One of the top complaints about Apple's otherwise excellent iPhone 5 is that it ditched its old proprietary charging cable for a new proprietary cable.
That means all those iPhone, iPod, and iPad cables people had gathered through the years were useless. Apple offered a $30 converter, but that's pretty expensive for a tiny piece of plastic.
Well, there's some good news for anything that wants a cheaper option.
BGR received a photo of what it is calling, "third-party non-approved authentication chips for the Lightning cable." In English, that means companies have figured out how to clone Apple's new lightning cable, and they can make less expensive cables for people.
Apple added proprietary technology inside of the new Lightning connector to ward off counterfeiters. This proprietary "authentication" chip found inside of the lightning connector foiled many third-party makers that already manufactured the cords ahead of the iPhone 5's release.
The crack of the Lightning "authentication" chip comes ahead of Apple's huge accessory makers summit next month.
TechCrunch's Apple sources revealed last week that Apple is scheduled to hold an accessory partner meeting for its Made for iPod/iPhone/iPad program partners Nov. 7-8 in Shenzhen, China.
Apple has strictly regulated accessories it endorses for sometime now, but now the iPhone maker seems to be harshly regulating Lightning connector accessories on price in addition to quality.
Now that the Lightning chip has been cloned, we should see cables popping up online at places like Amazon.
Don't Miss: Apple Is Shooting Itself In The Foot By Not Doing Everything It Can To Get New iPhone Accessories Ready >
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