Apple's reversible Lightning connectors are a great little convenience, but you've still got to plug them into your wall wart or computer the right way, because USB connectors are horrible and out to get you. But according to accomplished Apple leaker Sonny Dickson, Apple's new Lightning cables could get reversible superpowers on both ends.
Yes, the next standard for USB has reversible cables in mind, but Apple's new cables could bring that wonderful future to us in just a month or two with a simple and clever modification. Instead of having pins that take up roughly half of the connector's mouth, these new cables appear to have a thinner layer of pins that floats in the center of the connector, with room on both sides for the complimentary protrusion that sticks out of your wall wart or computer.
Rumors of this reversibility trick have been floating around elsewhere, but this beautiful future seems more likely than ever considering that Sonny Dickson—the dude who leaked the iPhone 5C in great detail and has a near perfect track record—has apparently gotten his hands on some of these puppies. These could be being manufactured for some third party Lightning cables, or a fabrication entirely, but let's hope for the sanity of everyone everywhere that these are real and impending.
With iPhone day around the corner, we should find out for sure pretty soon. And maybe, just maybe, we can see this heroic tech come to the USB side of some non-Lightning cables before that next version of USB rolls around. God knows we could all use it. [Sonny Dickson]
Update: A new patent dug up by uSwitch shows that, yes, Apple has been thinking about this kind of functionality. That's hardly a confirmation that it's coming soon (or ever) but it makes this leak seem a little more likely.
Image via Sonny Dickson