Will Apple’s 9-pin dock adapter look like this mockup?

When Apple announces the new iPhone next month, it is expected to unveil a brand new mini dock connector alongside it. The company’s existing 30-pin setup has been around for years, but is set to lose its place to a new 9-pin connector. Of course, Apple is likely to release an adapter that will allow it to work with older accessories, and this mockup shows what that adapter might look like.

Not everyone is happy about the idea of a new dock connector – especially not those with a whole lot of accessories that will no longer be compatible with their iOS devices. But it had to happen at some point. The existing connector has been around far too long, and Apple needs to make it smaller in order to make its devices smaller. Take a look at the iPod nano; it couldn’t possibly get any smaller because of its connector.

The good news is, Apple is expected to release a new adapter that will make new iOS devices compatible with older 30-pin accessories – like the MagSafe to MagSafe 2 adapter it recently launched for the Retina MacBook Pro. Thanks to this mockup from Metablog, we have an idea of what that might look like.

As you can see, the envisaged 30-to-9-pin adapter is rather large – nearly as wide as the iPhone itself – and it doesn’t just attach to the dock connector, but also the headphone jack as well. The reason for this is simple: It’s not another route for transferring data, but simply for structural support, to stop the connector slipping out of the iPhone too easily.

In another mockup, Metablog imagines a connector that fits over the top of a USB cable — kind of like a hood — and transforms it into a 9-pin connector. There are a number of reasons why this wouldn’t work, however, and one of those is the inconvenience it would cause. Image pulling out the USB cable to find the “hood” is still stuck inside your device.

[Via: Cult of Mac]