One of the little-known features of iOS 7 that not many people will like is its background check of whether or not a third-party accessory is hooked up to the your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad using a non-certified Lightning cable.
We’ve know Apple has tightened its MFi program rules (MFi stands for ‘Made for iDevice’) and iOS 7 seems to be stepping up a cat and mouse game between Apple and non-MFi vendors….
Connecting an accessory to an iDevice running iOS 7 through a non-certified Lightning cable produces a prompt saying “This cable or accessory is not certified and may not work reliably with this iPhone”.
It’s just a prompt meant to push folks into buying pricier Apple-sanctioned Lightning accessories. At any rate, it’s interesting how the firm has opted against blocking non-certified accessories from functioning (upcoming betas could change that).
But Apple’s protection seems to have been circumvented.
It has come to our knowledge via reader Marcel that iPhone5mod, a third-party accessory company, has successfully found a workaround to Apple’s built-in Lightning detection in iOS 7.
“We have cracked chips that bypass iOS 7 authentication functions,” the company says on its web store which offers the iOS 7 Lightning cable for less than seven bucks.
iPhone5mod was the first company to crack Apple’s Lightning authentication chips and  the video has them using their own Lightning cable in order to bypass the software check on the iOS 7 side.
Watchful readers would be quick to point out that iPhone5mod sells unofficial Lightning cables, docks, adapters and mod kits, often priced at half of what Apple-sanctioned accessories cost.
Of course, we don’t know whether or not Apple will in fact enforce tighter rules and cripple unofficial Lightning accessories in iOS 7 come this Fall.
Technically speaking, iOS 7 could easily prevent unsanctioned Lightning accessories from functioning properly. I’m hoping Apple won’t go there because even though I’m sure jailbreak developers would see to that, the amount of bad press and chastising it would no doubt receive just won’t be worth it.
By the way, the iOS 7 prompt isn’t a new thing as iOS 6 also warns you about using cheap unofficial 30-pin dock cables, chargers and other accessories.