One day, the Director of iPod Software (his boss’s boss) walked in and quietly put him on a clandestine project assisting two engineers from the DOE who wanted to build a “special” iPod. The Director told him his boss didn’t know about it, and he was instructed not to ask questions and only report directly to him. This undertaking was so secretive that only Shayer, his boss’s boss, the Vice President (VP) of the iPod Division, and the Senior VP of Hardware knew what was happening (via CNN).
Oddly, none of those people work at Apple now. Furthermore, according to Shayer, there was no paper trail left behind because all communication surrounding it was done in person. Shayer said the whole project was definitely not a standard business arrangement, and even thought Apple was engaged in a some kind of shady “under-the-table favor” for the DOE (via TidBITS).
It turns out that the two engineers — Matthew and Paul (Shayer redacted the last names on their business cards for privacy) — worked for Bechtel Nevada, a division of the Bechtel Corporation, a large United States defense contractor to the DOE. Shayer’s job was to help the two engineers/operatives learn and understand the underlying source code for the iPod’s operating system. However, Apple never gave them access to any internal servers, hardware, or software tools. He only provided a copy of the iPod’s current source code on a DVD to work with while on the premises, but it never left the building (via TidBITS).
