - 4.8Gbps or 600MB/s maximum but the sync will only ever reach the maximum rates of your drives so the write speed of the NAND inside the iOS device and the read speed of the drive inside the Mac. I expect the NAND write will be the slowest but if they double the NAND and use RAID 0 in future iOS devices, it can go up a lot. There is a test here of the storage speed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2EP1MRmEMs

It doesn't look like a very sustained test but 50MB/s seems reasonable. In RAID 0, they could hit 100MB/s and max it with USB 3.

That could use a micro-USB connector or it could use magsafe. The 30-pin connector was quite good in that it could support a phone device's weight but it is bulky and it needs to go. I would like to see microUSB with USB host support so that you can buy an inexpensive adaptor for plugging in a camera or USB pen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAd8RHGSqks

Imagine two people with iPads exchanging files, just take the pen, plug it in, copy and you're done. They don't need to show the filesystem directly, it can just load up discovered files inside the individual app view.

Nah, I'm just crazy for being right. Happens all the time.

No, I'm just right, you'll see.

In related news, Apple sends out armies of salesmen signing up new lucrative licenses for use of the new dock connector.

You don't have a falsifiable claim, you'll eventually be right for the same reason that a broken clock is right twice a day.

You weren't even right about what the article was about.

And people can be accidentally right about an outcome but be completely crazy as to why they expect something to change. So why do you think that no physical connector will occur on upcoming iDevices.

59 comments and a full day later and the article still has egregious errors in it? You people aren't even trying to be legible anymore.

Sorry to break it to you, but digital video signal and audio signal are nothing but specialized data. As long as the interface's speed can support the amount of data to be passed through, a USB cable will transport the video and audio signals you mentioned just fine.

If USB can't transport audio signal, then my USB audio card won't be working at all. And there are monitors with only USB connectors on the market. So it's not a theoretical statement to say, USB can indeed support video and audio connections.

That is true, but that changes it from being a direct wiring to your amp to needing an intermediate chip and power supply to convert the data to a signal if your amp doesn't have USB audio built in.

Video out, I don't know much about that setup, but still would generally require a chip in between your iOS device and your display.

I think they're both unnecessary complications vs. the existing system. If sending out a raw stream goes away, I would expect that Apple would just standardize on the wireless AirPlay system, that does away with intermediate cables, signal converters, etc., and it seems a lot of devices are starting to include that capability now.

BT 4.0 is around 24 Mbps but that's just BT 3.0 + HS and THAT's just BT + 802.11.

Although if I remember right they tweaked it a little bit.

My transfers are often large (movies) and if the iPad really becomes more of a productivity tool I can imagine I would want to keep the 30 pin dock connector with some of the pins for TB.

You guys forget this patent already?

http://www.patentlyapple.com/patentl...connector.html

No more composite or audio out.

Hey look ma! USB 2.0 AND 3.0. PC users will be just fine.

Audio and Video docks, not so much.

Good luck with that prediction kkerst. Not this year.

I will make the prediction that we will see this new dock connector on the iPad 3 and iPhone 5.

See, that's a verifiable prediction. In a few days we'll know if I'm right or wrong.

agreed. Wireless charging with an adapter instead of a cord

IMO if people on this site call you crazy there's an even better chance that your just a petulant fool who can't stand to be wrong, and blames the messenger when their mistakes are pointed out to them or things don't go their way.

PS - not talking about anyone specific here just the whackadoodles and trolls in general.

There are issues with wireless charging. Most notably it's slow. I'd love to option to buy a 30-pin connector cable for iDevices that would terminate at Thunderbolt to get the 10W charging from my Mac. The iPad takes too long over USB as it is.

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@ chabig - Exacty. The way things are now you can connect the iPhone, iPad, or iPod to at projector and show video, presentations, or more (the pico projectors are really handy!), but if Apple replaced the dock connector with USB that would no longer be possible. Fine for danbirchall who never considers such a use, but bad for all of the other users who depend on such possibilities. However, if Apple figured out a way to stream the video wirelessly that could be easily taken up by the market, then I wouldn't have too many objections to removing the dock connector. Although it will be hard to replace the physical strength of the dock connector. Many dock accessories would be impossible if the connector wasn't so strong.

Wait - do you seriously think that The Fox and the Grapes is somehow connected to "Don't Shoot the Messenger"?

I'd rather Apple do something like Samsung's Pogo connector. It allows for very easy drop-in docks. It's less cumbersome than even Magsafe.

Or go all the way and create an inductive 'dock'. Touchless charging and data exchange.

They are yes, although neither one really fits the psychology of this situation exactly which is why my statement probably sounds a bit confused.

How is Aesop's The Fox and the Grapes connected to punishing a messenger on account of the news he brings?

No way is Apple putting Micro-USB in anything of theirs.


Oh, so Thunderbolt, then.


Not when most of the docks/connectors require the devices to be seated properly. You'd trust an adapter 1/4" thick underneath your iDevice there wobbling in the accessory?

Bleck the ipad's speeds would be limited regardless of connection type. The memory used there has a relatively low maximum write speed compared to the non idevices.



Somehow I figured you'd say that. It looks cost prohibitive at this time. While mass adoption would bring the cost down, I'm not sure it will be in line with usb at any foreseeable point.

Can't charge without a cable to power somehow, unless you create energy (literally) out of thin air. Energy is neither created nor destroyed. You could always slap solar panel the size of a city block to back to your iPhone.

You realize that inductive charging exists, right? You don't HAVE to have a cable, but there's no tech that exists yet that allows Apple to do what they want with it.

I never said get rid of all connectors, I said they should get rid of the big ugly 30 pin connector they're using now. They could have a proprietary connector for power charging alone, everything else can be handled through AirPlay and wireless syncing - yes, even audio in could work. They have been driving towards this for awhile. And who cares if wireless syncing is slow? What else do you have really have to do when you're syncing anyway?

It's not crazy nor dumb when its Apple's idea, but when a simpleton like you comes up with it you get the dogpile treatment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcqdz...e_gdata_player

Yep, but your device must still be attached to a base unit, even if it's through the air, it's not across the room as most people are assuming. We're talking a quarter of an inch at best for a distance. People wanting this technology don't understand extremely basic physics (or it would have been done already.) If it would have been possible, don't you think the power companies would done this along time ago and do away with power lines? Of course they would have, but since it's not possible to transmit energy, we're stuck with a cabled approach for power delivery. The best approach they have come up with is burying the cable, but that's just out of site out of mind. Yes, I'm an engineer and I know more than two cents about this topic.

Thanks dude, although simpleton? Hehe, ok. I have been on this site for a long time but I usually don't comment too much. I'm constantly amazed how people screw topics into the ground and have no idea what they're actually talking about. Still, it's entertaining.