Apple allowed two US government contractors to work in its offices to develop a custom version of the iPod. But exactly what the iPod would do was a mystery.

I have a special assignment for you. Your boss does n’t know about it. You’ll help two engineers from the US Department of energy build a special iPod.

Apple’s legendary mythos of secrecy add to Apple’s tale of secrecy. The first paragraph sets the tone for the whole story, which has an abundance of cool details.

Only four people at Apple knew about this secret project. None of us still work at Apple. There was no paper trail, but all communication was in person.

shayer describes what the engineers were actually working on. He describes the engineers working on, including what they were actually actually working.

Ipod was added to an iPod and recorded data from this custom hardware to the iPod’s disk. But it still had to look and work like a normal iPod.

shayer says he did n’t know what the custom iPod would be used for. But he guessed that they were’building something like a stealth Geiger counter’. It could have allowed people to record radioactivity levels while using a normal-looking iPod.

Former iPod chief Tony Fadell says it’s all real. Fadell was vice president of iPod at the time. Fadell says he does n’t know what happened.