[UPDATE: 11:07pm EDT: According to The Verge‘s Sean Hollister, “Apple says the 30-pin adapter does support analog audio out.” If so, good news! Whew! Hollister also reports that Lightning to HDMI and Lightning to VGA adapters are on the way. Full article here.]
Apple’s “expensive adapters [US$29 or $39 with a cord] don’t support video or a feature called ‘iPod Out.’ That means if you buy a $29 adapter so you can plug your iPhone 5 into your speaker dock, there’s a chance you won’t actually be able to play music through the speakers,” David Goldman reports for CNN. “Which is, you know, the point of buying the adapter in the first place.”
MacDailyNews Note: “iPod Out” is a vehicle integration feature, not analog audio, that seems to have gone the way of the Dodo, especially in light Apple’s “Eyes Free” Siri integration in iOS 6.
“The old 30-pin connector that Apple had been using on all iPods, iPads and iPhones since 2003 was able to send an analog signal out, which many cars, docks and other gadgets picked up to control the iPod and play music through their speakers,” Goldman reports. “The new eight-prong Lightning adapter is all digital, but Apple did not respond to requests for comment about why the adapter wasn’t designed to convert the digital signal to analog. Some older speaker docks that aren’t compatible with the adapter will still be able to play music from an iPhone 5 by connecting a cord from an auxiliary jack to the iPhone’s headphone jack. But that kind of misses the point of the dock in the first place.”
Goldman reports, “The adapter can be used to charge iPhone 5 phones through old docks or connect them to a PC via old cables, for instance, though Apple will be supplying a Lightning-to-USB adapter and a wall plug with its devices that will be able to accomplish that task. The new Lightning connector is 80% smaller than Apple’s old one, a feat that helped Apple make the iPhone 5 the thinnest iPhone yet.”
Read more in the full article here.
[UPDATE: 11:07pm EDT: According to The Verge‘s Sean Hollister, “Apple says the 30-pin adapter does support analog audio out.” If so, good news! Whew! Hollister also reports that Lightning to HDMI and Lightning to VGA adapters are on the way. Full article here.]
MacDailyNews Take: Well, let the crapshoot begin! Boy, that Bose Portable Sounddock wasn’t exactly cheap.
Neither was that BMW.
Assuming/hoping/praying they both want digital audio signals. Fingers crossed and soon-to-be searching through specs…
Wonder how many cars, docks and other gadgets relied on analog out? We’ll soon find out, won’t we? Hopefully the number is small.
