The repair gurus at iFixIt have taken apart the latest Apple TV and discovered how the little box works. Apple revealed most of the tech specs at its recent press event but left out a few key details. Now that Apple TV is officially out, the missing details can finally be revealed.

Apple didn’t disclose, what, if any, onboard storage would be made available to the Apple TV. It is now known that it ships with 8GB of onboard NAND flash storage and it comes with a modest 256 MB of RAM. This device has the same amount of RAM as the iPad and iPod Touch, leaving the iPhone 4 to still have the most RAM out of any iOS device topping out at 512MB of RAM. While 8GB of Flash storage does seem a bit small at a first glance, the Apple TV is designed to stream its content from a host computer and isn’t designed to store large TV or movie files onboard. This amount of RAM is more than enough storage for Apps, for when Apple decides to open an Apple TV App Store. Jobs recently hinted that an App Store for Apple TV was a possibility but it would not happen until the time was right.

Apple TV resembles the iPad closest out of all the iOS devices out, packing the same A4 system-on-chip package and the same Broadcom Wi-Fi chip. There also appears to be an empty spot on the logic board for another NAND Flash chip, possibly leaving the door open for a future model with more flash memory. Apple historically bumps up the RAM and memory of its devices before the release of new models and this empty flash memory slot points to Apple planning an intermediate upgrade, assuming the sales are strong for this new model of Apple TV.

Apple continues its stance on environmental responsibility with the release of Apple TV as it only uses 5.95 watts of power, and is built to be easily recyclable. Now that Apple TV has been released, we hope Apple moves this product out of the hobby category. The company seems to have a head start on set-top boxes, but the competition is bound to be fierce by this holiday shopping season. With strong offerings coming from Google TV and the Boxee Box, just to name a few, Apple will have to work hard to stay strong. If the company is going to wait until the right time to launch an Apple TV App Store, doing so before the holiday shopping season might be an excellent way to stay ahead of the competition. At $99 for an Apple TV with access to the App Store, it would definitely be on the top of many people’s “must-have” wish list.

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Source: iFixIt

Authors: _GadgetNews

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