Read how the US government built a top secret iPod under Steve Jobs’ nose

For a period beginning in 2005, Apple allowed two US government contractors to work in its offices to develop a customized version of the iPod – but what exactly that iPod would do was a mystery, and the rest today, as shared in this fascinating story from former iPod engineer David Shayer that you should go and read.

The story begins as a novel:

It was a gray day at the end of 2005. I was sitting at my desk, writing the code for the iPod for the following year. Without knocking, the manager of iPod Software – my boss’s boss – came in abruptly and closed the door behind him. He gets straight to the point. “I have a special mission for you. Your boss doesn’t know. You’ll help two engineers from the US Department of Energy build a special iPod. Report only to me.

This opening paragraph sets the tone for the whole story, which has an abundance of cool details that only add to Apple’s legendary secrecy myth. For example:

Only four people at Apple knew about this secret project. Me, the director of iPod Software, the vice president of the iPod division and the senior vice president of hardware. None of us work at Apple yet. There was no written record. All communication was done in person.

As for what the engineers were actually working on, here’s how Shayer describes it:

They wanted to add custom hardware to an iPod and save the data from that custom hardware to the iPod drive in a way that could not be easily detected. But it still had to look and function like a normal iPod.

Shayer says he didn’t know what this personalized iPod would be used for. But he guessed that they were “building something like a stealth Geiger counter,” which theoretically could have allowed people to record radioactivity levels while appearing to be using a normal-looking iPod.

It all sounded like something out of a spy movie, but former iPod boss Tony Fadell says everything is real. He should know: Fadell was vice president of iPod at the time.

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