The fourth-generation Apple TV may have proven to have lit a spark within the set-top streaming box market, but it could soon be considered old news before it has even had a chance to settle in. A newly surfaced report is suggesting that Apple has internal plans to put the successor to the current Apple TV into trial production at some point during the current calendar month. If all goes well, the same report suggests that Apple could work closely with its manufacturing partner to ramp up production of the fifth-generation Apple TV in the first quarter of 2016.
The first thing to note here is that the report is going down the familiar route of citing unnamed sources from within Apple’s complex supply chain. In this particular instance, it cites “sources from Taiwan-based supply chain makers”. If those sources are legitimate, then there’s really no better place to get information from, unless it comes directly from an official representative of Apple, which it never does. In addition to speculating that the device could go into trial production this month, the article also elaborates on potential internal hardware changes that could make the ATV 5 a vastly superior offering.
Apparently Apple is planning to move away from the current 64-bit A8 chipset that powers the Apple TV 4 in favor of an improved processor for offering “dramatically” improved performance to the end-user. That’s really a no brainer to be honest considering that we rarely get an improved piece of Apple hardware that doesn’t come with a processor upgrade. The supply chain sources are also suggesting that an internal change will see Apple ditching the currently used large heat-sink setup, in favor of a more advanced solution designed to dissipate the heat that the new processor would produce.
If those two little nuggets of information are enough to whet your appetite for what’s to come, but aren’t enough to appease your desire for information about the future of the Apple TV, then you’ll have to wait for more information to develop on this one. The article does elaborate a little further to suggest that the new fifth-generation Apple TV will come with a set of new but “unspecified features”, which once again is a unsurprising as Apple has continually looked to improve on the existing experience that it offers.
Apple is apparently trusting Quanta this time around for the production of the Apple TV 5, instead of Foxconn Electronics as it gears up for mass production in early 2016. However, Quanta has apparently declined to comment on any orders or current clientele.
(Source: DigiTimes)
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