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Apple's Lightning Digital AV Adapter is a Full-Fledged Computer
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It's not like Apple makes extra money off of it except for selling adaptors. Accessory-makers benefit mainly. You think Apple would really change the adaptor just to make a little extra money at the expense of user annoyance? They would have done it every year.
The point is that it's better and, more importantly, will be even better because its design is meant to make its abilities expandable (re-assignable pins). If Apple stuck with the 30-pin, it would be outdated, and if it went with micro-USB, it would become outdated soon.
That being said, this adaptor (adapter?) itself sucks. Who came up with this nonsense? And as I have said, 256 @#$%ING MB OF RAM?!?!?
The Apple website says it will output 1080p. But perhaps it is a compressed signal rather than raw hdmi? I bet the difference is negligible.
Probably have to wait 10 years for a new connector capable of raw hdmi, and then another 10 years for 8k.
It shouldn't be this complicated. This adaptor is clearly overcomplicated.
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Lightning very well can output 1080p. It's the adaptor that sucks.
Yeah, that's right. All the engineers had a meeting and asked: "How can we cut corners and screw over customers at the same time"? The rest as they say is history. Thanks for your "fair and balanced" point of view.
Exactly right. And that's why Apple does it.
Customers are too often completely stupid and demand one thing, but end up spending Billions on something else. Best to ignore what they demand, and let marketing figure out what they'll actually buy and use.
If you ran a company, it probably would have gone bankrupt trying to make and sell 17" G5 PowerBooks.
ctm
That's what I thought Apple should make back in the day
It's kinda like a car. I know exactly what car design I want, but if that design was on a car, it wouldn't look as nice as something a professional can make... that is, unless it's something like a Prius. Those are made ugly on purpose for hipsters.
But I think this is an example of Apple actually doing it wrong. This adaptor is a mess, end of story. Lightning is good, though.
Yes. You're always right. My only intention in being here is to turn a story into a negative one for Apple.
You, yourself admitted that "Since, as far as we know, iPad never had two ARM chips before"
Further - "Or maybe they want get as much functionality out of the iPad as possible to reduce cost and complexity." - isn't that what I also was suggesting?
Further "Panic conjectures that for some reason the Lightning port isn't capable of outputting raw HDMI -- something that should give an extremely high quality image -- and instead uses a form of AirPlay to output video, delivering a lower quality video signal."
Let me know how completely wrong I must be after you define what conjecture is to me.
Have a lovely evening.
??
A device without input devices, output devices or a display is now a "full-fledged computer".
Boggles the mind.
My espresso-maker runs Linux - but I'd never consider it to be a "full-fledged computer".
My Tivo runs PowerPC Linux - but I'd never consider it to be a "full-fledged computer".
My network hub runs Linux - but I'd never consider it to be a "full-fledged computer".
My RAID controller card has a quad core processor and 512 MiB of RAM - but I'd never consider it to be a "full-fledged computer".
A device without input devices, output devices or a display is now a "full-fledged computer".
Boggles the mind.
My espresso-maker runs Linux - but I'd never consider it to be a "full-fledged computer".
My Tivo runs PowerPC Linux - but I'd never consider it to be a "full-fledged computer".
My network hub runs Linux - but I'd never consider it to be a "full-fledged computer".
My RAID controller card has a quad core processor and 512 MiB of RAM - but I'd never consider it to be a "full-fledged computer".
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The chip shouldn't need 256MB of RAM. This is just horrible. It's worse than Microsoft's tablet butchery and its fan-using XBOX 360 DC adaptor.
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Maybe it needs to have a certain amount of RAM and a certain CPU ability to be considered "full-fledged".
It is unknown how many ARM chips the iPad has in it. The ARM CEO implied it was several in the original iPhone. There are processors of unknown types hidden in many of the radio controllers, sensors and special function blocks.
What's even sadder is that $300-$800 devices and a $50 adapter produce crappy image quality.
I hope that I missed the sarcasm tags on that, because no serial cable would meet those requirements.
And I think that you have missed the obvious - a "full fledged computer" needs HID ability (keyboard/mouse/touch input, graphics output). Otherwise, it's just another semi-smart device with an embedded OS - just like the light-switches in my house.
Lightning doesn't do USB 3.0, so you can safely assume that the bandwidth of the port is less then 5gbit/sec.
HDMI runs at 10.2gbit/sec. At the bare minimum, Lightning is at least half as slow as required to properly support a full HDMI link. There simply aren't enough pins and data doesn't move fast enough to make this happen.
The old 30-pin dock connector was capable of a full 1080P link because HDMI was handled on the device and passed through the 30-pin connector relatively unscathed, so it was literally just a wired adapter with some other bits and bobs strapped in to stabilize the signal.
The internal hardware of the iPhone 5 and iPad 4 are definitely capable of outputting 1080P, but the Lightning port simply isn't. You can blame Apple for choosing form over functionality yet again.
As far as the adapter goes, it's rather brilliant even if it isn't at all optimal. If you don't have the bandwidth for a full-fledged HDMI signal, then what do you do? Compress everything into an MPEG4 stream, then decompress it on the adapter and fire it down a HDMI port attached to your SoC. Your average 1080P Bluray quality movie compressed down to h2.64 + DTS-HD MA only runs at about 20mbit/sec, which Lightning can handle no problem.
The only problem I see here is that Apple's current implementation sucks, but that's probably why the firmware is updatable and stored in RAM rather then ROM. Heck, they should be able to stream raw 1080P + DTS HD MA through Lightning this way, decoding it on the adapter. Why the quality sucks so much I don't know- but I'm guessing it is something they'll fix in the future, unless there is a limitation on the quality of the encoded output signal that is being sent down the Lightning connection.
-SC
HDMI runs at 10.2gbit/sec. At the bare minimum, Lightning is at least half as slow as required to properly support a full HDMI link. There simply aren't enough pins and data doesn't move fast enough to make this happen.
The old 30-pin dock connector was capable of a full 1080P link because HDMI was handled on the device and passed through the 30-pin connector relatively unscathed, so it was literally just a wired adapter with some other bits and bobs strapped in to stabilize the signal.
The internal hardware of the iPhone 5 and iPad 4 are definitely capable of outputting 1080P, but the Lightning port simply isn't. You can blame Apple for choosing form over functionality yet again.
As far as the adapter goes, it's rather brilliant even if it isn't at all optimal. If you don't have the bandwidth for a full-fledged HDMI signal, then what do you do? Compress everything into an MPEG4 stream, then decompress it on the adapter and fire it down a HDMI port attached to your SoC. Your average 1080P Bluray quality movie compressed down to h2.64 + DTS-HD MA only runs at about 20mbit/sec, which Lightning can handle no problem.
The only problem I see here is that Apple's current implementation sucks, but that's probably why the firmware is updatable and stored in RAM rather then ROM. Heck, they should be able to stream raw 1080P + DTS HD MA through Lightning this way, decoding it on the adapter. Why the quality sucks so much I don't know- but I'm guessing it is something they'll fix in the future, unless there is a limitation on the quality of the encoded output signal that is being sent down the Lightning connection.
-SC
The same amount of RAM as my first Mac... nuts!
Bunch o' younguns around here. My first Mac had a whopping 4MB of RAM. Thankfully I upgraded to a IIsi and it's massive 16MB of RAM which maxed out at 64MB (although RAMDoubler could theoretically make it go beyond it's max to 128MB). My B&W only came with 64MB. Wow how times have really changed.
So do you figure this adapter is going to get rather hot doing the conversion if used for an hour or two?
So the adapter is converting digital data into HDMI. I don't think it's conclusively proven that the adapter isn't capable of accepting and converting data rates and quality equivilent to HDMI.
The quality issues could be caused by a number of things such as the source video format and whether it was compressed, the device and software that are feeding the lightning cable and the formats and bit rates they support.
We know that iTunes and the iPhone both have limitations on the formats and bit rates they support and that these are likely to be imposed for a range of reasons including the phone's hardware capability but also things like guaranteed smoothness and power efficiency from the phone's battery.
So I wouldn't rush to the "it produces faecal quality video" conclusion based only on Panic's screenshots and commentary.
The quality issues could be caused by a number of things such as the source video format and whether it was compressed, the device and software that are feeding the lightning cable and the formats and bit rates they support.
We know that iTunes and the iPhone both have limitations on the formats and bit rates they support and that these are likely to be imposed for a range of reasons including the phone's hardware capability but also things like guaranteed smoothness and power efficiency from the phone's battery.
So I wouldn't rush to the "it produces faecal quality video" conclusion based only on Panic's screenshots and commentary.
The original Mac came with 128KB of DRAM. That's K. Not M. 2000 times less RAM, but 50X the price at $2499. I upgraded my Mac to a 512Ke, which is still 500 times less memory than this $49 adapter.
Way to halfarse it apple. All that work, just to make a low quality product.
The last few years, it seems like every time they do something, 75% of it is amazing, and 25% of it makes you wonder why they even bothered with the 75%.
The last few years, it seems like every time they do something, 75% of it is amazing, and 25% of it makes you wonder why they even bothered with the 75%.
It could be for a different reason, but I doubt it's ≥5gbit/sec. Is there some kind of specification page for this? The Wikipedia article and Google results are bare, and I was just curious.
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Or they're just newer Mac "converts".
Completely agree ... How much more would it have cost to just make a wireless airplay receiver instead of this cable
This "more than meets the eye" sort of thing reminds of when Apple suddenly activated the "hidden" Bluetooth chip in the second gen iPod touch, which was pretty amazing at the time.
To me, this is a pretty awesome indication that Apple has big plans ahead...it only seems like overkill now...until it becomes standard on the competitors later.
To me, this is a pretty awesome indication that Apple has big plans ahead...it only seems like overkill now...until it becomes standard on the competitors later.
