Apple’s most representative product, known as iPhone, iPad and MacBook, has went through a long history of evolution which covers the product appearance from the internal components of the product. Their interfaces has also swift for several times in the past few decades from their publications.
Lightning
Apple's high-speed multi-functional I/O interface is the new Lightning Dock interface, known as the lightning interface, was released by Apple on September 12, 2012 at the Fountainhead Convention Center in San Francisco. The release of the new interface standard also means that Apple's 30-pin Dock interface, which has been in use for nine years, will be officially replaced.
This connector pin is 8pin, its size is significantly reduced. And there is a huge change, that is, both positive and negative can be used.
In other words, as early as the Apple iPhone 5 began to use the Lightning data interface, support for positive and negative plug, and Android users are familiar with the USB-C interface similar. And Android phones equipped with support for positive and negative plug USB Type-C interface, which basically only began to appear in 2014 and became popular in 2015.
30-Pin Dock
Apple's proprietary 30-pin connector was common to most Apple mobile devices (iPhone (1st generation, 3G, 3GS, 4, 4S), 1st through 4th generation iPod Touch, iPad, iPad 2, and iPad 3rd gen) from its introduction with the 3rd generation iPod classic in 2003 until the Lightning connector was released in late 2012.
As a result of the popularity of Apple's iPod and iPhone devices using the connector, a cottage industry was created of third-party devices that could connect to the interface. With the discontinuation of the sixth-generation 160 GB iPod Classic and the iPhone 4S, the last Apple products to feature the original 30-pin connector, the connector was discontinued in September 2014 but the production of 30-pin connectors in India and developing markets still continued until February 2016.
USB Type-C/Thunderbolt 3
Thunderbolt3 started, due to the popularity of Type-C interface, Intel announced that the original mini DP interface of Thunderbolt was changed to Type-C interface. It can provide computers with faster transfer speeds and multiple types of data transmission at the same time.
Each Thunderbolt interface has two channels, each with a bandwidth of up to 10Gbps in both directions. not only that, it can also connect up to six devices and a display device with a native DP interface through a daisy-chained connection.
Mini DP/Thunderbolt 2
Mini DisplayPort is a miniature version of DisplayPort, announced by Apple Inc. on October 14, 2008. It is used in the MacBook (replacing the previous Mini-DVI), MacBook Air (replacing the previous Micro-DVI) and MacBook Pro (replacing the previous DVI) notebook computers. Also used in 27" LED Cinema Display.
The second-generation Thunderbolt standard combines DisplayPort and PCI Express specifications for faster data transfer rates than the first-generation Thunderbolt.
