Hacking the iPod Firmware

skreuzer writes "Earlier in the week, someone figured out how to get all the fonts and graphics off the iPod's firmware. Today, Engadget has an article that details on how to mod your own iPod's firmware and display just about any graphic for icons such as power, battery, status, etc."

Comments

Nothing to see here, please move along...

[isa-kuruption]

I'm waiting for the NetBSD-iPod-HOWTO.txt

Re:Nothing to see here, please move along...

[Saxton]

I'm honestly surprised this is a Windows app that was made to hack this, and not an OS X one.

Re:Nothing to see here, please move along...

[tonsofpcs]

Why? It is almost always easier to 'hack' into something using a system it wasn't designed for. On a system that a piece of hardware was designed for, you need to deal with getting around design; on a system it wasn't designed for, you can just get right into it alot easier.

Re:Nothing to see here, please move along...

[billdar]

There is a Howto on making a linux bootable from an iPod.
That way, you can always reboot any NetBSD machine into linux and access your iPod there. When your done, fall back to NetBSD.

Re:Nothing to see here, please move along...

[Saxton]

t is almost always easier to 'hack' into something using a system it wasn't designed for.

I disagree, in this case. For what this application is doing to the iPod, you should be able to get the same access to the firmware regardless of what OS you are using.

Re:Nothing to see here, please move along...

[wizbit]

No, that's crap - isn't this the same Apple that blocked access to a specific 3rd-party app in the 4.7 build of iTunes? Everyone likes to hold Apple up as the standard of tight hardware integration since they control the platform. Is it any wonder they would leverage it to make hacking their products a bit harder to do on Apple hardware?

Re:Nothing to see here, please move along...

[Zerikai]

What's so strange, the guys know more of programming anything in Windows than they know of MacOs X?

Re:Nothing to see here, please move along...

[tonsofpcs]

When one company owns the hardware of the machine, the software running on the machine, the hardware of the interface, the hardware of the device, and the firmware of the device, don't you think there would be more control over what you CANNOT DO.

Re:Nothing to see here, please move along...

[WJMoore]

You can't run NetBSD on it yet but Linux is coming along nicely: http://ipodlinux.sourceforge.net/

Re:Nothing to see here, please move along...

[brianosaurus]

Perhaps, but not in this case.

adding in OGG?

[the_2nd_coming]

when will some one hack it to play Ogg?

Re:adding in OGG?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this modded funny? I just bought an IRiver player, but I would have bought an iPod instead if it supported Ogg Vorbis.

Re:adding in OGG?

[bhunachchicken]

Please forgive my ignorance, but why was parent modded as funny?

When I came to choose a digital music player the choice for me was obviously an iRiver. Since I have an extensive collection of Ogg files and I generally rip CDs in Ogg format, an Ogg player was the best choice.

I'm sure I'm not alone in my decision and my situation, so giving the iPod Ogg support would have meant me buying that instead of the iRiver.

Having said that, the HP-120 is great and I highly recommend it to anyone with an extensive Ogg collection.

Re:adding in OGG?

[Anonymous Coward]

the current ipods can't decode ogg. their processors can't handle that kind of decoding, so even if you could mod it, it most likely wouldn't be able to keep up and play properly

Re:adding in OGG?

[Anonymous Coward]

Until they do, I'll continue to consider the iPod to be nothing more than overhyped, undercapable junk.
Pretty junk, granted...

Re:adding in OGG?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Page 2 at MacRumors, Apple will add playback of both OGG and FLAC in the iPod and iTunes at MWSF on January 11th.

Re:adding in OGG?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll tell you why it is funny. Because OGG fanboys are a joke. You are a typical example. You have an overinflated sense how your music player choice has impacted the world. Let me tell you who cares that you chose the iRiver. No one. You are a sad little man.

Re:adding in OGG?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for you champ, the rest of us in the real world will get on fine with MP3's....

Re:adding in OGG?

[aristotle-dude]

Why? Does OGG offer any "technical" advantages or are your reasons for wanting it purely political?

Why not just rip your CDs you bought in ACC format?

Re:adding in OGG?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) He did
2) iRiver did
3) All other player manufacturers without OGG support do

Whether #3 was enough to change their requirements is an unknowable, but a prick like yourself is wrong in the facts presented.

Butt-munch.

Re:adding in OGG?

[Anonymous Coward]

.. and the HP-120 (and other iRiver players such as the H3xx) have already had the icons/fonts/graphics modded by the community since earlier this year.

for example go here for one of many iRiver modding tools

Re:adding in OGG?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't Apple put OGG on their iPods? Same reason. Why should he or they?

Re:adding in OGG?

[mzwaterski]

Doesn't OGG offer surround sound?

Re:adding in OGG?

[Wesley Felter]

Good luck getting surround sound out of the iPod hardware.

Re:adding in OGG?

[Salsaman]

Why? Does OGG offer any "technical" advantages or are your reasons for wanting it purely political?

Yes, it is superior quality to mp3 at the same filesize.

Why not just rip your CDs you bought in ACC format?

Please tell me where I can find an ACC ripper. BTW I use Linux on all my machines.

Re:adding in OGG?

[physicsnerd]

There's a page2 rumor over at Macrumors.com that ogg support will be added into Quicktime and iTunes at MWSF. With ogg support in both Quicktime and iTunes it's likely that the iPod software will be updated to play ogg files.

Re:adding in OGG?

[mzwaterski]

haha, good point!

Re:adding in OGG?

[KingPunk]

good idea, oog is superior to many other codecs.
but the apple's ipod real time processor doens't have math emulation or anything like that
and it sounds horrible, with oog, because it cant handle the overhead that oog requires,
even at significantly lower bitrates.

i know this because of the whole familiar & ipod-liunux crap. ;)

maybe apple will get off their duff and stick to the whole "quality hardware" moteef that they normally do,
and actually bundle the ipod with a decent cpu, and MAYBE even include floating point, and math emulation, ..to say the least.

Re:adding in OGG?

[Mattintosh]

Why should he have to re-rip his music? Why can't players just support everything currently feasible (OGG used to require floating point stuff, so it wasn't feasible at first) and have support for updates that add more formats as they become popular?

As long as it's technically possible, every player should support every format. AIFF, WAV, AU, MP2, MP3, OGG, MOD, S3M, XM, IT, AAC (M4A, M4P), WMA... these should all be supported. Heck, iTunes (back when it was still SoundJam) supported 30+ formats and had a relatively easy plugin system to add more. There's just no excuse not to support everything, unless you're after a slice of the vendor lock-in pie.

Disclaimer: I am an Apple almost-fanboy and have most of my music in AAC format. I personally couldn't care less about .ogg support on the iPod.

Re:adding in OGG?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's funny is that anyone would be stupid enough to go through all the work of encoding their entire music collection in a format that is used virtually nowhere.

Then they come here and bitch and whine endlessly about why nothing supports the format they stupidly used to encode their collection.

And that is why it is funny!

Re:adding in OGG?

[Anonymous Coward]

iTunes under crossover office?

Re:adding in OGG?

[theparanoidcynic]

Not to be a troll or anything, but Aple's AAC encoder sounds pretty awful to me, particularly for live recordings. Am I nuts, or doesn anyone else thing that Oggenc and Lame have far better psychoacustics?

Re:adding in OGG?

[bill_kress]

What the hell is it about your post that inspires so much bitterness in the replies?? Sheesh. I don't use Ogg much, but crap.

The reason I checked is I was going to say that it was probably tagged as funny because squeezing another protocol into an existing limited space is probably next to impossible due to space constraints.

And if it isn't, saying it isn't like I just did will piss off someone enough that they will go do it just to prove me wrong.

Re:adding in OGG?

[diamondsw]

Um, think about this for a minute. The main site of MacRumors is devoted to *rumors*. This wasn't even good enough to make the front page.

Sure, it'd be nice, but it's as likely as a snowball in a fusion reactor.

Re:adding in OGG?

[diamondsw]

Given that as far as we know:
1) The audio decoding chip doesn't support Ogg
2) iTunes doesn't support Ogg
3) The iPod wouldn't know how to parse tags in an Ogg file

I think the chances are pretty slim (outside of Apple supporting it, which is also slim). Number one is obviously the hardest nut to crack (it does support it or it doesn't), but the other two would also be difficult outside of Apple.

Re:adding in OGG?

[dgatwood]

I haven't seen much stuff encoded with Apple's encoder, so it's hard to say. If memory serves, I think the labels do their own encoding. Somebody once told me that a lot of it was encoded with the Fraunhofer AAC encoder rather than Apple's. If you rip something from CD and it sounds different from the iTMS version, that's probably why.

There's no question in my mind that Ogg sounds better than the Fraunhofer AAC encoder. That encoder sounds awful whenever there's near-continuous cymbal, with all sorts of flanging in the highs.

Of course, where Ogg excels (and AAC falls flat) is on thinner music such as string quartets, solo voice and piano, etc. When there isn't much to mask the AAC artifacts, it sounds pretty terrible, IMHO.

What I'd like to see would be not just Ogg Vorbis support on the iPod, but Ogg Vorbis support in the music store---leave the codec decisions (Fraunhofer AAC, Apple AAC, Fraunhofer MP3, LAME MP3, Ogg Vorbis... in either CBR or VBR form) to the people doing the encoding. Let them choose whatever sounds best at that bitrate. Then wrap it all in an encryption wrapper like they do with AAC. That way, all the music on the music store would sound as good as possible (assuming the person doing the encoding was willing to try various codecs and see which one sounded best).

Just my $0.02.

Re:adding in OGG?

[DroppedPacket]

I just think you are nuts. :-)

Seriously, AAC sounds fine to me, but my minimum encoding quality at 160bps for AAC or 192 for MP3.

Re:adding in OGG?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

iTunes allows people to import CDs and encode them to MP3, so AAC is beside the point, in my opinion.

I know MP3 is a patent encumbered format, the plain fact is that there is no realistic way of getting around it for consumer hardware, if it doesn't play MP3, it doesn't sell, so they will for the forseeable future, feature MP3.

I'm not sure how much more efficient OGG is, but unless it is 50% or more efficient for the same sound quality than MP3, I think that efficiency is kind of moot as storage capacity increases every year anyway.

Re:adding in OGG?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

There are other posts that say floating point isn't necessary for ogg anymore.

I'm not sure what the benefit of using FP would be, because the input data is fixed-point, and the output data is fixed-point, converting to and from floating point anywhere in between would seem to be poor ways to do it.

Re:adding in OGG?

[WJMoore]

1. The audio format decoding is done in firmware (ie. in software). As long the the Core processor and Co-processor can handle the decoding the iPod has the potential to play any audio format.
2. iTunes doesn't support Ogg because QuickTime doesn't. There is an Ogg plugin for QuickTime that indirectly allows iTunes to play Ogg files.
3. Again if Ogg support was added to the iPod via a firmware update this would be part of it.

Of note the original iPod did not have the ability to play AAC files. This was added in a later firmware update. So number 1 is not a problem, it's a matter of getting Apple to add the support.

Re:adding in OGG?

[KingPunk]

you're right in many ways. but the fact remains,
that apple will be rolling out a new, more ehanced cpu, for its ipod line really soon.
and this cpu, will have FP, along with many other features. mark my word!

the only true question is, who's willing to pay 600$ for a digital audio player
when the spectrum of laptop prices aren't much behind?
almost defies logic.

Re:adding in OGG?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are other posts that say floating point isn't necessary for ogg anymore.

Floating-point is easily emulated with integers.
Remebering that PCs use bits instead of base-10 (0-9):
Let's say you need 2-bits of accuracy in floating point (00 = .0, 01 = .25, 10 = .50, 11 = .75).
All you would need to do is shift the whole number left by two (multiply by 4, e.g. skip 2 bits), and store the decimal information here.
Example:
r = (x * 4) / (y * 4);
whole_num = r >> 2; //r / 4;
decimal = 1 / 4 * (r & 3);

Increase the 4 to higher multiples of 2 to get more accuracy in the decimal portion.

Sorry if that's too technical. But essentially, you don't actually -need- floating-point support in the processor, although it certainly helps.
The only real limitation (that I can think of) may be that the iPod CPU does not have large enough register-addressing (e.g. enough bits) to account for the kind of precision that is needed by OGG. That, or the processor is too slow. I have no idea, having never worked with OGG before. But I have used this floating-point simulation in many applications before (arithmetic coder being most notable) successfully.

Re:adding in OGG?

[graffix_jones]

Well, if you're a Mac users, there's already OGG support for Quicktime and iTunes.

Quicktime OGG component

It's actually been out for quite a while... the only problem is that the OGG support doesn't automagically carry over to the iPod.

Re:adding in OGG?

[the_2nd_coming]

umm, there is an integer ogg decoder not stupid.

Re:adding in OGG?

[the_2nd_coming]

faac

Re:adding in OGG?

[drew]

While I don't know the specifics of OGG, many signal processing routines use FFTs (fast fourier transforms) to convert data into a form that is easier to do calculations with and then convert back when they are done. I do know that the vorbis encoder/decoder originally required a floating point processor, but some time ago one of the linux handheld makers put up a bunch of money to get a version developed that used only integer routines.

Re:adding in OGG?

[Dizzle]

Page 5 at MacRealities says they probably won't.

Re:adding in OGG?

[desolation angel]

only on slashdot would this be modded as 'interesting'

Re:adding in OGG?

[chrisjrn]

http://www.audiocoding.com

Re:adding in OGG?

[GlassHeart]

That way, all the music on the music store would sound as good as possible (assuming the person doing the encoding was willing to try various codecs and see which one sounded best).

As far participating in the iTMS is concerned, this would easily triple the cost for the record labels or more. Aside from the extra encoding and listening time, you'll have to pay for the expertise to judge which encoding is better, because it's no longer something a cheap intern can do.

How likely do you think that would be, given how greedy these people generally appear to be?

Re:adding in OGG?

[GlassHeart]

As long as it's technically possible, every player should support every format. AIFF, WAV, AU, MP2, MP3, OGG, MOD, S3M, XM, IT, AAC (M4A, M4P), WMA... these should all be supported.

You forget to consider the cost of licensing and support. Every customer has to pay for each non-free encoder, whether they've even heard of the format or not.

There's just no excuse not to support everything, unless you're after a slice of the vendor lock-in pie.

...or you're actually trying to run a business.

Re:adding in OGG?

[Aron S-T]

It also doesnt do OGG streaming. So if you have your music collection on a server, you can't listen to it in iTunes.

Re:adding in OGG?

[toddestan]

I'll tell you why it is funny. Because Apple fanboys are a joke. You are a typical example. You have an overinflated sense how your music player choice has impacted the world. Let me tell you who cares that you chose the iPod. No one. You are a sad little man.

Re:adding in OGG?

[EMH_Mark3]

AFAIK the ipod doesn't handle tags on mp3s either.. The tags are extracted from the mp3 from itunes, then stored into a database on the ipod.

Re:adding in OGG?

[mrchaotica]

...and it's still no excuse not to support Vorbis (and FLAC and Speex).

Re:adding in OGG?

[aristotle-dude]

Yes, there is. Cost of development versus return on investment. How many additional iPod sales will this generate? There is more to consider than licensing.

One last thing to consider, how much space is left in the firmware?

Considering they support two types of uncompressed format (WAV and AIFF), a lossless compression format (Apple lossless), industry standard MP3, industry standard ACC, Audible format for audio books and their own DRM-ACC format, I'd say they have their bases covered.

BTW. I'm sure one of you guys could hack together an Apple lossless encoder consider it is based on LPAC or even make a FLAC to Apple lossless converter.

Re:adding in OGG?

[aristotle-dude]

"I haven't seen much stuff encoded with Apple's encoder, so it's hard to say. If memory serves, I think the labels do their own encoding. Somebody once told me that a lot of it was encoded with the Fraunhofer AAC encoder rather than Apple's. If you rip something from CD and it sounds different from the iTMS version, that's probably why."

I believe that Apple receives copies of the master DAT tapes which are 24bit with a sample rate of 96Khz. They do not use the same AAC encoder included with iTunes.

I would surmise that the difference you are hearing is a combination of a better encoder and a better source material. There is no guarantee that the CDs you buy are produced with the optimal settings when down sampling and encoding to PCM for burning onto a CD master occurs.

Re:adding in OGG?

[sokoban]

Doubt it. FLAC & OGG really aren't that popular. I would actually rather see just quicktime support for them. That way, it would be easier to transcode them into more widely used formats for use on the iPod. AAC and ALAC are much easier to play back for lower power devices, are already supported by iPod and iTunes, and ALAC generally takes up less space than FLAC by a good bit.

Re:adding in OGG?

[dave420]

When more than 5 people use it?

I mean come ON! You really expect someone to go through all that trouble of making the ipod play ogg files, when 99.9999% of music-listeners use mp3?

I'm all for open source, but I can't stand it when people expect tiny formats to be accepted by the mainstream.

Re:adding in OGG?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only problem? It's also dog slow, giving long gaps between tracks. However, it was perfectly adequate to transcode a few ogg tracks into the much more accessible mp3 format :)

Re:adding in OGG?

[macmurph]

One last thing to consider, how much space is left in the firmware?

Oh, about 59.9 gigabytes....

Re:adding in OGG?

[aristotle-dude]

Nice troll. I asked how much is space is left in the "firmware" which is also known as the FLASHROM. There is a finite amount of space in their. I heard that Apple could not support WMA not just because of licensing issues but also because of technical issues related to how much space was left in the FLASH memory.

If there is space left, perhaps they want to reserve it for future expansion of their own choosing that we don't know about yet.

Re:adding in OGG?

[macmurph]

Sorry, there is no FLASHROM in the iPod. The OS resides on the HD.

Re:adding in OGG?

[dgatwood]

The iTMS may have better source material (if they are getting masters as the source), but IIRC, the iTunes encoder typically scored better than the Fraunhofer in blind listening tests.

So the differences are caused by better source material and a worse encoder.... :-D

About time....

[BigRedGPK]

It took this long? Anyone up to Mircosoft-ing their iPod? hehe

Re:About time....

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe emulate a modded x-box with linux in it?

Microsoft

[Basehart]

Cool - all the folks in Redmond have to do is put Microsoft on the splash screen and that's the end of the problem.

Re:Microsoft

[phaln]

"All of a sudden it started crashing, and it kept flashing 'WMA ONLY' on the screen! What's going on here?"

Re:Microsoft

[eMartin]

Knowing Microsoft, they'll actually write it in at least three places on that splash screen.

Re:Microsoft

[ostermei]

Oh, great, NOW look what you've done!

Re:Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to add the J&TCooper sites to your list of free sites. They've gotten good reps at the freeipodguide.com and gearlive.com forums.

Tech 4 Free
PC Tech 4 Free
Auto Tech 4 Free

Slashdot your iPod!

[garcia]

Hmm, I'm waiting for someone to post pictures of their iPod with the apple.slashdot.org icons all over the place.

Then the 9th level of circular hell will be complete! :)

I wish...

[Ilgaz]

I wish I could be authorized Apple service center right now.

Lots of customers coming ;)

Its only changing some icons & graphics.

[Viol8]

Hardly modding the firmware! Isn't there some way of programming your own apps on the thing?

Re:Its only changing some icons & graphics.

[SilentChris]

Maybe if Apple released the SDK hackers have been BEGGING them for years...

Re:Its only changing some icons & graphics.

[Viol8]

True hackers wouldn't need an SDK, they'd just create their own binary and upload it. Uploading is the hard part I suspect if you don't have an EPROM blower (assuming the EPROM in the IPOD can even be removed from the circuit board).

Re:Its only changing some icons & graphics.

[kzinti]

"Hack" is a verb with many nuances of meaning, including both "to write programs for" and "to make modifications to". I happen to think that changing the user-visible graphics is a way cool hack, even if used for something so unthinkably perverse as to create a "Hello Kitty" theme. As a programmer, it would be cool to be able to write modules to plug into the firmware - or even to patch the firmware for new and different capabilities. But as someone who carries an iPod, I like this hack even better, because it gives users the power to customize the most visible aspect of the iPod's firmware. Now I just gotta get me one of those new color models...

Re:Its only changing some icons & graphics.

[damiam]

Yes. The easiest way at the moment is iPod Linux.

Re:Its only changing some icons & graphics.

[Anonymous Coward]

That would reqire Apple to actually create the SDK first.

Re:Its only changing some icons & graphics.

[macemoneta]

True hackers wouldn't need an SDK, they'd just create their own binary and upload it. Uploading is the hard part I suspect if you don't have an EPROM blower (assuming the EPROM in the IPOD can even be removed from the circuit board).

The firmware is in the first partition of the disk drive, so updating the firmware (from Linux) is just:

dd if=new-ipod-firmware of=/dev/sda1

(where sda1 is replaced with the actual device on your system). The iPod expands the firmware and then reboots to use it.

The only tricky part is that Apple doesn't distribute the firmware file outside of their updater application, so you have to download the Windows updater and then use a resource hacking tool to extract it.

Re:Its only changing some icons & graphics.

[ben_rh]

No need for the resource hacking tool.

When you build the bootloader it needs a copy of the firmware you want to use, and the kernel you want to boot Linux with. To get the firmware, you can just download the newest updater from Apple's website, use that other OS to update the iPod with it, and then just do a

dd if=/dev/sda1 of=./apple-firmware.

Then, the bootloader package has a tool to truncate that partition image (32MB iirc) to the actual bootloader. Done, and no windows trickery required, apart from the necessary iPod Updater run.

Actually now I think about it, the tool in the bootloader package is probably doing a similar job on the partition image as the resource hacker is in Windows. Ah well, always nicer to do it with dd ;)

Re:Its only changing some icons & graphics.

[Anonymous Coward]

The only tricky part is that Apple doesn't distribute the firmware file outside of their updater application, so you have to download the Windows updater and then use a resource hacking tool to extract it.

Well, you could just use dd to rip that partition from an already updated iPod. First thing I do whenever I get a new gen iPod is dd the partition with PIXO (the OS) to an image dump and save it, and upload it to my FTP so I can help others who fuck up their iPods.

But about the firmware... What Apple semi-wrongly calls the firmware is inclusive of that OS partition on the disk, but BESIDES that, the updater programs do update the ACTUAL FIRMWARE on the ROM itself. Now I've been using dd to zap the OS to and fro the partition on all generation model iPods, and have had no problems using 'new OS + old ROM firmware'.

But keep in mind that this actually does not affect the /true/ firmware on the ROM. So if you do this and it doesn't work, it may just be that /that/ updater actually did need to change something on the chip too.

-gregday

there is only one possible use for this...

[Anonymous Coward]

...porn!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Cool

[afidel]

maybe now that the community can hack the firmware the on the go playlist feature will be backported to my gen 1 ipod =) I know that Apple isn't required to backport features to older units, but the fact that the hardware is capable of it, and that they have ported new features that benifit them just rubs me the wrong way.

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah don't you just hate it when new products get new features? A gen 1? I mean seriously dude. Maybe its time for an upgrade.

Re:Cool

[cepler]

Ya, I wish they would backport the fix to allow the album names to scroll left/right when browsing to the 3rd gen! iPod photo scrolls these just fine but with my 3rd gen I can't see the full names of some long albums, some of which are 3-4 in a row, VERY annoying. :(

Re:Cool

[usv]

How about hacking also more features to the On-The-Go playlist in general? At least with my 3rd generation iPod I am unable to remove or shift titles I accidentially placed to it. Just erase the whole list and try to get it right next time :(

And I'm also missing a directory-based file explorer which I am used to using in the custom software I play mp3's with on my server.

Re:Cool

[blanks]

"I know that Apple isn't required to backport features to older units"

Why not, this is a huge requirement that most people expect when buying equiptment.

I could see if it was many years difference, like NES to SNES where technology had changed so much (6-8 years right), but come on, it was 2 years between the different units?

or a change like OS9 to OSX,yes alot has changed, but you can still use the basic built in features (network OS9 to an OSX box etc).

If the features are there, and they went out of their way to NOT let people use these features accross various versions of the hardware/software, then thats just plain wrong. Sounds like a forced upgrade if you want to use features with others.

Re:Cool

[mkramer]

When you bought the hardware, it came with a feature list. The only requirement the manufacturer has is to make sure those features work as claimed. And no where on that feature list did they even mention the possibility that you would get more features as they released new products.

They have not done a single thing that prevents you from using any of the capabilities that you *bought*, I don't see where they're doing anything wrong.

Re:Cool

[afidel]

I never personally don't think the did anything wrong, I just think they could have done a lot more right if they threw us early adopters a bone. I love my iPod and Apple got a lot of sales from me showing it off to others, it would be nice if they had given me a feature that would have cost them essentially nothing to implement and which would greatly increase my enjoyment of the device. Shelling out several hundred dollars every couple years for a new music player just isn't reasonable for most people. Hell if they need additional revenue to justify it they could do something like Cisco where you can pay for featuresets but maintenance upgrades for bugs are free.

Re:Cool

[Moofie]

Careful what you wish for.

I know that my 4G has a different screen than yours, but it seems like the response time on my screen is really slow. Sometimes it's difficult to read the song title as it's scrolling. It would be nice if I could turn this off.

However, my #1 most wanted feature would be to decrease the sensitivity of song rating changes. I can't figure out why it doesn't just do one star per quarter-turn or so.

Re:Cool

[blanks]

Its wrong for the simple fact that they did this for the reason of forcing people to buy a new Ipod.

Just like the battery you couldnt replace, once its dead, you waste another few hundred dollars.

Re:Cool

[mkramer]

They're not forcing you to do anything. If you want features that you did not pay for, you must buy a new one. But there's nothing stopping you from using the features you already paid for, and presumably thought were worth spending the money in the first place.

Although, I'll concede that Apple's sending mixed messages by proving *some* new features on old models, like the recent iPod mini update. But that's just a mixed message, not a broken promise to the masses that own other models that didn't receive such updates.

Finally...

[dextroz]

a 'beautiful' a beowulf cluster...

Funny battery monitor

[Anonymous Coward]

I did this. I changed the power monitor so it starts as a fully erect cock that becomes more and more flaccid as the battery runs down - it's totally hilarious. Of course, now people think I'm a gay pervert. But it's worth it.

Re:Funny battery monitor

[hell_for_leather]

hillarious,
you have got to post a picture of this

Re:Funny battery monitor

[doodlelogic]

You let other people hold your iPod? Gross...

Re:Funny battery monitor

[Ava3ar]

post some pictures, i would love to see this, or even better a video, that would be friggin hilarious

Re: Funny battery monitor

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, now people think I'm a gay pervert.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. But I notice you're not denying it... :)

Re:Funny battery monitor

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't even want to know what you use as a splash screen ;)

Re:Funny battery monitor

[Anonymous Coward]

Janie Porche's hot wet pussy!!!

Re:Funny battery monitor

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably this self portrait.

Re:Funny battery monitor

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I want to put an old lady on life support, as the "Do not disconnect" image.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Warranty and Apple's Defaults

[Brainix]

From the article, "This most certainly voids your warranty..."

As far as I can tell, this can't damage the iPod's hardware, can it? I hope that companies grow more "hacker friendly" in the future--offer stronger warranties, and allow (even encourage) tinkering.

Also, I'd be more interested in hacks like this if I weren't so happy with Apple's nice default UI. Don't get me wrong--it's a wonderful technical achievement that these guys have hacked the iPod's firmware. I just think that most iPod owners are happy with the default graphics.

Re:Warranty and Apple's Defaults

[Bilzmoude]

Well, it voids their warranty because they dont want to pay tech staff to fix it when you mod your firmware, and it locks up.

When the price of a device is set, is is set with an assumption that a certian level of support is needed. They do not count for people having un-flashable firmware, because they modify their firmware to the point of total failure.

In any embedded device, it is not hard to write over the wrong part of your firmware, which will block you from restoring your firmware. If you do this, who is going to fix it for you? Also, lets say you modify the firmware to make non-optimal use of the hard drive, causing the hard drive to fail quicker. Should they be responsible for fixing this?

So, they decide to make firmware mods a warranty voiding act. They are not saying "You cannot mod your firmware". They are saying "If you mod your firmware, we are not responsible for it when it breaks."

Isn't it Ironic

[OverlordQ]

that it requires a PC instead of an Apple to hack the iPod?

Re:Isn't it Ironic

[vasqzr]

Yea. Where's the Mac version?

Re:Isn't it Ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

Remove the iBook from your ass and you will find it.

Re:Isn't it Ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because PC makers put out the program in order to sell PCs to iPod owners.

Re:Isn't it Ironic

[MikeBabcock]

Mac users probably aren't the types to bother.

I've always liked Macs, but never bought one because I hate the lock-in.

True Mac users seem to like the fact that Apple and only Apple makes good products for the Mac (Microsoft Office aside).

Re:Isn't it Ironic

[Moofie]

Hmmm...I guess I've never met a "true" Mac user.

I have no idea what "lock in" you're talking about. More to the point, I think you're painting Mac users with an awfully broad brush.

Re:Isn't it Ironic

[outZider]

Odd.

I've been a Mac user for a long time, and I've experienced very little lock in. Sure, many of the Apple apps are in common use because they're well designed -- I chose the operating system, only makes sense that the apps work like it. ;) Regardless, I find a lot of third party apps to work quite well, and Microsoft Office is a bit of a dog.

Re:Isn't it Ironic

[MikeBabcock]

Of course I was painting with a broad brush. This isn't a dissertation wherein I have the time to dissect each potential Mac user's personality.

Re:Isn't it Ironic

[Moofie]

So, er, what's your point?

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[TommydCat]

I've never figured out why kids put airplane wings on the back of their Honda Civic either, but there's definitely a trend to 'personalize' their ride to make them stand out just like everyone else.

Are there any pic packs out yet so I can make mine unique? ;)

Re:Anyone do this to a non iPod photo model?

[CrazyBusError]

No, it comes up in colour.

It's a *really* clever firmware hack...

But then...

[Onimaru]

...the iPod would be dead! This is all a plot to bring down the iPod High Council!

Re:But then...

[superpulpsicle]

Speaking of iPod and death. My 1 year old miniPod internal battery has died?! I recharge that thing regularly and it still does me no justice.

Re:But then...

[Pfhor]

http://www.ipodbattery.com/

$40 and you should be good as new. If you look around some more, you could even find some larger capacity batteries for it.

And check around for FAQs on proper ipod charge usage (you should have it charging whenever you possibly can).

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[atta1]

I believe this is part of human nature. Just look at the idea of custom paint jobs on cars, changing the look of a motorcycle, etc. This is part of our desire to personalize everything so that it becomes uniquely our own.

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[oberondarksoul]

I'd say it's closer to everyone wanting to appear unique, and not quite the same as other people. There are millions of iPods out there - but, as the popularity of laser engraving on them shows, people want theirs to be 'special' - want it to be unique to them. I'd say that, like case modding for PCs, this is simply people taking that to the next level.

useful features

[SupahVee]

Instead of making cosmetic changes like this, if someone out there is clever enough to get into the firmware of the iPod, add some useful features, perhaps the holy grail of the iPod, in my opinion. Ogg support. T
he fact that Apple can embrace BSD for their core, and have things interoperate rather well, yet leave this part out, when numerous listening tests have shown that Ogg Vorbis has better sound quality as equivalent bitrates than ANY lossy compression scheme, is just plain annoying, and is the single reason I havent bought an iPod. My whole music collection is ripped in .ogg, and to have to convert it because Apple is stubborn is not my idea of a good time.

Re:useful features

[Anonymous Coward]

ogg vorbis... blah blah blah

it's like a broken record. it's about time we got over the fact apple's not adopting it for a reason, be it technological or business/economics. they aren't adopting it just to screw the ogg vorbis users, as you may seen to think.

you are, however, doing the right thing by not buying an iPod for this reason. if enough people do the same, apple will adopt ogg vorbis. apparently, it hasn't been a problem thus far. we'll see what happens.

Re:useful features

[OverlordQ]

They're not adding Vorbis because the iPod couldn't handle the decoding AND playback at the same time. They'll just release Movie iPod next for another $800 instead of adding wanted features to wanted devices.

Re:useful features

[hell_for_leather]

Hey there,
what software do you use to RIP to .ogg ?

Re:useful features

[echocharlie]

Well said. From a business perspective, why would you want to support a non-proprietary format when you're proprietary one is now a market leader? Things might be different if the iPod wasn't so hot and Apple was forced to add features to try to gain marketshare. Things look different from the top. Just ask Microsoft.

Re:useful features

[daniel de graaf]

CDex for Windows and Grip for Linux

Re:useful features

[FeTrut]

I'm curious as to what qualifies as a *wanted* feature to you? I'm fairly sure in the business world a *wanted* feature is one where increased sales due to its introduction would outweigh the sacrifice of resources required to develop it. Can you say with some credibility that this is the case for ogg support?

Re:useful features

[zbrimhall]

I think the issue is more that supporting Ogg would undermine their own investment. Apple would like to create a world in which, for all intents and purposes, digital music means AAC.

Re:useful features

[Anonymous Coward]

OGG is not the fucking holy grail, you idiot. Format is irrelevant.

GAPLESS playback, now that's the holy grail. Do it, Apple, or I'll pee on you!

Re:useful features

[hell_for_leather]

Thanks,
what an excellent bit of software. I have a phone with a 32mb card and this tool is a lifesaver. I can totally shrink my mp3's :) made my day

i started playing with this yesterday

[vena]

and i'm all "hey this is great" but quite quickly ran into "ok so what am i gonna draw?"

thanks, the blank white paper problem wasn't quite giving me the optimum level of frustration.

Re:i started playing with this yesterday

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't leave us hanging with your activity report for yesterday. What happened after "ok so what am i gonna draw?" Did you go get something to eat? Took a nap?

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[Racter]

"No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft."

- H.G. Wells

Forget that, just install Linux on the thing.

[Otto]

Okay, so Linux isn't quite all there yet for the iPod, but progress is being made, more or less. You can put Linux on the thing and boot it and run apps and such anyway.

iPodLinux.org

Re:Forget that, just install Linux on the thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can put Linux on the thing and boot it and run apps

Why the fuck would anyone want to do that?

Re:Forget that, just install Linux on the thing.

[Otto]

Why the fuck would anyone want to do that?

Well, for one thing, to write something better or more flexible than Apple's software. Apple's written a pretty good interface on the thing, but it's not all that. There's significant room for improvement.

But then, if you're not the hacker type, don't install Linux on the thing. Like I care what you do.

Re:Forget that, just install Linux on the thing.

[DigiShaman]

But what kinda MP3 codec is running in Linux? Is it truely better then what Apple has to offer? Accustical benchmarks please

Re:Forget that, just install Linux on the thing.

[Otto]

But what kinda MP3 codec is running in Linux?

You're not making much sense, there. An MP3 decoder is an MP3 decoder. They're all the same. Some are faster or slower, but they all should produce identical output. MP3 encoders can vary, MP3 decoders cannot (short of implementation bugs, of course).

The MP3 decoder for the iPodLinux project isn't wholly finished yet because the kernel has some issues with the dual processors in the iPod. Work on making it faster is therefore progressing rather slowly. It's not yet suitable for public consumption, in other words. But for hacking around and trying stuff out, it's great.

And if you don't want to lose the use of your iPod, the installer can install dual boot. So that you can boot to the Apple firmware by default or boot to the Linux firmware by holding down a button at startup. Or vice-versa. :)

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[Anonymous Coward]

I make changes to things because I can. It makes it more unique in my mind. Sure it does exactly the same thing as before, except that it now displays *my* stuff (ie logos, images, etc).

Gapless playback

[bgeek]

Thats the one thing that most mp3 players lack. Note the use of mp3 and *not* ogg or any other obscure format and don't be mentioning ripping CD's as 1 file instead ;-) Now if someone could hack that... why I'd almost buy one!

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[skubeedooo]

People wanting to be different and/or creative is a result of the plastic surgery generation?

Presumably mental retardation is a result of the slashdot generation.

Idiot.

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[Bastian]

I figured this uniqueness imperative was why iPods scratch so easily. Every iPod is like a snowflake, and it starts developing its own unique "character" the first time you allow it to be in contact with other matter.

hacking the firmware? Why not just use GNU/Linux ?

[gnarlin]

Perhaps this will be useful.
And now you can also use vi on your ipod ;-)
I wonder if I could get emacs to work...

Re:This is great

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I try to avoid being seen with my iPod. I actually like it, use it and want to keep it, and not being seen with it reduces the chance of being mugged for it.

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[Oxygen99]

For thousands of years people have been 'modding' their clothes, houses, faces and bodies to distinguish themselves from the herd around them. Given that, I don't think hardware is a special case. If it forms part of your image then it will be changed, adapted or co-opted to help illustrate the personbrand you are. That's just the way human nature works, so no, the plastic surgery generation is irrelevant it's the an expression of desire for status, individuality and the illusion of differentiation.

Like most other things, it's just "same old, same old".

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[Anonymous Coward]

go back to kuro5hin

BETTER iPod HACKING GUIDE

[mbeck145]

Chris Nowak has figured out how to do something the smart people at engadget couldn't do, hack the iPod images without loosing all your songs or data. Check out Chris's article "iPod Hacking". Props to Nowak for coming up with this.

http://cnowak.blogspot.com/2004/12/ipod-hacking. ht ml

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[servognome]

It makes their 120hp civic go faster, duh!

Skinning hardware - almost

[alispguru]

Unfortunately, Apple has it patented.

Interesting idea, though - what if Apple sold an iPod with electronic paper in the case? You really could skin that hardware, and it would sell the same way that custom cases and faceplates for cellphones do today.

It's only a matter of time...

[Anonymous Coward]

...until someone posts pics of Goatse on the iPod!

Re:It's only a matter of time...

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be great if someone made a "feature" that splashed the goatse man whenever some stupid boy band started playing. It would be especially funny if they made it an animation so that you could see him pull his anus open over a few frames. That way when your retarded roommate starts rocking out to nsync or backdoor boys, his ipod would show how retarded he really is.

One would expect

[Anonymous Coward]

They show you how to change icons and graphics within the firmware. One would expect someone who really knew what they were doing would be able to identify, disassemble and modify ARM machine code within the firmware as well.

This leads back to what I've been wanting ever since the iPod was first announced, which is: The iPod has a reasonably powerful CPU, a wheel and a couple buttons, and a four-gray-shade screen. The iPod should be perfectly capable of emulating an original-generation game boy!

Linux

[hipbase]

When it runs Linux I will think about modding my iPod.

Re:Linux

[calibanDNS]

iPod Linux is here. Start thinking.

Re:Linux

[hipbase]

I have now seen it all, I can die now.

is that so?

[Anonymous Coward]

i thought that the PP chip supported ogg out of the box, but that apple chose to not include that particular feature

Re:is that so?

[WJMoore]

Yes I believe the PP chip is more than capable of handling Ogg.

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[Anonymous Coward]

A software concept? Right, because modifying and customizing the appearance of things is completely foreign outside software skins.

How this comment was modded insightful is just silly.

Re:This is great

[uberchicken]

More idiotic moderation. When I posted, parent was modded Troll. At *worst* it's flamebait, and even then it's still a valid viewpoint and worthy of discussion.

Re:Anyone do this to a non iPod photo model?

[jxyama]

>No, it comes up in colour.

in 'colour'? really? it didn't work for me... is that only for U.K. and Aussie models? ;)

Again with the Engadget plugs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh well, I already have their site blocked, so they won't get be getting any ad revenue from me.

And for those of us using Adblock, anyone care to post how to only block their ads?

Re:This is great

[penginkun]

Your argument is predicated on the nonsensical idea that the only reason anyone ever buys an iPod is to be seen having an iPod. That only élite, Hollywood types can afford such a device is simply untrue-I own one, my cousin is getting one for Christmas, and I know a few other people who have one. None of us is what you'd call rich.

I'd gladly pay another three hundred dollars for a new one, because the iPod is, quite simply, the most useful device I've bought in ages. I can (and do) take several days' worth of music with me wherever I go in a box the size of a deck of cards. It's easy to copy music to (and from) the iPod. I can use it as a hard drive. The UI is simple and elegant and clear. The iPod stands head and shoulders above the rest of the pack.

That's why people buy them.

Re:too much possibilities

[RPI Geek]

You forgot step 6: ? and step 7: Profit!

Not for me...

[Garabito]

Not only don't I have an iPod to hack, but yesterday my Motorola V500 died while trying to flash an unbranded firmware to it.

So, no more firmware hacking or mod for me.

At least for now.

Re:Not for me...

[Kiryat Malachi]

Try turning it off and flashing with the phone off, but charging - if I remember properly, this puts it into a USB-receptive mode.

Then again, you might have nuked that too, I don't know.

Re:Not for me...

[WJMoore]

This is not such an issue with the iPod as it can (almost)* always be restored with the Apple Firmware Updater.

* I won't say always in case I'm wrong

Re:Not for me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try getting a free iPod from one of the many sites offering them.

http://www.freeiPods.com/?r=11684670
http://www.freephotoiPods.com/?r=11684514
http://www.tech4free.com/default.aspx?ref=1930
http://www.mp3players4free.com/default.aspx?r=4362 1
http://FreeiPodPhotos.com/index.php?referral=43

You could end up with serveral to hack...

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[jangobongo]

It seems people are never happy with how things are supposed to look - when given the opportunity, many chose to change it.

Is this a result of the plastic surgery generation? Or is it just human nature?

Why should someone have to live with someone elses idea of how something should look? Should the world have the same sameness everywhere? Boring!

Might as well ask, "Why do people decorate their houses?" Or "Why do they change the desktop pic on their computers?"

Or even better: "Why do children see a blank piece of paper and want to color or draw on it?"

I think people have an innate creativity that they all want to express. Egos play into that too, I think. Everyone likes it when someone says, "That's so cool, dude!"

Why do we change things?

[tacokill]

Because we can.

Just human nature

[Kjella]

People have always had a need to stand out in, individually or as a group. It can be your clothes, your car, your behavior, your language, your status symbols, your furniture etc. etc. Both in terms of high status, social group (us vs rest) and individually (you vs world).

Artists have been creating their own designs forever. Couple hundred years ago here, speaking Latin proved you were a "learned scholar". 100 years ago the executives built housing on top of the hill, workers down the hillside. 60 years ago clothing was used to signalize if you were against the Nazis. 30 years you'd be wearing hippie clothes and join protests. And today you mod your iPod to show how "cool" you are.

The "plastic surgery" generation is nothing more than human nature with better tools for the job. People were just as willing to endure for the sake of beautey before as they are now.

Kjella

Re:Just human nature

[anothy]

the important objection first:

The "plastic surgery" generation is nothing more than human nature with better tools for the job.

no way. first of all, there's a significant difference between accessorizing and body modification. the permanence is significant, but the external/internal boundary is the most important difference.

also, what are the end results of plastic surgery? they are not, on the whole, people going out on a limb to try something different and demonstrate how much of an individual they are (there are exceptions, but they are statistically very rare). people get done up to look like other people - or worse, like pictures in magazines and on telly. our ideas of beauty and appropriate body image are manipulated by corporate-media-dominated culture to make sure nobody ever feels "good enough" (or at least that's the goal). this is different than at any point in history.

less important objections: the hill/valley split is centuries older than you said, and still goes on; i think you mean signify, not signalize; you're mixing examples from unrelated areas of human psychology with different implications.

Re:Just human nature

[Bob Uhl]

the permanence is significant, but the external/internal boundary is the most important difference.

That's a very good point. The old saying that we all put our pants on one leg at a time is based in the fact that until very recently we are all the same naked: yeah, a rich man has many properties and fine clothing, but at the end of the day he's not any different from the rest of us. But with the new trends of plastic surgery and genetic engineering, that may not always be the case, which worries me.

The most addle-pated hereditary ruler knew that he arrived at his position through an accident of birth, but a genetically engineered ueber will know that he is innately superior. That can't be good.

Re:This is great

[radish]

*yawn*

Wake me up when it can do what a $10 portable cd player can do, i.e. play back a live cd without inserting breaks between tracks.

Games

[eyeareque]

Now someone figure out how to install/program games onto the Ipod.. THAT will be very cool.

Re:Games

[calibanDNS]

Check out iPod Linux.

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[Misanthropy]

You think this is something new?
People have always wanted to make things different or change them to be uniquely theirs.
Hacking iPods, building hot rods, engraved swords, decorating your home; It all comes from the same place and it's nothing new.

This doesn't mean that it always turns out good (i.e. huge fins on Honda Civics) but it's nothing new.

Re:This is great

[Anonymous Coward]

*yawn*

Wake me up when a cd player will let me take my 550 CD collection plus my high res photography portfolio around with me in the pocket of my jeans.

Negatory

[Doc Ruby]

Hack your iPod, go to jail. OK, it's not jail, just getting yanked from eBay. But, if that kind of baseless PTO abuse is accepted, how long before corporate cops, waving the DMCA, drag you off to a consumer reeducation camp?

That was weaks ago motherfucka'

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm partyin'

Re: Bad Thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

I've personally been walking down the bad streets of Philly at night and saw a small framed jogger come by and start doing their little joggie dance while we wait for the light to turn green.

I was walking up behind them and they didn't see me and I noticed they had a nice shiny iPod on their fanny pack.

And a little voice in my head said "pick and a brick off the ground and hit them in the back of their head and take their I-Pod... they'll never catch you..."

And it started me... Never before had I really been to compell to attack another human over physical possesion.

And then on the bus a few weeks later another person with an iPod had fallen asleep and the voice came back... "Take it... They'll never catch you."

Something is unnatural about the iPod. I have to buy one before I turn to a life of mugging iPodders.

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[NardofDoom]

I like to change things because I want to see if something's better or worse. That's why I choose to pay $120/year for 3GB of space on a webhost instead of $100 a year on 250MB of space on .Mac. *I* get to choose what I use to display images and calendars and personal websites, not Apple. So I can try better stuff and see if it's helpful. If it's not, then I can go back or try something else. This is the same reason I use Wordpress on my webhost instead of Blogger and Gallery instead of Flickr.

Killer App...

[Chrontius]

Since Apple's not doing it, and iPod firmware is no longer clear as mud, let me suggest something to those l33ter than I: A really compelling feature would be a book reader program that can take large text files with limited HTML -- just the basics like bold, italic, and underline, maybe even blockquote.

With Baen distributing free books in RTF format with many hardbacks, and me getting an iPod for Christmas, this just got a lot more interesting.

If anyone figures this out, I'd be happy to send a couple Baen CDs (copied) as a thank-you.

Re:Killer App...

[dacetone]

I've used programs like PodText to transfer books to my iPod. Not that program specifically, but I can't find the one I used...but I found several at Versiontracker. A recent MacAddict article said that the iPod supports basic HTML like you asked. I can't find the article, but this seems to be correct.

Re:Killer App...

[dacetone]

Aha! I used Book2Pod with success. Testing HTML right now...god, loading this many notes is slow...hmm, didn't work. Will continue testing. Sorry about the disjointed posts, it's hard to think straight when I just woke up >.

Re:This is great

[Anonymous Coward]

-Step one: replace famous white earphones with non-white anything -Step two: Keep iPOD hidden from view when possible.

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[Wizzy Wig]

It seems people are never happy with how things are supposed to look - when given the opportunity, many chose to change it.

Seems that way 'cuz you read /. It just ain't so otherwise.

But since you brought it up - If I own the hardware, it's mine to tinker with. If I bought it, I can break it.

consumer hardware tech info wiki needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any web site dedicated to hardware tech info or custom firmware writing for these consumer electronic gadgets?

Some candidates:
a. take nintendo ds + firmware + embedded linux -> general purpose tablet/touch screen computer (for $150)

b. take ipod + custom firmware -> media server (audio, video)

Hrmmm

[j1bb3rj4bb3r]

I tried this awhile ago with my own iPod (I was trying to hack it to turn WMA support on in the chip). Once I got past the checksum problem, I realized I would need an ARM disassembler to have anyh hope of finding the right register to change to enable that support. Hopefully someone (with access to the chip specs and an ARM disassembler) is working this.

Hebrew support

[sometwo]

Any word on whether this utility could put Hebrew fonts on the ipod?

Re:This is great

[Steve Cowan]

It's a troll. The "iPods are only cool because they're trendy" comment is posted, in one form or another, in EVERY iPod topic.

It always illicits the same responses: "I got it because it's the best, not because it's cool", "I hide my iPod to not get mugged for it", and "you slashdot geeks just don't get it". Then the comparisons come up between the iPod and less "hip" players.

It is absolutely a troll, because it sets out to offend iPod owners and get them to defend their gadget. And what do you mean, "when I posted"... when you posted what?

Re:BETTER iPod HACKING GUIDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Try making a link of it next time! Really quite simple!

wow ...MacSlash has went down hill

[Anonymous Coward]

http://macslash.org/comments.pl?sid=4988&cid=83478

Seriously...wtf happened to MacSlash?
How dare they post a product announcement about macintosh software from a company that's actually selling things? WTF were they thinking when the posted a story about something that might actually interest mac users.
This place sucks. All they do is post stuff that their readers might be interested in and then make it easy for us to troll the comments in their stories.-- Ben Stanfield Executive Editor @ MacSlash

Wakey Wakey

[The Patient]

I doubt it will ever do that, since it doesn't play CDs. However, ripping an entire live CD with Easy CD DA Extractor's single-file output option turned on accomplishes the same thing.
Other extraction applications may have the same capability. Or not.

Re:Wakey Wakey

[Anonymous Coward]

No it doesn't, you fucking moron. That accomplishes one thing - one big huge fucking gapless track. What if I want to skip to track 9 of 12? Can't do it, the damn thing's one big file. A 20 year old CD player can do BOTH - play back with no gaps AND skip among tracks.

How fucking hard is this, Apple?

Re:Wakey Wakey

[The Patient]

Well, Mr. Off My Medication: anent your original post -- you didn't mention the ability to skip from track 9 to 12.
Hopefully, when your horse and buggy CD player does that, it doesn't create a gap. We wouldn't want the resulting aneurism depriving us of your well-thought out, intelligent responses. Lord, no.

changable themes

[AC-x]

On a side note, Apple and every other music player maker should make this part of the software that comes with their device, we all change the icons, desktops, and everything else on our computers, so it makes sense to be able to brand our music players any way we want.

I competely agree, my Canon digital camera allows me to upload new spashscreens and samples to it which I think is a very nifty feature.
Most companies will probably worry too much about brand preservation to implement this though which is a shame

Re:changable themes

[KD5YPT]

I don't think that could be a problem. Just like modding half-life (example, counter strike), modding the software portion does not destroy the brand. Heck, a lot of people buys half-life just to play counter-strike. Apple should be happy that now people will buy their product more and mod it.

Plus, since the mod is software based, there shouldn't be any warranty issue.

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[Anonymous Coward]

It's human nature. For anything personal, there is always an attempt to modify it. It happens way, way before there is a "plastic surgery generation". Even in the dawn of civilization, people do things to chage their look: tattoo, piercings, etc..

We are cursed with the desire to conform (buy iPod!!) and yet at the same time the desire to be unique (mod the iPod!!).

Re: Bad Thoughts

[drunknjew]

before i got one, i actually had dreams about killing or seriously maiming people for their ipods.... so i bought one, before my dreams had a chance ot come true

Re:Anyone do this to a non iPod photo model?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the non-Photo iPod (all models) use a 2-bit (4 color) greyscale screen. This is actually almost exactly like the screen built into Nintendo's Game Boy unit (untill GBC.). The best way I have found to convert full color images to be used with older iPod is to crack open PS> Open the image you would like to import to your iPod. Scale the image to the desired size first. Then, go to Image>Mode>Greyscale and click OK when it asks you to remove all color info. Then go to Image>Mode>RGB color. This is to get the pic back into a 32-bit pallete. You MUST DO THIS, otherwise your image won't dither correctly and it will look like crap. Finally, click Image>Mode>Indexed color... This will open a dialog. For pallete pick Adaptive (perceptual). In the number of colors dialog, type 4. For forced colors, pick Black and White (iPod screen is Black (full on), White (full off), and 33% on, 66% on for 4 'shades'). Enable Dithering using the dither method (NOT pattern) and mess with the percentage of dithering till the image is like you want it. Export to your iPod and enjoy.

And now the RIGHT link!

[ostermei]

Fixed!

Of course it might break the HW

[Flexagon]

As far as I can tell, this can't damage the iPod's hardware, can it?

How do you know? In many highly cost-reduced platforms, critical control is moved into software, so that it might be quite easy to break the hardware by breaking the software. Fiddle with the power management (charging) firmware on some mobile devices and you might blow up the batteries or at least create a serious overheating condition. This kind of thing happens often enough to cause recalls and firmware updates even in "official" firmware to easily back up a claim that hacking the software can break the hardware.

The earlier sibling's response is also sufficiently valid on its own: the vendor has no obligation to diagnose your problems if you've changed the (software) platform that provides the basis for their diagnosis capability. You didn't pay for an advanced hardware-only diagnostic service.

Re:This is great

[Razor's Edge]

Using iTunes one indeed can rip the CD without the breaks between tracks.
If you use the iTunes Join Tracks feature, the program melds two or more songs into one, continuous gap-free track. So now you can enjoy listening to classical music, concept rock albums and extended dance mixes without the silent treatment.
http://www.apple.com/itunes/import.html

only élite, Hollywood types can afford such a

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I could afford such a device, my father only earns about $200US a year.

Re:Not true?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't require a PC. At this time, the only application capable of letting n00bs like you hack your firmware is for PC.

The guy posted a simple instruction set on how to do it.

You know what. Fuck you. Wait here while I make your comment invalid.

*gets iPod from car*

Mod up: +1 Sad But True

[jargoone]

I tried a couple of other mp3 players, and finally decided to get an iPod. It's not perfect, but it's pretty decent. While my case was coming from a seller on eBay, I carried it to and from work in my pants pocket. I'm talking about a pair of jeans, the pocket of which is smooth as silk. After a week, the back was covered with tiny scratches. There were a couple of scratches on the front, and even one on the screen. I got one of those rubber jackets, but constantly have to take it off to dock it.

For fuck's sake. It's cool that it looks like nice. It's not cool that it looks like utter shit after a week of very delicate handling. Apple either needs to create a surface that's a little more durable.

Re:Mod up: +1 Sad But True

[Bastian]

I quit using the dock because it involved taking the case off. Sticking with the iSkin Exo, which has a cutout for the firewire adapter.

The screen cover on it broke, but I have replaced it with a trimmed-down WriteRight cover for my PalmPilot, which works just as well.

if push comes to shove, it's fairly easy to polish an iPod back to new with an incredibly fine polishing material (I use toothpaste) and a soft cloth.

Re:Mod up: +1 Sad But True

[michrech]

Apple either needs to create a surface that's a little more durable.

Or what?

if you have an older iPod

[Anonymous Coward]

iPod Linux doesn't support newer iPods.

Plus, you end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Want to add a new feature? Sure, well, but you lose everything else. The UI, battery management and in fact pretty much the entire ability to play music.

That doesn't count as easy in my book.

It's possible to customize text also...

[aqkiva]

It's possible to change the text, menus, etc. also. Now you can change the "Do not disconnect." text along with the graphic. Warning: this is nowhere near as user friendly as the ipodwizard program, but it worked for me using a 4th gen. iPod on linux. Just download the firmware with dd from the /dev/sdx1 partition, open up a hex editor and replace whatever text you want. There's a checksum located at 0x421C that needs to be updated. There's a checksum2.c program that can calculate and write a firmware's checksum. I'm not going to post a link to it due to the author's wish to avoid a slashdotting but a bit of searching should find it. I found that this program didn't calculate the checksum correctly but always returned a value 16418 too high so I just modified it to subtract this constant. This is almost certainly specific for my particular ipod verson. After the firmware is written back with dd, the text modifications show up. All the text that can be reasonably edited is located together in one block in the file. I changed what shows up under Settings->About->Format from "Windows" to "Linux" so now I have a Linux iPod.

Re:It's possible to customize text also...

[Anonymous Coward]

Plz email me the link

Re:It's possible to customize text also...

[Anonymous Coward]

I found the link
But it takes like 45 minutes to generate
and it doesnt work :(

Re:It's possible to customize text also...

[busonerd]

I'm the author of said tool.. Its broken for anything above 1g and 2g. That code has been dead for at least a year now.

Re:It's possible to customize text also...

[aqkiva]

It should take on the order of seconds to calculate. You probably need to uncomment the little endian define. The checksum is simply the sum of a range of bytes in the file. For small changes, it is quite feasible to update it manually. Just calculate the difference in byte values that you've changed and update the 4 byte checksum (little-endian) located at 0x421c. Thus, if you change an 'A' to a 'B', just increment the existing checksum at 0x421c by one.

Re:It's possible to customize text also...

[Anonymous Coward]

plz post ur code

Can't be far off.

[Eil]

How long before there's an ipod emulator?

(I'm only half-joking.)

Re:Can't be far off.

[WJMoore]

I believe Apple have one already. It what they use to produce the iPod screen captures on their website, such as: http://images.apple.com/ipod/images/musiccalendar_ 20040719.gif.

Re:Can't be far off.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever since the Music Store came out, I thought that an iPod emulator would be a good way to bypass the DRM. iPods aparently pay no atention to the DRM restrictions on the purchased music...

Re: Bad Thoughts

[djdavetrouble]

evil drunknjew said:
before i got one, i actually had dreams about killing or seriously maiming people for their ipods.... so i bought one, before my dreams had a chance ot come true

May I suggest you lay off the Doom 3 and other FPS games for a while?
Oh, and if you wanted one THAT bad, you could have just done the free ipod spam in your sig here like all of the other hypocrites.

Since it's been out for a long time....

[shadowsurfr1]

Since it's been out for a long time, I'm surprised it _wasn't_ cracked before now. Maybe I missed the news....

Re:Since it's been out for a long time....

[dave420]

It was done right after the first gen ipods came out - people found the graphics in the firmware. I guess the news is someone made an app to change the graphics for you... meh.

read on

[gotr00t]

They're currently working on making it work for the newer generation of iPods. Because they use the newer chipset from PortalPlayer, the memory mappings aren't quite the same (please correct me if someone understands this better).

You can still use your iPod firmware pretty easily. I have Linux installed on my 3G iPod, and it's kinda like a dual-boot.

If you think about it, it's a lot easier to program in C, using documented libs (podzilla) for the iPod, rather than hacking the Apple firmware and trying to add functionality, which will probably break your firmware anyhow.

Realistically...

[allwaysmusic]

Not sure how many people will actually take the time to change the graphics???

Don't get me wrong... the idea of changing the pictures on your iPod and personalizing your iPod is really cool! I just don't know how many will take the time and effort to do it.

Really clever firmware hack by the way. :)

http://allwaysmusic.modblog.com/

Re:BETTER iPod HACKING GUIDE

[Anonymous Coward]

hack the iPod images without loosing all your songs or data.

Better Link.

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[HazE_nMe]

Its is because of the mentality that we are all individual snowflakes each different from each other, rather than the "Fight Club" mentality that we are all the same decaying biological matter as everything else on this planet. People really want to be different so the if the option to change the appearance of somthing is there, they will use it to be unique.

Ripping to .ogg

[ToeNipples]

Hey there, what software do you use to RIP to .ogg ?

Nothing beats dBpoweramp (now in version 11) with lame 3.96. Just download it http://www.dbpoweramp.com/ and install the free codecs for AAC, OGG, WMA, FLAC, etc.

Re:Ripping to .ogg

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess, you work there?

Re:Ripping to .ogg

[ToeNipples]

lol, I guess I was too excited about dBpoweramp dmb, but no, I don't work there, sorry for being a cheerleader.

AWESOME!!!

[artifex2004]

Now my U2 iPod blinks out

DON'T PANIC!

instead of the circle with the line through it!

This rocks!

Anyone have a good small image of a sphere with his tongue sticking out for me to overwrite the Apple icon with?

p.s. I used the image from here to start, changed the background to black, changed the red to white (mine is b&w), then shrunk to the 64x64 size for icon #67 in my firmware. Did the little revision trick memtioned above, updated, and... where's my towel? And my salty snacks? Ford?

Very Easy Hack

[Thabenksta]

This is about as easy as it gets.

Good Job IpodWizard!

My Ipod Hack:
http://ipodstudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1019

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[Moofie]

Don't worry...people have been decrying the state of the current generation for about 8,000 years. You're not the first to think about how shallow "people these days" are.

So, even though you're radically oversimplifying, you're in plentiful company.

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[Moofie]

So you're conforming to the idea that the only reason to buy an iPod is to conform.

Way to buck the herd there, guy.

Suggested Image Project

[Mignon]

I think I spent too much time looking at the infinite cat and iPods around the world pages, but how about this:

1. Take a picture of your iPod *
2. Scale appropriately and replace whatever built-in picture you like.
3. Take a picture of this picture on your iPod *
4. Go to step 2.

* If you like, include a cat looking at your iPod.

Re:This is great

[cplusplus]

Actually, I almost bought an iPod. Then I found the iRiver H320. It's a comparably priced 20Gb player with a color screen that allows me to offload my digital camera's pictures without the need of a computer. With a couple trips coming up, an mp3/ogg player that can double as a large drive for my camera was just too much to pass up.
I think the iPod was cool when it came out, but it needs a refresher (and soon) if they want to say ahead of the pack. Other companies are catching up with Apple pretty quickly.

Apple is generally chill with warrenty restriction

[johnpaul191]

i assume they don't want to be responsible when people really screw everything up. i know someone that messed with the open firmware on his laptop and the machine was dead, had to be sent back to the magic Texas repair place and they fixed it no charge (after phone supports and the store's magic red phone had no idea how to help him).
when a lot of companies seal the whole box up, Apple started using the "el capatian case" (B&W G3 and G4 towers) that allowed anyone to add PCI cards, memory, hard drives etc etc etc. same with the G5 tower, and the G5 iMac now is the same way. if you look on Apple.com they explain how it is only 4 screws to open the whole thing up and poke around.

i read on some site that Apple's idea is that if, say, you power supply goes on the G5 iMac, they would send you another power supply module instead of you having to drag it back to the store. if you look at the high res images of the guts you can see how modular the whole thing is. this probably also saves them trouble with build to order machines, or repairs/upgrades in general.

Any hacks for iRiver?

[mi]

I'd like to hack it to use KOI8-U, when displaying the titles, &c. For some reason, it uses ISO-8859-1, and there is no way to change that :-(

Re:Any hacks for iRiver?

[chendo]

I believe you can change the encoding it uses to read tags in the Language option in the General tab of the options menu.

MisticRiver i s your friend.

By the way, there's already a program to modify the images on the iRiver H300 series: H3Mod (look for it in the forums at MR cause I'm too lazy).

Re:Any hacks for iRiver?

[mi]

I believe you can change the encoding it uses to read tags in the Language option in the General tab of the options menu.

I have it set to Ukrainian, but don't see that affecting anything -- the interface is still in English and the song titles are still displayed using ISO-8859-1 (or, maybe, -15), but not with any of the Cyrillic fonts.

I'll check the MisticRiver out, though. Thanks!

Re:Anyone do this to a non iPod photo model?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that might be possible. The iPod G4 processor has had support for color.

integer OGG

[bodrell]

That was news to me.

The first thing I thought when I read the question, when will some one hack it to play Ogg?, was "as soon as the iPod gets a floating point processor." I didn't even consider someone might have made an integer OGG player.

Re:Anyone do this to a non iPod photo model?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oooh, you can tell the difference between dialects. You get a cookie!

Yes

[StarKruzr]

This is Slashdot. We don't welcome your dangerous "thoughts" here.

Get back in step and start trolling and being reactionary like everyone else.

hmm...

[mrchaotica]

Error 404

www.macrealities.com could not be found. Please check the name and try again.

Obviously, there's no such thing as Mac Reality!

[yes, I own a Mac]

Re:hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

considering ogg and flac will most likely be in the ng qt --then it will in iPoD.

Re:only élite, Hollywood types can afford suc

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing if your dad only earns $200US a year you've probably got bigger concerns than buying an iPod.

Re:This is great

[penginkun]

Good point. I've often wondered why Apple hasn't carried iTunes's crossfade feature over to the iPod. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Re:Philosophical Ramifications

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no philosophical ramifications. It's just another iteration of stupid consumer culture -- in this case, internet/hardware geek/mod culture.

But please, go ahead and write a nice post-modern piece on it. I like reading all sorts of entertaining bullshit.

It sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

I still miss my NoMad Zen. It sounded much better. And had a better battery.

Re:It sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why you still have the Nomad, right? It didn't break or anything, did it? Keep talking about what sucks. Too bad you have a dead ear if you think that the Zen sounds better.

Yes, it can...

[Otto]

As far as I can tell, this can't damage the iPod's hardware, can it?

If you examine the firmware's code in detail, you'll find that when it boots for the first time (and only the first time) after updating/restore/etc., it reflashes the boot rom.

So in theory, a severely busted firmware could overwrite the flash rom and render the thing unbootable and impossible to fix, as you'd be unable to get it into disk mode to load new firmware on or possibly rendering it able to be forced into disk mode but unable to actually boot from the firmware in the first place to reflash the boot rom.

Re:Anyone do this to a non iPod photo model?

[aristotle-dude]

So how would that help with a black and white screen?

It was you

[Anonymous Coward]

oh, you're the person that wrote to us asking for Vorbis support. Unfortunately there are many other features that *millions* of people would prefer first. Once we get through them we'll consider supporting other formats like Vorbis.

The Apple iPod Team

Re:This is great

[Anonymous Coward]

You idiot. That makes it into ONE continuous track. Not a bunch of random-access tracks that can be played with NO gaps in between. That's what a 20 year old CD player gives you. NO gaps, AND the ability to skip around to different tracks. iTunes/iPod only gives you ONE or the OTHER. Not BOTH.

Idiot.

Re:This is great

[Razor's Edge]

I've yet to experience "NO gaps" with a CD player randomly selecting songs on a disc... The seek just isn't that fast. Especially when selecting across multiple discs!
Aside from that, I catch the intention of your point. No technology is perfect, obviously, and I don't think that was what I was claiming. The merits of the iPod and similar technology are obvious... Just try and carry your 20yr old CD player and collection of CDs with you in your pocket.
Must be so easy (and fun?) to make abusive comments to people when hiding behind AC, isn't it!?
Poor coward...

Ipod gps route/waypoints storage and communication

[alpiv]

Looking for a way to write a firmware to enable an ipod to speak to a gps unit to upload and download gps waypoints/routes etc. There is a standard gpx (xml) http://www.topografix.com/gpx.asp And most newer gps models can communicate to a usb port. now the hard part, the creation of the software to convert or add functionality to an ipod. The software should list the waypoint groups and routes to allow the user to select a specific set to upload to the gps. From the download side of things, the most common way is to either download all waypoints or all routes stored in the gps unit. Some newer models come with built in bluetooth, yet more on that later.. I need a starting point can anyone give me direction.