The fifth-generation iPod nano was released only yesterday, and already the deconstructionistas at repair-and-parts shop iFixit have vivisected one, yanking out its tiny, tightly engineered internal organs.

You can find the entire 28-photo teardown, complete with running commentary, on iFixit's website - but here are some of the highlights.

Before you can gut the iPod nano, you'll need to remove its clickwheel. Luckily - unlike previous nanos - doing so is a relatively easy task if you have the requisite spudger. Of course, iFixit is more than willing to sell you one as part of its two-utensil set of iPod Opening Tools.

After the nano's end caps, video-camera bezel, clickwheel, and glass LCD cover have been popped off, you can slide the nano's guts out of its nether end. Doing so isn't easy, however - it's a tight fit. As iFixit says: "We don't recommend trying this at home."

The fifth-generation iPod nano adds a number of new toy surprises inside, including the highly touted video camera, FM tuner, pedometer, and speaker. The speaker is a mere millimeter-or-so thick, so don't expect sound quality comparable to, say, a $60,000 Bowers & Wilkins Nautilus.

The camera that Apple trumpets is a dinky affair with a mere 640-by-480 resolution - that's 0.3 megapixels. Its meager megapixelage is likely one reason why the

 In a surprise move, Apple has open-sourced its Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) technology under the Apache 2.0 public license.

Baked into the recently released Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, GCD eases the programming challenges that developers face when coding for multicore processors. You can download a PDF of Apple's half-marketing, half-technical description of it here.

Blocks support is not found in the majority of C compilers, and surely, Apple hopes that open-sourcing GCD will add some momentum to blocks adoption. As Drew McCormack over at MacResearch opines: "By offering Grand Central to the broader programming community, [Apple] may be hoping it will catch on, and make the argument for incorporating blocks in the C standard that much stronger."

Open-sourcing GCD could be a boon both to Apple and to the larger *nix community. Mac OS X, of course, is based on open source Mach and BSD. If Apple can entice Unix and Linux developers and compiler creators to embrace GCD, it will strengthen both GCD's developer base and enhance its chances of becoming a wide-ranging standard, incorporated into other *nix systems. And, of course, further distinguish Mac OS X - and, for that matter, Linux in all its

 Apple's new iPod touch includes a wireless chip capable of handling 5GHz WiFi networks and FM radio signals.

In tearing open a third generation touch - a device unveiled just this week by a "vertical" Steve Jobs - our friends at Ifixit discovered a Broadcom BCM4329 chip, which supports the 802.11n WiFi standard as well as an FM transmitter and receiver. The touch's more illustrious cousin, the iPhone 3GS, uses an older Broadcom chip that lacks such support, offering only 802.11a, b, and g and Bluetooth.

You can see the new chip here:

Previously, eagle-eyed fanbois had noticed references to the Broadcom BCM4329 in the boot script for beta versions of Apple's new iPhone 3.1 software, which runs both the iPhone and the touch. And now we know why.

But Apple has not built 802.11n or FM support into the software, and it has yet to add the antenna needed for FM radio. As Ifixit points out, the second-generation iPod touch debuts with Bluetooth hardware, but it wasn't enabled until months later, when Apple rolled out its iPhone 3.0 software.

Ifixit also says that the iTouch includes room for a still camera, after it noticed a 6- by 6- by 6-mm space between the Broadcom chip and the device's wireless antenna. But it did not find board headers for camera cables:

Source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/09/11/apple_ipod_touch_broadcom_chip/