Go read how the US government built a pinnacle-mystery iPod proper underneath Steve Jobs’ nose

 For a period of time beginning in 2005, Apple allowed  US government contractors to work in its offices to develop a custom model of the iPod — but exactly what that iPod would do become a mystery, and remains so nowadays, as shared on this fascinating tale by means of former iPod engineer David Shayer which you must move examine.

The story starts off like a novel:

It was a grey day in overdue 2005. I was sitting at my desk, writing code for the next yr’s iPod. Without knocking, the director of iPod Software—my boss’s boss—all of sudden entered and closed the door behind him. He cut to the chase. “I even have a special undertaking for you. Your boss doesn’t know approximately it. You’ll help two engineers from the US Department of Energy construct a unique iPod. Report only to me.”

That first paragraph sets the tone for the complete tale, which has an abundance of cool details that best add to Apple’s legendary mythos of secrecy. For instance:

Only 4 people at Apple knew approximately this mystery undertaking. Me, the director of iPod Software, the vice president of the iPod Division, and the senior vice chairman of Hardware. None of us nevertheless paintings at Apple. There turned into no paper path. All communication was in man or woman.

As for what the engineers had been surely working on, right here’s how Shayer describes it:

They wanted to add some custom hardware to an iPod and document records from this practice hardware to the iPod’s disk in a way that couldn’t be effortlessly detected. But it nonetheless had to appearance and paintings like a everyday iPod.

Shayer says he didn’t know what that custom iPod might be used for. But he guessed that they have been “building some thing like a stealth Geiger counter,” that could have theoretically allowed people to report radioactivity stages even as appearing to use a normal-looking iPod.