[nirvana]

The 30 pin dock had 30 pins so it could put video out directly and things like that.

Lightening is a SERIAL FORMAT with 9pins. So it streams audio and video out in an encoded form.

The AV adapter, need to take that audio and video and turn it into a standardized AV format for the AV plugs.

Now, rather than a lot of odd incompatibilities because Apple added new features to new devices that older docks don't support, we have a common communication format in lightening that should be much more robust going forward.

Apple can add whatever protocols it needs over the serial connection to support future tech, rather than the old way of redefining what some of those 30 pins meant from period to period-- remember the 30 pin connecter started out in a time when there was firewire taking up some of those pins!

People like to ascribe nefarious purposes to Apple or claim apple is "rippng them off" because a small computer that does digital AV conversion costs $30... and they dont' realize that the 30 pin connector didnt' do any conversion of formats was just bringing the signals out to a standard connector. This one actually has to do work, which is why it has a SoC on it.

[revelation]

People don't realize that the 30 pin connector didn't do any conversion of formats because they don't care. They want a connector, and what Apple delivered is a power-sipping SOC that actively throws information away, given the artifacts seen, and then upscales to 1080p because they didn't even have enough throughput to get lossy compressed 1080p through the bus.

So yes you get your 30$ worth of components but it's horribly inferior to a 5$ adapter you can get for every other connector on the planet. It's a rip off alright.

[lostlogin]

A rip off in the sense that its a crappy output, not in that they are overcharging. I see mention that its likely making no money or actually losing money selling this cable.

[bsaul]

I really don't get the logic. As if the cable was the thing that you would absolutely want to keep going from one version of the iphone to the other. If a new technology is out, (let's say 4k output), you'd have to upgrade memory and cpu to handle that power anyway, along with a new TV or monitor, and pretty much everything along the chain. Hypothetically beeing able to save the cable seems really not the problem anyway..

[FireBeyond]

Which would go absolutely nowhere to explain why my Pioneer car stereo head unit, which used to allow remote control of my iPhone's music collection, and a Pandora app, no longer works with the iPhone 5 - "iPod Out" would be one of the first protocols you would expect to be supported, even 'out of the box', but, no it's not, rendering an $800 head unit a lot less useful.

Perhaps Apple should think of such things first, before "future proofing" things.

Despite your defense of them, and whether there was any merit.... this change has the benefit of netting Apple a healthy profit, and rendering billions of dollars of accessories obsolete.