Apple adapter with HDMI contains Lightning on ARM-PC with 256MB of memory [Photos]

Last fall, Apple has presented a number of hardware and software upgrades. In addition to the announcement of new Mac and iPad, the Cupertino-based company began selling branded adapters to connect "Apple" of new products, equipped with port Lightning, to the HDMI and VGA.

It turned out that these adapters are not very common, or rather not ordinary. Inside the Lightning Digital AV Adapter discovered a mini-computer. This was reported by the developers Mac-Transmit and Coda applications from American companies Panic.

Initial concerns about the fact that the 8-pin Lightning does not support video output, and the assumption that Apple is going to transfer this functionality to wireless technology AirPlay, did not materialize. Displays a picture with iPhone 5 and iPad mini can be transmitted directly to the external display. To that end, Apple has released a special adapters Lightning Digital AV Adapter costs $ 49 and the Lightning to VGA Adapter for the same price.

In fact, the first cable that lets you display an image from the iPhone and iPad to an external monitor or TV via HDMI-Interface - this is not a normal adapter with re-solder contacts in a different sequence. Inside the adapter hides a full computer on the ARM processor with its operating system and 256 MB of RAM. This discovery made by developers Panic in testing different ways to display the picture in iOS-devices on the external screen.

Experts said that if the AV-adapter for iPhone and iPad with the old 30-pin port allows you to work with images 1080p, the new model for the interface Lightning-limited resolution of 1600 × 900 pixels. In this case, during the broadcast of the picture has noise inherent in video format MPEG.

"There are many questions. Which operating system is used in the adapter? The adapter runs on a stripped-down version of iOS, which is loaded in a few seconds each time you connect the cable to the device. This may explain the slight delay before the image displayed on the external screen. But why these crazy needed crutches? The only reasonable explanation is the limited capacity of the connector Lightning, which does not allow to work with HDMI-format directly, "- said in a Panic.

It is not known how exactly is encoding / decoding video Lightning Digital AV Adapter, according to developers, a mini-computer takes AirPlay-signal cable, and then converts it into a format HDMI. But now it is clear why a seemingly normal adapter is the same as Raspberry pi.