从2005年开始的一段时间里，苹果公司允许两个美国**承包商在其办公室里开发定制版的iPod——但iPod到底能做什么是个谜，直到今天依然如此，正如前iPod工程师大卫·沙耶（David Shayer）在这篇引人入胜的故事中所分享的，你应该去看看。

故事一开始就像一部小说：

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

第一段为整个故事定下了基调，其中有大量酷炫的细节，只会为苹果传奇般的秘密神话添砖加瓦。例如：

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 still work at Apple. There was no paper trail. All communication was in person.

至于工程师们到底在做什么，下面是夏尔的描述：

They wanted to add some custom hardware to an iPod and record data from this custom hardware to the iPod’s disk in a way that couldn’t be easily detected. But it still had to look and work like a normal iPod.

夏尔说他不知道定制的iPod会用来做什么。但他猜测，他们正在“建造一个类似隐形盖革计数器的东西”，理论上可以让人们在使用外观正常的iPod时记录放射性水平。

这一切听起来像是间谍电影里的东西，但前iPod总裁托尼·法德尔（Tony Fadell）说这一切都是真的。他应该知道：法德尔当时是iPod的副总裁。

你应该花几分钟的时间读一下夏尔的故事。