10 ms·

Ideology has trumped engineering, and as hackers, you shouldn't tolerate it. Frankly, all of this has been obvious all along to any competent engineer, since t

by nirvana 14y ago

Ideology has trumped engineering, and as hackers, you shouldn't tolerate it. Frankly, all of this has been obvious all along to any competent engineer, since the moment Apple introduced lightening. They described it as a serial bus and talked about how it gave more flexibility. If you think about it for 2 seconds its obviously better to run protocols over a serial bus than to run 30 lines of individual signals, with dedicated lines for analog and dedicated lines for digital in a world where people want HDMI adapters for a connector that originally had firewire signals on it, from a time before HDMI was even common. But this is Apple, so the REAL reality distortion field kicked in-- a tsunami of press acting as if Apple was ripping people off with a $30 adapter, hundreds of mindless conspiracy theories from Apple bashers on Hacker News about how this is to have more control over people and how this once again proves that "open" (defined as google, not actually anything to do with openness) is better than "closed" (defined as Apple, you know the company with the most popular open source operating system in the world?). It's one thing to not know enough engineering for this to have been obvious to you, it's quite another to spread lies and engineering ignorance as a result of your ideological hatred of Apple. And the latter is basically all I saw on HN about this format. (Which is one of the reasons I write HN off as worthless for months at a time.)

mcintyre1994 14y ago
I agree with what you're saying, but I'm interested about Apple's open source operating system. Assuming OS X, I'm having trouble finding its entirety in open source, obviously it's built on open source but I don't think the entire OS is open sourced. I'm also having trouble believing it wouldn't have been used for a Linux desktop by now. Sorry for replying to a small part of your comment, but I really do agree with the rest.
objclxt 14y ago
> defined as Apple, you know the company with the most popular open source operating system in the world? I'm not sure which OS you're talking about...perhaps you could point me to the source code of either OS X or iOS? Certain core components of OS X are open source, but Darwin isn't OS X. As someone who makes his living from writing Objective-C code, I don't have any ideological objection to Apple. But I think you shouldn't accuse people of spreading "lies and engineering ignorance" when you seem to be claiming something that's patently untrue.
- hosay123 14y ago
  Perhaps you didn't experience the PR storm around the time OS X was initially released: it was heavily geared towards nerds and the literal phrase "open source" was extensively employed in their marketing material. This aside, you're basically trying to write off nirvana's (IMHO excellent) rant using a minor technicality, one of the common features of the discussions here that tends to make my skin crawl.
  - nier 14y ago
    The technicality being that Darwin seizes to be an open source operating system once it is shipped with closed source components. Why would this be true?
    - hosay123 14y ago
      OK here we go, and why not, after all it's Sunday and I've got nothing better to do.. right? The central tenet was that discourse here is regularly devoid of sound engineering because it tends to be blinded by mindless cultural perceptions of the companies involved in whatever happens to be under discussion. In the case of Apple the expectation is their products are flawless and if not then all hell will be paid on blogs and comment sections everywhere. Whether or not Darwin is or isn't open source doesn't freaking matter, it was heavily marketed as such back in the sands of time and even if this wasn't the case it doesn't invalidate the central point made in the rant - that just because this device has an Apple logo every popular discussion surrounding it turns to mindless diatribe as a result of non-engineering centric expectations people place on their products, and every engineering-centric party (i.e. hackers) must deal with the whining polluting engineering-centric forums for days every time it happens. In effect, the complaint is that commenting resembles the squabble of a throng of uninformed consumers rather than the judicious discourse of a forum of engineers.
      - jfb 14y ago
        While I agree that there is precious little interesting technical discussion on HN, engineering is an ideological discipline, just like anything else.
sneak 14y ago
I have always felt this way, I just don't feel a need to make a noise about it. Be wary of confirmation bias and sample set bias (you only hear the worthless noise from those who are speaking it) when reading sites like HN/Reddit/etc. It's a lot easier to hit the upvote button than it is to type a comment. Not all of HN's constituents are whiny blowhards.
esolyt 14y ago
>Ideology has trumped engineering, and as hackers, you shouldn't tolerate it. Exactly. It turned out Apple's Lightning is actually inferior to a standard MicroUSB + MHL.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  > The Samsung Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II use a connector that is similar to the original 5-pin MHL-HDMI adapter/dongle, but it uses 11-pins in order to achieve a few functional improvements over the 5-pin design standard, you say?
- bilbo0s 14y ago
  In what way do you believe (Lightning) is inferior? and in what way do you believe (MicroUSB + MHL) is 'standard'? Serious questions.
  - blinkingled 14y ago
    Both Micro USB and MHL seem to be industry standards - ref Wikipedia. Lot of vendors seem to putting out cheaper Micro USB to MHL adapters - so even if (Micro USB->MHL) may not be a standard it is at least built on two standards and proprietary licensing / approval seems to be unnecessary for vendors. Also most MHL adapters seem to do 1080p - the Lightning one seems to do 720p badly if we are to believe Apple store reviewers.
  - smackfu 14y ago
    The sad thing is that Lightning is even inferior to the Apple 30 pin connector for this use. You get better video out on an iPhone 4S than a brand new iPhone 5, and the connector is $10 less and has a pass thru so you can charge it at the same time.
rossjudson 14y ago
What you're saying is true from an engineering standpoint (serial vs parallel), but has to be placed in the customer's context. In this specific case the quality is bad, operation is unreliable, and the price is high. Consumer devices accept HDMI as input. Serial to parallel video (Lightning to HDMI) is tough without some heavy-duty hardware -- hence the exorbitant cost of these adapters. The SoC design introduces a massive amount of complexity. This has yielded unreliable operation. And it introduces that complexity at a point of physical vulnerability -- people don't treat adapter like tiny fragile computers. They treat them like, well, adapters. End-to-end serial communications would be nice, but that's not the world we live in. Lightning isn't that much smaller than HDMI or Micro-HDMI. Reversibility is a very minor feature, and not worth the price being paid. And that's not a $30 adapter. It's a $50 adapter. Did you think it was $30? That was the old one -- parallel to parallel.
- TorbjornLunde 14y ago
  I strongly disagree that reversibility is a small feature. Whenever Plugging the chargers to new iOS devices is effortless the same way as headphones jacks. Non-symmetrical connectors are an affront to usability.
  - jws 14y ago
    I appreciate reversibility once per day. In 2074 days of owning an iPhone and 1065 days of owning an iPad I have never used or wanted an HDMI output. I'd say they made the right tradeoff.
    - mikeash 14y ago
      I agree. I don't even have a device with the connector (yet?), but it seems like a major advantage. Who are all these people popping out of the woodwork wanting a wired connection from their phone to their TV? I'm sure some people do this sometimes, but so many? Why would you even do that? Perhaps this is uncharitable, but it makes me think that most of the people complaining here have never done it, never will, probably never even thought about doing it before, but are now outraged at the thought that the connector is not 100% perfect for this one uncommon use-case.
nathanstitt 14y ago
I agree 100%. Software is eating the world, so I'm not sure why everyone is so against this. Maybe it's a case of I didn't complain when they came for my DEC Alpha server with green screen, nor when they took away my Token Ring network, but I will not stand for only using one flimsy cable for all my devices. Come on, this is the tech industry, what did you think was going to happen? What I see Apple's done here is future proofed the connector. Ok, so it doesn't output 1080p today, but I see no reason why it couldn't tomorrow. Devise a new protocol, download an update to all the iDevice's which in turn upgrades all the adapters out there and everything's golden. Once this (admittedly painful) transition is complete, I see no reason for Apple to have to endure another one. By the time it's outdated, I'm sure everything will be wireless. Perhaps everyone complaining about a $30 adapter shouldn't have purchased a $600 phone and instead stuck with a $20 Moto Razr.
- nawitus 14y ago
  >Software is eating the world, so I'm not sure why everyone is so against this. Added latency and worse quality are pretty big things. I wan't to send pixels 1:1 to my display device, which this new technology doesn't allow.
  - nathanstitt 14y ago
    I do see where you're coming from, and agree it sucks that they've went backward in quality in this case. To my mind those are implementation details that Apple screwed up. It doesn't invalidate the basic idea though, which is to move the brains of the device into software so that the same connector can be used for a multitude of different functions, some of which don't even exist today. Admittedly, I'm not privy to whatever design decisions the team that implemented the connector made, but I see no reason why it couldn't have the same fidelity that a straight hdmi cable would have. If I guessed, I'd say that they said 'good enough, ship it' instead of continuing to refine it since they knew they could always send down an update later.
- rossjudson 14y ago
  The point here is that the electrical design of Lightning doesn't have the bandwidth for 1080p. It runs at USB 2 speeds. Software can't magically make hardware do things. It can create an illusion (like the Lightning adapter does), but the design has to support, for real, capabilities you want to properly provide.
blinkingled 14y ago
So what does Lightning Digital AV Adapter do today that could not have been done using Micro USB->MHL? Looking at the reviews the Apple solution is a) pricey b) over engineered and c) performs worse than MHL. And you are talking about Apple haters creating a reality distortion field? One way you could defend it is to promise features that can be programmed into the adapter firmware but if today it does 720p poorly I see no reason to believe something much more useful/better will come later. I am paying the $50 today, not in the future.
smackfu 14y ago
This seems like the kind of solution you would bodge together if someone gave you the already designed Lightning connector and said "now make it support VGA and HDMI". A completely crazy hack. Bashing Apple over it seems completely reasonable.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  It's a result worthy of pointy haired bosses.
Spykk 14y ago
Are you seriously defending Apple by saying a serial bus is the obvious solution? Apple, the company that has forced rediculous proprietary ports that add zero value into its products while every one else in the space was using Universal Serial Bus? If this post was meant to be sarcastic then I will accept a well deserved whoosh, but ideology trumped engineering at Apple years ago.
- rlanday 14y ago
  You do realize that it was Apple that first shipped computers with USB to replace legacy ports, right?
  - Spykk 14y ago
    USB was around long before Apple stopped providing PS/2. If you buy a phone or tablet from anyone that isn't Apple you will very likely get a USB port. If you buy Apple you will not. Trying to argue that Apple is somehow looking to the future by providing a serial bus years after it was the norm is hard to comprehend.
    - itafroma 14y ago
      Apple never provided PS/2; their solution was the (proprietary?) Apple Desktop Bus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Desktop_Bus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Desktop_Bus You may be thinking of the licensed Mac clones of the mid-90s: some of them did include PS/2 ports.
  - nivla 14y ago
    I think you are wrong about that. Apple shipped the iMac starting with USB v1.1 in 1998 [1]. It was the first Mac with a USB port. USB was developed in 1994 from a group of seven companies Compaq, DEC, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC and Nortel. [2] Windows 95 that was released in 1997 had built-in support for USB devices.[3] The market share of Mac at that time was about 4.6% [4]. So no Apple wasn't the first computer to ship with USB support nor was it the reason USB went mainstream. [1]http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac_ab.html http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac_ab.htm... [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#History [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95#Editions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95#Editions [4] http://pctimeline.info/windows/win1997.htm http://pctimeline.info/windows/win1997.htm
jessewmc 14y ago
Can you explain a little more what you're getting at? I'm not very familiar with hardware and don't know anything about video. The adapter seems like a neat hack, but definitely a workaround for something. I can't really tell if you're defending it or not. What's the win from an engineering standpoint here? And why is this an inevitable design (which you suggest if I understand you right)? What are some other options and what are the reasons those might not have been used?
aoetr 14y ago
Are you kidding? The issue is that the idiots at Apple failed to create a connector (or at least add a secondary connector for video) with enough bandwidth to even drive a single low-end 1080p display (and what about 2560x1600, 3D at 120/240Hz, 4K, multiple 4K configurations?!?). So, they had use H.264 compression and sell a ludicrously expensive adapter with a CPU, destroying the signal, introducing latency and effectively defrauding their consumers who thought they would get arbitrary and direct HDMI output like you would expect from any reasonable system.

by nirvana 14y ago

mcintyre1994 14y ago

I agree with what you're saying, but I'm interested about Apple's open source operating system. Assuming OS X, I'm having trouble finding its entirety in open source, obviously it's built on open source but I don't think the entire OS is open sourced. I'm also having trouble believing it wouldn't have been used for a Linux desktop by now. Sorry for replying to a small part of your comment, but I really do agree with the rest.

objclxt 14y ago

> defined as Apple, you know the company with the most popular open source operating system in the world? I'm not sure which OS you're talking about...perhaps you could point me to the source code of either OS X or iOS? Certain core components of OS X are open source, but Darwin isn't OS X. As someone who makes his living from writing Objective-C code, I don't have any ideological objection to Apple. But I think you shouldn't accuse people of spreading "lies and engineering ignorance" when you seem to be claiming something that's patently untrue.

hosay123 14y ago
Perhaps you didn't experience the PR storm around the time OS X was initially released: it was heavily geared towards nerds and the literal phrase "open source" was extensively employed in their marketing material. This aside, you're basically trying to write off nirvana's (IMHO excellent) rant using a minor technicality, one of the common features of the discussions here that tends to make my skin crawl.
- nier 14y ago
  The technicality being that Darwin seizes to be an open source operating system once it is shipped with closed source components. Why would this be true?
  - hosay123 14y ago
    OK here we go, and why not, after all it's Sunday and I've got nothing better to do.. right? The central tenet was that discourse here is regularly devoid of sound engineering because it tends to be blinded by mindless cultural perceptions of the companies involved in whatever happens to be under discussion. In the case of Apple the expectation is their products are flawless and if not then all hell will be paid on blogs and comment sections everywhere. Whether or not Darwin is or isn't open source doesn't freaking matter, it was heavily marketed as such back in the sands of time and even if this wasn't the case it doesn't invalidate the central point made in the rant - that just because this device has an Apple logo every popular discussion surrounding it turns to mindless diatribe as a result of non-engineering centric expectations people place on their products, and every engineering-centric party (i.e. hackers) must deal with the whining polluting engineering-centric forums for days every time it happens. In effect, the complaint is that commenting resembles the squabble of a throng of uninformed consumers rather than the judicious discourse of a forum of engineers.
    - jfb 14y ago
      While I agree that there is precious little interesting technical discussion on HN, engineering is an ideological discipline, just like anything else.

sneak 14y ago

I have always felt this way, I just don't feel a need to make a noise about it. Be wary of confirmation bias and sample set bias (you only hear the worthless noise from those who are speaking it) when reading sites like HN/Reddit/etc. It's a lot easier to hit the upvote button than it is to type a comment. Not all of HN's constituents are whiny blowhards.

esolyt 14y ago

>Ideology has trumped engineering, and as hackers, you shouldn't tolerate it. Exactly. It turned out Apple's Lightning is actually inferior to a standard MicroUSB + MHL.

ricardobeat 14y ago
> The Samsung Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II use a connector that is similar to the original 5-pin MHL-HDMI adapter/dongle, but it uses 11-pins in order to achieve a few functional improvements over the 5-pin design standard, you say?
bilbo0s 14y ago
In what way do you believe (Lightning) is inferior? and in what way do you believe (MicroUSB + MHL) is 'standard'? Serious questions.
- blinkingled 14y ago
  Both Micro USB and MHL seem to be industry standards - ref Wikipedia. Lot of vendors seem to putting out cheaper Micro USB to MHL adapters - so even if (Micro USB->MHL) may not be a standard it is at least built on two standards and proprietary licensing / approval seems to be unnecessary for vendors. Also most MHL adapters seem to do 1080p - the Lightning one seems to do 720p badly if we are to believe Apple store reviewers.
- smackfu 14y ago
  The sad thing is that Lightning is even inferior to the Apple 30 pin connector for this use. You get better video out on an iPhone 4S than a brand new iPhone 5, and the connector is $10 less and has a pass thru so you can charge it at the same time.

rossjudson 14y ago

What you're saying is true from an engineering standpoint (serial vs parallel), but has to be placed in the customer's context. In this specific case the quality is bad, operation is unreliable, and the price is high. Consumer devices accept HDMI as input. Serial to parallel video (Lightning to HDMI) is tough without some heavy-duty hardware -- hence the exorbitant cost of these adapters. The SoC design introduces a massive amount of complexity. This has yielded unreliable operation. And it introduces that complexity at a point of physical vulnerability -- people don't treat adapter like tiny fragile computers. They treat them like, well, adapters. End-to-end serial communications would be nice, but that's not the world we live in. Lightning isn't that much smaller than HDMI or Micro-HDMI. Reversibility is a very minor feature, and not worth the price being paid. And that's not a $30 adapter. It's a $50 adapter. Did you think it was $30? That was the old one -- parallel to parallel.

TorbjornLunde 14y ago
I strongly disagree that reversibility is a small feature. Whenever Plugging the chargers to new iOS devices is effortless the same way as headphones jacks. Non-symmetrical connectors are an affront to usability.
- jws 14y ago
  I appreciate reversibility once per day. In 2074 days of owning an iPhone and 1065 days of owning an iPad I have never used or wanted an HDMI output. I'd say they made the right tradeoff.
  - mikeash 14y ago
    I agree. I don't even have a device with the connector (yet?), but it seems like a major advantage. Who are all these people popping out of the woodwork wanting a wired connection from their phone to their TV? I'm sure some people do this sometimes, but so many? Why would you even do that? Perhaps this is uncharitable, but it makes me think that most of the people complaining here have never done it, never will, probably never even thought about doing it before, but are now outraged at the thought that the connector is not 100% perfect for this one uncommon use-case.

nathanstitt 14y ago

I agree 100%. Software is eating the world, so I'm not sure why everyone is so against this. Maybe it's a case of I didn't complain when they came for my DEC Alpha server with green screen, nor when they took away my Token Ring network, but I will not stand for only using one flimsy cable for all my devices. Come on, this is the tech industry, what did you think was going to happen? What I see Apple's done here is future proofed the connector. Ok, so it doesn't output 1080p today, but I see no reason why it couldn't tomorrow. Devise a new protocol, download an update to all the iDevice's which in turn upgrades all the adapters out there and everything's golden. Once this (admittedly painful) transition is complete, I see no reason for Apple to have to endure another one. By the time it's outdated, I'm sure everything will be wireless. Perhaps everyone complaining about a $30 adapter shouldn't have purchased a $600 phone and instead stuck with a $20 Moto Razr.

nawitus 14y ago
>Software is eating the world, so I'm not sure why everyone is so against this. Added latency and worse quality are pretty big things. I wan't to send pixels 1:1 to my display device, which this new technology doesn't allow.
- nathanstitt 14y ago
  I do see where you're coming from, and agree it sucks that they've went backward in quality in this case. To my mind those are implementation details that Apple screwed up. It doesn't invalidate the basic idea though, which is to move the brains of the device into software so that the same connector can be used for a multitude of different functions, some of which don't even exist today. Admittedly, I'm not privy to whatever design decisions the team that implemented the connector made, but I see no reason why it couldn't have the same fidelity that a straight hdmi cable would have. If I guessed, I'd say that they said 'good enough, ship it' instead of continuing to refine it since they knew they could always send down an update later.
rossjudson 14y ago
The point here is that the electrical design of Lightning doesn't have the bandwidth for 1080p. It runs at USB 2 speeds. Software can't magically make hardware do things. It can create an illusion (like the Lightning adapter does), but the design has to support, for real, capabilities you want to properly provide.

blinkingled 14y ago

So what does Lightning Digital AV Adapter do today that could not have been done using Micro USB->MHL? Looking at the reviews the Apple solution is a) pricey b) over engineered and c) performs worse than MHL. And you are talking about Apple haters creating a reality distortion field? One way you could defend it is to promise features that can be programmed into the adapter firmware but if today it does 720p poorly I see no reason to believe something much more useful/better will come later. I am paying the $50 today, not in the future.

smackfu 14y ago

This seems like the kind of solution you would bodge together if someone gave you the already designed Lightning connector and said "now make it support VGA and HDMI". A completely crazy hack. Bashing Apple over it seems completely reasonable.

stcredzero 14y ago
It's a result worthy of pointy haired bosses.

Spykk 14y ago

Are you seriously defending Apple by saying a serial bus is the obvious solution? Apple, the company that has forced rediculous proprietary ports that add zero value into its products while every one else in the space was using Universal Serial Bus? If this post was meant to be sarcastic then I will accept a well deserved whoosh, but ideology trumped engineering at Apple years ago.

rlanday 14y ago
You do realize that it was Apple that first shipped computers with USB to replace legacy ports, right?
- Spykk 14y ago
  USB was around long before Apple stopped providing PS/2. If you buy a phone or tablet from anyone that isn't Apple you will very likely get a USB port. If you buy Apple you will not. Trying to argue that Apple is somehow looking to the future by providing a serial bus years after it was the norm is hard to comprehend.
  - itafroma 14y ago
    Apple never provided PS/2; their solution was the (proprietary?) Apple Desktop Bus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Desktop_Bus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Desktop_Bus You may be thinking of the licensed Mac clones of the mid-90s: some of them did include PS/2 ports.
- nivla 14y ago
  I think you are wrong about that. Apple shipped the iMac starting with USB v1.1 in 1998 [1]. It was the first Mac with a USB port. USB was developed in 1994 from a group of seven companies Compaq, DEC, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC and Nortel. [2] Windows 95 that was released in 1997 had built-in support for USB devices.[3] The market share of Mac at that time was about 4.6% [4]. So no Apple wasn't the first computer to ship with USB support nor was it the reason USB went mainstream. [1]http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac_ab.html http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac_ab.htm... [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#History [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95#Editions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95#Editions [4] http://pctimeline.info/windows/win1997.htm http://pctimeline.info/windows/win1997.htm

jessewmc 14y ago

Can you explain a little more what you're getting at? I'm not very familiar with hardware and don't know anything about video. The adapter seems like a neat hack, but definitely a workaround for something. I can't really tell if you're defending it or not. What's the win from an engineering standpoint here? And why is this an inevitable design (which you suggest if I understand you right)? What are some other options and what are the reasons those might not have been used?

aoetr 14y ago

Are you kidding? The issue is that the idiots at Apple failed to create a connector (or at least add a secondary connector for video) with enough bandwidth to even drive a single low-end 1080p display (and what about 2560x1600, 3D at 120/240Hz, 4K, multiple 4K configurations?!?). So, they had use H.264 compression and sell a ludicrously expensive adapter with a CPU, destroying the signal, introducing latency and effectively defrauding their consumers who thought they would get arbitrary and direct HDMI output like you would expect from any reasonable system.