When is an iPod not really an iPod? If that sounds like the opening line for some kind of riddle, well, that’s because it’s kind.
As an Apple software engineer for 18 years, David Shayer played an integral part in the development of the iPod code. In a blog post on Monday, he recounted in detail how, in 2005, he helped two non-Apple software engineers create a custom operating system for the iPod that would allow a functioning 5th generation iPod to power mysterious hardware inside.
Shayer says not only did he not know what he was working on, but that only a few people at the company had any idea about the project at all. Even his boss, Shayer claims, was kept out of the loop.
“I have a special assignment for you,” Shayer writes that his boss’s boss told him at the time. “Your boss does not know about it. You will help two engineers from the U.S. Department of Energy build a special iPod. Just let me know.”
Except, as Shayer recalls, the two engineers did not actually work for the DoE. Instead, they worked for the defense company Bechtel. They wanted a special iPod, an iPod that would secretly record and store unspecified data, and it was Shayer’s job to help them make that possible.
Now, it should be noted that we are unable to verify Shayer’s reviews. We ran into Apple in an attempt to do just that, but got no immediate response. Shayer himself writes that anyone trying to verify his story with Apple should expect the same results.
“Only four people at Apple knew about this secret project,” he writes. “None of us work at Apple yet. There was no paper trail.”
So, what was the purpose of this secret iPod? Although Shayer can not say for sure, he does have a guess. He thinks the defense contractor built a clandestine Geiger counter.
A modern, hand-held Geiger counter in 2017 that takes a lecture in Pripyat.
Image: Sean Gallup / getty
“You could walk around a city,” Shayer postulates, “casually listening to your tunes while recording evidence of radioactivity – looking for grease or steel uranium, for example, as evidence of a dirty bomb development program – without the chance that the press or the public will win. would get from what happened. “
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Maybe that’s what the defenders’ opponents were doing. And maybe not. Either way, it should give you something to think about the next time you see someone casually running your block, 15-year-old iPod in their hand.
