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Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

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Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#51

Post by econgeeker »

mcantelon wrote: post #39

Hilarious that Apple has to "allow" you to use one piece of hardware you own with another. Only in the world of Apple would a $60 serial cable be news.

Hackers have been hooking up iPods for years. Apple doesn't mind it, and you don't need Apple's permission. The idea that Apple is "locked down" while others are "open" is silly.

When it comes to you, using your Apple hardware with any other hardware any way you want-- apple doesn't care. Strap C4 to both, and Apple won't care.

Just don't try and get a warranty repair after you blow it up.

What Apple does care about is people selling hardware that interfaces with its hardware. Apple wants to make sure that hardware doesn't run mains voltage across the Apple board os they get a stream of "mysteriously" dead iPhones.

Apple provides really first rate hardware support in all their Apple stores. I think a lot of people don't realize this. But they do. Often just replacing hardware if there's any debate, and even sometimes completely out of warranty.

The approval here is merely to sell an authorized accessory. If there's demand for these beyond the hobbyist market, the price will come down and others will make them.

If not, then the people who are using them don't care about spending $60. You could got to sparkfun.com or other such companies and get interface electronics to build your own in years past... this is just someone making one commercially to make it less hassle.

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#52

Post by econgeeker »

geoka9 wrote: post #20
st3fan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You pay the Apple tax if you make a device like this. You will also need to license a chip from Apple that does some crypto to validate your device and you will have to buy the connector from a specific vendor that is blessed by Apple. It all adds up. I love how Google is letting the market go crazy with their recently announced external accessory APIs. That is what Apple should have done. Of course it is highly inco…

You would think that at least geeks would be appalled by Apple and avoid their products because of this. But every geek I know (save one or two) is raving about their Apple gadgets.

Wait, why should a geek be appalled that Apple cares about the quality of accessories people sell?

Its not like two weeks ago, before this product, you wouldn't hook an iPhone up to an RS-232 port! You could always do that if you wanted to hack together a solution.

Apple just made it official.

And really, $60? Seems a bit high, but there's the fact that this is a specialty product for a specialty market, and realy, if you're hardware hacking the time savings of buying a working product is well worth the $60.

I truly do not understand the idea that "geeks" wouldn't love Apple. To me, geeks are either people who really love technology, or people who have very strong engineering skills. I have both. And because of both, I really appreciate Apple doesn't waste my time , money or energy with crap. Apple makes first rate products, and that means I get to spend more time geeking.

People also seem to think that Apple has everything locked down. I don't see that at all-- you can work with nonstandard hardware if you're a developer by using the Apple supplied accessory SDK. Sure, consumers-- that is to say, non-geeks,-- are kept from hurting themselves to some extent by Apple, but that's a good thing. Means I can recommend their products to my mom.

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#53

Post by econgeeker »

blhack wrote: post #40
geoka9 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would think that at least geeks would be appalled by Apple and avoid their products because of this. But every geek I know (save one or two) is raving about their Apple gadgets.

You can make that three geeks. I got pretty upset earlier this week. I wanted to do a site-survey of the wireless network that covers my company's campus. The iPad is a wonderful tool for this, you'd think. It has a wifi chip, and a GPS. What I wanted was to drive around and pair signal strengths with GPS locations. Except I can't do this on my iPad because Apple doesn't want me to. The API for getting wifi signal st…

Wait, did you want to hack together a solution, or sell something in the App Store?

You can run any software you want on your devices without Apple caring at all. Either your company is an enterprise licensee, or you pay your $99. Big deal.

$99 keeps the script kiddies out-- you know the ones who download iOS betas to show their friends and then complain that they managed to brick their device?

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#54

Post by econgeeker »

endgame wrote: post #46
blhack wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make that three geeks. I got pretty upset earlier this week. I wanted to do a site-survey of the wireless network that covers my company's campus. The iPad is a wonderful tool for this, you'd think. It has a wifi chip, and a GPS. What I wanted was to drive around and pair signal strengths with GPS locations. Except I can't do this on my iPad because Apple doesn't want me to. The API for getting wifi signal st…

Four geeks. Proprietary control (at the software or hardware level) isn't some abstract bogeyman that only Free Software Hippies need to worry about. It's a very real threat.

Except that Apple doesn't exercise any proprietary control, except if you want to sell in the App store.

If you just want to hack on your hardware, Apple doesn't care. You might void your warranty, but that's it.

Apple keeps the consumers protected, and doesn't stop the hackers.

This "very real threat" is literally an imaginary bogeyman that only "Free[1]" Software Hippies care about.

[1] So long as you use our license and only our license and never express an opinion contrary to the Chairman Richard Mao Stallman.

PS -- I've never met a real geek who thought Apple was exercising proprietary control outside of their realm. All of the people who complain about Apple like this-- that I know personally-- are not geeks who got into linux (and the "free" ideology) because it was cool, not because they're really hackers with engineering skills. But that's just my personal experience. Of course, they think they are the "real geeks" and that people who use macs use them because "they come with training wheels" and stuff like that.

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#55

Post by econgeeker »

clumsysmurf wrote: post #36

From the features section, it says "Enables development of iOS apps for private use in homes, schools and offices" Is it possible to also use this for non-private apps - that is - apps submitted to the App Store?

Yes, it is. The iOS Accessory SDK is public. You'd just be making an App that relies on people having this hardware already.

This works for hardware manufacturers who make iOS accessories and then want to ship an App to work with it (which is the general case of the cable.)

But you could, for instance, make an arduino hacking kit that lets you talk over the cable to a board, and sell that as an App in the AppStore.

That text communicates to me that it comes with no software to drive it and you'll have to write your own, and there are no assumptions about the hardware on the other side, but you could use it to work with an arduino.

Seems like this is the perfect piece of hardware to go with open sourced iOS software for doing development with the arduino.

Imagine being able to re-program your Arduino powered robot in the field from your iOS device!

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#56

Post by econgeeker »

st3fan wrote: post #16
kylek wrote: post #8

> Supports communication at speeds up to 57.6 Kbps. Is that a technical limitation or typo? Many devices use 115.2 Kbps if I'm not mistaken

If I remember correctly, your device does not actually get full serial port access. Instead Apple provides a protocol made up of data packets that you can send to and from your device. These packets must be signed by a little crypto chip that you have to license from Apple. Yes, very tight control. A device like this is not simply a cable. It actually contains a little micro-controller that reads and writes Apple's s…

You're making an assumption that he overhead is the cause of the speed.

There's no serial port on the iOS device connector. So it isn't really as you represent.

The iOS device connector has a USB client port. This requires the other side of the connector to be a USB host. Thus to make this cable ,they have to put in a little micro controller that has a USB host port (which many of them don't since micro controllers are more likely found in devices than in hosts, hosts are usually PCs and laptops, etc.)

And then that host micro controller talks to a RS-232 serial chip (or has a serial port integrated to it).

Its possible that to save money that micro controller is slow enough that talking to USB at 12mbit/s takes up most of its time since this is likely done in software, and it can only flip the bits for the RS-232 at 57k. In fact, they might not even have an RS-232 port on it and they might be simply literally flipping generic IO pins up and down to produce and RS-232 compatible interface.

Would have to reverse engineer it to know.

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#57

Post by econgeeker »

ddw wrote: post #29

It would be interesting if Cisco will take advantage of this in any way to allow the control of their networking devices. Not that it's too hard to plug in with an old laptop, but still, the iPad is convenient. It's a little confusing to me why Apple makes it so hard for people to use their devices in customer specific ways like this cable. I read a while back that TV networks like CNN and ESPN were using iPads to co…

Apple does make it easier for everyone else willing to pay $99. You don't have to jailbreak. You just pay your $99 fee and you've got full access to run whatever software you want.

There's even an open source community of people making iOS software. They're chinned by the "open source" community because they're hacking for iOS, but they exist.

CNN or ESPN don't have to jailbreak. A big part of the problem is that you assumed they did, because the "open source" community is running around pretending like everything is locked down and you have to jailbreak to run arbitrary software. You don't, you just become a developer.

The bonus of becoming a developer is that you also get to hack on pre-release versions of the OS and stuff like that.

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#58

Post by econgeeker »

jrockway wrote: post #48
runjake wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I heard, the cable uses some proprietary Apple chip that does some sort of authentication. I could be wrong.

If only there was some country with good electronics copying abilities and no regard for intellectual property...

The prevalence of off brand cables that work with these devices make me wonder about the allegations of a proprietary crypto chip.

I use modern iOS devices and the worst that's happened to me is one would claim that something wasn't an "authorized" cable when I plugged it into a USB port that didn't provide enough current. (plugging it into one that does-- totally off brand USB power plug) works, though.

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#59

Post by noonespecial »

econgeeker wrote: post #49
noonespecial wrote: post #45

Android: The $49/Night hotel with the free continental breakfast and free wifi. (But there might be roaches in the rooms) Ipad: The $349/Night hotel that charges you $25 if you open the little fridge and $45/hour for the wifi that never quite works. (But the elevators have chrome, move fast and are never out of order. No roaches.) There's no reason in the world that a $350 room shouldn't come with free wifi and snack…

I don't understand this comparison. Android tablets have not proven to be cheaper than the iPad (adjusting for screen size). It is true that this cable is overpriced, but that is simply because there isn't a big demand for serial cables, and thus only one company (so far) has made one. Apple's "approval" process is like the approval process for the appstore-- they just want to make sure stuff isn't going to take you…

Yikes. Sorry. iphone. I didn't mean to cast it into the light of tablets specifically.

In this case, arduino (serial) interfaces for android devices are varied and extremely cheap. It wasn't possible at all on istuff until now, and only now with about $50 worth of rent-seeking added on.

istuff is usually top shelf. It just reminded me of another place where I've seen top shelf stuff nickle and dime its users in ridiculous ways despite the fact that they paid a great deal more for what should be a better experience.

Don't downvote parent please. He's got a valid point. My bad.

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#60

Post by jrockway »

econgeeker wrote: post #58
jrockway wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only there was some country with good electronics copying abilities and no regard for intellectual property...

The prevalence of off brand cables that work with these devices make me wonder about the allegations of a proprietary crypto chip. I use modern iOS devices and the worst that's happened to me is one would claim that something wasn't an "authorized" cable when I plugged it into a USB port that didn't provide enough current. (plugging it into one that does-- totally off brand USB power plug) works, though.

The crypto chip lets the iOS device use some alternate signaling protocol over the dock connector. Charging is unrelated.
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