14 DAY TRIAL // Apple’s second-generation Apple TV finally made it into the hands of iFixit’s tinkerers who didn’t waste any time and went right inside its black enclosure to reveal to the world how Apple managed to cram everything that makes it tick inside a 4 x4-inch box.
Before busting it open, the team at iFixit notes that Apple may have chosen low density plastic for the case to aid in the transmission of infrared signals coming from its remote.
The downside to this is that the case can get easily scratched, as the team shows in one hi-resolution picture taken after wiping some dust off the device with a microfiber cleaning cloth.
“Like many Apple devices, the Apple TV has no visible screws. So of course the first thing we did was shove a couple metal spudgers between the rubber-coated base and the upper case,” the teardown reads.
“The base pops right off after some careful prying.”
The power supply is inside the device, as with all other Apple devices.
The gagdget uses thermal pads, rather than thermal paste, which means no messy cleanup for those who attempt to open up the device for fixing.
The Apple TV’s logic board was easy to remove so that the iFixit team could analyze it in detail.
Before doing this, though, they noticed (with a little help from a commenter) that the solder pads near the side of the logic board look to be a "perfect" match for 30-pin a dock connector, as the ones found on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
The team speculates that “Perhaps this logic board will be used in future iPads.”
Finally, iFixit gets to the interesting parts that make up the Apple TV - memory, storage, CPU… the works. Here’s the breakdown:
· A Samsung K9LCG08U1M 8GB NAND Flash chip. “It's the same part we found during the iPad teardown,” iFixit points out. It has 8 GB of exploitable storage. · Wi-Fi board courtesy of Panasonic. It contains the Broadcom BCM4329XKUBG 802.11n Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/FM chip which also lives inside Apple’s iPads. · A4 processor marked as K4X2G643GE. “This is identical to the marking found on the iPad and 4th Generation iPod Touch, but different from the iPhone 4 processor,” iFixit reveals. · The device boasts 256 MB of RAM.
The team gave Apple TV an 8 out of 10 score for repairability, citing the following reasons:
- Relatively easy to open case that can be easily reassembled. - Separate power supply board that can be replaced independently of the logic board. - Simple design - there's 6 pieces! - Relatively common fasteners (Phillips and T6 Torx) found throughout. - Thermal pads rather than thermal paste means no messy cleanup. - Lots of expensive electronics housed on one singular board means that if one fries, the board is toast unless you can attempt or know how to do component level repair.
The team concludes its teardown, noting that the new Apple TV is likely "the most eco-friendly set-top box of all time."