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Apple's Lightning-to-HDMI Dongle Secretly Packed With ARM, Airplay

Posted by Soulskill on from the also-a-reservoir-of-hipness dept.

New submitter joelville writes "After noticing artifacts and a 1600 × 900 image in the output from Apple's new Lightning Digital AV Adapter, the Panic Blog sawed it open and found an ARM chip inside. They suspect that video bypasses the cable entirely and instead uses Airplay to stream three inches to make up for the Lightning connector's shortcomings."

4 of 392 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Car analogy by EmagGeek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's like having a 300HP engine in your fancy new sportscar, but all it does is turn an electric generator that delivers 50HP to the electric drive motor.

    Yet, they sell it to you as a 300HP sports car.

  2. Wireless wire? by SCPRedMage · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Doubtful. More likely that it's streaming encoded digital video via the cable itself, and the components on the connector just decode the stream.

    Perhaps this is a slight step forward, as far as technology is concerned, but it's a big leap back, as far as consumers are concerned...

    --
    My sig can beat up your sig.
  3. Re:Good engineering? by ninetyninebottles · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Really, needing a computerized cable is just silly.

    Actually, it's a step forward and it's not the first technology to do this. The basic idea is, make the port a smart interconnect and let a smarter cable be more adaptive. That way a 4 meter cable can be tuned differently than a 2 meter cable and you can use the same port for a cheap copper cable or a long but expensive fiber cable. Regardless of how relatively expensive the cables are, replacing the computer is harder and adding new ports to mobile devices, even most laptops, simply doesn't happen. This makes a nice, future-proofed port for your laptop, phone, peripheral, etc. that will have real longevity.

  4. Re:Car analogy by ZorinLynx · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is a silly analogy these days. There are modern automatic transmissions that are basically just automated clutch-equipped gearboxes rather than the standard torque-converter-automatic that saps power like crazy.

    Those transmissions transmit no less power to the wheels than a manual transmission would. Not only that, but they can shift faster than 95% of people can shift a manual transmission, so unless you're a freaking NASCAR driver you're going to get better performance using one of these than on a standard manual tranny.

    Also they often have paddle shifters or similar so if you want to shift manually you still can.