Lightning

Rainer Brockerhoff with two excellent posts on Apple’s new Lightning connector. Boom! and Boom: A Follow-Up.

I understand the sentiment from people who wish Apple would have moved to an existing standard (like micro USB), but Rainer calls out some of the technical reasons that such a move probably wouldn’t have made sense.

What I don’t understand is the idea that Apple should have stayed with the old 30 pin connector. This is why PC laptops still have VGA ports.

You can’t seriously think that every iPhone, iPod, and iPad for all time would keep using the same connector, and if the connector is going to change eventually, it seems clear that the change should occur as soon as possible. If Apple had waited for the next iPhone, or the next one after that, there would have been that many more people with accessories based on the 30 pin connector.

It also seems like people have forgotten that even within the 30 pin connector era Apple has made changes. I still have a car charger and some other accessories sitting around that will connect to my iPhone 4S just fine, but won’t fully work because they are FireWire based. At least with the new Lightning connector I can tell what cables will work and what ones won’t.