I was considering one of these adapters, but the video quality doesn't seem good according to the story. Can someone who has used this adaptor tell us what they think of the output?
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Apple's Lightning Digital AV Adapter is a Full-Fledged Computer
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I think you people are missing the sinister reality here:
Apple can update the OS in the cord, meaning at any point they can render unauthorized third party cords incompatible.
Apple can update the OS in the cord, meaning at any point they can render unauthorized third party cords incompatible.
The same amount of RAM as my first Mac... nuts!
That's half as much HARD DRIVE space as my first Mac.
No.... They can update the Lighting to HDMI adaptor. Slightly different import.
For example possibly updating decompression codecs.
The same amount of RAM as my first Mac... nuts!
It has 512 times more memory than my first Mac.
I disagree.
If anything, we now know why the lightning adaptors are so expensive. Not so much because Apple wants to leech us of our money, but because they really are that costly to produce.
Also, Apple is pragmatic above everything else (at least where managing supply-side costs are concerned). They are not going to waste money outfitting every connector with a processor and ram if there wasn't a legitimate need, especially when a cheaper alternative presented itself.
They clearly have some great plans for it down the road. Just like how itunes would go on to become a great selling point for the iphone and iPad, the lightning connector may well prove to be as such in due time.
Those greedy Apple bastards
How do you know what cost was "shifted" to the consumer? Perhaps developing and implementing an A6 chip was more important to them for 100% of users than including an on board digital video chip, so they instead "shifted" the cost to an optional adapter instead of building it in. You could use your logic literally on any product where the manufacturer sells optional extras.
Will it be the year of most users on a version higher than 2.3? Any year now...
Since we're "back in my day"-ing, it's 12 times the hard drive space of my first Mac... and 2048 times the RAM in my first Apple device (a //c).
It's a little silly to say that Lightning can't output raw HDMI--of course it can't. Raw HDMI requires nineteen wires, which Lightning has nowhere near. The legitimate question would be whether an iOS device an output uncompressed digital 1080p video, which the existence of a mini computer in the adapter in no way answers.
It's unlikely it does, [corrected my statement after reading the linked article] given the compression artifacts noticed, but it's not impossible that higher-throughput less- or un-compressed video could be output via a later adapter, or maybe even a firmware modified version of this one (given that it is, after all, a full computer--depends on the max bandwidth of its lightning connection to the host iOS device).
Personally, I think the lightning connector is awesome, because it's massively future-proofed; since the pins are fully reconfigurable, you can add just about anything you want to it down the line. If/when MHL (a phone-centric HDMI replacement that uses less wires) hits the market, you just have a new adapter with a different internal processor to handle the transcoding. Or you produce a new 4K adapter that takes advantage of a more powerful CPU in future iDevices to stream more data through the same connector and drive a higher-res display. Or whatever Apple decides to do with it down the road.
Yes, geeks can whine about expensive cables, but the fact is that the vast majority of consumers just buy whatever overpriced cable is on the shelf at RadioShack anyway, so they're highly unlikely to notice or care. At least in this case they're actually getting some technology for their buck, rather than a gold-plated placebo with an 800% markup.
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Or like I said - they shifted costs to keep profit margins the highest. Not everyone will need extra cords. So why not put tech in there that you don't "need" in every iPad.
This way iPad profit margin is higher than it would be - and they can charge nicely for the cable. And as a bonus - they can regulate those cables because there's a chip in there that maintains the whole walled garden approach.
They didn't take anything out of iPad for this - iPad is sending compressed video stream to the adapter which decodes the signal on the fly with the built-in chip instead of transmitting raw video like it used to. It's an added ARM chip on the adapter. Since, as far as we know, iPad never had two ARM chips before, there wasn't any part that was "shifted" from iPad to the AV adapter.
Panic's conjecture is that there wasn't not enough pins to be dedicated for raw HDMI output on the new much smaller cable, which would explain why things turned out to be this way. A careful reading of the article would've told you this before you've taken that step to make this another negative greedy Apple story.
I am not tech savvy enough to make a judgement call as to whether this move is purely profit-oriented or not. However, that would actually be pretty clever, and I am not saying this because I am a fan of being ripped off.
Do you remember how the macbook airs basically got stripped of every port available, forcing you to have up to 3 different adaptors if you need to to hook up to vga/dvi/hdmi (I have all 3!). However, it does help in keeping the macbook air slim and light, and when I do not have it plugged in, I am appreciating the design decisions that went into it.
In the end, it really is an issue of tradeoffs and compromises.
You're funny.
You seem to think I was implying Apple was greedy. I was implying they were smart and it was a good business and design choice if that's what they did.
But you're right - I didn't read the story in full.
Ok... I get this, but ...
I guess I'm just starting to wonder how many people would really bother with this lightning to AV cable anyway?
I mean, if I had any real need to do video presentations on a large TV screen from my iOS device, I'd just purchase an AppleTV box for it and do *wireless* AirPlay streaming to it. Then, you can hold your device as you walk around (or even sit down to watch the video along with everyone else present), and effectively have your wireless remote control for it right there too.
If you have to keep your display tethered via a lightning to AV cable, you're not going to be able to do much besides "press play" and sit your iPad or iPhone on the TV and walk away from it.
Especially now, knowing you don't get any resolution or performance advantages with a direct cabled connection here? Sounds like a loser of a product to me.
I guess I'm just starting to wonder how many people would really bother with this lightning to AV cable anyway?
I mean, if I had any real need to do video presentations on a large TV screen from my iOS device, I'd just purchase an AppleTV box for it and do *wireless* AirPlay streaming to it. Then, you can hold your device as you walk around (or even sit down to watch the video along with everyone else present), and effectively have your wireless remote control for it right there too.
If you have to keep your display tethered via a lightning to AV cable, you're not going to be able to do much besides "press play" and sit your iPad or iPhone on the TV and walk away from it.
Especially now, knowing you don't get any resolution or performance advantages with a direct cabled connection here? Sounds like a loser of a product to me.
No, you were doing what you always do, which is to turn a story into a negative one for Apple. I mean for the sake of discussions and different points of view that could be a good thing but I'd expect you get at least get the basic facts right when it's written right in the Macrumors' summary.