Reuters: Apple to Shrink Dock Connector for Next iPhone

Clare Jim and Lee Chyen Yee, reporting for Reuters, “What’s Up Dock? Apple to Shrink Connector for iPhone 5”:

Apple Inc’s new iPhone will drop the wide dock connector used in the company’s gadgets for the best part of a decade in favor of a smaller one, a change likely to annoy the Apple faithful but which could be a boon for accessory makers.

Regarding the headline: awful pun, and it’s a mistake to call the next iPhone the “iPhone 5”. We learned that last year.

Regarding the article: Apple is already abandoning its own only-a-decade-old proprietary adaptor for something better and smaller; PC notebooks still ship with huge 25-year-old VGA ports. Every time I bring this up, the VGA defenders argue that of course notebooks need to ship with VGA ports, added thickness be damned, because the world is full of VGA-only projectors. But the world is also full of Apple 30-pin dock connector cables and accessories. This is how progress is made.

Update: And “Apple faithful”? Really? What other company has its customers described as “faithful”? Seriously.

★ Monday, 23 July 2012