- Sunday, 12 July 2009
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All men are born truthful and die liars - Marquis de Vauvenargues
Mini Displayport offered gratis by Apple
MAKER OF HARVESTED HARDWARE Apple has decreed that, from henceforth, any manufacturer shall be entitled to use its Mini Displayport standard howsoever they shall choose.
Mini Displayport is a display connection standard devised by Apple and implemented on its latest line of notebooks (including the Macbook and Macbook Pro) as well as its newer displays (including the 24-inch LED Cinema Display). It takes the Displayport standard and shrinks it down into a smaller connector, useful on super-shrunk devices, such as Cappuccino's own Macbook Air.
Displayport is itself a rip-off of the popular HDMI standard. However, nobody in the computing industry likes HDMI, since companies using that port have to pay a license fee, and any fule no that margins on computing kit are thin enough as it is, without having to pay licensing fees for connectors.
Sticking to this ethos, Apple says that anybody wanting to make a product
with its connector can if they simply do a
little
paperwork.
Given Apple's usual attitude to licensing (it charges a large whack to third
party peripheral maker which want to use the 'Made for Ipod' logo on its
packaging), we can only assume that Steve Jobs' health has taken a turn for a
worse.
Why else would he allow such a altruistic move? µ
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Wasn't the DisplayPort connector small enough already? Is there any reason for it apart from flogging more fruit-flavoured "converters" to protect you Mac from interfacing with real world items, like projectors?
To Sam M, A. Peon & Niki Mistry, you bunch of monkeys
You are missing the whole point of this article, Wily Ferret is talking about Apple changing the “standard” DisplayPort Connector and making it smaller and “non standard”.
He is also pointing out to the fact that Apple is licensing the Mini DisplayPort connector for no fee, unlike their previous proprietary connectors like: Mini-DVI, Micro-DVI.
It means that you’ll have to remember to bring a dongle/adapter with you everywhere you go, because a "standard" DisplayPort Cable won't fit into that port.
How are you missing this and going on and on about HDMI vs. DisplayPort.

It's like when USB changed the B connector to Mini-B and then to Micro-B, which was already confusing (although Mini-B made a little sense), would we then have a discussion about Serial, Parallel or even FireWire/IEEE1394 and why!?
And let’s not forget that every device and cable from Mini-B and Micro-B isn’t exactly manufactured to specifications, that’s why you will find that some cables and devices don’t exactly fit or connects intermittently, especially on external drives.
Nokia, Samsung and others even have there own proprietary connectors on certain models still today, which is irritating.

"If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate!"
If you read the following interesting article: http://lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=161

You will see that DisplayPort sends the video data in routable packets, where as HDMI doesn't.
"Why else would he allow such a altruistic move?"

Well, the "sting em early, sting em often" approach hasnt exactly had manufs falling over themselves to implement firewire on low-end mobos - which is about 99% of them. Firewire isnt dead, not exactly, but it is kind of covered in buboes and piled on a cart in medieval europe IYKWIM, AITYD.

So maybe Sir Steven (where *have* I heard that name before?) is trying the old "sucker em in until you can grab em by the short hairs" ploy for a change.

And once every multimedia device in the universe has the new worldbeating superconnector... who knows?
You could call HDMI a ripoff of DVI, as the video signals are level-compatible but for the addition of "optional" HDCP (DRM) with HDMI. However, DisplayPort is a newer, packetized protocol that looks substantially different on the wire (and uses a substantially different number of wires) ... and optionally supports HDCP and some other DRM protocol as well.

It targets the same niche as HDMI, as well as some others, but as we all know, the situation is that HDMI was designed with nothing but TVs in mind while DP will have much more headroom and flexibility as monitors get bigger (or more numerous, what with the chaining support).
He's offering it gratis free so that manufacturers move to it; advertise Apple inadvertantely, and turn a generation of impressionable youths to the darkside that is Crapple.
In business terms however, i applaud Apple, very shrewd tactics and ones that will unfortunately pay off. Heres hoping the surge of Apple-targeted viruses increases :)