You’d never guess it was there—a tiny chip, barely a millimeter square, hidden inside the headphone module on the third-gen iPod shuffle. If you dismantle the module itself, you still won’t see it: it’s underneath a board containing a few simple copper traces, itself minuscule, and glued to the plastic. Even the traditional iFixit teardown gallery missed it. Is this the mysterious “DRM headphone” chip? What else could it be?
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You’d never guess it was there—a tiny chip, barely a millimeter square, hidden inside the headphone module on the third-gen iPod shuffle. If you dismantle the module itself, you still won’t see it: it’s underneath a board containing a few simple copper traces, itself minuscule, and glued to the plastic. Even the traditional iFixit teardown gallery missed it.

Is this the mysterious “DRM headphone” chip? What else could it be?