Go read how the U.S. government put a top-secret iPod under Steve Jobs’ nose

For a time, starting in 2005, Apple hired two U.S. government contractors in its offices to develop a customized version of the iPod – but just what that iPod would do was a mystery, and it remains so today, as shared in this fascinating story by former iPod engineer David Shayer that you should read.

The story begins as a novel:

It was a gray day in late 2005. I was sitting at my desk writing code for next year’s iPod. Without knocking, the director of iPod Software – my boss’s boss – abruptly closed the door behind him. He cut to the chase. ‘I have a special assignment for you. Your boss does not know about it. You will help two engineers from the US Department of Energy build a special iPod. Report me only. ”

That first paragraph sets the tone for the whole story, which has an abundance of cool details that only add to Apple’s legendary myths of secrecy. For instance:

Only four people at Apple knew about this secret project. I, the Director of iPod Software, the Vice President of the iPod Department, and the former Vice President of Hardware. None of us work at Apple yet. There was no paper trail. All communication was in person.

What the engineers were actually working on, Shayer describes it here:

They wanted to add some custom hardware to an iPod and record data from that custom hardware on the iPod disk in a way that could not be easily detected. But it still had to look and work like a normal iPod.

Shayer says he did not know what that custom iPod would be used for. But he advised that they ‘build something like a stealth Geiger counter’, which could theoretically enable humans to record radioactivity levels while showing that they are using a normal-looking iPod.

It all sounds like something out of a spy movie, but former iPod boss Tony Fadell says it’s all real. He should know: Fadell was then vice president of iPod.

You need to take a few minutes to read Shayer’s full story TidBITS.