4 ms·

Time was when a person could build and program their own computer using any parts they wanted. Tech types valued their ability to build, diagnose, repair, and o

Time was when a person could build and program their own computer using any parts they wanted. Tech types valued their ability to build, diagnose, repair, and optimize their own equipment. From the responses here, I can only surmise that's attitude is considered old fashioned now. I lost interest in Apple product after going go through a Kafkian experience trying to use the standard serial port on the early iPod/iPhone connectors. Was trying to build a prototype of a handheld compass app, using a magnetometer board we designed that plugged into the connector and drew power from the phone. Everything worked fine, except I couldn't get the serial port software working in the phone app. Apple wouldn't let me use the serial port without a special MFI chip, requiring me to fill out tons of financial paperwork (Dun and Broadstreet etc), business plans, sales estimates, target markets, etc. They were not interested in helping me out at all. Not sure why Apple decided that serial ports were off limits. This is about the oldest comm technology out there. sigh Anyhow, I read that hobbyists were working around the limitations by using the microphone port as a modem. Basically modulate the serial data, send as a waveform into microphone port, then demodulate the audio stream in software. Clever. So I went and built this. Only to find that Apple had recently decided to close the "audio hole", forcing me to use an MFI chip to get access to the microphone port. The more I dug, the more I found everything locked down. I realized Apple didn't want me actually using any of the standard interfaces I'd come accustomed to using in my decades long career in tech. Beautiful phone, I just couldn't use it outside of the curated experience. Not without their permission (read: tax). It was the most anti-consumer piece of electronics I'd ever enountered. I'm assuming it's much much worse now. If Apple dared, they'd consider locking down WiFi access as well. I'm sure they've toyed with the idea of forcing all WiFi router manufacturers to purchase an MFI chip to interoperate with Apple product. What the kids here seem to want is a curated experience, and they're willing to pay $$$ every month for a device they can't open, repair, modify, etc. Good luck to you and your leased phone experience, you only compute at Apple's pleasure. I fear for the subsequent generations raised in a market where this exploitive behavior has become normalized. /old-timer-rant

Clamchop 3y ago
> forcing me to use an MFI chip to get access to the microphone port. How does this work? We are talking about the now-deceased analogue minijack, right?
- lordfrito 3y ago
  Well back then (~10 years ago?) it was just a standard three signal minijack (left out, right out, mic in) I think the audio out was open to software, but the incoming mic data required an MFI chip to be able to open/read the channel in software. I never did get my hands on an MFI chip, so I never got far enough to figure out what it interfaced with. I assumed at the time it must somehow talk to the phone over the mic line, otherwise how could you build a microphone that used the standard mic jack? I'm sure it's encrypted, I know they were like 10¢ or so in volume, and once Apple approved/blessed your idea you could get tech docs and samples. That's about all I know, as I couldn't get them to work with us, as my company refused to hand over and project plans, market data etc to them. It was going to take multiple months before we got anywhere, and we had weeks to get a demo running. Spent about 3x time and money on that project as it should have taken because of their user hostility. So f*ck em. Maybe some one else here can add some details on how MFI works on microphones. Edit: should follow up saying that once I figured out that they weren't locking out WiFi, we added a small WiFi hotspot module to the PCB. So you plugged it into the phone, it drew power from the phone to run a hotspot. You then had to go into the phone and join the hotspot. Then our app would open a port on the local wireless LAN to tunnel a few hundred bytes of data a second. Blew my mind that I could only get around Apple blocks by sticking another radio on the phone.
  - fingerlocks 3y ago
    I don’t know what special chip you’re talking about. I wrote firmware for both wired USB and wireless IAP2 for external hardware support on iPhones, and it didn’t require anything more than the standard developer account. Shipping and getting the device certified by Apple, with a literal stamp on the box that says “Made for Apple Devices” or whatever, is where MFi comes into play. MFi is an account you sign up for to get spec sheets, support, and access to order custom components like lightning connector modules. But that’s all optional for hobby programming. https://mfi.apple.com/en/how-it-works https://mfi.apple.com/en/how-it-works
    - lordfrito 3y ago
      Things might be different now, but for sure back when I was doing this there was an "authentication chip" or "authentication coprocessor" needed to unlock almost all available I/O functionality. There's this [0] which in the 2nd paragraph says that you need an authentication chip. Here's a few articles from back in the day [1] [2] talking about how you can't use the serial port without the MFI authentication chip. Many sites recommended jailbreaking your phone to use the serial port, which of course doesn't help me with a commercial solution. There are people complaining about needing a chip to use audio in/out features. [3] [4] Apparently this irritated a bunch of car audio buffs when they locked this down. We tried using the standard Bluetooth SPP protocol (serial port protocol) as a bypass. Found out that Apple won't support SPP without the chip. [5] [6] For those that don't know, Bluetooth was originally designed to be a wireless serial port to replace RS-232 cables. [7] So support for this should be standard behavior out of the box. But of course Apple wanted to tax this feature as well. I can't seem to find articles about people talking about using line-in software modem as a bypass, but this stuff is from a long time ago and forums come and go. I certainly didn't come up with the idea on my own, I only attempted it because other people had done this to bypass the serial port lockdown. Like I said, maybe it's different now, but it wasn't back then. After my bad experience I vowed never to purchase an Apple product again. [0] https://mywraps.com/blogs/news/what-is-apple-mfi https://mywraps.com/blogs/news/what-is-apple-mfi [1] https://hcgilje.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/iphone-serial-communication/ https://hcgilje.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/iphone-serial-commu... [2] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/iphone-serial-port-programming.767767/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/iphone-serial-port-prog... [3] https://forum.arduino.cc/t/sending-music-from-iphone-to-arduino/326275/11 https://forum.arduino.cc/t/sending-music-from-iphone-to-ardu... [4] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2660553?answerId=12682664022#12682664022 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2660553?answerId=126826... [5] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7420717/iphone-to-rs-232-via-bluetooth https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7420717/iphone-to-rs-232... [6] https://stackoverflow.com/a/16035512 https://stackoverflow.com/a/16035512 [7] https://www.androidauthority.com/history-bluetooth-explained-846345/ https://www.androidauthority.com/history-bluetooth-explained...
spacecase-25 3y ago
[flagged]
hnfong 3y ago
> I read that hobbyists were working around the limitations... > It was the most anti-consumer piece of electronics You're a hobbyist, not a consumer. Consumers don't want to stick a cable into the serial port and do arbitrary stuff. Consumers buy gadgets from businesses supporting them, so that explains the financial paper work. When people here babble about "anti-consumer", what they really mean is "anti-hobbyists".
- lordfrito 3y ago
  Not sure I like the logic here. By labeling me as a hobbyist, you're suggesting that I shouldn't be surprised businesses ignore my needs because I'm not a "real" consumer? In my world any paying customer buying and using a product was considered a consumer of it. I probably spend more money on tech than the average user. Shouldn't make me part of some core "power user" sub-demographic? I used to build computers. I design and program embedded systems. I'm constantly purchasing/using all sorts of tech both at work and at home. But you're suggesting stuff like this is somehow "not for me"? I can do all of this on on Windows. I can do all of this on Linux. The only place I can't seem to use these features is on Apple product. Cars are used in many different ways. Some people use them to get to work. Some people work on them themselves, soup them up, restore them, etc. GM doesn't seem to have a problem catering to all of these crowds simultaneously. Labeling this as a hobbyist problem just seems like handwaving to explain why I shouldn't be alarmed at the trend of taking our ability to use and control our computers away from us. Is this just Apple apologism, or do you think it's ok when companies generally take away our ability to own and repair the products we purchase?

Clamchop 3y ago

> forcing me to use an MFI chip to get access to the microphone port. How does this work? We are talking about the now-deceased analogue minijack, right?

lordfrito 3y ago
Well back then (~10 years ago?) it was just a standard three signal minijack (left out, right out, mic in) I think the audio out was open to software, but the incoming mic data required an MFI chip to be able to open/read the channel in software. I never did get my hands on an MFI chip, so I never got far enough to figure out what it interfaced with. I assumed at the time it must somehow talk to the phone over the mic line, otherwise how could you build a microphone that used the standard mic jack? I'm sure it's encrypted, I know they were like 10¢ or so in volume, and once Apple approved/blessed your idea you could get tech docs and samples. That's about all I know, as I couldn't get them to work with us, as my company refused to hand over and project plans, market data etc to them. It was going to take multiple months before we got anywhere, and we had weeks to get a demo running. Spent about 3x time and money on that project as it should have taken because of their user hostility. So f*ck em. Maybe some one else here can add some details on how MFI works on microphones. Edit: should follow up saying that once I figured out that they weren't locking out WiFi, we added a small WiFi hotspot module to the PCB. So you plugged it into the phone, it drew power from the phone to run a hotspot. You then had to go into the phone and join the hotspot. Then our app would open a port on the local wireless LAN to tunnel a few hundred bytes of data a second. Blew my mind that I could only get around Apple blocks by sticking another radio on the phone.
- fingerlocks 3y ago
  I don’t know what special chip you’re talking about. I wrote firmware for both wired USB and wireless IAP2 for external hardware support on iPhones, and it didn’t require anything more than the standard developer account. Shipping and getting the device certified by Apple, with a literal stamp on the box that says “Made for Apple Devices” or whatever, is where MFi comes into play. MFi is an account you sign up for to get spec sheets, support, and access to order custom components like lightning connector modules. But that’s all optional for hobby programming. https://mfi.apple.com/en/how-it-works https://mfi.apple.com/en/how-it-works
  - lordfrito 3y ago
    Things might be different now, but for sure back when I was doing this there was an "authentication chip" or "authentication coprocessor" needed to unlock almost all available I/O functionality. There's this [0] which in the 2nd paragraph says that you need an authentication chip. Here's a few articles from back in the day [1] [2] talking about how you can't use the serial port without the MFI authentication chip. Many sites recommended jailbreaking your phone to use the serial port, which of course doesn't help me with a commercial solution. There are people complaining about needing a chip to use audio in/out features. [3] [4] Apparently this irritated a bunch of car audio buffs when they locked this down. We tried using the standard Bluetooth SPP protocol (serial port protocol) as a bypass. Found out that Apple won't support SPP without the chip. [5] [6] For those that don't know, Bluetooth was originally designed to be a wireless serial port to replace RS-232 cables. [7] So support for this should be standard behavior out of the box. But of course Apple wanted to tax this feature as well. I can't seem to find articles about people talking about using line-in software modem as a bypass, but this stuff is from a long time ago and forums come and go. I certainly didn't come up with the idea on my own, I only attempted it because other people had done this to bypass the serial port lockdown. Like I said, maybe it's different now, but it wasn't back then. After my bad experience I vowed never to purchase an Apple product again. [0] https://mywraps.com/blogs/news/what-is-apple-mfi https://mywraps.com/blogs/news/what-is-apple-mfi [1] https://hcgilje.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/iphone-serial-communication/ https://hcgilje.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/iphone-serial-commu... [2] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/iphone-serial-port-programming.767767/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/iphone-serial-port-prog... [3] https://forum.arduino.cc/t/sending-music-from-iphone-to-arduino/326275/11 https://forum.arduino.cc/t/sending-music-from-iphone-to-ardu... [4] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2660553?answerId=12682664022#12682664022 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2660553?answerId=126826... [5] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7420717/iphone-to-rs-232-via-bluetooth https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7420717/iphone-to-rs-232... [6] https://stackoverflow.com/a/16035512 https://stackoverflow.com/a/16035512 [7] https://www.androidauthority.com/history-bluetooth-explained-846345/ https://www.androidauthority.com/history-bluetooth-explained...

spacecase-25 3y ago

[flagged]

hnfong 3y ago

> I read that hobbyists were working around the limitations... > It was the most anti-consumer piece of electronics You're a hobbyist, not a consumer. Consumers don't want to stick a cable into the serial port and do arbitrary stuff. Consumers buy gadgets from businesses supporting them, so that explains the financial paper work. When people here babble about "anti-consumer", what they really mean is "anti-hobbyists".

lordfrito 3y ago
Not sure I like the logic here. By labeling me as a hobbyist, you're suggesting that I shouldn't be surprised businesses ignore my needs because I'm not a "real" consumer? In my world any paying customer buying and using a product was considered a consumer of it. I probably spend more money on tech than the average user. Shouldn't make me part of some core "power user" sub-demographic? I used to build computers. I design and program embedded systems. I'm constantly purchasing/using all sorts of tech both at work and at home. But you're suggesting stuff like this is somehow "not for me"? I can do all of this on on Windows. I can do all of this on Linux. The only place I can't seem to use these features is on Apple product. Cars are used in many different ways. Some people use them to get to work. Some people work on them themselves, soup them up, restore them, etc. GM doesn't seem to have a problem catering to all of these crowds simultaneously. Labeling this as a hobbyist problem just seems like handwaving to explain why I shouldn't be alarmed at the trend of taking our ability to use and control our computers away from us. Is this just Apple apologism, or do you think it's ok when companies generally take away our ability to own and repair the products we purchase?