Apple TV stripdown reveals mystery solder pads Apple's new second-generation Apple TV is easy to take apart, easy to repair, and its guts may be poised for significant upgrades – or even double duty. Apple TV Apple TV: small, black, plastic, and containing the soul of an iPad So discovered the repair-heads at the tools, parts, and tips website iFixit when they …
lavender with a trace of mauve:
teal with a hint of celadon:
I believe B&Q* can mix these for you. I'm think of painting colour-coded squares around all my electronic equipment.
And future iPad logic board? Or just production line efficiencies?
*Other paint mixing facilities may be available
The basic ones are red, green, blue, yellow, cyan, magenta, brown, purple, pink, orange, black and white.*
Everything other colour is referenced against them. Like a dark red or a greeny-blue.
*I know there are pedants who don't class black and white as colours, but that is missing the point.
If it is a possible future iPad board then does that mean we may see a smaller iPad?
(or has the current iPad got the same size board as this?)
A smaller iPad would be brilliant for Apple - it would encourage more people to buy one ,for sure. (well relying on Price and Spec) - Oh no wait this is Apple.
Oh and El Reg - you seem to have mentioned 8GB Flash RAM - surely that can get a bit confusing?
>A smaller iPad would be brilliant for Apple - it would encourage more people to buy one ,for sure. >(well relying on Price and Spec) - Oh no wait this is Apple.
... but so far neither Dell nor Samsung etc have managed to produce a 9" tablet that really undercuts Apple. Dell - smaller but not much cheaper. Samsung - more expensive. RIM - no pricing and might not be out before iPad v2. Maybe HP can do it ....
Is they're using parts they know well and have solid supply contracts in place for? Simplfies the engineering and coding required to make the thing work and deliver it at a competitive price point I would've thought.
Apple may be a lot of things but they're not stupid. If they were I don't think they'd be where they are now.
Not a fanboi, just an observer (current Apple products = 0).
Clam.
"Apple 338S0891 chip — no further identification provided"
This is obviously the Lock-Down chip, which prevents users from "doing what they want" and which sends all your personal data directly to Steve Jobs for him to read and laugh at. The chip also controls users brains and is responsible for the Matrix sequels sucking so badly.
"This might let you connect to USB-equipped computing devices and view content on a television connected to the Apple TV through its HDMI port."
Well using Airplay you can put content from your phone or ipod onto the TV, and it already streams content from your Mac (and I assume PC) wirelessly, so what content are you referring to? Something like paid for streaming on your computer to port to your AppleTV?
Bluetooth? FM transmitter & receiver? Neither of these are in the official Apple TV specs! I wonder whether the hacker group known as "dev team" will be able to unlock these features; and if so, what use might they be.
Paris, because she too packs a lot of great features in a compact form-factor.
1) didnt i read somewhere before there is an ipad mini coming out for xmas anyway?
2) agreed with all comments about sharing components, makes perfect sense. but what about a screen-less ipad, with your own monitor??? future iTV maybe? works as a buisiness model!
3) Joke: a smaller ipad that fits in your top pocket...., with a phone in would be amazing..!
I don't see what all the fuss is about. All of circuit design is based on designing functional blocks and stringing them together. Even in analog circuit design, this is the model (hence all inputs being high impedance, all outputs low impedance). It makes sense from both a hardware development and software development to create a common parts and functionality platform from which to spawn product variations. Apple TV & all of the iCrap are variations of the same thing - a small low-end CPU based computing platform. Obviously Apple would try to avoid reinventing the wheel for each of these products, when a common base platform affords huge cost and development savings.
So if it's eco friendly, can we assume that they included the hours of processing time to convert from various common media types to Apple's own proprietary formats?
As well as needing to leave something else switched on to stream the media to it.
You could replace it with a bump on the wire and get your PC/MAC to "stream" HDMI to the bump and the bump can transmit it to the telly. Oh look, there's a set top box that needs no power at all.
No.
I fail to see the point of a TV box device that is incapable of scheduling and recording digital TV streams.
For me - and many others - that's the whole point. That's why I built my own MythTV box.
A box also capable of streaming any media you care to throw at it.
Sure, power consumption is high & it needs a bit of TLC every now and then, but it *works*, it's *open* - in fact, it's awesome.
Aside from form factor & looks, it *totally* wipes the floor with Apple TV.
Looking at the high res photos on iFixit of the dock connector pads it looks like they are used for bed of nails type testing during production as you can see clearly small needle like marks on each pad. This does make sense in that for development they can fit a dock connector to make things easy but then remove it in production, relying on a bed of nails setup.
It also looks like the dock connector might clash with the screw hole beside it as the plug appears wider than the footprint for the connector.
Since this is a new product and the motherboard is unused by any other equipment (note copyright 2010) it is obvious that Apple has in mind it usual annual money-generating upgrade scheme as it has used over most of it's range.
And Thank You, Register, for "Apple's standard 30-pin dock connector as is used on the iPhone/Pod/Pad" which correctly identifies the common Apple connector for what it is - an Apple standard.
I noticed on a recent trip to ZenShen that non-Apple manufactured versions of these are available in the Chinese after-market parts catalogues for around $1.31 each in 10-piece quantities which is way less than what Apple charges for just the royalty fee's. Another thing to get Jobs excited.
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