Quote:
Originally Posted by CubicleGeek
Putting a "chip" into a cable to detect orientation is absolutely insane design choice. Cables generally suffer a lot of wear and tear from constantly connecting/disconnecting, getting crammed into a pocket/bag.
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It's a very human choice - having to think about orientation on a plug you use at least once a day is the insane choice. Second, the lightning connector was specifically engineered for thousands of insertion cycles, something that USB never was, in addition to being able to handle 25% higher wattage than micro USB.
Comparing Auto-MDIX detection on ethernet to what the lightning cable does shows you don't understand the other design considerations behind the connector - it works on ethernet because both ends of the connection speak ethernet, are expecting the possibility of an auto-MDIX protocol conversation, and know what to do if they see it. Lightning can be power, USB, audio, VGA, HDMI, 30 pin legacy iPod, etc - it has to be able to do the signalling conversion and physical interface management since the devices on the other end of the connector don't, and because for most kinds of devices you'd plug an iPhone into, there exists no convention for doing so.
In fact, if dumb cables were such a good idea, why hasn't USB adopted the notion of non-keyed interfaces? Obviously the ethernet consortium solved the issue a long time ago, so what's the holdup on USB.