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Comment by tshaddox | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure if I believe this rumor yet. I haven't seen that "This accessory is not supported" message on an Apple device in many years (and even then, it was only when a legit cable was starting to wear out). I've used several cheap chargers and accessories that I'm almost certain are not "Apple certified." Does this program even still exist? Also, iPad Pros have USB-C, and as far as I can tell they are broadly compatible with things like USB audio interfaces which I'm also fairly confident have not gone through any sort of Apple certification process.

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> I haven't seen that "This accessory is not supported" message on an Apple device in many years

Well with the lightning cable it's pretty clear that it has to be MFi-certified, right?

> iPad Pros have USB-C, and as far as I can tell they are broadly compatible with things like USB audio interfaces which I'm also fairly confident have not gone through any sort of Apple certification process.

Sure. The thing is that MFi is some kind of authentication that goes on top. To me it really feels like they were forced to move to USB-C, so they did it, and now the rumor says that they are porting MFi to USB-C (which makes total sense, I don't see a reason for them to drop the MFi program).

"Activating" MFi with USB-C is just a matter of updating the software (assuming that they have the cryptography hardware in the device).

IMHO the rumor is really plausible. Actually I was expecting MFi to be there from the beginning on, and I was confused by the fact that it was not there: I don't see USB-C as a technical reason for them to drop MFi.

> Well with the lightning cable it's pretty clear that it has to be MFi-certified, right?

I don't know, but I would have said no. Is this thing certified by Apple? https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/USB-mini-Fan-Custom-L...

Hmm I guess that fan is just getting power from the device. MFi authenticates the data channel, but I doubt there is any data moving between the device and the fan, right?

That's because all those third-party vendors probably went out of business or abandoned Apple. I had lots of Y adapters to work around the problem Apple created but never solved: There was no way to charge the phone AND use an asinine headphone-jack dongle. The answer was a simple cable, with no power source.

Overnight, they all stopped working because Apple wasn't getting its fee from those manufacturers.

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