Back in 2005 , before the iPhone , Apple supposedly help a U.S. Department of Energy contractor change a fifth - generation iPod to secretly record and storage data . The exact cause why remains a mystery , but an X - Apple engineer involve in the project thinks it could have been a stealthy Geiger counter .
This bonkers story comes courtesy ofDavid Shayer , a former Apple software engineer who was with the troupe for 18 years and work on devices such as the iPod and Apple Watch . Shayer , who wrote the story forTidBITS , tell a “ gray-haired day in late 2005 ” when his foreman ’s gaffer , the director of iPod package , told him that he was assigned to a top - secret project with two engineers from the U.S. Department of Energy to build a “ special iPod . ”
In actuality , the two engineer were from Bechtel , a U.S. defence contractor for the DOE . The request was to work up a normal , function iPod that could also on the QT record data onto custom hardware . In other words , some undercover agent - level shit . At the fourth dimension , the iPod was n’t a specially easy twist to alter . That ’s because according to Shayer , the iPod ’s operating system was n’t based on any other Apple operating system . Instead , it was establish on a “ source platform Apple bought from a company called Portal Player ” and cobbled together with computer code from Pixo , a party started by former Apple engineers who wrote a “ general - purpose cell headphone operating system . ” TL;DR — the iPod OS was complicated , and there was n’t an promiscuous way to figure out how it process without help from Apple .
Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)
https://gizmodo.com/my-dad-was-a-spy-maybe-1840483228
Throughout Shayer ’s tale , it ’s apparent that secrecy was paramount . Shayer fundamentally shepherd the two Bechtel technologist — Paul and Matthew — through the cognitive process but said Apple did n’t provide any computer hardware or software . Likewise , while Shayer gave them the tools they require to reckon out how to build the twist , he says he never saw the usance hardware Paul and Matthew added to their modified iPod . When it came meter to figure out how to conceal the recorded information , Shayer suggested they make a concealed partition so that if anyone plug the secret iPod into a computer , “ iTunes would care for it as a normal iPod and it would look like normal iPod in the Mac Finder or Windows Explorer . ”
At Apple , Shayer says , no record was go on of the project , and only four mass , including Shayer , knew about it at all . ( None of the four still work at Apple . ) As for what the equipment was used for … no one actually knows . Shayer believes it was likely a eccentric of Geiger parry DOE agents could utilise to sneakily read radiation levels while appear to listen to medicine .
It ’s not terribly surprising that the U.S. government might approach a major technical school company for help with this kind of matter . There are reasons why executives at these companies often have a government security clearance — and Steve Jobs was no elision . While it ’s not exculpated why Jobs was give way top security headroom , Wirednotes that it may have had something to do with his work at Pixar , which was contracted by word agencies for render reconnaissance mission escape and satellite information using its Pixar Image Computer .
While we may never know what that usage iPod was used for , thanks to Shayer ’s story — which is honestlya great read — we do know it exist . If that ’s not fodder for Apple conspiracy theories , I do n’t know what is .
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