There is no sane reason for the dock connector to not be micro-USB. Discuss. | Hacker News Reader

There is no sane reason for the dock connector to not be micro-USB. Discuss.

jwz.livejournal.com

52 pointspavel_lishin35 comments

Well Micro-USB was standardized by the USB-IF in 2007 and the dock connector was first used in 2003, so I'm going to go with "linear time and a desire to be backwards compatible with the enormous ecosystem of products which provide them with a significant competitive advantage".

I mean, I can go to most hotels now and more or less count on the fact that even if I forgot to pack a charging cable, I can stick my phone on the alarm clock's dock connector. That's a big factor contributing to the low-friction iDevice ownership experience.

*edited to reflect the fact that the dock connector came in with the 3rd gen iPod in 2003, not the 1st gen in 2001.

Wait—hotels have clocks with Apple dock connectors?

The last 4 or 5 I've been in certainly did. These were in and around Seattle, Portland, and Vegas.

Also seen them pretty regularly in NY, Boston and Atlantic City. Typically can't use them to listen to music off an iPhone, but it will still charge.

Definitely saved me a few times.

Maintaining compatibility with iPod integrated cars has been one of the big reasons to stick with the dock connector. It's very expensive to upgrade cars with fancy new head units especially if you want things like steering wheel controls to continue working. Conservatively I'd say anywhere between $1-2k with a professional installation. Plus what's the alternative? I don't know of any standardized control system for micro-USB based players. I think Bluetooth will ultimately solve the integration problem.

The funny thing is over the same time period that the iPod has used one connector devices like cell phones have gone from proprietary connectors, to mini-USB, now to micro-USB. It hasn't exactly been a smooth ride. micro-USB was only announced in 2007 and wasn't widely deployed until 2009. Are we going to have nano-USB in 2 years and repeat the whole process yet again? I'm not arguing against standardized connectors but the mini/micro debacle certainly didn't help consumers much did it?

I always thought so too, but it was surprisingly much less than this at my local Fry's. I didn't opt to buy, but these services ran in the $200-400 range there, IIRC.

No need for separate ports for video/audio out is a pretty compelling reason.

http://pinouts.ru/PortableDevices/ipod_pinout.shtml

Except the G1 does audio out with a hybrid port, so it's not that good a reason. (It does have its own share of issues, but not being able to use a normal micro-usb cable is not one of them.)

Why is a separate port a big deal? You could easily put a micro-USB port right next to an HDMI port, take up roughly the same amount of space, and still have a quasi-proprietary but just as easy to use cable that is just an HDMI cable and a micro-USB cable in the same sleeve.

Haha, you really think apple would put two ports on their devices?

Well, there are rumors of the DP-able iPad 2.

Yes, that type of DP.

Well obviously not because they would prefer they be proprietary. But if you put them right next to each other, you can have your magically minimal design and still let your users get by when they're short a cord.

Don't get why you were downvoted..

By 2011 or 2012, can't remember the exact deadline, their mobile phones must have Micro-USB. At least if they want to continue selling them here in Europe. The ruling for it passed a while ago that all mobile phones must be chargeable with the same micro-usb connector. Apple agreed to those requirements. I don't see Apple doing Dock AND Micro-USB.

Unless they provide an adapter, don't know if this is allowed or not.

EDIT: Ah screw it, if this site[1] is to be believed Apple will only provide an adapter.

[1] http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/25149/next-iphone-charges-vi...

What's wrong with only providing an adaptor? This satisfies everyone doesn't it?

What's the point?

This law is to make all your gadgets chargeable through one cable. Now i have to carry adapters for all my gadgets instead of different chargers/cables? That's just about the opposite of what that law tries to achieve!

I just hope this will be forbidden. Please! All my gadgets use different connectors and chargers it is so annoying (and all seem to be USB but with different layouts.. that's laughable).

Just as a note, HTC uses something called "ExtUSB" which lets them get extra pins (and therefore features) out of something that can still do normal USB functions (like charging, syncing, etc).

http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/index.php?title=ExtUSB

clap clap clap

Among other things, the port was/is/will be a:

- Firewire Port

- USB Slave Port

- USB Host Port

- Audio Line Out

- Audio Line In

- VGA Video Out

- Micro SD Port

- Future Port 1

- Future Port 2

- etc...

I suppose I might care about the complaints if I were not already swimming in iPod-USB cables.

On the other hand, I have a micro-USB phone and exactly one micro-USB cable that I use for charging both at home and in my car, and for sync. One time I misplaced my one micro-USB cable and decided to go shopping for an extra, only to find that every store I visited had no idea what a micro-USB cable was.

And my micro-USB phone is a lot more finicky about flaky USB power sources than any of my iDevices, so I have a very difficult time understanding the complaints about the iPod port.

From a physical design perspective...

- micro-USB doesn't provide anything to hold the connector in whilst the dock connector uses small clips.

- Also, anyone who has used the WD Passport drive with dock knows that the micro-USB port isn't very suitable for holding an iPhone-sized device vertically. There's too much play so the device can wobble or not be seated correctly, and this can damage the usb pins. There just isn't the same positive physical connection as with a dock connector.

I can't stand Apple's iDevice ports. They are wide, difficult to plug, and feel like they will break or snap off. They also collect lint like there is no tomorrow.

Apple's magnetic power plugs on the other hand are awesome! I suppose magnetic interference prevents them from becoming a digital port, but it sure would be nice!

The magnet plug will not interfere with the signals on a digital port.

USB used to need a bit of charge to negotiate a session with the host so you couldn't charge a completely dead battery by connecting to a PC. I'm not sure if that is still true. I just tried to charge a dead Canon point-and-shoot camera over microUSB and it didn't work.

The dock does a/v out without needing another connector. For example, the HTC EVO has an additional HDMI out port.

Apple has added additional features like the control capsule on headphones.

It'd actually be nice if the 30-pin dock connector was standardized and everyone used it. Apple probably isn't too keen since USB beat Firewire the last time Apple tried to standardize a connector interface.

MicroUSB can do AV out, it just can't do HDMI. I would imagine the apple connector can't do HDMI either. Although I really don't know how many "free" pins there are in the 30 pin connector that could be purposed for it.

There is an eminently sane reason, at least from the perspective of Apple's wanting to keep the switching costs of it's customers high. It may also be an aesthetic and design choice, but the primary function of the specialised dock connector is to prevent competitors from producing drop-in replacements for Apple devices and to raise the switching costs for committed apple customers. If you already have a dock connector in your clock/radio and in the dashboard of your car, you aren't going to switch to a usb based device for music or phone or casual browsing.

The A/V connection seems to be a valid reason, but...

Ever used a Ford with MS Sync? I rented a Focus with this on vacation last summer, and it works quite well - a surprisingly innovative and compatibile product for Microsoft.

It hooks up to your iPod/iPhone with the standard USB cable, and can play audio, so it has to stream it over the USB connection somehow, or it rewires the port, which seems unlikely to me, as you'd run out of pins (stereo audio, power, control, ground = 5 pins minimum).

I really wonder how this is accomplished, as it can play back protected AAC music, which must be decoded on the phone, so it isn't just using the device as mass storage...

I can't imagine it's accomplished very much differently than any radio-transmitting iPod attachment for a car.

A radio transmitter for iDevices will use the audio out lines on the dock connector, whereas the USB cable purely breaks out data, as far as I'm aware, so they must be doing something different.

I must have misunderstood you, and now I'm intrigued: what connector does an iDevice have other than the dock connector and the headphone connector?

iPod can stream protected audio content over USB. You just need an auth chip approved by Apple to be able to do that. Most of the cheap devices just use analog audio out and use "Apple Accessory Protocol" (which can be sent over either serial port or USB) to control it.

The dock connector, started back in the days when the iPod was firewire* and since the iPod charged over firewire on Macs but firewire ports on PCs were often unpowered, Apple needed to provide a way for one iPod model to be plugged into both windows and mac machines. This was also before Apple gave up on firewire and went USB only. Further people have enough confusion hooking things up, so giving them a failproof solution is pretty ideal. People really do have trouble confusing video and audio RCA jacks, for instance. This single port has allowed Apple to transition thru dozens of product and models over almost a decade without having any compatibility confusion or hassle, and no special $20 adapters, etc. Compare this to the situation we've seen in the last decade with video ports-- and they only do one thing, yet there have been a half dozen different "Standards".

What is most interesting here is the default presumption that Apple is doing this for proprietary "monopolistic" reasons.

*though the first ipod had an actual firewire port, a later model which was intended for windows as well had the dock connector which supported both firewire and USB and Apple shipped different cables for mac and windows iPod users.

Another thing people forget is the variety of devices Ipods plug into. Your high-tech treadmill, for example, uses pins dedicated to video out.

Indeed. I’d have to say this form of laziness is a benefit. Even the extra cost in firewire controller chips helped to doom it outside of pro use.

It has USB, power out, serial control, audio, video out, and remove features. Probably some others I can't think of off the top of my head. This means it's doing a lot more than just USB.

There are a lot of products like FM tuners and other aftermarket offerings that are only possible via the dock connector. A USB connection would require the dongles to be much more complicated and work a lot closer to the hardware.

PS If you made all the Audio digital over USB you'd need more complex hardware. You want to have the cheapest headsets and output cables to get the audio and video out of the machine. That means old fashioned analog audio/video. It's all in one connector so you can "dock" it with simply one connection.

There shouldn't be any reason for 4 different micro-USB standards when we already had usb-C!

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