$10 Dongle for charging an iPhone whilst listening to old style headphones

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/07/21/10-dongle-for-charging-an-iph.html

it’s the double dongle!!

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This is the simplicity that Apple strives for. Because they couldn’t put 2 fucking ports on the iphone itself.

Reminiscent of Jobs’ original intention of not putting hard drives on the Mac (diskettes only), because that a was more “pure” implementation.

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Be advised that these really cheap adapters usually do not license the chips needed to support Lightning and so are often nuked by iOS as “incompatible.” They may also be very cheaply made with crappy DACs. This one may have neither of those issues, but the Amazon reviews are suspicious (many aren’t for this product). Check out the reviews for similarly priced comparable products. All of these $10 double-dongle things seem sketchy.

It’s a pity as I could use a few of these.

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My Nexus phone keeps trying to sell me a Pixel 2 XL, which would need a similar gizmo to let me get the music out. WHY!!!

Whilst?

Did he just say whilst?

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They are probably all identical hardware with slightly different packaging/branding (like most cheap HDMI cables such that you find on Amazon).

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#D***hebagDesign

Didn’t Apple say it had no room inside?

« Old style headphones »… Ouch.

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Simplicity; like a single button mouse. No thanks. (An option to the dongle is just to go with Android, of course.)

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Hear hear. Bitter experience has taught me that it if doesn’t carry Apple’s MFi certification, it’s a waste of money.

Some Android makers are also leaving off the headphone jack.

And there are excellent reasons to stick with Apple - if you’ve already bought a bunch of IOS apps, if you prefer to avoid Google’s privacy-sucking ecosystem, or if you give a damn about having OS updates and better device security.

Well, yes I do give a damn about device security, but Apple never issues mere security updates, they always fuck with the system behaviour and interface at the same time. I hate them.

To be called ‘proper headphones’ or just ‘headphones’, as opposed to ‘donglephones’, perhaps? I would love the world to just start calling all non-jack headphones something else very specific so we can all more openly mock and shun them.

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This is the stupidest thing ever. But hey, apple can’t be wrong right?

If avoiding Google’s privacy-sucking is your concern, I recommend LineageOS - it’s my monastic alternative to the Android OS for Android phones. Of course, stripping out Google services means many apps won’t work (like Lyft or Uber), since most app makers aren’t interested in supporting your bid for freedom and don’t write their apps to work without Google Play services installed.

Psh. Have you seen Apple’s “Mighty Mouse”? It has about four buttons, all mapped on a hair-trigger, and one of the worst trackballs I have ever used. I frequently end up accidentally clicking my way to a previous page because the “back” button on the mouse lies exactly where you need to grip it. The thing looks nice, but like most Apple design, it’s not “designed” to actually be usable. See also: their “chiclet” keyboards, specially engineered to maximize your wrist injuries.

“Why not install this alternative OS that breaks your phone”

I think I’ll just stick to devices that work out of the box without invading my privacy, TYVM.

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If the problem is a dependency on evil services, I am willing to suffer the price of breaking a few things. “Works out of the box” in this case means “spies on you for Google”. I find the lack of services often crippling, but I find it useful as a goad to encourage me to contribute towards development of better alternatives (thus, “monastic”).

Not for everyone, I agree, just the ideologically blinkered, like me.

For those whose ideological blinkers preclude them from buying an IOS device, I guess that is so. I shall stick to using IOS because I prefer not to have either google’s spyware or China’s backdoors preinstalled on my phone. I’ve edited my comment above to clarify.

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They said that. The Youtube tear-downs and the guy who actually added one back in to his iPhone 7 kind of call their veracity into question though.

Apple would never lie to you.

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