“Apple is test­ing the patience of its fans,” said Tero Kuit­ti­nen, an inde­pen­dent ana­lyst and a vice pres­i­dent of Alek­stra, a com­pany that helps cus­tomers man­age cell­phone costs.

Apple’s dock con­nec­tor has been around for over 10 years. To change it now is not “test­ing the patience” of their fans. It’s mak­ing a choice to get rid of a big­ger con­nec­tion for a smaller one — which in turn allows Apple to design a bet­ter phone — and even­tu­ally iPad.

CNN­Money is also wrong with their asser­tion that Apple’s $30 Light­ning adapter won’t work with old speak­ers (Link via @danfrakes). Just have to ask Apple:

Offi­cial word from Apple: Light­ning con­nec­tor sup­ports video (adapters on the way); 30-​​pin adapter does ana­log audio.

— Dan Frakes (@danfrakes) Sep­tem­ber 13, 2012

Read all about the Light­ning con­nec­tor at Macworld’s arti­cle “What Apple’s new Light­ning con­nec­tor means for you”.

Apple’s Greed

Yes, Apple will make money by sell­ing new adapters. Apple has made money on a vari­ety of adapters over the years, as do most tech com­pa­nies. Apple often ¹ attempts to make money from the prod­ucts it sells.

But if you think that Apple is going to hang on to a 30 pin adapter because other com­pa­nies prof­ited heav­ily from sell­ing devices based on that adapter, then you clearly haven’t been fol­low­ing along with Apple’s story long enough.

A list of a few other things Apple has changed because they felt it was best for their cus­tomers in the long run:

• Ditch­ing the floppy drive while “every­one” was still using it.
• Mov­ing to USB when hardly any­one had any USB devices.
• Get­ting rid of DVD/​CD dri­ves in most of their portables.
• Doing away with boxed soft­ware and sell­ing direct to cus­tomers via the Mac App Store.
• Music indus­try, movie indus­try, etc.

The cynic says Apple does it to make money. And that’s par­tially true. The irra­tional Apple fan says it’s just part of the expe­ri­ence of own­ing a Mac.

The truth is some­where in between.