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Panic Discovers a Tiny Computer in Lightning AV Adapter

Stymied by oddities when outputting video from an iPad to an HDTV, the folks at Panic took a hacksaw to Apple’s Lightning Digital AV Adapter to investigate. To their surprise, they found what appears to be a miniature computer, complete with a processor and 2 gigabits of RAM (for reference, that equals 256 MB of RAM, the same amount shipped in the original iPad). Panic’s initial speculation was that the processor was outputting an AirPlay signal (which would partially explain some compression artifacts that appear on screen). However, an anonymous but apparently knowledgeable commenter, who sounds like he or she works at Apple, explained that the adapter’s approach “essentially allows us to output to any device on the planet, irregardless of the endpoint bus (HDMI, DisplayPort, and any future inventions) by simply producing the relevant adapter that plugs into the Lightning port.” See for yourself!

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