An interesting discovery comes to us by way of the Panic Blog –
When they were having some problems with their adapter, curiosity got the better of them and they dissected it.
Inside they found an ARM processor and 2 GB of RAM.
The working theory is that the adapter isn't so much an "adapter" as it is actually an AirPlay receiver that runs a scaled-down version of iOS whenever it's connected to a device.
Weird.
As they write in their post, "if someone complains that this insignificant plug costs $50, tell them it’s a tiny computer!"