MHL is a standard. Many (non-Apple) devices use it.

This was a good bit I read on the Lightning connector and some of the thinking behind it:

http://brockerhoff.net/blog/2012/09/13/boom-2/

Assuming everything written there is true, then from my read of this, microUSB would never even have been considered. With a microUSB plug, the pins are apparently too small to carry the 2 amps of power that iPad charging would need. Some manufacturers have apparently hacked around this in various non-standardized ways. So, imagine if Apple puts that in the iPad (or some other future power-thirsty device). You can use any microUSB cable to sync or provide AC power, but only the Apple supplied adapter to actually charge the battery. You've completely negated the benefit of having the "standard" port, engendered customer confusion and loss of goodwill (how come my phone charger won't charge my iPad? It's the same port!), and gave up any benefits that would come from using your own superior connector design.

So, even if you disregard any ideas of wanting to control the accessory market or anything like that, there's absolutely no way Apple ever would have seriously considered microUSB just based on the power issue alone. (IMHO, of course)

I don't know if this is true, but it sounds vaguely plausible. Given the prevalence of devices that need ~ 2A to charge these days, I hope that USB4 does something about it.

That said, for some reason, Windows claimed that my Samsung S3 was only drawing 96mA (out of a possible 500mA) when (failing to) charge the other day. Odd.

It's possible to find the micro-USB spec online (I found v1.01). The power pins are specified as 1.8A. While this is indeed, mathematically speaking, less than 2A, it's hard to believe that people would really notice the difference in charging times between 1.8A charge and 2A charge.

Peter

Or, put more cynically, every time they go on about "preserving the clean lines" of something, it costs you twenty-five quid.

Peter

A standard that only covers the protocol, and not the connector oddly. Many vendors used the standard 5 pin microUSB plug for MHL. Samsung caused some controversy by shipping an 11 pin MHL port on the Galaxy S III, which was incompatible with all 5 pin cables. They did also ship an 11 to 5 pin adaptor.

Their main reason for making the change was to allow simultaneous use of the USB and MHL functionality. 5 pin only allows one or the other.

Looks like no matter what ecosystem you participate in, it's a potential mess. 30 pin to 9 pin, or 5 pin to 11.

BTW, why do people (like the writers at 9to5 Mac) keep calling the new connector "9 pin" when it's actually 8?

It appears to be 9 connections. The 9th is a ground on the side from the pictures. It may not be a pin exactly but it's a connection. Not that the 8 are technically pins either.

I think Bruno's point is that you'd never hear USB described as a 5 pin connector or VGA as a 16 pin one. The (main) ground doesn't normally get talked about as a pin.

Didn't Apple call out 8 pins specifically when they introduced it?

EDIT: They called it "8 signal" - which means 8 pins on the female end and a grounded sleeve, which as Andy pointed out, is like pretty much everything else, including USB.

I'm sure Apple would prefer people to just use the name of the connector and not its pin-count.

The "16th" pin of VGA and "5th" pin of USB are a shield and should not be used as ground. USB and VGA both have a dedicated grounds. In fact USB spec dictates that the host end only should connect ground to the shield. It does not carry current.

I'm not sure if the same applies here. I'm yet to see the actual pinout defined.

Updating to iOS 6 right now. Fingers crossed that everything doesn't go to shit.

I can't believe Apple also pushed out 10.8.2 today along with a bunch of app updates. Not a good idea to release so many updates at the same time. It makes it really challenging to identify the root cause of any issues.

Mac OS X 10.8.2 so far doesn't fix any of the two dozen egregious bugs I've found - some of them date back to Lion 10.7.0 - I still have to file official Apple radar bug reports for the majority of them however...


EDIT: Update seems to have gone fine. Still can't "activate" my phone number for iMessage. Notes still don't sync (imap account) and now when a note is created/edited on the Mac it just generates a duplicate, which still doesn't sync to the iPhone. Another useless (to me) icon I can't get rid of in the form of Passbook. OS update in general, yawn-fest.

My hope/belief that Apple will ever address even a portion of thse issues has pretty much disappeared. The thing is that normal "consumer" types find issues all the time but brush them away, either they don't realize they're bugs or they're simply not demanding enough to care.

As more stupid people start to use a product, it seems the product itself starts to become more stupid.

I've given up on using my IMAP account for notes, mainly due to the duplicate notes issue. I am now using my iCloud account instead, which doesn't have the problem (even though it appears to use IMAP under the covers).

I don't have an iCloud email address. My AppleID is at my own domain and used for everything (else) Apple related. So now I have to grab an iCloud account just for notes? Why on earth are the using MAIL for notes at all? On the Mac they removed Notes from Mail into its own app. They should just store that data on iCloud like any other random app does.

The only reason I'm trying to use my imap account is to avoid having to create an iCloud email address specifically for this.

Creating a note on the iPhone while set to use the imap account doesn't even hit the network to transmit anything. It's not using imap at all. Checking the notes prefs doesn't show any option to select "default account" which I briefly saw at one point. Deleting the imap account does not remove the notes, proving they weren't part of the imap account to begin with.

Totally broken.

Letting it create an iCloud email address takes two seconds, you never need to pick up the email (uncheck email on the iCloud settings) and most importantly, Notes works properly against iCloud

I believe it only shows the "default account" as a brief flash occasionally, except when you actually have more than one account setup for notes.

I took a different route. Removed the Notes icon from the dock on the Mac and hid the Notes application on the iPhone.

The only reason I wanted to use Notes at all is because the Evernote iPhone app doesn't let you view anything offline. I'll hunt around for something else I can use instead.

I'm pretty sure I'm also going to go back to a Jailbroken experience when that's available. I'm tired of not being able to view notifications on the lock screen and also want quicker access to BlueTooth, as well as hiding all the cruft I don't want around like Newstand and Passbook.

iOS6 - no mail items ever appear in Notification Center, despite a new mail badge appearing on the Mail icon. IMAP.

I'm seeing mail in the notification center. For both Gmail and Exchange accounts. iOS6 on a 4S.

It was working fine before the update to iOS6 - no changes manually altered. I've verified that the notification options are turned on for Mail. Maybe I'll turn them off, reboot the phone and then turn them back on.

The iPhone 5 seems to be off to a good start in terms of sales. The store line-ups look even crazier than any previous release. I hate launch days. Everyone is out in those lines instead of being on their computers buying stuff from my site. Seriously, I always see a market drop in sales on this kind of date.

OK, very very odd. So after updating I verified it was ON. Then I noticed it wasn't working. Now I go back and check the settings...

Notification OFF for each mail account. Notification style set to NONE for each mail account. Lock screen notification set to OFF for each account.

I think that explains it. But not how any of those things, let alone all of them, suddenly got set to OFF.

Here's some bad design and carelessness (lack of attention to detail):

Do No Disturb appears as its own item in Settings and then again in Notification Center. The first instance only lets you turn it ON/OFF but setup requires going into notification center. Too awkward.

When you have Do Not Disturb ON, either manually or via schedule, plugging the phone into power will still produce a vibration, turn the screen on and play a sound. WTF. Sorry, it should vibrate and nothing else. When you're plugging the device in to power with someone sleeping only a few feet away, it's not very cool to chime a loud sound and light up the screen.

http://www.apple.com/letter-from-tim-cook-on-maps/

I've been making use of the iOS 6 maps as part of the trip. Overall, they work well for turn by turn where I've been. Mostly due to the integration with Siri and the lock screen. If I need to conserve power a bit, I can turn off the screen, and the phone will turn it back on only when it has new instructions.

It has led me off route a bit for some destinations though. 2 destinations have been off by a few blocks, from a bad pin placement from Yelp. One situation it simply didn't handle was a business on State Line Rd where the address numbers don't line up to what they are across the border running down the middle of the road. And the more common and easier to fix one is the address on file has the right street address, but potentially incorrect state or zip code info. The pin will be in the right spot, but the driving directions engine keys off the incorrect info. This one lead maps to tell me to drive all the way from South Dakota to California for gas.

I do have other maps programs, including one with local maps if I wander out of cell coverage. So far, I've only needed to switch once. Once the data improves, it will be a good addition to the iOS side.

It is a shame the painful transition was necessary, but Apple had little choice in the matter. The old maps were very dated feature wise, and it was becoming a big negative when compared against other phones. Google and Apple couldn't work out an agreement that both sides were happy with regarding the built in maps, even after Google promised back in 2009 to bring navigation to the iPhone. Google could have submitted a 3rd party app via the app store as early as 2008, though it appears this has yet to happen.

It was a good move on Apple's part to move away from Google's map platform, however they didn't handle it well.

They should have played it out very low key, probably by making clear it was a first step and beta like Siri when it was announced.

The data Apple has licensed is pretty good. With the exception of missing NavTeq data, it's got more bases covered than Google did long after they started. However, like Google before them, they haven't done a terrific job integrating the multiple sources of data and gluing everything up together, including refinement of their routing engine.

Google still has sub-par routing and distance calculation, and IMO, it's not nearly as refined or accurate as TomTom's platform.

Apple has TomTom map data, but they obviously don't license their navigation platform.

It's also especially odd that with all the data licensed that their satellite coverage is so spotty and inconsistent. Google doesn't have its own satellites taking pictures and all their imagery is also licensed. It shouldn't take Apple very long to match the quality here if they're willing to continue spending money on the problem.

Even if I had an iPhone 5 however, I'd still stick to third-party software for navigation. No matter how much money Apple spends on improving their data and integration, there just no way they're ever going to integrate all the features many people want. Their built-in offerings historically tend to be lacking in some way or other. It's going to hurt sales for other apps long-term, but right now, it's a chance for TomTom, Navigon, Garmin, CoPilot, etc. to keep cashing in.

I'm not looking to argue, I'm just curious where you've gotten this impression. I assume it's from Google Maps on the desktop. It works wonderfully for me on Android.


The funny thing here is that the company with the best flyover data is Microsoft. Too bad nobody will see it on their phones and only a few more will see it in their browsers.

I can see Apple licensing photo data from Microsoft. Also, I don't know for a fact, but I suspect Google now has its own aerial images to extend whatever it licenses. I would imagine in addition to all the streetview stuff they've been making that they could afford to fly a few planes around taking pictures.

A number of friends and I have all manner of Garmin and TomTom GPS units. They, and myself (wives too etc.) also use Google Maps via the web site to check locations and initial routes. If I'm at the computer and I want to check something quickly I just pop in to a browser window.

Google Maps is nearly always dead wrong on its time calculations for any planned route here in Canada. Its directions are also fairly often not the best route when compared to Garmin and TomTom's. Less frequently, completely crazy. This of course depends on the route, because for really simple stuff they all may produce exactly the same suggested route. But Google will still be off on the time.

Google's platform was built over a long period of time and heavily supplanted with previously licensed data. I'm surprised they haven't been sued by TomTom and Nokia (and others) they way they have been by Skyhook. It doesn't take much stretching of the imagination to hypothesize that some of their map building may not have been totally above-board.

When Google first started offering directions, their quality and results were laughable compared to then-heavyweights MapQuest et al. This lack-lustre performance lasted for quite a while, Maps wasn't built overnight by any stretch.

Apple has a number of potential advantages here. They've got bucket-loads of money. But more importantly, they've got an insanely large initial user-base right from the start. Now it remains to be seen how they will use that crowdsourcing to improve their product. I have no idea if they plan to offer a street-view like feature or ever get into producing their own assets.

In the Android space, it seems there are very few "good" nav programs. I've tried perhaps a dozen or so of them, and only two were close to measuring up. First and foremost was Google Navigation for Android. Excellent, though it relies heavily on having a data connection, making it too expensive to use on our normal limited data plans.

The other was Sygic GPS Navigation. I used the 7-day free trial period. It worked well enough for "offline" navigation, but was a bit slow in responding to vehicle movement.

Last I checked, neither Garmin nor TomTom had their own-branded apps available on Android -- with the exception of Garmin in Australia only.

The standalone Garmin Nuvi 3790 I have here worked way better than any of those, and actually appears to be an Android device under the hood.

Cheers

Good point. That might have played better for them.

Waze should be jumping on this opportunity right now. They've got the best system I've seen so far, and now's the time to capitalize on it.

Their map of the UK appears to be blank

All right, the best system for the USA I've seen so far. :-)

Sorry for the US-centric view on that one. :-)

Actually, no... Looks like they've got data for UK/Europe too. Don't know how *good* it is, but...