7 ms·

How Apple’s Lightning-Plug Guru Reinvented Square’s Card Reader

73 points by ghosh 13y ago

jrockway 13y ago
I appreciate the attention to detail. > You have to make the swipe feel satisfying; you have to make it ready [sic] accurately enough that it works the first, every time. I don't think you have to do this. I've used a number of card readers that didn't read my card the first time (or the second, or the third), and that didn't feel good at all. They still collected my money successfully :)
- pseut 13y ago
  Sort of, but if you think about some of the businesses that use this, three or four swipes can mean longer lines at peak times, which can make some people decide to go somewhere else. So they may not successfully collect money from people at the end of the line.
coldcode 13y ago
Clearly Steve and his love of simplicity (which is really hard to do well) live on even in those who have moved on.
- sunnybythesea 13y ago
  I agree that it's hard to do. And, Steve may have fostered the school of simple, clean design, but let's not give him credit for everything now. If you ever study Chinese brush paintings, you''ll appreciate how simple and elegant they are...and these have been around for centuries.
  - coldcode 13y ago
    Of course Steve learned it from his various travels and interests. The trick is getting people to agree with you.
eliteraspberrie 13y ago
This article has several inaccuracies and fallacies. The magnetic stripe on your credit card stores data in two separate bands. The old Reader grabbed from just one. With their new custom read head, Square can grab both, which makes every swipe more accurate, and more likely to work on one try. There are three tracks on a magnetic stripe (IATA, ABA and THRIFT), the first two are used in banking. The first track stores alphanumeric data such as your name; the second track stores numerical data, namely the card number. Reading both tracks doesn't make the swipe "more accurate" at all, since there is no redundancy there. On one level, developing a custom chip gave Square total control over the processes at the heart of the product: Decoding the magnetic signal from the credit card, encoding the electrical signal being sent to the smartphone, and all the encryption that happens in between. First, the decoding of the swipe does not happen on the reader. The first version of Square sent the entire audio clip to their servers for decoding; this new version may do it on the phone. Secondly, there is absolutely no encryption between the reader and the phone, any encryption is between the phone and their servers. The old version relied on a coin cell, which added around two millimeters to the overall thickness of the device. With their own chip, though, Square was able to be much more efficient in their use of power, to the point that they could draw all they needed from the smartphone via the audio jack. An audio jack provides no power. The signal is created by electromagnetic induction. The previous version of Square used a battery to amplify that signal. Edit: Square claims their new readers do some sort of "encryption." I am skeptical, but I had only tested the first version of the reader.
- devicenull 13y ago
  > An audio jack provides no power. The signal is created by electromagnetic induction. The previous version of Square used a battery to amplify that signal. Huh? I thought that you could get a limited amount of power from the audio jack by playing a tone through it while something's connected. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5560867/how-to-get-electric-power-from-head-phone-jack http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5560867/how-to-get-electr... seems to agree.
  - riobard 13y ago
    I have similar doubts too. If an audio jack doesn't provide any power, how does it drive headphones?
kamjam 13y ago
Very nice and everything, but if I went into a store and the payment method was via a device attached to an iPhone then alarm bells ringing "card skimmer" would be going off in my head and I'd walk out the door.
- mikeash 13y ago
  Why? Your liability is zero, your potential inconvenience is low, and there's no reason people can't skim your card info using other readers too.
  - kamjam 13y ago
    Why? Because I don't want the inconvenience. If I call up and complain about unrecognised charges then my card is cancelled, then I have to wait 5 business days minimum for a new card and also a new pin to be issued. If you want my business and my money then get a proper credit card processing terminal, there are plenty of other merchants around.
anotherbadlogin 13y ago
"Lightning-plug guru"? Is that supposed to be impressive? It's just the opposite. The Lightning plug is a sorry piece of shit, and a step backward from even the hacked, overextended 30-pin connector. No one with common sense would REMOVE the audio line out from an entire line of devices that focus heavily on media playback. WTF? Now that even cheap rental cars have auxiliary audio jacks, Apple decides to REMOVE the line out from the dock connector? And no one with common sense would DEGRADE the video output by recompressing it into a mottled hash of artifacts. But that's what Apple has done with the vaunted Lightning connector. Read about it: http://www.panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-surprise http://www.panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-s...
zaroth 13y ago
To comment on a different aspect of the article, I really liked the use of the animated GIF to demonstrate the spring design. Loaded without plugins, high-def, and looked beautiful on the phone screen. The perpetual auto-loop is not quite perfect, but I can't think of a better alternative. I wonder it's hardware accelerated on most phones or if its sucking battery. I assume the browser is definitely smart enough not to render it when it's off screen, but the loop is too tight to try to 'test' that by timing it while scrolling. I'm not at home but I'm curious what the bitrate is, what tools are used to produce it. I know anigif is popular on reddit and tumblr, nice to see it getting used in this way.
nemesisj 13y ago
One thing that's always confused me about the reader is the fact that there's no bracing to prevent stress on the audio jack during a swipe. Almost every merchant I've seen using the reader has some kind of silly putty or jury rigged apparatus that's designed to hold it steady and not stress the jack. Does Square provide some kind of shim now, or is this just not as big of a problem as it seems it would be (and I've seen anecdotally with quite a few merchants)?
shirro 13y ago
Is it common for people to still swipe cards in some counties? I pay nearly all my small purchases with RFID and bigger ones with chip and pin.
- mikeash 13y ago
  It's almost the only way it's done in the US, still. RFID is available on a lot of readers but just a few cards, and few people seem aware of it. Chip and pin doesn't exist at all.
  - zwieback 13y ago
    Does anyone know why other technologies didn't catch on? I could imagine more powerful regulators in other countries being one factor and lower cost as another but I really don't know whether those are the real drivers or not.
    - nemothekid 13y ago
      Swiping is American? Or the general public isn't aware. Here in San Francisco, RFID readers (Google Wallet, PayPass Credit Cards) are common, but a majority of people still swipe, even if their cards supports it.
    - Philadelphia 13y ago
      It's probably mostly a matter of it not providing enough advantage to justify the huge expense of replacing everything.
      - skeletonjelly 13y ago
        Has to be something else. Chip and/or RFID is pretty common in every country I've been to that isn't USA.
    - techsupporter 13y ago
      At least one article I found says that it's about liability: https://origin.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/are-chip-and-pin-credit-cards-coming-1.aspx https://origin.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/are-chip-an... Supposedly the big motivator behind the chip and PIN push in other countries is that liability for fraudulent transactions could be pushed onto the cardholder. ("You didn't guard your PIN and your money was stolen, sucks for you.") That article says that Regulation E of the Electronic Funds Transfer Act of 1978 in the United States prohibits such a shift by US banks. Without the motivation, banks in the US haven't invested in the infrastructure because it doesn't get them anything. Swiping a card "just works," people are used to it, it's a solved problem, and doesn't require any new outlays of money (not just for the cards and readers, also advertising about how it works, increased call center staff for confused customers, more livery for merchants, and so on) so I guess they're letting sleeping dogs lie.
gcb0 13y ago
"how wired can ship your marketing as an article"

73 points by ghosh 13y ago

I appreciate the attention to detail. > You have to make the swipe feel satisfying; you have to make it ready [sic] accurately enough that it works the first, every time. I don't think you have to do this. I've used a number of card readers that didn't read my card the first time (or the second, or the third), and that didn't feel good at all. They still collected my money successfully :)

pseut 13y ago
Sort of, but if you think about some of the businesses that use this, three or four swipes can mean longer lines at peak times, which can make some people decide to go somewhere else. So they may not successfully collect money from people at the end of the line.

coldcode 13y ago

Clearly Steve and his love of simplicity (which is really hard to do well) live on even in those who have moved on.

sunnybythesea 13y ago
I agree that it's hard to do. And, Steve may have fostered the school of simple, clean design, but let's not give him credit for everything now. If you ever study Chinese brush paintings, you''ll appreciate how simple and elegant they are...and these have been around for centuries.
- coldcode 13y ago
  Of course Steve learned it from his various travels and interests. The trick is getting people to agree with you.

eliteraspberrie 13y ago

This article has several inaccuracies and fallacies. The magnetic stripe on your credit card stores data in two separate bands. The old Reader grabbed from just one. With their new custom read head, Square can grab both, which makes every swipe more accurate, and more likely to work on one try. There are three tracks on a magnetic stripe (IATA, ABA and THRIFT), the first two are used in banking. The first track stores alphanumeric data such as your name; the second track stores numerical data, namely the card number. Reading both tracks doesn't make the swipe "more accurate" at all, since there is no redundancy there. On one level, developing a custom chip gave Square total control over the processes at the heart of the product: Decoding the magnetic signal from the credit card, encoding the electrical signal being sent to the smartphone, and all the encryption that happens in between. First, the decoding of the swipe does not happen on the reader. The first version of Square sent the entire audio clip to their servers for decoding; this new version may do it on the phone. Secondly, there is absolutely no encryption between the reader and the phone, any encryption is between the phone and their servers. The old version relied on a coin cell, which added around two millimeters to the overall thickness of the device. With their own chip, though, Square was able to be much more efficient in their use of power, to the point that they could draw all they needed from the smartphone via the audio jack. An audio jack provides no power. The signal is created by electromagnetic induction. The previous version of Square used a battery to amplify that signal. Edit: Square claims their new readers do some sort of "encryption." I am skeptical, but I had only tested the first version of the reader.

devicenull 13y ago
> An audio jack provides no power. The signal is created by electromagnetic induction. The previous version of Square used a battery to amplify that signal. Huh? I thought that you could get a limited amount of power from the audio jack by playing a tone through it while something's connected. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5560867/how-to-get-electric-power-from-head-phone-jack http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5560867/how-to-get-electr... seems to agree.
- riobard 13y ago
  I have similar doubts too. If an audio jack doesn't provide any power, how does it drive headphones?

kamjam 13y ago

Very nice and everything, but if I went into a store and the payment method was via a device attached to an iPhone then alarm bells ringing "card skimmer" would be going off in my head and I'd walk out the door.

mikeash 13y ago
Why? Your liability is zero, your potential inconvenience is low, and there's no reason people can't skim your card info using other readers too.
- kamjam 13y ago
  Why? Because I don't want the inconvenience. If I call up and complain about unrecognised charges then my card is cancelled, then I have to wait 5 business days minimum for a new card and also a new pin to be issued. If you want my business and my money then get a proper credit card processing terminal, there are plenty of other merchants around.

anotherbadlogin 13y ago

"Lightning-plug guru"? Is that supposed to be impressive? It's just the opposite. The Lightning plug is a sorry piece of shit, and a step backward from even the hacked, overextended 30-pin connector. No one with common sense would REMOVE the audio line out from an entire line of devices that focus heavily on media playback. WTF? Now that even cheap rental cars have auxiliary audio jacks, Apple decides to REMOVE the line out from the dock connector? And no one with common sense would DEGRADE the video output by recompressing it into a mottled hash of artifacts. But that's what Apple has done with the vaunted Lightning connector. Read about it: http://www.panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-surprise http://www.panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-s...

zaroth 13y ago

To comment on a different aspect of the article, I really liked the use of the animated GIF to demonstrate the spring design. Loaded without plugins, high-def, and looked beautiful on the phone screen. The perpetual auto-loop is not quite perfect, but I can't think of a better alternative. I wonder it's hardware accelerated on most phones or if its sucking battery. I assume the browser is definitely smart enough not to render it when it's off screen, but the loop is too tight to try to 'test' that by timing it while scrolling. I'm not at home but I'm curious what the bitrate is, what tools are used to produce it. I know anigif is popular on reddit and tumblr, nice to see it getting used in this way.

nemesisj 13y ago

One thing that's always confused me about the reader is the fact that there's no bracing to prevent stress on the audio jack during a swipe. Almost every merchant I've seen using the reader has some kind of silly putty or jury rigged apparatus that's designed to hold it steady and not stress the jack. Does Square provide some kind of shim now, or is this just not as big of a problem as it seems it would be (and I've seen anecdotally with quite a few merchants)?

shirro 13y ago

Is it common for people to still swipe cards in some counties? I pay nearly all my small purchases with RFID and bigger ones with chip and pin.

mikeash 13y ago
It's almost the only way it's done in the US, still. RFID is available on a lot of readers but just a few cards, and few people seem aware of it. Chip and pin doesn't exist at all.
- zwieback 13y ago
  Does anyone know why other technologies didn't catch on? I could imagine more powerful regulators in other countries being one factor and lower cost as another but I really don't know whether those are the real drivers or not.
  - nemothekid 13y ago
    Swiping is American? Or the general public isn't aware. Here in San Francisco, RFID readers (Google Wallet, PayPass Credit Cards) are common, but a majority of people still swipe, even if their cards supports it.
  - Philadelphia 13y ago
    It's probably mostly a matter of it not providing enough advantage to justify the huge expense of replacing everything.
    - skeletonjelly 13y ago
      Has to be something else. Chip and/or RFID is pretty common in every country I've been to that isn't USA.
  - techsupporter 13y ago
    At least one article I found says that it's about liability: https://origin.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/are-chip-and-pin-credit-cards-coming-1.aspx https://origin.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/are-chip-an... Supposedly the big motivator behind the chip and PIN push in other countries is that liability for fraudulent transactions could be pushed onto the cardholder. ("You didn't guard your PIN and your money was stolen, sucks for you.") That article says that Regulation E of the Electronic Funds Transfer Act of 1978 in the United States prohibits such a shift by US banks. Without the motivation, banks in the US haven't invested in the infrastructure because it doesn't get them anything. Swiping a card "just works," people are used to it, it's a solved problem, and doesn't require any new outlays of money (not just for the cards and readers, also advertising about how it works, increased call center staff for confused customers, more livery for merchants, and so on) so I guess they're letting sleeping dogs lie.

gcb0 13y ago

"how wired can ship your marketing as an article"