28Dec2010

iPod Nano Hack Could Enable Video, Games

James Whelton won a pink 8GB iPod Nano, and on the plane on his way back home he hacked it. And while he hasn’t done anything as spectacular as a jailbreak, he got the better of the little iPad and dug out some interesting details of what may be possible.

James got control of the Nano’s SpringBoard, the iPod equivalent of a desktop, where all app icons appear. Normally, the Nano’s OS checks to make sure that it isn’t trying to load a modified version. James bypassed this check and proved it my removing an app icon, leaving a blank space.

That’s cool and all, but the SpringBoard plist (a plist is a file that Apple’s devices use to store preferences) shows that it could be simple matter to switch on support for movies, TV shows, games, an address book, a calendar and even switch on a passcode lock. Here’s a picture of the extracted file:

Watching video on the tiny, square Nano screen seems kind of pointless, but so what? And unlike iOS devices which receive updates regularly, the normal iPods get one or two updates in their lifetimes, if ever, so there wouldn’t really be any reason not to hack one.

View the original article here