[nathanstitt]

I agree 100%. Software is eating the world, so I'm not sure why everyone is so against this.

Maybe it's a case of I didn't complain when they came for my DEC Alpha server with green screen, nor when they took away my Token Ring network, but I will not stand for only using one flimsy cable for all my devices. Come on, this is the tech industry, what did you think was going to happen?

What I see Apple's done here is future proofed the connector. Ok, so it doesn't output 1080p today, but I see no reason why it couldn't tomorrow. Devise a new protocol, download an update to all the iDevice's which in turn upgrades all the adapters out there and everything's golden. Once this (admittedly painful) transition is complete, I see no reason for Apple to have to endure another one. By the time it's outdated, I'm sure everything will be wireless.

Perhaps everyone complaining about a $30 adapter shouldn't have purchased a $600 phone and instead stuck with a $20 Moto Razr.

[nawitus]

>Software is eating the world, so I'm not sure why everyone is so against this.

Added latency and worse quality are pretty big things. I wan't to send pixels 1:1 to my display device, which this new technology doesn't allow.

[nathanstitt]

I do see where you're coming from, and agree it sucks that they've went backward in quality in this case. To my mind those are implementation details that Apple screwed up. It doesn't invalidate the basic idea though, which is to move the brains of the device into software so that the same connector can be used for a multitude of different functions, some of which don't even exist today.

Admittedly, I'm not privy to whatever design decisions the team that implemented the connector made, but I see no reason why it couldn't have the same fidelity that a straight hdmi cable would have. If I guessed, I'd say that they said 'good enough, ship it' instead of continuing to refine it since they knew they could always send down an update later.

[rossjudson]

The point here is that the electrical design of Lightning doesn't have the bandwidth for 1080p. It runs at USB 2 speeds.

Software can't magically make hardware do things. It can create an illusion (like the Lightning adapter does), but the design has to support, for real, capabilities you want to properly provide.