It's 2016. CES has come and gone. Is the mythical 3.0 cable ever going to appear for our iPad Pros?
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iPad Pro USB 3.0 Lightning cable predictions?
- Thread starter appletvbob
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I would guess it will arrive eventually, and I think the reason we didn't see one at CES is that the MFI Lightning sockets that Apple provides are not USB 3 compatible.
A third party company could make their own, but it wouldn't be MFI certified so the interest from the big brands will be low.
I would speculate that USB 3 over Lightning is quite a technical achievement since it's effectively doubling the number of pins to 16. Given how Lightning dynamically assigns pins based on orientation, the chips within the cable must be capable of assigning twice the number of pins. I'm no expert but that sounds tricky without support from Apple. Of course, the new USB 3 Lightning to SD card adapter will do this, so Apple has the technology.
A third party company could make their own, but it wouldn't be MFI certified so the interest from the big brands will be low.
I would speculate that USB 3 over Lightning is quite a technical achievement since it's effectively doubling the number of pins to 16. Given how Lightning dynamically assigns pins based on orientation, the chips within the cable must be capable of assigning twice the number of pins. I'm no expert but that sounds tricky without support from Apple. Of course, the new USB 3 Lightning to SD card adapter will do this, so Apple has the technology.