[WrathOfGod]

We disassembled the Apple Lightning Cable and measured all the dimensions.
Check it out if you're interested.

 

[shotgunshane]

Looking forward to using my UHA-6s with the 5.  Thanks for the thread and information.

 

[paradoxper]

Thanks, Peter. This was very insightful.

 

[DigitalFreak]

Quote:

Looking forward to using my UHA-6s with the 5.  Thanks for the thread and information.

Where did you get the information that you could hook it up to the Leckerton DAC? Considering it's chipped I'm guessing you can't do DAC bypass.

 

[paradoxper]

Quote:

Where did you get the information that you could hook it up to the Leckerton DAC? Considering it's chipped I'm guessing you can't do DAC bypass.

Some info

 

[shotgunshane]

Quote:

Where did you get the information that you could hook it up to the Leckerton DAC? Considering it's chipped I'm guessing you can't do DAC bypass.

 
The day after the 5 announcement, I chatted with an Apple csr and they conversed with a tech who said it will host usb audio without authentication. I'm hoping authentication is for ipod out controls only. Of course they could have no idea what they are talking about and my dreams will subsequently be crushed but considering the 30 pin adapter also supports usb audio (per all the media reports), then why block it in one cable and not another?  A man can dream; don't crush a man's dreams.

 

[SoupRKnowva]

Quote:

 
The day after the 5 announcement, I chatted with an Apple csr and they conversed with a tech who said it will host usb audio without authentication. I'm hoping authentication is for ipod out controls only. Of course they could have no idea what they are talking about and my dreams will subsequently be crushed but considering the 30 pin adapter also supports usb audio (per all the media reports), then why block it in one cable and not another?  A man can dream; don't crush a man's dreams.

 
if i had a usb capable dac...i would test that lol but i dont.
 
The phone is amazing though. so ridiculously fast...and the new headphones, while head and shoulders above the old iBuds, are still nothing to write home about

 

[grokit]

Just posting this because Peter hasn't (or isn't allowed to):
 

 
Looks nice, the guy doesn't mess around!
 
http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/21/authentication_chips_discovered_in_teardown_of_apples_new_lightning_connector

 

[DigitalFreak]

Quote:

 
The day after the 5 announcement, I chatted with an Apple csr and they conversed with a tech who said it will host usb audio without authentication. I'm hoping authentication is for ipod out controls only. Of course they could have no idea what they are talking about and my dreams will subsequently be crushed but considering the 30 pin adapter also supports usb audio (per all the media reports), then why block it in one cable and not another?  A man can dream; don't crush a man's dreams.

Trust me I also have my fingers crossed.

 

[antberg]

Subscribed just for curiosity about how this will develope

 

[scootermafia]

I've done some more "research" and found some more things out.  This story is now all over Appleinsider, top article of Gizmodo, and soon to be more sites that have gotten in touch with me.
 
The board has 1 large chip, 1 medium chip, 1 small chip, 2 big resistors, and 2 little resistors.  
 
 

 
What's more interesting than this is how the pins are laid out:
 
 
 

 
Some of the pins, the ones I think are responsible for power (top 1 and bottom 8 are V-, while top 4 and bottom 5 may be V+) are mirror-flippable so that they always connect to the same place on the iPhone's Lightning jack no matter how you flip it.  That is commonsense as you wouldn't want to dynamically assign which pins are power, that seems impossible to me.  But top 2 and bottom 2 are the same connection, they are connected to one another and to USB Data+.  So when you flip the plug, the data+ connection ends up in a different place.  Thus, you absolutely have to have dynamic assignment of pins performed by most likely the iPhone itself.  Something tips the iPhone off as to which side is which (who knows, it could be a magnet!).  

 

[shigzeo]

Rainer Brockerhoff responds to you here with somewhat differing information, but it's safe to say, that for now, there is a LOT of speculation about what is inside. He argues:
 
 
 

I really see no justification for the “authentication chip” hypothesis, and even their diagram doesn’t show any single “power pin of the Lightning plug”. It’s clear that, once the cable’s type has been negotiated with the device, and the device has checked if there’s a charger, a peripheral or a computer on the other end, the power input from the USB side is switched to however many pins are required to carry the available current.

 

[scootermafia]

Right, I think we've proven that it's a chip that controls the flow of power.  Pin assignment is being handled by the iPhone itself, because I've shown that the USB data pins are contiguous from top to bottom meaning that when you flip the connector the pin is going into a different place on the iPhone's Lightning jack.  I think what it does is just serve as an intermediary, it detects power and does some sort of security routine to make sure that the power is all good and perhaps what type of device is supplying the power.  I don't think that it's possible for it to be a security chip per se, at this point, since it's only communicating with a USB 5V power line - it's hard to say whether any 2 way communication is really taking place there.  I think the chip just decides whether the iPhone charges or not. 

 

[grokit]

Wouldn't it use authentication to decide whether to transmit power?

 

[adamschuetze]

Wow thanks scootermafia!  I know a lot of other tech sites have been wondering what the heck is inside these cables.