It would have taken a single phone call to Apple's licensing group to learn that this would be a problem. They didn't make that phone call. That was a mistake.
It would have taken a single phone call to Apple's licensing group to learn that this would be a problem.
That's not true. Apple saying "no" when there is no money on the table and no popular interest means nothing.
Apple saying "no" when you have customers beating down your door and $130k to divide between licensing and manufacturing is a different matter. Apple chose to pass up this money. There was no way to foresee this until the choice was on the table.
Building first and asking permission later is sometimes admirable.
But one ought to weigh in advance whether or not 1000 customers and funds on the order of $130k is likely to provide enough leverage to bend the rules of a company with, literally, the most money in the whole world and a famously proprietary attitude.
According to the article it sounds like they started on the design before Apple announced the new connector, and then updated their design once the connector was announced. Also it seems they did contact Apple but "[they] didn’t get a yes or a no up front,”. Once they finally got a straight answer from Apple they canceled the product. So apparently they did make that phone call and it wasn't as simple as you seem to want to make it.
