The third generation of the Apple TV is identical on the outside and nearly functionally identical with its predecessor — the only change being the addition of 1080p. That doesn’t meant that it’s the same on the inside, however, as iFixit’s traditional teardown has revealed a few small details changed and an overall refinement of the internals. The first and most obvious change is the switch to a single-core A5 processor to drive that 1080p video (and everything else). Interestingly, the processor no longer has a thermal pad attached to it, suggesting it might run a little cooler than the A4 in the previous generation. iFixit also discovered a second antenna on the device, possibly for 5GHz Wi-Fi.
Apple TV teardown reveals second antenna, single-core A5 processor
The third generation of the Apple TV is identical on the outside and nearly functionally identical with its predecessor — the only change being the addition of 1080p. That doesn’t meant that it’s the same on the inside, however, as iFixit’s traditional teardown has revealed a few small details changed and an overall refinement of the internals
The third generation of the Apple TV is identical on the outside and nearly functionally identical with its predecessor — the only change being the addition of 1080p. That doesn’t meant that it’s the same on the inside, however, as iFixit’s traditional teardown has revealed a few small details changed and an overall refinement of the internals
Otherwise the rest of the internals are the same, including 512MB of RAM and 8GB of storage, and apparently the insides are quite accessible for would-be hackers. With the Apple TV, it's not the insides that count, but the interface — and on that front the lozenge-shaped icons remain as polarizing as ever.
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