Apple's alleged 9-pin dock connector may be same size as Micro USB - Page 3

Has the signalling been shown to be the weak link? Last time I measured, the transfer speed didn't approach the max practical line limit. Thunderbolt requires a separate host chip, that separate chip is why Apple dropped Firewire from the iPod line, it's incompatible with the idea of compact devices when you have unnecessary chips. To get faster, all they need to do is support USB 3, which is on most new computers anyway.


If it's a better connection, why not? mini-USB is largely friction based, this looks smooth with a detent on the end. I've also seen two different mini-USB connectors, four and five pin. They don't interchange.

I would suggest the new connector is better for this use, because it's not just a cable connector, it's also a dock connector, and I would submit this would have more repeatable, more reliable connectivity than mini-USB.


The rumored prices are good though. With the exception of Monoprice, I've had bad luck with less expensive dock cables.


When I saw those smooth notches on the edges, I too was thinking of this detent possibility.


Interoperable on the other end, but point is taken. I think this is to make docks better. This connector looks to be more ruggedly designed too. I don't think mini-USB is designed for daily insertions.

Here is an off of the wall concept, that would not surprise me.  The new dock connector is a pure male connector going into a female socket, and the microusb is a female socket surrounded by a male housing that connects to a male tongue inside of a female socket right.  What if the new port had a retractable tongue.  If you plug in a dock 2 cable, the tongue gets pushed in and the dock 2 pins are activated/exposed, if you put in a micro usb cable, the tongue stays out and connected to the USB power pins.

 

That way Apple has its custom Dock 2 connector that (hopefully) does more that plain USB, but complies with the EU rules without the complexity of an adapter.  Like I said an off of the wall concept.

 

He means within the context of what some people are saying, which is that MicroUSB plugs will fit into and be usable in the Dock Connector 2 port.

 

Complete nonsense, yeah. 

 

So? Apple made USB+FireWire to Dock Connector cables. Why not USB 3+Thunderbolt to Dock Connector 2? 

 

Sounds like something that will break unnecessarily easily.

 

I agree that it would not be easy to do.  Even if it did not make it into the final design, I do see this as something that Apple would of at least looked into.  Who know though, with other materials (ie not plastic, maybe liquid metal), they may have been able to get it working.  The fact that the tongue is recessed may also give it enough protection that it would work.

 

I do agree that it is not an easy engineering solution, however that has not stopped Apple before.  It also could have been one of the things that held up the redesign from last year.  Don't forget a couple sources came out after the 4S was released that the leaked redesign was based on a real prototype.

 

The GSM-A would like a word with you.

 

Sure. But that's not ports at all… 

 

It's very similar. Government has a responsibility to foster competition.

 

Europe did that by mandating GSM as its 2G standard. It created a level playing field full of competition. In contrast, the US government let American telcos use any wireless standard they liked. Some of them (CDMA) were technically superior to GSM but it led to an incompatible mess where coverage and service were poor and charges were high.

 

(It's also pretty dumb to argue on the world wide web that the EU has never created an innovative product.)

I have not experienced this widely-touted micro-USB "standard," since in the US there still seems to be a wide variety of uniquely shaped USB plugs for phones and cameras, none of which magically plug into each others' devices.

 

The issue there is iOS flash memory not being fast enough to bother. Adding faster memory introduces tradeoff questions regarding battery life.

 

So you'd rather be forced to use crap than to have the option of using something better. Well, that beautifully sums up what the EU is doing with ports right here, isn't it?

Is there a reason it is not feasible to offer both now? Why not include a us USB cable and sell a thunderbolt cable? That would give the people who have computers with thunderbolt ports to take advantage of it now. It also might encourage people to upgrade to a new Mac. It might also help to speed industry adoption of thunderbolt.

I think that is a reasonable assumption assuming two things are feasible.

One, the cost of putting hardware in the device for TB on all devices with this connector is feasible.

Two, there is a benefit to syncing and/or charging that make it a viable option. Note that NAND speeds have been hanging at about 22Mbps for years now and aren't getting better with the small lithography.

 

And this is inexcusable. The more expensive stuff has greatly increased in speed.

As long as the USB micro connector won't fit in the 9-pin Apple socket, and vice versa, it doesn't matter whether or not they have similar outside physical dimensions.

 

What your promoting isn't competition, at least not in the capitalist sense, it's more like a regulated oligopoly.  It takes away the opportunity of the marketplace decide winners (and losers) and puts that decision in the hands of bureaucrats or judges.

 

Which, or be fair, the EU is apparently entitled to inflict on themselves.  Just don't expect the rest of the world to follow edicts or "mandates" from a panel of Swiss judges or Belgium bureaucrats.

 

Another half inch of thickness and it would be a MacBook Pro. The 13" MacBook Air gets battery life comparable to other Ultrabooks. The 11" isn't bad considering how small it is. I have never placed my MacBook Are in a 2" thick padded case. I have a neoprene sleeve for it that fits tightly, and the end result is still thinner than the MacBook Pro. It fits nicely into a pocket of a suitcase or even the front pocket of my regular notebook case (so I can get two notebooks into the same case).

In the case of GSM, it's the opposite of what you allege. A few more regulations made the cellular market considerably more competitive. In the US, you had to buy your device from your carrier, and you couldn't take said device to a different carrier should the relationship go south, you had to buy a new device. In the EU, you just get a new SIM card and you're on a different carrier.

To pretend the US carrier market isn't an oligopoly is to live in a fantasy, I think it's clear the US carrier market is worse.

 

Forget your ideological views for a moment and look at the facts. In the 10-15 years after GSM was mandated in Europe, Europe had the cheapest and best cellular networks in the world (bar maybe Japan). It also became the home of the most successful companies in the industry - Nokia, Ericsson, Vodafone, etc. It took the US a long time to catch up. 

 

It certainly wasn't an oligopoly. GSM is an open standard. Anyone could license it and contribute to it. Competition was fierce from all sides of the industry.

 

Do you think that it's wrong that the US has a standard for power sockets? How dare the bureaucrats and judges tell us what to do!

 

 

It's a trade-off. Long term competition vs. short-term technical gain. Qualcomm's version of CDMA was technically superior to GSM but the costs were terrible once Qualcomm had locked you in. That cost was passed onto the customer.  

 

Japan, which uses both CDMA and GSM.

 

Yes, the ones whose success is written in history. And nowhere else.

 

 

Except the side that, you know, wanted to use better technology. Because they weren't allowed to.

 

Correct. Great technology but one company had a virtual monopoly (60%+ marketshare) for a long time. Prices in Japan were high and things such as number porting were completely unknown. The market has changed a lot in the past five years. Japan is no longer a world leader.

 

 

That's the price of competition - companies rise and fall. Only monopolies have any kind of staying power.

 

 

But what was the price that the US paid for CDMA? High prices, poor service, hidden fees and long contracts. Was a slight technical edge worth all of the downsides?

I've never seen such NAND. Can you show me?

 

Well that exposes me for the solid state storage greenhorn I am, dunnit?  I was thinking about the chips used in standard size (and Apple's stick) computer SSDs. They'll have to be crazy expensive (and suck way too much power) for smaller devices to use.

NEWS FLASH! Samsung to announce new 9-pin dock connector, another innovation from heaven...

Exactly. That's why Apple isn't always the first adopter of new tech, preferring instead to wait until it can be sold at reasonable prices. This of course doesn't apply to everything; rMBP.

Yeah, SSDs are made up of NAND and then use a controller much in the same way RAID woks with multiple HDDs to speed up the overall read/write far beyond what any single HDD could do.

Now Apple does typically does use two NAND chips per iOS-based iDevice so I don't see why they technically couldn't use a controller to nearly double the speed of the storage access. There are surely plenty of reason why this hasn't been done yet — size, cost abs power consumption cone to mind — but it is technically possible.

 

 

What exactly are you optimizing for?  The ability to switch carriers or good data coverage in highly populated areas?  Competition was fierce within the confines of a poorly chosen standard, not between the competing technologies.  I'm sure it was good for manufacturers who toed the line and did what they were told.  And, really, who doesn't love a Three-Year Plan?

 

 

I don't think it's wrong for the US to decide their own standards for power (sockets/voltage/frequency/grounding), but I would object to being forced into using the European "standard" power sockets.  Especially when the only thing that really matters for compatibility in the smartphone space is the ability to provide a nominal 5 volt source in a USB A socket.
 

 

In the US, Sprint/Clearwire went with WiMAX and most of the other US Telecoms went with LTE.  The better technology ultimately won out.

 

Imagine if some Belgian bureaucrats had picked WiMAX as the mandated 4G technology?  Or if a panel of Swiss judges had banned the LTE standard from using the 700 GHz spectrum available in the US (at considerable effort) because the EU wanted to make use of 800 GHz instead?

 

 

Tell me how that gets corrected when governments mandate the standard?

Edited by John.B - 9/9/12 at 2:53pm

Why couldnt this new port accept micro usb to just charge an iphone? Htc phones had a special port that accepted mini usb cables to charge and sync but also accepted special htc cables that also allowed video out and other cables.

If htc could do that why wouldnt apple? It would satisfy the Eu.

1) Apple may have done that but the images we've gotten so of the connector and port say otherwise. Notice that micro-USB pins are inside the connector whilst Apple's rumoured connector has the pins on the outside. If you look the port interface tere appears to be no tongue in the device to accept mico-USB.

2) Apple has been in accordance with this new law since they started putting USB-A on their EPS about 8 years ago.

Still posting your usual cesp I see.

First off, it's a "rumor" about Apple being the only supplier of adaptors or cables. Secondly, you're lying about "accessories". There's no way Apple isn't going to let all the companies that make docks, speakers and other accessories make them work with the new connector. That's one if the best features if iDevices - the wide range of accessories made to work with them because they have the same port in the same location.

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/10/1776  says

 

 

As a result, world leading mobile phone producers committed themselves to ensure compatibility of data-enabled mobile phones, expected to be predominant in the market within two years, on the basis of the Micro-USB connector. The agreement was established in June 2009 and signed by Apple, Emblaze Mobile, Huawei Technologies, LGE, Motorola Mobility, NEC, Nokia, Qualcomm, Research In Motion (RIM), Samsung, Sony Ericsson, TCT Mobile (ALCATEL), Texas Instruments and Atmel (IP/09/1049).

 

Nope. Fact in that they agreed to provide an adapter. Not fact that they agreed it to be the standard for phones.

More likely to be micro Thunderbolt.

And what does the mandate require of companies? Does it say they need to put micro-USB on their devices or does it say they can use a proprietary connector so long as they use USB-A on their EPS? Seriously, how many fucking times does it need to be stated before you people actually read the very simple shit that has been laid out before a dozen or more times? And who the **** said that Apple wasn't part of the group?

 

I'm contemplating making this "rule 3" on my list, but I'll have to come up with a more generic way of saying it. 

 

A little selective editing goes a long way, doesn't it?  That standard is actually for chargers, not micro-USB connectors.  The title to the press release even says, "Commission welcomes new EU standards for common mobile phone charger".   Apple never would've signed off on it otherwise.

 

Here's the full presser, for the TL;DR crowd's benefit (bold is mine, for emphasis):

 

 

To no one in particular; I love the European slant that assumes the world automatically waits with bated breath to adopt EU standards, when all they needed to do was establish that charger units support a USB A socket (which most have for the past few years).

 

No Japanese carrier ever used GSM. A domestic standard called PDC was used instead, which was arguably technically superior to GSM (more efficient use of airwave spectrum, less power consumption on handset side) but was never seriously marketed overseas for various political reasons. Quality of service in Japan has always been good, with high availability and a lot of innovative services, but was never what you would call "cheap."

Introducing a new tech to Japan is easier by orders of magnitude compared to the US. For example, think about the actual length of fiber required to reach every home in Japan. Now do the same for the US. Big difference, eh? The same applies to cell tower coverage, since there is so much more land to cover.

 

Yup. I posted only facts, and Shidell counters it with "derp" and rumors.

Apple store: Lightning to Micro USB adapter

 

/thread