{"id":2951,"date":"2015-11-18T09:53:46","date_gmt":"2015-11-18T12:53:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/?p=2951"},"modified":"2015-11-18T09:53:46","modified_gmt":"2015-11-18T12:53:46","slug":"boom-the-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/2015\/11\/18\/boom-the-return\/","title":{"rendered":"Boom: the Return"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few years ago I\u00a0wrote a series of posts about Apple&#8217;s then-new <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lightning_(connector)\">Lightning connector<\/a> for iOS devices:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"\/blog\/2012\/09\/13\/boom-2\/\" target=\"_blank\">Boom!<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/blog\/2012\/09\/23\/boom-pins\/\" target=\"_blank\">Boom: Pins<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/blog\/2012\/09\/18\/boom-a-follow-up\/\" target=\"_blank\">Boom: a Follow-Up<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/blog\/2012\/09\/21\/boom-teardown\/\" target=\"_blank\">Boom: Teardown<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/boom-final-follow-up\/\" target=\"_blank\">Boom: Final Follow-Up<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>No doubt you&#8217;re noticing a trend there&#8230; \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, the recently-released <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/ipad-pro\/\" target=\"_blank\">iPad Pro<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ifixit.com\/Teardown\/iPad+Pro+Teardown\/52599\" target=\"_blank\">seems to have<\/a> the much-awaited <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/USB_3.0\" target=\"_blank\">USB3<\/a> capability on its Lightning connector. It does ship with a Lightning-to-USB2 cable, though, and USB3 capability\u00a0isn&#8217;t mentioned in the tech specs.<\/p>\n<p>The main objection to this actually happening is that Lightning, with its 8 pins, <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/apple\/2015\/11\/apple-sneaks-a-usb-3-0-compatible-lightning-port-into-the-ipad-pro\/\" target=\"_blank\">doesn&#8217;t have enough pins<\/a> to support the standard USB 3 specification. This is, again,\u00a0the old assumption that Lightning\u00a0cables are \u201c<a href=\"\/blog\/2012\/09\/23\/boom-pins\/\" target=\"_blank\">just&#8230; wires leading from one end to the other<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>To restate what I posted previously, if you actually look at the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/USB_3.0\" target=\"_blank\">USB3 pinout<\/a>, there are the two differential pairs which Lightning already has, and <em>one additional pair<\/em> for USB2 compatibility. So a legacy wire-to-wire USB3 cable would need 9 pins \u2014 but, remember, Lightning connectors don&#8217;t work that way!<\/p>\n<p>In other words, if you plug in an old Lightning-to-USB2 cable into an iOS device, the cable itself already has to convert the two differential pairs to USB2&#8217;s single pair. So, no need to have the extra legacy pair on the Lightning connector itself \u2014 a future Lightning-to-USB3 cable will generate that as well, and use the two high-speed pairs when plugged into a USB3 peripheral. The current pinout is, therefore, quite sufficient.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few years ago I\u00a0wrote a series of posts about Apple&#8217;s then-new Lightning connector for iOS devices: Boom! Boom: Pins Boom: a Follow-Up Boom: Teardown Boom: Final Follow-Up No doubt you&#8217;re noticing a trend there&#8230; \ud83d\ude42 Anyway, the recently-released iPad Pro seems to have the much-awaited USB3 capability on its Lightning connector. It does ship [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,16],"tags":[15,11],"class_list":["post-2951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple","category-hardware","tag-ipad","tag-iphone"],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Rainer Brockerhoff","author_link":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/author\/rbrockerhoff\/"},"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1q3Zc-LB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}