There’s been a lot of speculation about why Apple decided to start using the Lightning port in every part of their current generation of hardware. A teardown of Apple’s Lightning AV adapter reveals some insight into why, and how Apple and their users will benefit from it as the platform moves forward.
Apple’s got a sordid past when it comes to how they have handled what cables you can and can’t use with their hardware. Previous generations of iDevices have had pages of apps that allowed jailbroken iDevices to use whatever cable they chose to transmit video to second screens after Apple locked things down in software. With third party cables sometimes being significantly less expensive than the ones being sold officially, Apple could either do something about it or look to a solution that addressed the problem from a mutually beneficial perspective. Lightning was Apple’s solution to both the third party cable market and an elegant solution to how video output is handled on iOS.
Recently the guys at Panic discovered that the Apple Lightning AV adapter was less than honest about what it was capable of. When trying to output a video to a 1080p television over HDMI, it was discovered that the output was actually a scaled 1600×900 video feed that lead to odd visual artifacting and an overall decrease in quality. Since Apple’s website pretty clearly states that Lightning iDevices with the AV adapter can output at 1080p, this is pretty bad form on Apple’s part. One of the guys performing the tests noticed that the feed looked very similar to that of an AirPlay feed, and decided to cut open the AV adapter to satisfy the urge to know what they thought initially was an AirPlay receiver of some kind.
Underneath the Lightning AV adapter’s soft white plastic casing was a nondescript ARM processor and 2GB of RAM. Basically, the AV adapter has a small computer onboard, designed to handle the raw feed from the Lightning port and translate it into something the HDMI cable can use. This means that the actual iDevice doesn’t have to be responsible for this processing, which is great for the overall performance of the hardware.
A comment left on the original Panic post, who hinted very heavily that he or she might work for Apple, explained that this method of handling the video means an adapter for any video format could be made. While this certainly lends to the idea that Lightning is “future-proof,” it’s important to remember the first part of this, where an adapter will only exist if Apple approves it moving forward.
The bad news is that Apple is unlikely to be able to fix the problems with this Lightning adapter with software. You’ll probably need the next version of the hardware, and it’s unclear whether or not Apple will ever publicly address the fact that the current hardware is essentially false advertising. The good news is that Apple can fix it, and its more than likely they already are.
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar