• beefcat@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    in this case, apple display connector (adc) predates dvi, so they didn’t really have any other option for supporting an all-digital signal path to an lcd monitor, especially not one that could also power the monitor and provide usb.

    this happens a lot with apple proprietary connectors. lightning predated usb-c by almost 5 years, and it was a much better connector than the existing industry standard at the time (usb micro-b). it didn’t really start to feel like a problem until many years later when usb-c started offering most of the same advantages and more.

    • thejevans@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Then they could have released an open standard instead of creating a proprietary connector.

      • beefcat@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        the adc connector was mostly proprietary in the sense that nobody else used it. third party manufacturers had no problem making adapters and cables without apple’s permission, as evidenced by the the belkin dongle this article is talking about.

        what you’re really asking for is an industry standard, which is different from an open standard. however, an industry standard requires the industry as a whole to buy in to it. if they say no, but you still want to solve a problem that their existing standards do not, what do you do?

        industry standards also do not typically appear overnight. usually, companies put out multiple solutions trying to solve new problems, and eventually the industry coalesces around a preferred solution. USB was introduced in 1996 with full support for mice and keyboards, but it took nearly a decade to become the de facto connector for mice and keyboards.

        • thejevans@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          I am asking for specifications to be released without patents or have patents signed over to an organization like VESA. Whether it becomes popular or not is another story.

          • beefcat@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            i don’t think adc was encumbered by patents, at least not in any way that prevented other manufacturers from making use of it. it wasn’t locked down behind special handshakes and a certification program like lightning is. it used the same signaling protocol that dvi ended up using, which is why passive adapters like the belkin one above were possible. the additional pins on the connector were used for power and usb. the specifications were freely available, and monitors, gpus, and kvms were released that used the connector in the late '90s and early '00s.

            the problem people are haivng is that this connector did not see wide use, so cables and adapters are hard to come by 25 years after the fact.

            putting vesa in charge wouldn’t change anything here unless vesa decided to ditch dvi and push this connector instead. however, that probably wouldn’t have happened, because their constituents (most wintel pc makers) would have preferred the cheaper solution of not bundling video, power, and usb in a single cable.

            • jarfil@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              i don’t think adc was encumbered by patents

              25 years after the fact.

              If it were, they’d likely be expired by now.

              I wonder if an adapter could be made some “DIY” way, if it needs to be active, it could be a fun project for someone into FPGAs.

              • beefcat@beehaw.org
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                1 year ago

                the adapter is passive since both connectors use the same signaling protocol

                the problem is that designing tooling to manufacture a custom connector at scale is expensive, so nobody is going to do that until they know there is enough demand to at least cover the upfront cost of designing that tooling and manufacturing a bunch of these.

            • deegeese
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              1 year ago

              You’re missing the point that if Apple had just given it to VESA, it would have become the de-facto standard instead of DVI because other companies would rather reuse ADC than design DVI from scratch.

              • beefcat@beehaw.org
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                1 year ago

                i think i laid out exactly why that most likely wouldn’t have happened

                i don’t think there is any reason vesa couldn’t have adopted it if they wanted, the connectors are already extremely similar. the problem is they didn’t want a connector that also handles power and usb, because that would have raised costs for pc manufacturers

                • deegeese
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                  1 year ago

                  As a consumer, would have been pretty cool if DVI carried USB too.

                  Instead, almost every monitor bundles a USB hub that needs an extra cable. Not sure how that saved manufacturers money.

                  • beefcat@beehaw.org
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                    1 year ago

                    you have to remember this was 1998, and apple was the first company going all-in on usb for peripherals, using it to replace the aging apple desktop bus.

                    the cost concern also has more to do with low end machines in that time frame. if the connector included it, then any devices that used it would need usb support. at a time when usb was still brand new, and most pcs that had it shipped with controllers that only supported one or two ports.

              • anlumo@feddit.de
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                1 year ago

                ADC is incredibly inconvientient, because it doesn’t support hotplugging. It also requires the computer to contain a power supply for the screen.