Teardown

Judging by the Apple TV specifications page, the set-top box isn't a major departure from its predecessor. And a recent teardown seems to confirm that.

A member on the XBMC forum over the weekend posted a full teardown of the new Apple TV. As promised, the set-top box comes with the Apple A5 system-on-a-chip, which is one step above the A4 the previous Apple TV was running. However, as "aicjofs," the forum user, points out, the Apple TV comes with the single-core A5 chip, making it a little less capable than the dual-core option found in Apple's new more

Apple is taking a hit for new iPad customers. That's because the company's bill of materials to make the next generation slates has apparently gone up, but the retail price has not.

According to an initial tear-down analysis by IHS iSuppli, the cost of parts found in the new iPad with 32GB of storage and 4G capability is 9 percent higher than that of an iPad 2 with a 3G radio. The report says the midrange new iPad costs Apple $364 for the parts, plus another $11 or so to assemble, for a grand total of $375, or just over 50 percent of the retail price of $729.

Flying to Australia to be the first to buy one of Apple's new iPads sounds a bit crazy to start with. So how much crazier is it to do that... and then tear the thing apart?

The folks at iFixit have done just that, putting their newly acquired "new iPad" through a full tear-down. While a complete version of that report has yet to come, the service is doing a "live tear down" akin to a live blog you'd get at a news event, uncovering parts of the unit as it's taken apart piece by piece.

One more

With its unique glass-covered design, the HP Envy 14 Spectre was one of the most talked about products at CES 2012 and even took home CNET's Best of CES award for the computers and hardware category. Now, the ultrabook is finally here, and as CNET's Dan Ackerman points out in his review, the Spectre largely succeeds and doesn't become a prisoner to its novelty.

That said, at a pricey $1,399, no one would fault you for wanting more than the current Intel Core i5 CPU, integrated Intel HD3000 graphics, and a 128GB solid-state drive (SSD). However, does a look inside reveal more? Well, Bill Detwiler, head technology editor at our sister site TechRepublic, cracked the ultrabook open to see what's inside, and of course, there's good news and bad news.

A purported iPad 3 back casing has turned up at Repair Labs, matching up with many of the improvements Apple is rumored to be developing for the next generation of the company's successful tablet.

Among the details offered by the metal housing is a new, smaller shape for the internal logic board. This would mean that the current A5 processor-based logic board would be ditched, presumably for a new design based on an A6 processor.

The smaller size of the logic board opens up more room that Apple may use for an extended battery. We also see a retooled more

Aside from a couple hulking memory chips, Texas Instruments owns the interiors of Amazon's Kindle Fire.

iFixit's teardown shows an abundance of TI silicon, with flash memory storage and system memory from Samsung and Hynix, respectively.

Keep in mind that a system-on-a-chip (SoC) like TI's OMAP 4430 already packs many of the core device features onto one piece of silicon. But the Kindle Fire also attaches a number of less glamorous TI chips to the SoC for things like power management and audio.

Editors' note: This article was originally published October 13. It has been updated throughout.

A teardown by iFixit and analysis by iSuppli, Chipworks and others reveal the iPhone 4S as a mini version of the iPad 2 in many respects.

Camera: A Sony CMOS sensor, according to Chipworks. Overall, camera is 8 megapixels, 60 percent more pixels than the camera on iPhone 4. A larger aperture (f/2.4) and new sensor. Better in low-light conditions. Video at 1080P, 30 fps.

Memory: The Apple A5 chip has 512MB of Samsung DDR2 RAM, according to iFixit's teardown. The capacity matches more

When new Mac systems and devices come out, expect the do-it-yourself repair guide iFixIt to be one of the first to rip it apart and show you what's inside. When Thunderbolt was issued iFixIt disassembled the first MacBook systems to show the Thunderbolt controller chips, and also took apart the Thunderbolt cable to show the signal conditioning electronics in them. Only days after Apple released its Thunderbolt Display, iFixIt is at it again and has fully disassembled the monitor to show a surprising amount of circuitry.

Apple's Thunderbolt Display is in essence a Thunderbolt hub, and as iFixIt more

Without any devices initially being available for it, Apple's Thunderbolt technology was relatively dormant in the public eye after its debut in the latest MacBook Pro and iMac systems. However, since the release of the Promise Pegasus RAID system, Apple's accompanying Thunderbolt cable, and some recent firmware updates for it, Thunderbolt appears to have caught a new wave of interest, particularly around the cable itself. People have wondered not only about its compatibility with Displayport (which has a similar connector as Thunderbolt), but also about its seemingly expensive $49 price tag.

iFixit today released a teardown of the cable to look at its components and in doing so revealed that the cable's unusually large connector jackets actually house a controller that is used to boost and condition the signal so it makes it from one end of the cable to another without any data loss.

Not only does the cable contain chips, but it contains a fair number of them. Each end of the cable contains six chips, with a large controller by gennum technologies, and a number of other smaller electrical components on printed circuit boards. Gennum technologies provides signal conditioning chips that allow for data transfer at high speeds. This technology appears to be the root of the cost for the cables.