Disqus
As many of you who regularly read these pages may know, I’ve been porting over to Apple – part of that has been the painful process of find the best accessories. I say pain, because first of all you need to ID the right accessory (of which there is often more than one option), and then secondly, Apple do put a premium on all their products – including accessories!
However, one thought did occur to me the other day – and that is that the accessory range, particularly Apple’s own stuff is very well thought out. It’s well designed, well packaged, but it’s also modular – you can interwork components of things like docks, cables, and chargers very neatly.
Take a related (and recent) example – their newest LED Cinema Display has an integrated power source for Laptop charging, and combined AV leads. Very nice. There is a criticism that this means a lack of display ports for example, but when you are all about minimal design, you should expect that I think. In a similar way, the iPhone/iPod multimedia (composite) cable is also well put-together, and includes a USB lead section, plus mains adapter component. So all working towards reducing the number trailing cables.
For us Mobile users, some cables are still necessary (chargers, and you could argue headphones too, for fidelity of sound) – and to some extent are still the bane of our lives! So attempts by companies to reduce cables/connectors/jacks is always seen as good.
The power/data connector on devices moving toward mini-USB as a ‘standard’, and the headphone jack heading toward 3.5mm ‘standard’ are both welcome moves. But Apple have attacked things from an additional angle by making docks, chargers, and cables that serve more than one function.
For me that means a neater desk – which is something that with previous PCs and Mobiles has proved a real battle. Removing cabling from my desk setup is something I haven’t done in years (in fact I’ve added to it), so it was a nice experience the other night to be pulling out legacy desk components, due to the newer ones being truly multi-purpose.
What sayeth you, IntoMobile readers? Agree-th you? 
About The Author
Ben Robinson
Ben is a 10+ year veteran of the Mobile industry – starting his career when SMS was a still a relatively new concept for most people (!), he has now consulted on everything from bleeding-edge Mobile content, to the next-gen accessories you might view it on. As a result he has a broad and deep knowledge in numerous areas of Mobile – from network operators to device vendors, to infrastructure and middleware vendors (not to mention content delivery) – and has worked for companies in all of these areas! He is based in the UK, a hotbed of activity for mobile, and recently became a father for the second time – as oppose to in his younger years when he was happy spend time tweaking all manner of mobile devices to 'nth' degree, he now looks for services and hardware that provide the most efficient, compact, and reliable improvements to his already manic life! It’s his opinion that Mobile solutions should be there to help to make your life better – if a particular solution (be it service or device) isn’t doing this, he believes you need to ask the very important question of why you continue to use it... His focus at IntoMobile is mainly on Mobile content, services, and infrastructure, particularly as regards the UK market – and with the occasional look at devices. Additionally, using his extensive experience in the industry, he will provide commentary on the industry at large, with regular (and hopefully thought-provoking) articles.
