Innovation or e-waste? Apple rumored to ditch headphone jack

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Get a very professional camera, with integrated FTP client, and use an ad-hoc wireless connection between the phone and the camera. The Canon 1D-series can do this for some years already. (Granted, you'll paaaaaay...)

I could transfer pictures wirelessly, I know, but, as the saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. There's absolutely no reason to suppose that Apple are likely to remove Lightning connectors from the iPhone and iPad in the foreseeable future. I'll worry about it if it happens.

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by dgatwood

Apple's vision of a wireless world is a beautiful vision, but unfortunately, it is based on ivory-tower thinking that can't actually work in the real world. The cloud is not a substitute for local storage, and cannot possibly be a substitute for local storage in the near term or even medium term, simply because we don't have gigabit fiber to the curb, and we don't have 8G cellular networks or whatever.

Anybody who says otherwise hasn't watched as the photographs from a single photo shoot saturated their DSL connection's uplink for 2 weeks straight.

I'd call yours a rather niche-y (but still legitimate) bandwidth need. Most peoples bandwidth needs are rather modest.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/15/tech...-5g/index.html

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I disagree. I don't see Apple removing physical connectors from the iPhone and iPad any time in the future; the peripherals market is just too lucrative - including to Apple themselves.

As always, though, time will tell.

If you are going full waterproof, IPX8 or 9, then a lack of ports will make the engineering a fair bit easier.

The peripherals market may be very lucrative but if only apple peripherals will work with iBlueTooth™ and iWiFi™ then more money to Apple and they will charge MFi Cartified for 3rd parties as they currently do for cables.

TBH: If they do go port free I don't see why the iPhone and iPad couldn't talk to each other by a direct WiFi connection, I suspect this would be touted as a completely new and innovotive Apple idea.

I may be feeling cynical today

[GlennD]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I could transfer pictures wirelessly, I know, but, as the saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. There's absolutely no reason to suppose that Apple are likely to remove Lightning connectors from the iPhone and iPad in the foreseeable future. I'll worry about it if it happens.

I actually agree with you - they won't remove the ports from the iphone AND the ipad. Just the iphone.

The ipad actually gets used in business scenarios to give presentations. It doesn't need to be as "tough" because it doesn't go into all the same situations that a phone does. And your SD card scenario is probably not an uncommon one for photographers.

I would be surprised to lose the ports (at least the lightning port) on an ipad. I'd be equally surprised NOT to lose the ports on the iphone over the next couple of models.

It's all just speculation though.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

If you are going full waterproof, IPX8 or 9, then a lack of ports will make the engineering a fair bit easier.

The peripherals market may be very lucrative but if only apple peripherals will work with iBlueTooth™ and iWiFi™ then more money to Apple and they will charge MFi Cartified for 3rd parties as they currently do for cables.

TBH: If they do go port free I don't see why the iPhone and iPad couldn't talk to each other by a direct WiFi connection, I suspect this would be touted as a completely new and innovotive Apple idea.

I may be feeling cynical today

What if Apple went retro and used something that Palm used to use to transfer data wirelessly between two Palm PDAs: An IR Port. You could put two Palm PDAs with their tops facing each other and send data from one to the other (the receiving PDA had to approve receiving the incoming information).

Although it might seem odd, consider that an IR port could likely be made very small (the IR Port on my Handspring Visor is about 1/2" by 1/8" and it is about 10 years old). For security reasons the power the IR port puts out could be low enough that only an Apple device within 1" could send/receive information from another Apple device and the information would be encrypted for transmission for better security (both users put in the same one-time-use encryption key for the transmission).

On the subject of connectors, what if Apple dispensed with the Lightning Connector and went with four small metal squares (two for charging and two for data transmission) on the back that would connect when the device is put into a cradle. The squares would likely take up less space than the Lightning Connector (the reason for eliminating the 3.5mm Connector), and since most people put their devices in a case that would protect the squares when not in use.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by GlennD

The ipad actually gets used in business scenarios to give presentations. It doesn't need to be as "tough" because it doesn't go into all the same situations that a phone does. And your SD card scenario is probably not an uncommon one for photographers.

Good point; I'd forgotten that the iPad used the Lightning port for external video.

[dgatwood]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Get a very professional camera, with integrated FTP client, and use an ad-hoc wireless connection between the phone and the camera. The Canon 1D-series can do this for some years already. (Granted, you'll paaaaaay...)

I do basically this with my 6D. The point I was trying to make wasn't that transferring pictures from a DSLR to my phone is infeasible, but rather that having my photos live on a cloud server instead of my phone or laptop would result in nightmarishly poor performance because of their size.

Audio and video recordings would be even worse. For folks who do any of those sorts of things, local storage is crucial.

[GlennD]

In cases where you are taking very large photos, it seems like the camera with the FTP client combined with a wireless hard drive (that creates an ad hoc wifi network) would be the ideal choice....and I bet a lot of pros use exactly that.

Harry (and probably some other folks) seem to be in that in-between state - serious enough hobbyists to have some quality equipment and knowledge, but without the everyday need that might justify the expense of a professional solution. That niche might be the group that would have the hardest time with losing the ports. Less serious photographers are going to be fine with the cloud solution.

[ApK]

Why would a wireless solution be the "pro" solution when it's so much slower and less reliable than a wired solution?

I'd a expect a field pro doing a lot of shooting would just swap memory cards and then copy via fast wired connection as soon as they could.

Shooting news or sports or other fast shooting stuff would fill up a card long before a piddly wifi connection finished copying the data, even if you had a constant perfect connection, and were carrying around a drive with enough battery power.

I can see the wifi drive as a nice studio convenience option though.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by ApK

Why would a wireless solution be the "pro" solution when it's so much slower and less reliable than a wired solution?

I'd a expect a field pro doing a lot of shooting would just swap memory cards and then copy via fast wired connection as soon as they could.

Shooting news or sports or other fast shooting stuff would fill up a card long before a piddly wifi connection finished copying the data, even if you had a constant perfect connection, and were carrying around a drive with enough battery power.

I can see the wifi drive as a nice studio convenience option though.

Not to mention the creative editing the news team can do on a fluff story.
I agree for photos and videos wired is much better.

I think on my dolphin video of 30 seconds, it took either 10 or 15 minutes to upload.
I know it was 15 on the finished time.

[GlennD]

I would expect a pro to be carrying adequate memory cards and not need to be transferring DURING a shoot.

But I'm barking up the wrong tree anyway - Harry's scenario is transferring from camera to ipad to view the pictures on the fly. Having a hard drive as an intermediate storage would be a pain in the neck for that use case.

Then again, I'm still of the opinion (to stay on topic...) that the ipad is NOT at risk for losing ports, but the iphone IS.

(Here's a nice thought though - a hard drive with an SD slot built in)

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Note on cheap dimmers. We recently had to replace our bedroom wall/ceiling lights. 2 strings of 50 white Christmas lights. We decided to go with led lights. The dimmer wouldn't turn them off completely.

That may be caused by LEDS not drawing ENOUGH power to overcome the trickle from the TRIAC. (This is not just a issue with cheap dimmers)

A tip from the (Xmas) Lightshow Forum: A Glade (or similar) plugin on the lamp circuit. You need about 1 Watt of minimum load. That kicks it over the minimum

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by theducks

A tip from the (Xmas) Lightshow Forum: A Glade (or similar) plugin on the lamp circuit. You need about 1 Watt of minimum load. That kicks it over the minimum

Presumably that's just a small resister in between the socket and the bulb?

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Presumably that's just a small resister in between the socket and the bulb?

A glade plug in is an air freshener.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by meeera

Doesn't everyone in the world have an unlimited mobile data plan and constant great mobile reception? C'mon.

In Cupertino, CA USA, Yes