Apple TV Teardown Complete, Reveals Plenty

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As you already know by now Apple has started to ship the first new Apple TV units. In case you haven’t purchased the gadget yet and still thinking whether the device is worth $99 of your precious cash stash then you should check out the official iFixit Apple TV teardown.

That’s right, the Apple TV has been already dismantled, just like every other hot Apple device or gadget and here’s what the iFixit team found about the innards of this Apple TV model:

• The Apple TV has 256 RAM, just like the 4th Generation iPod Touch and the iPad. The key marking of interest on the A4 processor package is “K4X2G643GE,” which is identical to the marking found on the iPad.
• We found Samsung K9LCG08U1M 8GB NAND flash chip inside the Apple TV! It’s the same chip we found when taking apart the iPad. This is a pretty remarkable amount of storage for a $99 device.
• We are pretty sure the flash memory is used to cache your favorite shows while they’re being streamed.
• There is an empty spot right next to the Samsung NAND flash that looks to be the perfect size for putting another Samsung NAND flash chip. Could Apple be planning a higher capacity Apple TV in the future?
• Wi-Fi board brought to you courtesy of Panasonic! This is the first time we’ve seen a Wi-Fi board from Panasonic in an Apple device. A different division of Panasonic usually supplies the optical drives for Apple’s laptops.
• The Panasonic Wi-Fi board contains a Broadcom BCM4329XKUBG 802.11n Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/FM, exactly the same as the one we found on the iPad.
• The solder pads near the side of the logic board look to be a *perfect* match for a dock connector! This Apple TV seems to be a couple of features shy of a full-on computer. Perhaps this logic board will be used in future iPads?
• Apple is continuing its theme of hiding power supplies inside their devices. It’s especially impressive here, considering that the Apple TV is only slightly larger than a 60 watt MacBook AC adapter.
• The sticker on the power supply has this rating: 3.4V @ 1.75A. We’ll save you the multiplication: that’s just 5.95 watts!
• Apple brags that when in standby mode, the Apple TV uses less power than a night light. We don’t suggest trying to use the status LED to illuminate your dark hallways, though.

These are some very interesting conclusions here and we can only add that the Apple TV shapes up to be one of the next iOS devices that Apple might significantly develop in the near future. The question is, will the Apple TV be successful this time around? Or, even better, will it surpass Google TV in sales?