My hacked iPod

[JoeEllwood 0]

Hey guys,

One of my hobbies over the past couple months has been hacking my iPod. Basically you use a program to hack into your iPods firmware and play around, when you're done just write it to your iPod and it will reboot with the new changes.

Might sound a bit boring, but you can have some fun with it. Anyway, I wanted to get rid of the newly released backround hack (yes, you can now put custom backrounds on your iPod instead of the boring old white) and the only way to do it was to restore the iPod.

I decided to take a few before and after pics to give you an idea of what is possible. I only made a few simple changes, I'll probably change the font again when I finish this post.

Anyway, here are the pics. Apologies for the crappy quality - I will get higher quality ones if anyone's interested.

Before 1

After 1

Before 2

After 2

As you can see, I've changed the theme (skin) and the font. I also changed two quick strings, I changed "Shuffle Songs" to "Mix it up" and "iPod" to "iJoe".

One really neat thing with strings: in the legal section is heaps of copyright info etc. It is possible to delete all that and replace it with your name, phone number and address. Any text you want. So if anyone steals or finds your iPod you can prove it's yours.

Other hacks that are possible:

- disk browser

- additional operating system

- reboot iPod with one button

- rainbow selector bar

- volume bar on all screens

If anyone's interested, let me know and I can get you started.

Hope you enjoyed :mrhappy:

[mulletman 0]

Interesting stuff.

I always figured that hacking it would be possible, and never got round to doing it.

After my iPod broke i found i could do many more display changes as default on my Zen Vision:M, which is a far superior device IMHO.

[mutley 4,498]

I've never thought of hacking my iPod. It's only a Nano2 with a small screen so I would probably not benefit as much as you guys'.

Nice idea though.

Cheers

[JoeEllwood 0]

Hey Mut,

You can do most of the things you can do with mine on the Nano.

If you have a 2nd Generation Nano (colourful one) the firmware has not yet been cracked, shouldn't be too long as the guys who did this stuff are really quick.

When they do, it'll probably be possible to play videos on the Nano. Basically you install another OS on top of Apple's one - and run videos from the new one, it's pretty neat.

[mutley 4,498]

That's good Joe, it is a 2nd generation Nano, I'll get my magnifying glass out ready :mrhappy:

Cheers

[allardjd 1,853]

The news here today is full of an iPod scandal. It seems some students have been caught using hacked iPods as cheat-sheets during college entrance exams.

 

Some schools are entirely banning any kind of music playback devices.

 

Whenever someone comes along with something really innovative and useful it seems there's always someone else right behind them trying to find a way to use it for something nefarious.

 

Young guys like Joe Ellwood and Dave Gorman give me some encouragement that there are a lot of the good type out there too. It's the punks who seem to get all the press.

 

John

[hello_basil 0]

Very impressive, I wonder if it works on an Ipod Mini?

There is software called "MojoPac" I believe that allows Ipod users to run Windows programs off their ipods without installing them onto the computer! :shock:

[JoeEllwood 0]

It doesn't surpise me Alan, iPod's have the ability to copy text files from the PC to the device, then view it on the player - so you can put anything you want on there and read it later.

Unfortunately banning music players won't save the problem as they are other ways to store such files and view them on the go.

Theo, yep - it does. On the Mini you can do I think all of the stuff you see in my pics above.