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.'"

Comments

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.

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.