Smaller iPhone dock cable shown with mystery engraving - Page 2

Not that there's anything wrong with it?

 

 

 

Phil: "So I'm walking down to my car and it hits me."
Tim: "Yeah, what's that, Phil?"
Phil: "iPhone 5."

Tim: "Phil, it's the 6th phone."
Phil: "So they say. So they say."
Tim: "So who says? We're the ones who say."

Phil: "Tim, the blogs are saying iPhone 5."
Tim: "They're saying it because they think we 'shorted' them last year! They're pretending the 4S was the exact same phone as the year before! The 5th one was 'supposed' to come out last year, but since it didn't it's coming out this year."

Phil: "Eh…" *waves hand dismissively*

*door opens*

Scott: "Hey, Tim, Phil."

Phil: "Hey, Scott. Hey, what's the name of our next phone?"

Tim: "Oh, you're dragging him into this?"

Scott: "… iPhone, why?"
Phil: "Yeah, but what's the number?"

Scott: "… six…"

Tim: "You see? You see? Now will you let it die?"

*buzzer*

Tim: "Yeah?"
Jony: "It's me."

Tim: "C'mon up."

*beat*

Phil: "Why can't it be 5, Tim?"

Tim: "Phil, we've been over this before…"

Scott: "Hey, Phil, can't we just drop the number like on the iPad?"

Phil: "We'll ask Jony. He's smart. He should know."

Tim: "Oh, I don't believe this…"

Jony: "Don't believe what?"

Tim: "Oh, Phil's on the iPhone 5 kick again."

Jony: "Oh, bloody… Phil, you know that doesn't work."

Phil: "Oh, and you know what to name it? You're just a designer. I'm in marketing. I'm supposed to come up with this stuff!"

Jony: *already getting peeved* "Phil, it's our 6th phone."

Phil: "Yeah."

Scott: "And we put iOS 6 on it."

Phil: "…Yeah."

*knock* *Tim opens the door*

???: "And it has an A6 chip in it!"

Tim: "… Hello, Mansfield…"

Phil: "……so?"

Jony: "So… don't you think it'd be a little odd to call it 'iPhone 5'?"

Phil: "……Phil's getting very upset…"

Generally, the metal "plug" part of the connector is actually a shield, and not a ground. The shield is connected to ground however, usually inside the host computer, while the shield and ground are isolated at the peripheral. This helps to prevent electromagnetic interference. So in other words, I doubt Apple would be using the shield as a ground for powering and charging the devices.

The iPhone can send power, that's how accessories like the camera to Dock Connector work. Data communications do send power both ways. How else could the data from the iPhone get back to the host if the electricity only flowed one way? Many of the pins (currently) are live all the time, and inserting the rumoured connector would short the pins on each insertion and removal.

Data pins are powered, and can be shorted, and on early USB equipment, shorting the data+ and data- on a USB socket on a computer would often kill the socket. Shorting the data pins with the power pins was sometimes fatal to the whole logic board. Nowadays the power pins are fused, and the data pins are protected well enough not to blow up when shorted.

USB uses differential communication, a pair or wires makes up a single data line. Hence USB 1 and 2 have just a single, half duplex (can't simultaneously communicate bidirectionally) communication line consisting of two wires. USB 3 has two grounds, one 5v, and three pairs of data lines (allowing full duplex, simultaneous bidirectional communication), which equals the 9 pins. I think I may be the first to point out that because two of the pins in the official USB 3 A connector are both ground, Apple may well be able to get away with using just one ground instead, so only 8 pins would be in use.

I'll repeat that, only one ground may be required, thus making USB 3's pin requirements identical to the eight pins that are shown in the pictures. You can't really turn off some of the pins without dropping back to USB2, unless you had some kind of buffering circuitry in the cable itself. That'd make for a very expensive cable. I still don't think the iPhone 5 will have USB 3 though.

Having solely USB for dock/speakers/microphones/video out will make accessories much more expensive, as the processing would need to be done in the accessory, unless it used the headphone jack too. Hopefully this wont be the case, and the pins can supply line level audio outputs and serial communication too. Perhaps the idea is to use the headphone jack as a partial substitute for the lost pins, using it to supplement the Dock Connector, effectively adding an extra four pins.
Edited by Elijahg - 9/11/12 at 7:47pm

Thanks for your explanation. I do think they could overcome the obvious negative consequences of shorting the contacts with some innovative firmware/software based override techniques but this would just be another typical proprietary Apple solution: i.e. Think different, Not necessarily better, just different. 

 

Seriously. C is for Cook. Tim Cook.

No problem. It would be possible to have resistors in series with each pin, but for power pins a resistor large enough to prevent shorting damage would also reduce the power available to connected accessories to an unacceptably low level. You could have resettable fuses too, but they allow large currents for a short while before they blow, plus they're physically big. Other than having some kind of switch in the socket to actually enable the pins (I think you suggested this earlier), there isn't really a viable hardware or software solution.

Just to clarify my previous post: it is possible to have bidirectional data communications where the electrons only flow one direction, thus allowing the iPhone's data pins to be unpowered, but it's not used for high-speed data transfer. It's only for pretty low speed stuff, and certainly not USB.

Explain to me how short would work in regards to my previous example of how of the 9th pin could open the circuit for the other 8 when fully inserted?

What would have been cool is an optional thunderbolt dock.  Universal thunderbolt/ usb dock.

That is about the only way it could be done. It would actually close the circuit not open it (no current flows in an open circuit). Seems a bit clunky though, a bit of dirt or dust blocking the button's release would cause a short when removing the connector.

There are other issues too: the metal edge of the connector would cause hideous wear to the gold coated pins in the iDevice unless they somehow lifted out the way before insertion.

The exposed pins on the plug would only have to flop down on a coin, edge of a MacBook, iMac, Apple keyboard etc, and it'd short out some or all the pins. Not good at all. Perhaps the plug only becomes live when it's inserted, but again all these buttons and mechanisms make for one mightily expensive cable.

the person's wearing a Nike Fuelband in pic 3, should be easy to find em!