[pjc50]

There was: the Apple 30-pin connector. It was revolutionary and got built into plenty of hotels where you can still see them. And where it acts as a warning to not build tech into your furniture again.

People keep building phone dock systems and they just don't really seem to take off. Maybe the best one available today is the HP Elite X3 .. running the discontinued Windows Phone.

[dwyerm]

I can't help turning this into a headphone-jack argument:

I was able to plug my phone in at the last hotel I stayed in because its ageing 30-pin dock also had an aux plug, which my modern phone still supported. It also seemed a lot better for my device security to not give some random active device direct access to my phone.

[sametmax]

How was it revolutionary ? USB worked pretty well.

[pjc50]

Until USB-C it doesn't carry analog audio.

Like the iPod itself, it's not a question of new functionality, but better usability/popularity of existing functionality. The revolutionary aspect was that you could just drop an iPod into the dock and it would start playing your music through the dock's speakers, while also charging. This didn't require the dock to be "smart", it was analog audio.

[sametmax]

What you describe qualifies for "nice". Not "revolutionary".

Apple's marketing is working a bit too well.

[LeonM]

Whats the problem with USB3 not carrying analog audio? Instead of placing the DAC in the phone, we now place it in the audio device, it makes no difference. One could argue it's better, as we now have choice in the quality of the DAC, instead of being stuck on the one in your device.

[pjc50]

The Apple 30 pin connector was introduced in 2003 when USB2.0 was all we had, and it's a right pain to enumerate a device and persuade it to start sending you digital audio over USB2. Whereas two analog pins Just Work.

Moving the audio to all-digital moves more NRE cost to the devices. It also means there's a potential for the "choice" of rubbish DACs to save cost.

[katastic]

>Whereas two analog pins Just Work.

Actually, they only work when they follow the standard physical layer. Try plugging a Line device into a Mic input, or a Line device into a speaker. Or an unbalanced into a balanced jack. It'll "work" but not "correctly."

And, just like saving money with "rubbish DACs", there's room for designing complete crap, noisey audio paths (and noisey amplifiers) in products.

If people could actually agree on a standard (USB3 seems a good choice), sending audio over a digital port seems fine.

The ONLY real problem, is digital audio isn't digital audio. It's a protocol with MANY audio formats. 44Khz. 48Khz. 96, 192khz. 2 channels, 4 channels, 7.1 channels. 16-bit, 24-bit, 32-bit float. Compressed with different compressions.

THAT'S where the real shitshow happens. Because now you're basically in the oldschool Modem situation where you have to try various standards and HOPE that the sender and the receiver both have compatible formats and in failing that, falling back to some standard required format like "stereo 44Khz PCM".

[dreamcompiler]

The number of ways analog audio can work (and equivalently, fail) is small: Mic vs. Line, Power vs. Voltage, Voltage vs. Current, and Balanced vs. Unbalanced. In practice, it's not a big problem because of connector conventions and smart signal detection.

Contrast this situation with digital audio, where the number of modes is exponentially larger by your own admission. Analog audio is more reliable.

This doesn't mean digital couldn't be more reliable; it's just that it hasn't typically been designed with the necessary metadata as part of the protocol.

[xxs]

>>This didn't require the dock to be "smart", it was analog audio.

Not smart, just have a 30pin connector. Having DAC on board would be trivial (esp. after paying the royalties for the connector). So calling it revolutionary is just being an Apple shill.

[pjc50]

Accusing others of being "shills" is a stupid tactic that does not belong on HN. Nobody's going to be shilling a connector that was introduced in 2003 and is currently obsolete.

[ju-st]

USB-C carries analog audio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C#Analog_Audio_Out_.26_Mic...

[pjc50]

Yes. That's why I said until USB-C. Which came out after Apple had already obsoleted the 30-pin connector. At the launch of the iPod it was not possible to do analog audio over USB2.