How to Hack an iPod

usermilk writes "The upcoming issue of Time magazine has an article on 'How to Hack an iPod.' It teaches you how to convert your iPod into a semi-PDA. As the article says, 'Owners of Apple's MP3 player opened it up and added all sorts of bells and whistles. You can too.'"

Interesting...

[Picass0]

Time Magazine is owned by AOLTime-Warner, a media giant with interests slanted to the benefit of the RIAA and MPAA. Now Time is going to tell all of us unwashed end-users how to use our I-pods in a way that might be at odds with the DMCA. Hmm....

I hope Fritz Hollings and Disney don't find out about this.

Actually, this is one time I'd be amused to see Apple sue, just to watch AOLTime-Warner get a taste of the bad laws they helped build.

Hacks to drive purchases

[Dark Paladin]

I've noticed over time that the games that do the best are a) good games, and b) allow their users to hack the system.

Quake III, for example. Great game? Maybe - IMHO, not as good as Unreal Tournament. But the ability for gamers to hack their way and replace everything from pictures to AI has helped make it big.

Best example is Half-Life - I mean, Valve has how many products? One. But because of the mod scene, they're still making money. When a good mod comes along, they capitalize on it, and use it to promote their product.

I think Apple is catching on. They noticed people making hacks to view address book information - so they added the ability. I'm hoping that just as Steve Jobs sees the Mac as the center of the digital world for media, that Apple sees the iPod as a bridge that users can latch onto. Hard drive, music player, storage device for other things (cameras, PDA's, etc) - the possibilities of this little device are are nearly limitless.

Re:Hacks to drive purchases

[Niherlas]

Or, conversely, acknowledging popular hacks as features that customers want to see in their products.

Apple actually has a long history of this - and in many cases they've actually compensated the orginal "hack" author. WindowShade, an Apple Menu with submenus, a single control panel for Internet-related prefs - these are just a few hacks that were either freeware or shareware that ended up becoming MacOS features.

iTools Webmail may just be the latest - there were already sites like imapple.net offering web-based access to iTools accounts (via IMAP clients like IMP and SquirrelMail). Apple may have realized that (since they really couldn't cut IMAP access), it was in their better interest to make a clean local (fast) webmail implementation.

iLinux

[President Chimp Toe]

Hey, anyone working on an iPod linux port yet?

Beowulf clusters anyone?

Re:iLinux

[rodbegbie]

Yes.

http://neuron.com/~jason/ipod.html [neuron.com]

rOD.

Re:iLinux

[gklinger]

If you read that site you'll find that they are not trying to port Linux to the iPod but rather, trying to find a way to access the iPod from Linux. Quite a different proposition.

Re:iLinux

[xinu]

That's iPod on Linux, which is kinda neat, I suppose for it's nerd factor. But, he asked about Linux on an iPod.

Then again, why the hell would you wanna do that? So you can get it to play ogg?

Re:iLinux

[PoshSpod]

Beowulf clusters anyone?

Problem is iPods only have enough processing power to decode MP3s and run a small b&w display. Not much use for number-crunching.

Now if someone could put togeather a 10gb firewire-backed portable RAID device, that would be cool!

Re:iLinux

[Chaset]

Are you talking about something like this:

RAID [smartdisk.com]

Not exactly iPods, but what would be cool is if you can hook this up to an iPod. Music for the rest of the decade.

The magazine came out April 15th

[Microsift]

Granted the date on the cover is April 22, but this issue has been available for at least four days (maybe longer in NY).

Re:The magazine came out April 15th

[usermilk]

I know, but I am always hesitant with magazine dates. They always date them ahead for some unkown (to me) reason, yet release them a week behind their cover date. So do I say the upcoming or the current or the past issue? I just went with the date on the cover.

Re:Time and Apple

[Microsift]

Hardly, there is minimal coverage in Time magazine about Apple products. When the G4 came out, it was two weeks before Time even mentioned it on the technology page (this was the first personal computer to break the gigaflop barrier). The iPod is getting coverage, because it is cool, just like the new iMac, not because Time and Apple are bedfellows.

One Step Ahead

[Sentry21]

And remember people, if you can't wait for the latest issue of Time Magazine to hit the shelves, you can always check out Time Canada for the latest leaked articles.

--Dan

Stupid iPod hacks

[Wise Dragon]

To quote Wes Felter [editthispage.com], "Am I the only one who thinks all the iPod kludges are stupid?"

Re:Stupid iPod hacks

[jlower]

In don't think they are stupid but I haven't seen one yet that I want to use on my iPod.