Once upon a time I bought this iPod camera connector to use it with my iPod 5G. This small dongle basically converts the proprietary dock connector into a USB socket, to which you could connect your camera. Of course, I never used it back in the day, because it was too slow and cumbersome to actually use it with the iPod.

Then along came the iPad which has an optional accessory kit that includes basically the same dongle (and a SD card reader). Today I tried to use the old connector with an iPad – Teymur’s iPad to be precise. Unfortunately and somewhat expected – it’s Apple after all – the old dongle didn’t work. Once you plug the dongle in you get an error about an unsupported device.

Has anyone taken apart the new USB camera connector? I wonder what they changed. I remember hearing something about an authentication chip that Apple put into some newer iPod/iPhone docks, but I think that was related to video out issues.

On the positive side, (some) USB card readers, e.g. to import from a Compact Flash card, do work – with the dongle that’s made for iPad:

Photo courtesy Thomas Hawk

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Tags: apple, camera connector, ipad, ipod, photography, usb