Apple Lightning
I'm curious -- what's the reason for something seemingly as simple as a Lightning cable to have chips inside of it?<p>For most of computing history, I was generally under the impression that cables were "dumb" -- each pin connects to a wire which connects to a pin on the other end. There's fancy bundling and twisting and whatever involved, but it's still ultimately just conductive wires.<p>When did cables start getting chips, and why? Did Apple start it or somebody else? Is it solely to try to prevent third-party manufacturers? Is it for the cable to announce to the port that it supports certain specifications of power or data? (But why would that require a chip instead of just some kind of "dumb" extra pin that has some basic electrical property that can be read?) Is it something else?<p>I mean I understand why certain <i>dongles</i> have chips, because they're connecting between sets of pins that aren't 1-1 or even in the same data format at all. Or why the same might be true for USB-C to Lightning.<p>But for cables to go from "dumb" to "smart" seems like it kind of breaks all expectations of what a cable even does, and therefore how a consumer will even know what to purchase -- which, of course, has famously been a HUGE issue with USB-C.<p>Would it be better for us to go back to dumb cables without chips? Or are there good reasons why this is the future, where at some point we'll expect <i>all</i> computer cables to have them?