New Dock Connector

And now, my worthless thoughts on Apple’s arguably ubiquitous dock connector and the potential upcoming change:

Since the third generation iPod, Apple has used a physically standard and almost consistent electrically standard proprietary Dock connector on almost all of its media devices.  Of course there were exceptions, primarily where iPod Shuffles were concerned, and we all remember the debacle of the change in the electrical pin outs around the time of the iPhone 3G (except for those of us who don’t remember the debacle), but by and large the Dock Connector has remained true and now devices and peripherals abound in greater quantity than ever as the iOS device family continues to rule the consumer electronics world.

There have been rumors circulating that the next iPhone, due potentially as early as late this year, will sport a new, physically different Dock connector.  This would supposedly be a narrower connection, potentially shorter in height as well.  Somewhat obviously the pins could go one of two ways: denser packing of the thirty pins, or a reduction in pins down to a smaller number (as few as four) – this is based on nothing except my assumption that we’d need at least data+, data-, power+, and power- or ground.  As I understand it now, not all 30 of the pins are used anyway – data, power, several grounds, one or two video output types, and a couple pins of audio, or something like that.  The point isn’t so much electrical anyway, it’s the physical port.  And a new physical port would be electrically different anyway.

Consider the number of speaker docks, the number of integrated car audio systems, the number of gadgets that connect to the dock connector, and the massive number of chargers out there that all have the Dock Connector.  There is a lot of that stuff out there.  Imagine all of them rendered natively unusable in a single product release.

Of course they’d still be compatible with current devices. A new device wouldn’t retroactively ruin them.  And of COURSE there would be adapters which would make 99.9% of the devices compatible.  But adapters… they’re a little bit loathsome.  Plus, each one would probably be sold to the tune of 10-20 dollars and that’s just rampant opportunism by vendors…

I suppose it would be economically helpful in general.  Most of us would buy a new charger, a new car charger, a new case for the new device of course, and maybe even a handful of the adapters for our old stuff.  Money would flow.  We’d accept the new connector because we’d have to.  But would it bring us anything but lighter wallets?

The iPhone is thicker than the current Dock Connector.  The Apple wants to continually make the iPhone thinner, despite heat and battery life issues, not to mention fragility, so they still have room to play.  The iPod Touch, barely thicker than the Dock Connector but it still is.  Same for the Nano.  Certainly the iPad is significantly thicker than the connector.  So in a sense, to some of us logical thinkers, the thickness of the Dock Connector is not an issue.  Neither is the width.  Drop width in place of thickness in the preceding paragraph and everything still holds up.

Apparently there’s still room for options in the current Dock Connector electrically, or at least there was.  With the iPhone 4 and 4S and iPad 2we saw Dock to VGA connectors show up where there weren’t any before.  This new connection does not preclude use of the Dock to Component cables (that I am aware of) or even the Dock to Composite cables.  Then the Dock to HDMI shows up.  So with either different pins or creative use of the same pins – they’re still shoehorning in functionality.

What’s to be gained by changing the Dock Connector?  I feel I’ve ruled out physical dimensions safely enough for myself.  We’re not getting Firewire back that’s for sure. In fact it’s only vaguely worth mentioning because we lost Firewire for the same reason we won’t be getting Thunderbolt iOS devices anytime soon (no matter how badly we want them).  Firewire was never a native component of whatever kind of cpu and chipset was part of any iPod – it required separate chips which required space and expense.  With the ubiquity of USB and the waning interest in Firewire, it was booted.  Similarly, Thunderbolt has limited availability on host devices, requires expensive separate chips in the device, and the cables are fifty freakin’ dollars or more.  What’s a conventional dock cable go for, a dime straight from Hong Kong?  Anyway, there’s no space to put that chip in an iPhone.  Maybe in an iPad but I’m not even sure about that.  Then there’s the power requirements of the yet to be truly optimized Thunderbolt controllers as well as the fact that I have no clue whether a Thunderbolt port must remain a physical Thunderbolt port in which case it would have to be the only port or sit alongside another port for USB, lest we get more chips involved to adapt the Thunderbolt signals to USB to plug into (almost all other) computers out there.  Plus, USB is strange about the physical ports it allows, so that might not even be allowed.  Point is, it’s a total mess, and we probably won’t see it soon.

Thunderbolt could also open us up for Mini DisplayPort out of iOS devices but since, as far as I know, there are exactly three Mini DisplayPort monitors out there… and then adapters for HDMI, DVI, and VGA.  No real point to Mini DisplayPort.

Since the rumor mills are pointing to an overdue appearance of USB 3.0 in the new upcoming Macs (very strictly a rumor), maybe we can hope to see that in a future device.  Maybe that will be the payoff for a new Dock Connector (again, if we even see one).  That’d be nice.  I wouldn’t have to grit my teeth and plan my day around the syncing of my GPS app.  It wouldn’t take an immeasurable amount of time to reload all my stuff when I have to restore my iPhone.  Granted it’s only immeasurable because of my impatience but still…

I admit this is an exercise in futility.  We don’t know what Apple will do with the next iPhone.  We could well see the same exact connector with the same exact USB 2.0.  We could see a new connector with absolutely no new features and merely additional headaches.  We could see a new wonder connector ready to take us into the future.  Odds are we won’t see an EU-appeasing microUSB port but that’s out there too.  My objective was to make an attempt at theorizing what was more likely than the rest of the potentialities out there.  Even now, as I examine the pin out diagram of the modern Dock Connector and see no provisions for video, and yet there are several video adapters out there, it just reminds me that I’m not an electrical engineer and in fact do not know exactly how everything works.  But conjecture is a fun time killer.  Sometimes we’re left feeling clever.  Sometimes we’re left feeling dumber.

But those new Macs.  That new phone.  Ever mere months away.  And then we’ll see.