Originally Posted By: drakino
Also a good comment from John Gruber on this.
Originally Posted By: Gruber
The Lightning adapter epitomizes what makes Apple Apple. To the company’s fans, it provides elegance and convenience — it’s just so much nicer than micro-USB. To the company’s detractors, it exists to sell $29 proprietary cables and to further enable Apple’s fetish for device thinness. Neither side is wrong.

Apple doesn’t give a shit what everyone else is doing. To some, that’s what makes Apple great. To others, it’s what’s wrong with Apple. One side thinks, Why in the world should we have to wait until 2016 to have a smaller, reversible plug? The other side thinks, Why in the world would you want a proprietary, non-standard, expensive plug?

Standards certainly have their place. But it frequently takes someone not caring about standards to push things forward in a meaningful way. Sometimes it doesn't pay out. Other times, it helps push everyone forward eventually, including the standards folks.


Plus, lightning was created for some very specific reasons; it needed to be small, because the antenna folks hated us sticking a honking 30 pin connector in the middle of their antenna cavity. It needed to be very robust - hence the liquidmetal housing with embedded PCB - and it had to have great retention characteristics in a clean, hole-free design (unlike micro/mini usb, which collect even more dirt due to the sharp bits on the connectors) - hence the "flattened 3.5mm jack" side profile which allows for really strong side springs.

Still love being able to plug stuff in "the wrong way round". Was a bitch to implement, however smile