USB-C _does_ require e-marked cables in certain cases where passing large amounts of power over a thin cable could be dangerous. I don't believe these chips are proprietary nor expensive - just marking silicon that replaced the old resistor system that was somewhat brittle and often wrong.
For Lightning, yeah, there's basically no reason except for the 'Made For iPhone' program, and it isn't even effective at that since Chinese cable makers just clone the keys of the official stuff.
40Gbit DAC is even more annoying because unless the cable is a bit more active, it's essentially 4 10gbit DAC in one sheath.
Second, yes, some does require active cables with DAC. which does not stand for "cable" like the other comment says. DAC is direct attach copper (as opposed to optical). Without an active cable you're limited to 5 meters, although you can risk it and get a 7 meter passive cable. usually, 7m is already active, and 10m+ is guaranteed to be active. The reason you can even do 10G over copper is because it's cat6. Have you seen that cable? It's twinax - more like the cable from your TV antenna. That's not viable for a phone.
What you are talking about is 10G base-T. That does not need active cabling. but again, you can't compare that to a tiny thin lightning cable.
If you're considering downvoting them, there's news articles about when Apple caved and allowed 3rd party cables.
I have more questions than anything else.
Cables with electronics in them are useful for protections like this, and to facilitate safe interoperability of multiple voltage and current sources and sinks like on USB Type-C. The question becomes, is the protocol implemented in a simple, open consumer friendly way or is it implemented with other nasty antifeatures.
call this a “safety in depth” approach
Though likely there's something in the phone _as well_ as the cable.
Guarantee there was a consumer study where they compared reactions between these scenario.
The world is unfortunately not very efficient.
Many people in IT think, that data is just 1s and 0s. But in reality we are living in a physical world and as such some form of power is used to transmit those 1s and 0s. This power may is electrical power in terms of voltages with defined generated current or in terms of current with defined voltages (20mA communication heavily seen in industrial equipment). If you have a slow communication link, EMI and other environmental thinks like temperature is not much of an issue. But as faster you like to communicate you need to cope with those things. The electrical contacts in the connectors doesn't help. So people started to put the transceivers into the cables. Those transceivers with additional electronics like ringing suppression circuitry and other "magic" are then best fitted for the desired cables for the desired environments. Then you started to makes those cables smart like to detect the capabilities of the cables like is it really possible to talk at 10Gbps or is it more a cheaper type where 100Mbps is the max. As more smarter those cables get people get creative to put other things in it like "hey, the cable could become a converter as well".
What shielding does not help as well is contacting problems because of corrosion or dirt. We are talking about a consumer product and not a well designed any lay out wiring by some system integrator. Consumers are doing all kind of bad things to connectors and will complain if it does not work.
I know, I know, usb cables don't need a chip inside, why does lightning. because usb cables are a useless random mess. lightning cables are not - they run at the guaranteed speed, they charge at the guaranteed watts, and they have no issues with shorts despite having contacts exposed and reversible, unlike usb. and usb-C? well, there are active cables available for that, which tackle the issues described with a chip in the cable. just like lightning does.
Considering the main use case (almost exclusive use case) for lightning is for charging and nothing else, I wonder why they have to be so complicated? Shouldn't charging cables work with Vcc/Gnd only wired and a dumb power 5V/2A source? Why is my phone doing some complex detection/negotiation of cables/chargers when I plug it in? Why is a charger considered an "acceessory"?
Tell that the people, who want to connect their professional microphone to make TikToks. Tell that the people, who want to connect a stick drive to offload their videos. Tell that the people who provide different accessories.
Lighting has evolved from the 30-pin Dock connector. The 30-pin Dock connector was the idea to combine charging, USB, and some analog stuff into one single connector. At that time USB provided only 5V and 200mA. Apple was one of the other who improved USB charging by allowing more power. But for the sake of compatibility, you cannot just do this, you need to negotiate it. It is like every USB up to USB3 starts in USB1.1 to negotiate the possibilities.
So, Lighting was not developed out of thin air. It was developed with a history, like many many other communication protocols and standards. Even as Apple is known for cutting of old ties easily, if you look really deep into the details, you will always find compatibility to old out-dated technologies. Its like you still find the good old 8051-core in many things, like even dead simple and cheap charge controllers.
You could argue you that you don't need any of those features, but Apple disagrees and that's why lightning is not just a 5V DC jack.
Yes I understand the reasoning behind it, but I don't understand why it's not seen as a much more important feature to be able to load from anything anywhere so long as the +5V and GND pins are working, regardless of what power source and cable it is.
That there is complexity when the lightning cable and connector is used as a data transfer cable I understand. I don't understand why the charger mode isn't dumb as rocks.
I have a lot of cheap chargers, and they give out all sorts of crazy stuff. One drops the voltage to like 3.5 volts with 1 volt of ripple under load. Another shuts down the port completely if you draw >.6A.
It is really hard to tell how much current can one draw safety.
That doesn’t mean you can remove the microphone.
Optimising the common case in this instance will remove all other possibilities.
This is also tied to fast charging (and whether the device will support it)
That’s at least my understanding from the document.
My theory is that it started as the former and then they realised it would seem less suspicious and more friendly to also use it for the latter.
It's far more likely that the purpose of MFi is to make sure that any officially licensed accessories aren't pieces of shit that Apple will cop the blame for. Most users aren't going to blame the cable manufacturer when their phone won't charge properly, since the vast majority of people have no idea about the complexities of modern charging protocols, so they're going to mistakenly think the phone is at fault and blame Apple.
That makes me even more angry about the ridiculous price of these accessories
For most of computing history, I was generally under the impression that cables were "dumb" -- each pin connects to a wire which connects to a pin on the other end. There's fancy bundling and twisting and whatever involved, but it's still ultimately just conductive wires.
When did cables start getting chips, and why? Did Apple start it or somebody else? Is it solely to try to prevent third-party manufacturers? Is it for the cable to announce to the port that it supports certain specifications of power or data? (But why would that require a chip instead of just some kind of "dumb" extra pin that has some basic electrical property that can be read?) Is it something else?
I mean I understand why certain dongles have chips, because they're connecting between sets of pins that aren't 1-1 or even in the same data format at all. Or why the same might be true for USB-C to Lightning.
But for cables to go from "dumb" to "smart" seems like it kind of breaks all expectations of what a cable even does, and therefore how a consumer will even know what to purchase -- which, of course, has famously been a HUGE issue with USB-C.
Would it be better for us to go back to dumb cables without chips? Or are there good reasons why this is the future, where at some point we'll expect all computer cables to have them?