> I haven't seen that "This accessory is not supported" message on an Apple device in many years
Well with the lightning cable it's pretty clear that it has to be MFi-certified, right?
> iPad Pros have USB-C, and as far as I can tell they are broadly compatible with things like USB audio interfaces which I'm also fairly confident have not gone through any sort of Apple certification process.
Sure. The thing is that MFi is some kind of authentication that goes on top. To me it really feels like they were forced to move to USB-C, so they did it, and now the rumor says that they are porting MFi to USB-C (which makes total sense, I don't see a reason for them to drop the MFi program).
"Activating" MFi with USB-C is just a matter of updating the software (assuming that they have the cryptography hardware in the device).
IMHO the rumor is really plausible. Actually I was expecting MFi to be there from the beginning on, and I was confused by the fact that it was not there: I don't see USB-C as a technical reason for them to drop MFi.
Hmm I guess that fan is just getting power from the device. MFi authenticates the data channel, but I doubt there is any data moving between the device and the fan, right?
Well with the lightning cable it's pretty clear that it has to be MFi-certified, right?
> iPad Pros have USB-C, and as far as I can tell they are broadly compatible with things like USB audio interfaces which I'm also fairly confident have not gone through any sort of Apple certification process.
Sure. The thing is that MFi is some kind of authentication that goes on top. To me it really feels like they were forced to move to USB-C, so they did it, and now the rumor says that they are porting MFi to USB-C (which makes total sense, I don't see a reason for them to drop the MFi program).
"Activating" MFi with USB-C is just a matter of updating the software (assuming that they have the cryptography hardware in the device).
IMHO the rumor is really plausible. Actually I was expecting MFi to be there from the beginning on, and I was confused by the fact that it was not there: I don't see USB-C as a technical reason for them to drop MFi.