For everyone who’s cribbing about the massive change that Apple has brought about in its connecting cable’s design, there’s probably some good news that will make you happy. Yes, you may need to go out into the market and spend a few precious bucks to pick up the new adapter, but the Lightning cable does have a few advantages too.
Teardown artists at ChipWorks managed to unpeel the Lightning cable to get a closer look at what’s on the inside. And according to them, the cable features four embedded chips and some passive devices within it, which have basic security features like CRC generation. Key parts within the cable also include a Texas Instruments IC. The TI IC identified within the cable has managed to shed some light on Apple’s technology upgrade that lets the same amount of signals move to and from the nine direct connections that it previously had 30 pins do.
There’s also speculation that this ‘mystery chip’ could even help identify the requirements of specific hardware that gets plugged into the Apple devices, and select which features need to be enabled onto this hardware, e.g. enabling digital audio and music player controls when the device is connected onto a speaker dock.
