Apple's New Processor Boards

[ToeJam]

Hi all;
This just popped up in my news feeds
arstechnica.com/apple/2014/07/wsj-tsmc-is-shipping-its-first-apple-processors-replacing-samsung/

Those discrete components are real tiny - almost like grains of sand some of them.
The gold strips at the top; are those connectors for other boards? Is the plastic surround an anchor for the connector? There's a similar plastic surround on the connector at the bottom right.
The large metal square looks most like a microSD slot but could be a SIM card slot. Just noticed the six contacts and cutouts - more likely a SIM card slot.
Also there are small metallic spots on the edge of the board. I was thinking this could be RF shielding, but it's not continuous.
It could be for connecting to other boards, but why not do that with a similar connector as above?

Still a think of beauty. 100's of years of technological progress brings us to this.

Cheers
ToeJam  O0

[andersm]

That picture is of the iPhone 5S board. You can find more pictures, with good closeups, in eg. iFixit's teardown.

[rs20]

It's a shame such a beautiful piece of hardware engineering will end paired with a straitjacket of restrictive, standards-noncompliant, monopolistic crapware.

<ducks> 

[ToeJam]

rs20;
Agree, but then is that not a challenge to the hacker that made them a hacker?

[Wilksey]

I bet that's grated at them for a long time Samsung making their chips! lol.

Most memory is Samsung also.

I guess that no matter who makes the silicon, Samsung, Taiwan Semi or <insert another fab company here> it is still some kind of ARM based core?