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Comment by unoti | Hacker News Reader

That's truly amazing what they're doing here. I'm sorry if this is an ignorant question, but wouldn't it make sense for there to be some kind of USB port or something that's actually designed for I/O on the iPhone? I mean, surely there'd be less power loss if the port was actually designed to power other low power devices. Especially if it could mean that you don't need as powerful of an external microcontroller for doing the hacking and encoding that's necessary for doing all the work-arounds from not having a real IO port.

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Apple wants you to use their 30 pin interface, but that requires going through their MFi program and that lets them control the hardware ecosystem like they do the software ecosystem.

To be fair, there are certain advantages to hardware manufacturers willing to jump those hurdles. You're able to ensure no one can make software for your hardware, for one. Secondly users who plug in your hardware can automatically be taken to the app store to download your software.

Also the headphone jack is available on all phones and if you develop for 30 pin interface, you have to design different hardware connector for different phones

Is there anyplace online people in the MFi program hang out (forums, usenet, mail lists, etc.)? I've got some very basic questions about the whole process, but it seems like such a black hole (from the outside looking in).

It would be great to use the ipods or ipads for industrial data collection, but we'll need IR and a way to get data on/off without network connectivity.

Not that I've seen, and the NDA you have to accept is pretty strict.

That's what I was afraid of. In the quantities we're looking at, maybe we'd be better off jailbreaking and selling the whole thing as a package.

Or maybe I'll just drag my feet a bit and hope there's a decent Android tablet with USB host and an SD slot coming soon...

You should take a look at Adam from Notion Ink. It's USB host. To me that's the killer feature, for this reason!

Thanks, that's an interesting device.

So far, it's vapourware. That's something I just can't get over when I consider ordering one.

If it's vapourware then what were they showing at CES 2011?

It's vapourware until you can buy one. A lot of things that are shown at CES do end up being cancelled before they're ever released.

The pre-orders are shipping. Mine will arrive in about two weeks.

And there was video footage of Duke Nukem Forever shown off in 1998.

I really have no idea about the iPhone, but the iPad can be a USB host via the USB part of apple's camera connection kit.

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