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Comment by sophacles | Hacker News Reader

I don't get it. If I buy an old IPhone, or anything with a Micro-usb, I can just take my phone knowing I can charge it just about anywhere. But they put a new connector on it. Why not just put a micro-usb without adaptor on it? It seems that it would make a lot of sense for those of us who don't want pockets/bags full of cords and adaptors. Or just do both.

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For one, Apple's new connector ("Lightning", but I'm not sold on the name) is reversible so is easier to insert correctly.

That is fantastic. Seriously, USB is annoying that way. But now when I take a trip for a couple days, which my work has me doing regularly, and if I have an Iphone 5, I have to be sure to bring my adaptor kit, or pay a $30 adaptor tax. With micro usb, I pay a $1 forgetfulness tax, if that, because almost everywhere has a spare usb charger or cable lying around.

I don't want to pay that much to not have to turn the cable over once.

In nearly every single situation, the right orientation for a USB cable is with the USB symbol on top.

There are exceptions, but this one rule let me get it right for all but 1 device I own.

Unfortunately (and speaking as one who has never knowingly given Apple any money) not all USB devices get this right: I've got a card reader (made by Kingston) with the USB logo on the wrong side of the plug. It's really anoying.

Yes, but it's still the connector most people put in correctly on the third try. ;-)

I noticed that micro USB is better in this respect.

Doesn't help in the dark, which happens to me every night as I put it onto charge.

My symbols have long faded away. I had to scratch one side.

The tech spec page says "Lightning to USB Cable".

Doesn't say if it's USB 2 or 3, and doesn't say if it could be Thunderbolt (unlikely)

Likely for size reasons. "Micro" USB is still pretty thick on the iPhone thickness scale.

I'm just speculating, but it seems more reasonable than the "because they can charge you for it!!!" hand-waving going on in my sibling comments.

Also, the new connector is reversible. I'll gladly take that over standard, although I know other people have different preferences.

Which is really the only major benefit over both the standard USB and the current Apple 30-pin.

To be honest, I'm not sure if that alone is really worth the extra annoyance of a new connector.

TBH, there's almost zero extra annoyance for me. On the day my iPhone 5 arrives, I'll pack up the old connectors in the family misc cables box and never use them again. I'll probably buy two extra connectors, one for the car and one for the office. Overall effort spent: less than twenty minutes and twenty dollars. Definitely worth it by my accounting.

This phone http://img.pics.livedoor.com/012/d/3/d3c8a2642464e6c8bfd0-LL... is 6.65mm thick

I'd assume it's because controlling the adapter means controlling the device ecosystem and therefore both less testing they have to perform and less support issues from the random stuff people try to connect up to the device.

Because selling the new cords and accessories and licensing the new connector to other companies will make Apple a lot of money, and the costs are not visible to the consumer (i.e., a cable costing $10 instead of $2, with $8 going into Apple's pockets - the $8 Apple surcharge is not easily visible to the consumer).

If Apple had decided to make the same amount of money overall by raising the price of the iPhone 5 and using standard connectors, it would be more visible to you. This way is akin to the "cheap printer and expensive ink" paradigm, or the "cheap airfare but you have to pay all the taxes and fees separately" paradigm. Most consumers will not look ahead to calculate the lifetime cost of ownership of the device, they'll only look at the initial price.

A reasonable estimation is that apple is going to NET about 32 billion dollars in sales of iPhone 5s in its first sales year. Take that $8 surcharge, add an extra adapter at $10 a pop for every one of those customers, and you're talking about an extra 0.5% of net revenue.

It's meaningless to them. It really is. Regardless of what reason they ended 30-pin, it cannot be seen as a primarily financial one.

In the past I would agree, but with all the stories of cost cutting lately, I am skeptical that it is meaningless.

Factoring in supplier changes and development costs, I would wager that the .5% revenue would result in an overall wash on the accounting sheets.

I really don't think it was to sell connectors. Those kinds of things are too low margin for Apple to really care that much.

Some ill-sourced dirty laundry about Apple Retail does not apply here. If I may engage in some hyperbole: this is the highest-profile product in all of consumer electronics that is at the forefront of almost any discussion regarding the biggest change in how seven billion humans spend their days in a long, long time. And disrupting a decade-old ecosystem of a billion 'things' is not engaged in for cost saving measures.

I used round numbers for illustration. A microUSB-USB cable costs $2 (delivered!) from dx.com. A cable to do the same thing from Apple will cost $19:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/05/apple_adapters_for...

plus taxes, plus shipping if you want it shipped. This part is costing Apple less than $1 to produce and distribute. I see an estimate of 23 million iPhone 5's will be sold in the first quarter of availability. I couldn't say how many extra cables will be sold but if we go with your one-per-phone estimate, we're talking about an extra $400 million, in profit, in the first quarter of sales alone. Just from cables, not counting docks and speakers and whatever else people plug into their iPhones. Counting those other things, maybe a wild-ass guess would be on the order of an extra $5 billion in profit over the next year?

I have zero doubt in my mind that Apple's decision to forego both the old dock connector and microUSB was primarily profit-driven. Let's summarize the situation:

-- changing connectors has an extremely clear negative impact on users (all your cables and accessories are obsolete)

-- changing connectors has an extremely clear and truly enormous profit benefit for Apple (also a negative impact on users)

-- Apple has stated that the new connector connects in two orientations, providing a tremendous benefit to users

Is that a fair summation of the arguments on both sides?

Point #2 is arguing with your conclusion, so let's set that aside.

You're on the right track but you have to look wider. And now that prices are out, we can play with better guesstimates.

Anyone purchasing an iPhone will have a USB wallbrick and a USB-Lightning cable in the box. They can charge their phone from that setup, any computer, and any USB wallbrick Apple or any third-party vendor ever sold. So the "upsell" here, if there is one:

- Purchasing extra USB-Lightning cables for convenience ("one for the work PC too...") $19 - Purchasing Lightning-30 adapters for old 30-pin dock speakers and car adapters still in use $29

I'm guessing attachments will be about 10% for the extra cable and 10% for the dock over the life of the product. But let's say 50% for all iphone 5 purchasers.

With an estimated global sale of 80M per year, assuming 50% attachment for both, assuming 100% profit margin, that's $50 over 80M units / 2 = 2B dollars in an extremely optimistic interpretation.

Apple booked 109B in revenue in 2011, of which 2B would count for 1.83%. They will do a great, great deal more than that by the time 2012 is over.

$2B in potentially increased accessory profit is a fart in the wind for this company. And keep in mind they're probably losing a substantial number of 30-pin licensees in this changeover, who already pay real money to get -their- access to Apple's vast platform of 90% margin accessories. We're just trading one proprietary connector for another.

Also, considering the obvious and real customer ire breaking compatibility causes, considering the obvious and real costs of redesigning and changing a part they've been ordering by the hundred millions for a decade, and considering the possibility that they might not even re-license any of their 30-pin accessory profiles, it can't simply be for money's sake.

The benefit for them moving to a dramatically smaller I/O port with a dramatically smaller set of supporting onboard electronics is in meeting extraordinary engineering pressure for reduced volume and mass in an era where many of their mobile products are nearly the same size as a 30-pin dock connector.

It's a new era. Consumer computers are now measured in milligrams and micrometers, and 2002's best effort doesn't cut it anymore.

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