I have a 11 yr old nephew who has some ADHT issues but is pretty good with the touch screen gestures on Apple products.

Whilst trying to inspire him to gain deeper understanding of devices, would something like the Rasperry Pi Model B be suitable ? Or is it asking too much ?

It's really unclear what you are asking! Do you want him to be interested in internal components or inner workings of software?

Sorry - yes I was a little vague.
In common with most kids today, they have little thought about what happens under the hood when using a modern device. Especially when using touch-screen devices.

I would like hopefully, to help him look beyond the instant gratification of playing with touch screen gestures and games and introduce him to inner workings of technology.

We don't have maker-faires in my part of the world and there are not many people like you guys at his school. I don't know much about the RPi either, but yes, I am thinking about mainly software and getting him to engage for more than 30 seconds before his eyes glaze over...

The Rpi might be a little hardcore, but then he would have no idea what to do with a graphing calculator either.

If he plays Minecraft at all, the ComputerCraft mod may be interesting. It adds computers and robots that are programed in Lua. Not only is it fun, but they are learning stuff at the same time.