6 ms·

One must wonder why they chose to expend significant R&D to make a complicated, power-sucking adapter for use on a mobile device that provides sub-par output an

One must wonder why they chose to expend significant R&D to make a complicated, power-sucking adapter for use on a mobile device that provides sub-par output and costs quite a bit more than a "dumb" cable. Maybe I'm missing something, but I feel like Lightning is just the next Firewire without all the usefulness that FW had (low latency, dedicated bus that wasn't USB, lots of pro audio gear that worked with it, ability to daisy-chain, faster real-world speeds than USB, near-ubiquity before FW800 came out, super small form factor (the 4pin is tiny; not much bigger than a lightning)).

rangibaby 14y ago
Lightning is a replacement for Apple's old and huge dock connector. You're probably thinking of Thunderbolt.
- stephengillie 14y ago
  Thunderbolt definitely is designed as a replacement for Firewire, USB, 10 Gbit Ethernet, HDMI, and all other current wired connections. It's been advertised as such for a while. I first heard about Lightning just 2 days ago. I'm now confused between Thunderbolt and Lightning, and frustrated that I'll have to go learn about their differences.
  - mjs 14y ago
    All that setup and no "very very frightening" joke?!
    - lostlogin 14y ago
      Nicely done. The very very frightening for me is the clunky move to wireless. There are about 20 Macs in the office, and when half the keyboard batteries go flat after a long weekend and you need to quickly check something, scrounging the building for a USB keyboard is tiring. This combined with airplays momentary drop outs and refusal to start (infrequent but annoying) make me sad. It's like we're so close to the cableless world, but just far enough away that its awful.
  - stephengillie 14y ago
    So Lightning is an 8-pin replacement for the 30-pin connector. And Thunderbolt is still the all-in-one replacement for all wired connections. So apparently the purpose behind the Thunderbolt connector subsumes the purpose behind the Lightning connector, yet the existence of Thunderbolt does not obviate Lightning's existence. Sorry for the slow uptake, Galileo ;)
    - rangibaby 14y ago
      TB requires active cables, which are hideously expensive (for now, at least?). Even a 50cm one is $29 from Apple. http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD862ZM/A/apple-thunderbolt-cable-05-m http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD862ZM/A/apple-thunderbol...
czhiddy 14y ago
The form factor of Lightning is top notch - all of the USB-variants seem terribly designed after using it. Too bad Lighting isn't free-to-license like Firewire was. That said, the design for this AV adapter is puzzling. I wonder what the hardware limitation was that prevented straight digital video out. (# of pins?)
- DannyBee 14y ago
  There are definitely not enough pins to do straight pin for pin HDMI through lightning. Of course, if you are going to go to the trouble to do what they did, you may as well bitstream it through the adapter, ...
  - beedogs 14y ago
    The current design prevents users from accessing the actual 1080p video stream from the device, too. The cynic in me says this is an end-run around any DRM issues giving access to that 1080p bitstream could introduce: instead let's just output a degraded, upscaled stream and call it HD.
  - moreati 14y ago
    According to Wikipedia MHL allows proprietary connectors, and MHL-through-microUSB is most often done with 5 pins. Lightning is 8 pins + shield, so it would have been possible for Apple to put HDMI signalling inside the devices, and get native 1080p/60 out. However, MHL-through-Lightning might have prevented the AV adaptor having a daisy chained lightning socket of it's own. Maybe that's why Apple jumped through these hoops.
    - makomk 14y ago
      Reading the reviews on the Apple site, the passthrough Lightning connector on the adapter is apparently charging-only, which you can do just fine with MHL-through-microUSB IIRC.
  - nirvana 14y ago
    The answer is that lightening is a general purpose next generation serial format. This allows them to support different formats in the future, for instance, say when HDMI isn't popular. The 30 pin connector didn't have HDMI on it at the time it was created and they have repurposed pins over the years regularly. Here they can have a much less complicated solution-- a standardised serial bus over which they can stream any future protocol they want to support. It's a lot more future proof.
adamisen 14y ago
Hopefully it's in pursuit of a connector that's somewhat forward & backward compatible for the next decade. It would be nice to learn more about Lightning. In particular the 1600x900 limitation is irritating. It'd be reassuring if this is something that will be addressed with a firmware update (similarly with the artifacts, though I have somewhat less hope for improvements there). I'm gung-ho for Lightning but if it turns out to be nothing more than a fancy way to make USB expensive and proprietary I'll be having another think. If it guarantees accessory compatibility for 6-10 years it's worth a couple compromises but I do expect 1080P output as advertised.
- adamisen 14y ago
  After careful parsing of Apple's specs languag, I now believe that mirroring from sub 1080P devices (iPad mini, iPhone, iPod touch) is limited to 1600x900 but that 1080P video playback works (presumably without lame encode artifacts). It appears full size iPads will mirror 1080P. It makes sense...
raverbashing 14y ago
My opinion: bandwidth The lightning connector doesn't have enough bandwidth to drive a HDMI connexion directly Of course, compressing (inside the iPad) for streaming, sending this through a limited bandwidth channel and then decompressing is complicated, but looks like it's the easiest solution (because all components - especially sw ones - are off the shelf) It's like a mini Raspberry-pi in that adaptor, amazing! (if not slightly overpriced)
- AlexDanger 14y ago
  It's like a mini Raspberry-pi in that adaptor, amazing! (if not slightly overpriced) What a wonderful age we live in. How long ago was it that people doubted the Rasberry-Pi could be delivered at such a low price? One of those rare moments where movement to the future is evidently palpable.
  - jonknee 14y ago
    Apple could be losing a decent amount of money on each adapter sold. They can afford to lose money on an adapter few will by (in comparison to devices sold), especially while they're now making money on all the new 3rd party lightning accesseries.
jwr 14y ago
What "dumb" cable did you have in mind? Because once you accept Lighting as the connector, there is no "dumb". You have USB and this is where you have to start. You don't get DVI/HDMI signals, analog audio, or anything else.
coldtea 14y ago
>One must wonder why they chose to expend significant R&D to make a complicated, power-sucking adapter for use on a mobile device that provides sub-par output and costs quite a bit more than a "dumb" cable. And people have answered this convincingly. From comments on TFA: = = = = = The reason behind this stupid expensive solution: It seems that the lightning connector is similar to the thunderbolt connector idea. With USB you have Power/USB/MHL output. Each method requires a specific combination of pins. Updating to a different protocol, support for other devices requires difficult pin sharing (thus hardware modification), support for currently unknown future connections is impossible. If in the future something new appears it won’t work with older USB devices. With lightning you can connect anything. Similar to thunderbolt it does not use a specific protocol to handle a specific task. It uses a general method to communicate between adapter and iOS device. That way Apple can send anything through this lightning adapter. The adapter itself gets updated automatically because it loads its firmware from the used device. So Apple can send USB2.0, USB3.0, Analog audio, Digital Audio, HDMI and any new standard through it, in theory. The idea is great: The lightning adapter will be Apples only port and it will remain future proof. In reality however, the lightning connector also has a limited bandwidth thus they have to compress their data, the conversion to and from the Apple lightning protocol requires lots of processing power, on both sides, and reduces quality. And finally it’s expensive. Apple should have tried to use thunderbolt instead of their own propietary technology, but then they would have used a common technology which other manufacturers could use and benefit from, too, that’s not the way Apple likes it, so they introduced their own thing, which is crap right now. AND: Just remember, this is v1 hardware for a tough future proofing problem. I genuinely appreciate the lengths Apple went through to create A) a reversible plug, so you can stop mashing and flipping. B) handled all the connector options. The built in decoder module could take a compatible 1080p video stream and push that to the TV at full resolution, the screen mirroring is a separate protocol. Now I’m curious if the Lightning-SVGA adapter has the same rig! So, v1 of the Lightning connector is probably (assuming) going at USB2 speeds. In v2 of the connector we could see USB3 (5Gbit/s) or thunderbolt (10Gbit/s) speeds, but all the accessories still work. Assuming the faster speeds come, it’ll support 4K TV output video streams, same plug. Yay future.
- revelation 14y ago

rangibaby 14y ago

Lightning is a replacement for Apple's old and huge dock connector. You're probably thinking of Thunderbolt.

stephengillie 14y ago
Thunderbolt definitely is designed as a replacement for Firewire, USB, 10 Gbit Ethernet, HDMI, and all other current wired connections. It's been advertised as such for a while. I first heard about Lightning just 2 days ago. I'm now confused between Thunderbolt and Lightning, and frustrated that I'll have to go learn about their differences.
- mjs 14y ago
  All that setup and no "very very frightening" joke?!
  - lostlogin 14y ago
    Nicely done. The very very frightening for me is the clunky move to wireless. There are about 20 Macs in the office, and when half the keyboard batteries go flat after a long weekend and you need to quickly check something, scrounging the building for a USB keyboard is tiring. This combined with airplays momentary drop outs and refusal to start (infrequent but annoying) make me sad. It's like we're so close to the cableless world, but just far enough away that its awful.
- stephengillie 14y ago
  So Lightning is an 8-pin replacement for the 30-pin connector. And Thunderbolt is still the all-in-one replacement for all wired connections. So apparently the purpose behind the Thunderbolt connector subsumes the purpose behind the Lightning connector, yet the existence of Thunderbolt does not obviate Lightning's existence. Sorry for the slow uptake, Galileo ;)
  - rangibaby 14y ago
    TB requires active cables, which are hideously expensive (for now, at least?). Even a 50cm one is $29 from Apple. http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD862ZM/A/apple-thunderbolt-cable-05-m http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD862ZM/A/apple-thunderbol...

czhiddy 14y ago

The form factor of Lightning is top notch - all of the USB-variants seem terribly designed after using it. Too bad Lighting isn't free-to-license like Firewire was. That said, the design for this AV adapter is puzzling. I wonder what the hardware limitation was that prevented straight digital video out. (# of pins?)

DannyBee 14y ago
There are definitely not enough pins to do straight pin for pin HDMI through lightning. Of course, if you are going to go to the trouble to do what they did, you may as well bitstream it through the adapter, ...
- beedogs 14y ago
  The current design prevents users from accessing the actual 1080p video stream from the device, too. The cynic in me says this is an end-run around any DRM issues giving access to that 1080p bitstream could introduce: instead let's just output a degraded, upscaled stream and call it HD.
- moreati 14y ago
  According to Wikipedia MHL allows proprietary connectors, and MHL-through-microUSB is most often done with 5 pins. Lightning is 8 pins + shield, so it would have been possible for Apple to put HDMI signalling inside the devices, and get native 1080p/60 out. However, MHL-through-Lightning might have prevented the AV adaptor having a daisy chained lightning socket of it's own. Maybe that's why Apple jumped through these hoops.
  - makomk 14y ago
    Reading the reviews on the Apple site, the passthrough Lightning connector on the adapter is apparently charging-only, which you can do just fine with MHL-through-microUSB IIRC.
- nirvana 14y ago
  The answer is that lightening is a general purpose next generation serial format. This allows them to support different formats in the future, for instance, say when HDMI isn't popular. The 30 pin connector didn't have HDMI on it at the time it was created and they have repurposed pins over the years regularly. Here they can have a much less complicated solution-- a standardised serial bus over which they can stream any future protocol they want to support. It's a lot more future proof.

adamisen 14y ago

Hopefully it's in pursuit of a connector that's somewhat forward & backward compatible for the next decade. It would be nice to learn more about Lightning. In particular the 1600x900 limitation is irritating. It'd be reassuring if this is something that will be addressed with a firmware update (similarly with the artifacts, though I have somewhat less hope for improvements there). I'm gung-ho for Lightning but if it turns out to be nothing more than a fancy way to make USB expensive and proprietary I'll be having another think. If it guarantees accessory compatibility for 6-10 years it's worth a couple compromises but I do expect 1080P output as advertised.

adamisen 14y ago
After careful parsing of Apple's specs languag, I now believe that mirroring from sub 1080P devices (iPad mini, iPhone, iPod touch) is limited to 1600x900 but that 1080P video playback works (presumably without lame encode artifacts). It appears full size iPads will mirror 1080P. It makes sense...

raverbashing 14y ago

My opinion: bandwidth The lightning connector doesn't have enough bandwidth to drive a HDMI connexion directly Of course, compressing (inside the iPad) for streaming, sending this through a limited bandwidth channel and then decompressing is complicated, but looks like it's the easiest solution (because all components - especially sw ones - are off the shelf) It's like a mini Raspberry-pi in that adaptor, amazing! (if not slightly overpriced)

AlexDanger 14y ago
It's like a mini Raspberry-pi in that adaptor, amazing! (if not slightly overpriced) What a wonderful age we live in. How long ago was it that people doubted the Rasberry-Pi could be delivered at such a low price? One of those rare moments where movement to the future is evidently palpable.
- jonknee 14y ago
  Apple could be losing a decent amount of money on each adapter sold. They can afford to lose money on an adapter few will by (in comparison to devices sold), especially while they're now making money on all the new 3rd party lightning accesseries.

jwr 14y ago

What "dumb" cable did you have in mind? Because once you accept Lighting as the connector, there is no "dumb". You have USB and this is where you have to start. You don't get DVI/HDMI signals, analog audio, or anything else.

coldtea 14y ago

>One must wonder why they chose to expend significant R&D to make a complicated, power-sucking adapter for use on a mobile device that provides sub-par output and costs quite a bit more than a "dumb" cable. And people have answered this convincingly. From comments on TFA: = = = = = The reason behind this stupid expensive solution: It seems that the lightning connector is similar to the thunderbolt connector idea. With USB you have Power/USB/MHL output. Each method requires a specific combination of pins. Updating to a different protocol, support for other devices requires difficult pin sharing (thus hardware modification), support for currently unknown future connections is impossible. If in the future something new appears it won’t work with older USB devices. With lightning you can connect anything. Similar to thunderbolt it does not use a specific protocol to handle a specific task. It uses a general method to communicate between adapter and iOS device. That way Apple can send anything through this lightning adapter. The adapter itself gets updated automatically because it loads its firmware from the used device. So Apple can send USB2.0, USB3.0, Analog audio, Digital Audio, HDMI and any new standard through it, in theory. The idea is great: The lightning adapter will be Apples only port and it will remain future proof. In reality however, the lightning connector also has a limited bandwidth thus they have to compress their data, the conversion to and from the Apple lightning protocol requires lots of processing power, on both sides, and reduces quality. And finally it’s expensive. Apple should have tried to use thunderbolt instead of their own propietary technology, but then they would have used a common technology which other manufacturers could use and benefit from, too, that’s not the way Apple likes it, so they introduced their own thing, which is crap right now. AND: Just remember, this is v1 hardware for a tough future proofing problem. I genuinely appreciate the lengths Apple went through to create A) a reversible plug, so you can stop mashing and flipping. B) handled all the connector options. The built in decoder module could take a compatible 1080p video stream and push that to the TV at full resolution, the screen mirroring is a separate protocol. Now I’m curious if the Lightning-SVGA adapter has the same rig! So, v1 of the Lightning connector is probably (assuming) going at USB2 speeds. In v2 of the connector we could see USB3 (5Gbit/s) or thunderbolt (10Gbit/s) speeds, but all the accessories still work. Assuming the faster speeds come, it’ll support 4K TV output video streams, same plug. Yay future.

revelation 14y ago