6 ms·

I had no idea they published this to the general public.

by MBCook 25d ago

JimTheMan 23d ago
There are probably enough counterfeiters out there who just take these apart and measure them, that the benefit to making it a bit more difficult isn't worth it. Whereas the benefit of opening it up for people to make accessories, play around with it from a marketing perspective, or even just to marvel at them would be of greater benefit.
nish__ 25d ago
It's so we can make cases.
darknavi 25d ago
A huge ecosystem of third party accessories, cases, skins, etc. The openness is easily worth it.
- MBCook 25d ago
  That’s obviously the people who are really using it, but I assumed you had to pay Apple to get it. So either you made your own measurements or if you were doing Made For iPhone and they would give it to you as part of that program which surely you must have to pay for.
  - p0ckets 25d ago
    Commoditize Your Complement - Apple wants accessories to be cheap. You might want to pay for the Made For iPhone certification for some things, but I doubt most cases have it.
  - gertlex 25d ago
    I assume there's NDAs in place with some vendors pre-release, since my understanding is some accessory vendors get the needed info before new models are released, so they can spin up their lines and have accessories ready to go when the new model hits the market. (but I could be wrong; NDAs w/China? no idea what the time between announced/released/shipped is typically; I last bought Apple product in 2009...)
    - tonyedgecombe 25d ago
      I've heard that they are busy bribing people in Apple's manufacturers for dimensions before products are released.
- eloisius 25d ago
  I always imagined shops in China got out the calipers and made measurements from scratch every time a new iPhone was released. Never knew Apple made it this easy to manufacture Minion iPhone cases
  - SoftTalker 25d ago
    Commoditize your complements. Wide choice and availability of accessories benefits hardware sales.
  - userbinator 25d ago
    They probably still do, if they have the device, because you definitely want to make sure before creating the not-cheap-even-in-China tooling. As others have mentioned, these are more useful for when they don't, i.e. before the actual release.
  - Maxion 25d ago
    The big manufactureres pay or just simple acquire the leaks.
    - yreg 24d ago
      I remember around iPhone 6 or such popular design rumours that were circulating around turned out to be wrong. There were photos of chinese warehouses filled with cases made for the incorrect design. With iPhone 4 Gizmodo literally acquired the prototype and still large portion of the crowd did not believe them, because the design seemed radically different to what they expected. Nowadays with the size of the supply line there seem to remain no more hardware secrets before the keynotes.
enoch2090 25d ago
For accessory manufacturers?
- duskwuff 25d ago
  Yes. These drawings are a companion to Apple's accessory design guidelines, which include a lot of other interesting design considerations: https://developer.apple.com/accessories/Accessory-Design-Guidelines.pdf https://developer.apple.com/accessories/Accessory-Design-Gui...
nujabe 25d ago
Wouldn’t surprise me if EU forced them to.
- bigyabai 25d ago
  No, this is to attract accessory manufacturers, and then corner them into buying an MFi/connector license: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MFi_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MFi_Program
- zimpenfish 25d ago
  This kind of thing was available (although more difficult to find) well before the EU started on their Apple quest - e.g. I had the dimensional drawings for whatever phone I had in late 2015 (6 or 6S, I forget) because I was making graphical inserts for my clear case using my Cricut with dimensions from the Apple PDF.
deleted 25d ago
[deleted]
plorg 25d ago
It's nice but lots of companies do this if their equipment is meant to be used with other equipment from third parties. Frankly I'm surprised they only provide it in 2D PDFs.
kalleboo 24d ago
Checking the wayback machine, this URL seems to have only shown up a couple months ago with the very latest devices, and has slowly been backfilled with older devices since then. Wonder if it's due to the EU repairability regulations. I would have also thought they only supplied this stuff to people who signed an MFi contact that stipulates certain rules on implementation.

I had no idea they published this to the general public.

by MBCook 25d ago

I had no idea they published this to the general public.

There are probably enough counterfeiters out there who just take these apart and measure them, that the benefit to making it a bit more difficult isn't worth it. Whereas the benefit of opening it up for people to make accessories, play around with it from a marketing perspective, or even just to marvel at them would be of greater benefit.

nish__ 25d ago

It's so we can make cases.

darknavi 25d ago

A huge ecosystem of third party accessories, cases, skins, etc. The openness is easily worth it.

MBCook 25d ago
That’s obviously the people who are really using it, but I assumed you had to pay Apple to get it. So either you made your own measurements or if you were doing Made For iPhone and they would give it to you as part of that program which surely you must have to pay for.
- p0ckets 25d ago
  Commoditize Your Complement - Apple wants accessories to be cheap. You might want to pay for the Made For iPhone certification for some things, but I doubt most cases have it.
- gertlex 25d ago
  I assume there's NDAs in place with some vendors pre-release, since my understanding is some accessory vendors get the needed info before new models are released, so they can spin up their lines and have accessories ready to go when the new model hits the market. (but I could be wrong; NDAs w/China? no idea what the time between announced/released/shipped is typically; I last bought Apple product in 2009...)
  - tonyedgecombe 25d ago
    I've heard that they are busy bribing people in Apple's manufacturers for dimensions before products are released.
eloisius 25d ago
I always imagined shops in China got out the calipers and made measurements from scratch every time a new iPhone was released. Never knew Apple made it this easy to manufacture Minion iPhone cases
- SoftTalker 25d ago
  Commoditize your complements. Wide choice and availability of accessories benefits hardware sales.
- userbinator 25d ago
  They probably still do, if they have the device, because you definitely want to make sure before creating the not-cheap-even-in-China tooling. As others have mentioned, these are more useful for when they don't, i.e. before the actual release.
- Maxion 25d ago
  The big manufactureres pay or just simple acquire the leaks.
  - yreg 24d ago
    I remember around iPhone 6 or such popular design rumours that were circulating around turned out to be wrong. There were photos of chinese warehouses filled with cases made for the incorrect design. With iPhone 4 Gizmodo literally acquired the prototype and still large portion of the crowd did not believe them, because the design seemed radically different to what they expected. Nowadays with the size of the supply line there seem to remain no more hardware secrets before the keynotes.

enoch2090 25d ago

For accessory manufacturers?

duskwuff 25d ago
Yes. These drawings are a companion to Apple's accessory design guidelines, which include a lot of other interesting design considerations: https://developer.apple.com/accessories/Accessory-Design-Guidelines.pdf https://developer.apple.com/accessories/Accessory-Design-Gui...

nujabe 25d ago

Wouldn’t surprise me if EU forced them to.

bigyabai 25d ago
No, this is to attract accessory manufacturers, and then corner them into buying an MFi/connector license: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MFi_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MFi_Program
zimpenfish 25d ago
This kind of thing was available (although more difficult to find) well before the EU started on their Apple quest - e.g. I had the dimensional drawings for whatever phone I had in late 2015 (6 or 6S, I forget) because I was making graphical inserts for my clear case using my Cricut with dimensions from the Apple PDF.

deleted 25d ago

[deleted]

plorg 25d ago

It's nice but lots of companies do this if their equipment is meant to be used with other equipment from third parties. Frankly I'm surprised they only provide it in 2D PDFs.

kalleboo 24d ago

Checking the wayback machine, this URL seems to have only shown up a couple months ago with the very latest devices, and has slowly been backfilled with older devices since then. Wonder if it's due to the EU repairability regulations. I would have also thought they only supplied this stuff to people who signed an MFi contact that stipulates certain rules on implementation.