Lightning - page 8

After months of silence, big accessory makers are finally starting to rollout products for Apple’s Lightning dock connector just in time for the holidays. One such example is Griffin’s new PowerJolt SE car charger. The cord plugs into your car’s 12 volt power outlet and channels 10 watts of juice to your Lightning-equipped iOS device.

My iPhone would die if I couldn’t charge it in the car. I’ve been using a 30-pin Belkin charger with Apple’s Lightning adapter since I got my iPhone 5, but Griffin sent me the new PowerJolt SE last week.

The Lumawake is an iPhone dock designed for your nightstand. It will of course charge your iPhone overnight whilst holding it in a convenient spot, but that’s just the beginning. To really tell you all that it does, I probably need to start a list…

There are almost no iPhone 5 docks available right now, and that’s for two reasons. One is that Apple has only just let manufacturers start including the new Lightning connector in their products. The other is that the new iPhone has only been around for like five minutes.

Braeburn has managed to get around the former problem by asking you to use your own Lightning cable, and the latter by, well — who knows? By being smart and hard-working I guess.

I have been using the aluminum dock for the past week, and it turns out to be pretty neat, although it won’t be for everyone.

The Speck CandyShell is a dual-layer case with a patented design that aims to give you all-around protection for your iPhone 5. It combines a soft, rubber interior with a hard outer shell that offers plenty of impact resistance for those unfortunate yet inevitable drops.

The CandyShell also provides protection for your volume keys and sleep/wake button, while providing access to your headphone jack, Lightning connector, mute switch, and camera.

It costs $34.95 and comes in a plethora of color combinations, including black and slate, white and charcoal, raspberry and black, grape and malachite, and many more.

JBL has become the first accessory maker to announce a duo of Lightning-compatible speaker docks for Apple’s latest iOS devices. Priced at $99.95 and $199.95, the OnBeat Micro and the OnBeat Venue Lightning are both available to pre-order today.

Lightning chargers! Get your Lightning chargers here! Scosche has finally announced a set of basic home and car chargers for the current crop of iDevices, and you can actually buy the things.

I have no illusions about this retractable Lightning cable for charging your current-gen iOS devices – it looks so much like the crappy USB and 30-pin dock connector cables that come in those vending machine accessory kits that I wouldn’t be surprised if you could break the thing inside a few weeks, just by using it as it is meant to be used.

But it is just $10, and it is actually available to buy, which are two major points in its favor.

It’s been a couple of months since Apple released Lightning, and in two months, Apple has refreshed every iDevice that uses the old 30-Pin Dock Connector short of the iPod Classic. Despite this aggressive move to ditch the connector of the past, though, there has yet to be a single third-party accessory that supports Lightning.

Why? Because third-parties need to go through Apple for MFi (or Made for iPhone/iPad/iPod) certification, and the guidelines for getting that certification didn’t get announced until very recently at a secret meeting between Apple and accessory-makers in Shenzhen, China.

What’s going on at that meeting? According to a new intriguing report, Apple is making any accessory-maker who signs on for MFi certification to embrace their own supplier code, which should force accessory makers to manufacture their devices a lot more ethically.

We’ve seen a number of Apple fans come up with clever docks for the iPhone by using packaging materials Apple ships products with. Taking a cue from their customers’ resourcefulness, Apple has a new patent that shows iPhone packaging that can also double as a dock after it’s been opened.

Belkin has become the first accessory maker to get authorization from Apple to build third-party accessories for the Cupertino company’s new Lightning connector. It just announced a new lineup of Lightning accessories, which are compatible with Apple’s latest lineup of iOS devices, including the iPhone 5, the new iPod touch and iPod nano, the fourth-generation iPad, and the iPad mini.

If you live in a house divided in the smartphone wars, where some members cling to their Androids while you relish the joy of your iPhone 5, you probably have a plethora of USB cables in your house that are completely useless to you. Apple now has a solution.

You can pick up a Lightning to Micro USB Adapter from Apple for $19 now. Use the adapter to connect an iPhone, iPad, or iPod with Lightning connector to a micro USB cable to sync and charge, or to a compatible micro USB charger to charge your device. The adapter is available online, or at your local Apple Store.

Unshielded, shoddily built and as close to dangerous junk as you can get without actually being dangerous. Today, this description happens to apply to these knock-off Lightning adapters from China, but it could equally describe any cheap no-name Chinese electronic accessories.

Shortly before unveiling the iPad mini last week, Apple announced a new fourth-generation iPad — just 7 months after it released the third-generation iPad. In addition to an improved FaceTime camera, faster Wi-Fi, and Apple’s new Lightning connector, the device comes with the latest A6X processor. But is it a worthy upgrade over its predecessor?

Well, if performance is important to you, then yes, it is.

If you don’t have an Apple TV but want to look at all your pretty iPhone 5 pictures on your HDTV, then Apple just came out with some new Lightning adapters to help solve all your problems. For $49 you can get a Lightning to HDMI adapter, or Lightning to VGA adapter from the online Apple Store.

The new adapters ship in 2-3 weeks and would probably be pretty useful for people who are always tech their tech gear with them on business trips, but seems how the Apple TV only costs 50 bucks more to beam your content to your TV, we think it’s a better investment.

While some companies churn out new smartphones and tablets every month, Apple has traditionally given us at least 12 months with our iOS devices before replacing them with newer models. So it was a big surprise to us all when it announced a new and improved fourth-generation iPad on Tuesday, just seven months after the third-generation iPad went on sale.

If you bought a “new” iPad within the last 30 days, however, don’t be too miffed your device is already obsolete — because you could be one of the lucky ones. If you take your device into an Apple Store, there’s a chance you’ll be able to swap it for a brand new, fourth-generation model free of charge.

When Apple holds a press event to announce its latest gadget, the vast majority of us are frantically refreshing our favorite websites in an effort to keep up with the news as it’s breaking. It’s not often we get to watch the event live.

But sometimes, Apple treats us to a live video feed. And it’s doing that today for the much-anticipated iPad mini event.

The picture above is purported to show third party non-approved authentication chips for Apple’s new Lightning USB cables. They’re pretty much a huge deal for anyone who plans to make iPhone 5 accessories or cables, because now that the Lightning authentication chip has been cracked, manufacturers can create cheaper accessories because they won’t have to pay Apple a fee to use the official Lightning chip.

New, mini iPads; new, thinner iMacs; 13-inch Macbook Pros with Retina displays; you could wait till Tuesday to discover all the great products Apple’s about to unleash into the world, but that’s what grandpas do. Join us on our newest CultCast, and find out everything we know and expect from next week’s big media event right now. And, um, no offense to actual grandpas, cause I love grandpas, they’re the best.

Plus: 3rd-party lightening adapters and cables—they’d make great stocking stuffers, am-i-right? We’ll tell you when you can finally expect to see them in stores.

All that and more on our newest CultCast! Subscribe now on iTunes, or easily stream The CultCast via Apple’s free Podcasts App.

Read on for the show notes!

Invites to Apple’s iPad mini announcement went out yesterday, so it’s time speculation turned its focus to when the much-anticipated device will actually go on sale. One source claims that you’ll be able to pick it up in shops on November 2, with pre-orders starting a week earlier — on October 26 — via the Apple Online Store.

The iPhone 5 has been on sale for nearly a month now, but we’re still yet to see any official third-party Lightning accessories. It’s not that accessory makers are slow at producing them, it’s that Apple is yet to finalize its Lightning policies and give manufacturers the go-ahead to use its new connector.

Fortunately, this is expected to happen next month. Apple will hold a conference in Shenzhen, China, between November 7 and November 8 with its Made for iPod/iPhone/iPad (MFI) program partners to finalize its Lightning plans, according to a source “close to Apple’s accessory manufacturing partner.”

Just days after pulling apart the fifth-generation iPod touch, iFixit have taken their tools to the new, seventh-generation iPod nano. This model marks another major change to the iPod nano lineup; it’s no longer a tiny device you can wear on your rest, but instead it takes a longer form much like the fourth- and fifth-generation devices.

iFixit has given this model a reparability score of 5 out of 10, which means that like the rest of Apple’s new iOS devices, this one isn’t to get into, or easy to repair. Here are some other interesting things the teardown uncovered.

Ever since Apple first introduced the Lightning adapter, much attention has been given to the mysterious chip used inside every Lightning Cable. Some speculated that the chip’s purpose was to merely “flip” the path the digital signals take from pin topin depending upon which orientation he cable was plugged into a device, while others have insisted that it is, in fact, a security chip meant to thwart counterfeit Lightning accessory makers.

What’s the truth? It looks like the chip inside every Lightning cable is a security chip, but it’s a simple one, less advanced even than the security chips you would find in today’s printer cartridges! And since those can be faked, so can Lightning.

Apple was expected to send out invitations to an upcoming iPad mini announcement on October 10, but that date has now come and gone, and we’re still left wondering when the tiny tablet is going to get its grand unveiling. Recent reports have suggested that the device has been postponed due to production delays, but according to AllThingsD, that’s not the case.

Instead, Apple will be holding its event on October 23, sources claim — just three days before Microsoft’s new Surface tablet begins shipping in the United States.

dive

The new Lightning to 30 Pin adapter has not won over many Apple fans. No one wants to pay $30 to be able to use their old iPhone accessories with the new iPhone 5, but it’s better than buying a new accessory altogether, right?

Double Helix Cables finally got their new dock adapter in the mail and naturally decided to tear it apart and find out what is inside. They found out that just like the new Lightning cables, Apple’s gone to some extra lengths to make the Lightning to 30 Pin Adapter unhackable and uncounterfeitable.

The new Lightning-to-30-pin adapter is a tiny thing, just a little dongle that routes signals from your old iPhone dock or connector to the appropriate pins in the new Lightning adapter. It’s smaller than the size of a matchbook.

Despite this, however, reader Doug P. emailed us with an image of how much packaging the adapter comes in: not only is Apple’s retail packaging for the adapter six times bigger than the adapter itself, but the shipping box it comes in looks like could easily hold up to thirty adapters without their packaging.