New supplier shipped 40 tons of ‘set top boxes’ to Apple in August

Apple has recently given its “hobby” Apple TV set-top box a rash of updates, adding new channels and planning on adding built-in iTunes direct purchasing to the small unit. Similarly, the box’s popularity has risen steadily over the last year, with Apple CEO Tim Cook telling a conference in May that the company had sold 13 million of the devices, “about half in just the last year.” Now Apple has taken delivery of 40 metric tons of “set top boxes” from a previously-unknown Chinese supplier that could herald an updated device coming soon….