Apple loosened its licensing terms for its Lightning cable and has given the Kickstarter-funded Pop Charger a second lease on life.
Last week, the development team behind the Pop Charger announced that the project was canceled because Apple would not offer the company a license for its Lightning cable. The Pop Charger is a multi-device charger that included micro USB cables for Android devices and Lightning cables for iOS devices. Apple’s terms prohibited the use of two different types of cables in a device that included a Lightning cable. The news of this decision spread like wildfire on Thursday of last week and Apple reversed its decision on Friday.
Project co-founder Jamie Siminoff shared the news with supported that this change by Apple has enabled the POP charger project to move forward. He writes,
As you know on Thursday we sent you an update that because of Apple’s rules around Lightning we would be canceling POP. The story got,A LOT of news,and reactions, way more than we could have ever imagined. In fact it became such big news that 24 hours after we posted,Apple changed their guidelines,for Lightning.
It was an incredible turn of events for us. We never could have imagined that we would be able to change Apple’s rules.
Based on Apple’s change we can make POP the way we had promised and the project is back on. We will not be processing refunds and are going full speed ahead to produce and deliver the product to you ASAP.
This is good news for POP supporters and iOS users in general, who can look forward to future products that incorporate a variety of charging interfaces.
[Via GigaOM]