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Apple's Lightning Digital AV Adapter is a Full-Fledged Computer
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Everything recently feels 'jimmy rigged.'
Between this, iPad 3 being powered by A5x (really just A5 CPU and quadcore gfx to drive that display), The fact that 13" rMBP intel integrated 4000 HD card is pushing all those pixels, and the fact that 15" rMBP neither nvidia nor the 4000HD card were meant to push those pixels either but that both models are probably doing it due to an Apple-made and baked-in software hack.
Did Apple not think somebody nerdy and inquisitive would do a tear apart of the cable eventually?
Between this, iPad 3 being powered by A5x (really just A5 CPU and quadcore gfx to drive that display), The fact that 13" rMBP intel integrated 4000 HD card is pushing all those pixels, and the fact that 15" rMBP neither nvidia nor the 4000HD card were meant to push those pixels either but that both models are probably doing it due to an Apple-made and baked-in software hack.
Did Apple not think somebody nerdy and inquisitive would do a tear apart of the cable eventually?
A 256MB RAM in an adapter? I hope they patented this whole thing for every little piece of design. But it's a definite overkill.
How stupid is it to force customers to the new lightning connector on their mobile devices, force them to buy expensive and technically inefficient active adapters and even lower the quality of the transfered image while doing that. If I have a 1080p HD movie on my iPad, I want it to be displayed on my TV in the same quality as it is stored and not process it with another transcoding step that lowers the quality even more. I can live with adapters any day, but not if they alter the image of my stored media.
Not even talking about the fact that this adapter is a complete an utter waste of resources. Every engineer that reads this should at least shake their heads or fall of their chair, because it just doesn´t make any technical sense, but rather to outsource components that may increase the BOM of their mobile devices by a tiny bit.
Instead of just building a bit more ridiculously cheap RAM into their mobile devices and use the native processing power of their already extremely fast and future-proof A6(X) chips (they are going to be even faster in the future), they make an active adapter that actually needs to work with some additional memory and even an iOS to boot and transfer an image. Seriously, how dumb is that, Apple?
Not even talking about the fact that this adapter is a complete an utter waste of resources. Every engineer that reads this should at least shake their heads or fall of their chair, because it just doesn´t make any technical sense, but rather to outsource components that may increase the BOM of their mobile devices by a tiny bit.
Instead of just building a bit more ridiculously cheap RAM into their mobile devices and use the native processing power of their already extremely fast and future-proof A6(X) chips (they are going to be even faster in the future), they make an active adapter that actually needs to work with some additional memory and even an iOS to boot and transfer an image. Seriously, how dumb is that, Apple?
No it's not. Given that it's a complete AirPlay receiver, it does need RAM to function.
I'd even add it should have MORE RAM (or flash storage) to properly buffer iOS-native video files. If it buffers / decodes them at all, as the AppleTV does (not sure about this adapter)...
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While you're absolutely right, you'll surely receive a LOT of flames from Apple fanboys for this
You forgot to add -
Apple's Lightning Digital AV adapter IS NOT a computer because it requires one to function (no processor unless standalone in which case, it would be a computer). This is just following your LOGIC
P.S. The use of capital letters is a doubtful method even to convince your pals, not to mention Macrumors, where's a lot of people working in IT.
Incorrect. The adapter does not require a computer to function, it requires input. The computations all take place inside the adapter, not the computer. The same cannot be said about the hub which requires the CPU or the raid controller.
Apple doesn't give a sh*it about technically non-illiterate folks. This is why they even had the "you're holding it wrong" "excuse". And that's only one of their blatant lies showing they think everyone else is stupid. For example, when asked about dropping the antialiasing in the iPhone 2x mode on the iPad 1 / 2 in iOS 5 (and thus REALLY reducing the quality of displaying the iPhone screen), they stated "antialiasing was a bug". Which everyone at least somewhat tech-literate knows is a blatant lie.
That is cool! It is amazing how much tech they managed to put inside such a small adapter.
How is this amazing! They have to waste more materials just to make a product that is worse then the last one! They should have thought of this before making the lightning adapter. Now we have to deal with inferior tv out on all apple devices for the next 10 years when apple makes a new port on their devices
apple engineers you really dropped the ball on this. Guess your quality is going down just like your stock!So be it. Another reason to hold onto my iPad 3 even longer. It´s just sad, as people won´t have any choice with future devices.While you're absolutely right, you'll surely receive a LOT of flames from Apple fanboys for this
I think Apple is providing fan service in a way by even offering these adapters. Pretty soon signals will be more commonly transmitted via wireless radio and Apple knew this when they started to campaign the whole Post-PC concept and cut-the-cord concept with sync over wifi and airplay. Honestly, i wouldn't bother connecting my laptop to my TV because its annoying and uncomfortable to have my laptop so close and physically attached to my TV. The same goes for my iPhone and iPad. And for $50 bucks, it'd be a better investment to just get an Apple TV for another $50 and do AirPlay over wifi with the obvious additional benefits of having an Apple TV. Like I said, fan service. And to some extent this really only benefits those that choose not to get an Apple TV or don't have Wifi yet in their home/office.
That's incorrect. Smartphones with microUSB, such as Samsung's Galaxy SII, use a technology called MHL, which combines the three RGB/ YUV pairs of the HDMI signal into a single twisted pair with a clock. Another pin carries data, and the other two carry power. Televisions from Sony, Samsung, LG, and Toshiba can accept this signal directly, with a passive cable that lets the TV charge AND control the phone. Or, a dongle can be used for any other HDMI TV. Resolution can be as high as 1080p60, without compression.
I think the teardown article makes a lot of assumptions which are likely false. For one thing, just because the chip has an embedded ARM microcontroller, it doesn't mean it's running an OS. That is very likely wrong. It probably has 256 kbits of on-chip non-volatile, not 256MB. And, the likely purpose of this is to manage the HDMI and HDCP protocols, not to convert H.264 into HDMI. The artifacts which were observed can be caused by a lot of things, such as the video compression or decompression, OR, maybe the video output to the lightning connector sub-samples video to 4:2:2 or 4:2:0, or, maybe some video scaling is performed. But I doubt that the lightning dongle decompresses the video signal. An easy test would be to observe how much lag is present when you move your finger about the display. With HDMI, there is no lag, but if the video is compressed and uncompressed, there will likely be lag.
Even if they are wrong on the technical details, what it comes down to in the end is the visibly higher quality (900p instead of 1080p, image artifacts) the old adapter with the old connector offers compared to the new adapter and the new lightning connector. No one really cares how it works as long as it doesn´t offer worse quality on screen. And if Apple praises the new lightning adapter as more "future-proof", that should translate to "we can make even more money in the future".
That's the whole point - Apple can't be that dumb. I want to believe that there has to be some deeper reason behind all this. I am no tech expert, so I can't know if all this is possible or not, but what if the circuitry was to future-proof the cable for the next 10 years?
This probably seems redundant, even wasteful now, but I daresay that years down the road, we will be praising Apple for their foresight when their future products start tapping on features in the lightning cable.
That's true, but I'd like to see independent verification of their claims, since they got a few details wrong.
It does - see the Panic image at http://www.panic.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/jpegcompression.jpg . Those are definitely decompression artefacts (blocking), not those of plain 4:2:x subsampling, which would "only" slightly reduce the bandwidth needed (by one-third for 4:2:2 and by half for 4:2:0).
Those kinds of blocks would ONLY happen with interlaced content (and only with 4:2:0), not progressive one - and all iDevices emit progressive video. An example:
interlaced, moving image (the worst case): http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/420-interlaced-single-field.png
(this isn't the case as the Panic screenshot shows a non-moving one)
With progressive input, such blocks are far less visible at 4:2:0.
Note that the above (worst-case and, in this non-interlaced case, surely not existing) 4:2:0 subsampling case would only introduce blocks in the outer one-pixel areas of different colors. Here, in the Panic shot, anyone can see the blocks are even 2-3 pixels high/wide, that is, much larger than anything 4:2:x subsampling could ever introduce.
Well, the ugly blocking certainly visible at http://www.panic.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/jpegcompression.jpg tells it all (see my just-posted elaboration too).
Apple's Lightning Digital AV Adapter is a Full-Fledged Computer
Thank you! That was very useful information! What I meant was that I'd like to see someone independently verify the artifact issue of the iPhone 5 vs, for example, the 4s.