Lightning connector

• AAPL Company
• iPad
• iPhone
• iPhone 7
• Apple Inc

Apple patents half-height 3.5mm headphone jack, ready for slimmer future iPhones

Ben Lovejoy Sep 22 2015 - 5:31 am PT

21 Comments

While Apple appears to view the Lightning port as the future headphone connector of choice, with some manufacturers already on board, there are plenty of us who’ll be reluctant to replace our existing, expensive headphones. Which poses something of a problem as iPhones and iPads continue to get slimmer, and existing ones barely accommodate the 3.5mm socket.

Apple, however, has a potential solution to this in  a patent granted today (via Patently Apple). It’s essentially a standard 3.5mm jack cut in half, to make it much smaller in cross-section. This could easily be used with existing 3.5mm jacks using an adapter. The clever part is that it’s actually chopped off a little above the halfway mark, so the revised connector would still fit snugly in standard 3.5mm jacks on other devices.

As always with Apple patents, there’s no telling whether it will ever make it into production, but this one strikes me as a neat solution to a problem that could arrive as early as the iPhone 7, KGI suggesting that it will be around 6mm thick.

iPhone 6 photo: ukmobilereview.com

• AAPL Company
• iOS
• iPad
• iOS Devices
• iPhone

Could Apple unleash an update that breaks third-party unauthorized Lightning cables?

Jordan Kahn Feb 14 2013 - 2:13 pm PT

0 Comments

When Apple first announced that it would replace its old 30-pin connectors with the new, smaller Lightning standard, it took quite sometime for accessory makers to get on board. Accessory manufacturers had trouble producing Lightning-compatible products until cracking a unique authentication chip Apple is using in the new standard. Apple wouldn’t authorize official Lightning products until months later, when Apple briefed accessory makers at its MFi summit in November. Today, in a story from The New York Times, major Apple accessory maker Mophie outlined how Apple is keeping tighter control over companies making products for iOS devices with Lightning. It also warned Apple could potentially disable unauthorized Lightning products with a software update:

When a hardware maker signs up with Apple’s MFi Program, for companies that make accessories for Apple products, it orders a Lightning connector component from Apple to use in designing the accessory. The connectors have serial numbers for each accessory maker, and they contain authentication chips that communicate with the phones. When the company submits its accessory to Apple for testing, Apple can recognize the serial number.

The chip inside the Lightning connector can be reverse engineered — copied by another company — but it probably would not work as well as one that came from Apple, Mr. Howe said. Apple could also theoretically issue software updates that would disable Lightning products that did not use its chips, he said.“That’s one thing Apple is good at: controlling the user experience from end to end,” Mr. Howe said. “If you’re buying something in an Apple store, it’s gone through all this rigorous testing.”