All clickwheel iPod games have now been preserved for posterity
arstechnica.com264 points by CharlesW 5 days ago
264 points by CharlesW 5 days ago
The security around developing these things pre launch was a bit hilarious, even compared to later mobile devices/tablets. A few of the members of one team I worked on were instructed to bring their passports to work in the months running up to any expected announcement, and when notified they would be dispatched to a basement in Cupertino with laptops with self contained build environments (a major headache) to produce the game, which would then appear on stage.
We've largely forgotten what a strangely big deal iPod launches used to be. I remember being mildly amused/amazed by the fact you could see them announced online and in use on the London Underground within hours.
Ooh, I have a lot of questions if you're willing to answer them :). I've been reverse engineering the original iPod software for the iPod Nanos for some time now, and I've seen the interface to 'eApps' (what they seem to call loadable applications) from the OS point of view [1], but I've always wondered about the app developer experience.
What was the SDK/toolchain like? Did you have any way to test the software in an emulator/simulator on a PC? What was debugging like? Was the iPod software/hardware you were developing against in any way special?
[1] - IIRC after the binary is decrypted, loaded into memory at a fixed address, and a symbol table (based on numeric IDs, not strings) is used to populate a trampoline with function pointers that the app requested. There seems to be no privilege separation between the app and the rest of the OS, as is the case for the iPod software in general.
TBH had I known too many of the specifics of the platform by now they would be forgotten or I wouldn't be able to mention them!
These games were largely heavily derived from their Brew/WinMo/Symbian versions, which were (subset of) C++ games developed on PCs and then retargeted to embedded devices using compilers with annoying licensing servers. Almost everyone that did this enough had their own PC runtime, and would barely touch any device/platform specific emulator even if it existed, a situation that remained the case until Unreal/Unity took over.
> There seems to be no privilege separation between the app and the rest of the OS, as is the case for the iPod software in general.
This was/is common for most RTOS type environments where MMUs were not a thing. For example, the whole point of Brew and J2ME was to provide some level of separation prior to the later Symbians and then Android/iOS etc.
> TBH had I known too many of the specifics of the platform by now they would be forgotten or I wouldn't be able to mention them!
Thanks anyways! :)
> This was/is common for most RTOS type environments where MMUs were not a thing. For example, the whole point of Brew and J2ME was to provide some level of separation prior to the later Symbians and then Android/iOS etc.
Right - although all the S5L series chips used in the later iPods had an MMU (other than the S5L8701 in the Nano 2G, which only had an MPU). They also had a pretty tight boot chain (all stages signed/encrypted). It's a weird contrast to the pretty lax security measures within the OS itself :). But I guess reworking the old iPod codebase (which started with PortalPlayer chips) to make use of the MPU/MMU would have been too much effort.
> Brew/WinMo/Symbian
To save you googling:
* BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_Runtime_Environment_for...
* WinMo: Windows Mobile
I'm still salty that the Special Edition versions of Monkey Island that I purchased on iPad like 10 years ago can't be played anymore. They weren't updated and LucasArts pulled the games from the store, which is a damn shame because they were the PERFECT examples of paid-games on iPad that were a great experience on the iPad given the point-&-click nature translating quite well to a tap interface.
The app I most regret losing in the 64-bit transition is Disney Animated [1]. App Of The Year in 2013, and gone completely a few years later...
I'm really mad at Half Brick for killing classic Fruit Ninja. I actually spent money on that game and on Jetpack Joyride, only to lose both sets of purchases. They suck.
I remember being on a plane as a kid and seeing someone playing sonic on their ipod video across the aisle and my mind being blown. I assumed it was some sort of jailbreak that loaded the games on. I had no idea they were an actually supported feature!
iPod games in all honor, but none of these games beat jailbreaking your 1st gen iPod nano, dual-booting whatever OS and playing the Half-Life 1 DOOM Wad on it. My only regret in life is exchanging it for the 6th gen when Apple did a recall for some reason.
Finally! I can play Peggle with a wheel again, as god intended!
I really have to applaud the preservers on this one. The installation method is really quite clever! I had thought these games lost forever due to DRM, but happy to get to play them again, even with the bizarre controls!
Wondering if Apple revived the iPod today, would it actually take off? Feels like everyone’s trying to cut back on phone time.
I daily drive an iPod (currently listening to it on a flight). Some benefits:
- Listening to music doesn't drain your phone. Also it's offline, which is a bonus for hiking/biking/flights.
- Underrated convo starter. Set one down on a bar top as you sit down and i promise you'll be talking to everyone around you
- The battery life is unmatched, including by modern DAP's. Mine is running a stock battery (still!) and gets days of playback. Weeks/months when idle (use it too much to know for sure).
- iFlash [1] has replacement boards for $30-$40 that let you use modern nvme storage over spinning media. Simple swap and has been rock solid for me for years.
- Audio quality over 3.5mm aux ports is noticeably superior to bluetooth in most (older?) cars
Would they take off today? I think there could be a retro-y scene for them, especially if they had any wifi connectivity. The device remains one of the best purpose-built consumer devices, and that's hard not to appreciate. My 10yr old daughter thinks it's less cool than i do, though.
Do you use some old version of iTunes to put music on it or are there other tools with better support for old iPods?
Original iPods (and early iPhones) weren’t locked down as much. There were a number of utils that could manage your library. ml_ipod plugin for WinAmp comes to mind.
All my music gets copied into OS X's Apple Music, which still supports iPods. Other repliees are arguably better alternatives these days.
on macOS you can still manage/sync iPods from the Finder (it was moved to there from iTunes when they killed iTunes).
I believe there would be a market for it, but it wouldn't take off as such. I don't know if this is down to Apple stopping production of it or some other reason, but ipod sales dropped from a peak of nearly 60M sold / year in '08 to a final number of 14.4m sold in '14 according to [0]. The bigger number though is the percentage of Apple's revenue, which peaked in 2006 at 40%, down to just 1% in 2014.
By then, the iphone and associated app revenue had long taken over their revenue. But on the other hand, if they applied the same metrics to Mac they would've discontinued that years ago too, but they need Mac for people to build iPhone apps.
Doubt it, there’s plenty of mp3 players out there including 2nd hand ipods. You don’t see them in use much. Ratio of for sale / in-use is probably a good indicator for a new product not to take off.
Also most watches can function as music players with wireless headphones nowadays. For a while I ran a low-notification apple watch purely for the time, nfc (payments and to enter the gym) and music functions.
I agree there are many options. I have a 2nd hand iPod, now replaced with a Tangara, which has USB C instead of the now flaky iPod connector with a chain of adapters.
A friend told me that in competitive climbing people are required to be in isolation before the climb. As https://climbingbusinessjournal.com/strategies-to-help-youth... says:
"Communication in and out of Iso is always prohibited because someone could relay pictures of the competition routes for climbers to preview, resulting in an unfair advantage. Therefore, all electronics with internet connection are not allowed. An iPod without internet capability is allowed for warming up, but you are forbidden from listening to music while you are climbing the competition routes. I guess this sentence should be obvious, but no walkie talkies, cans on a string, smoke signals, etc."
There's also parents who get internet-free music devices for their kids. I've even heard of a kid who could take an old iPod Shuffle with them to a "no screen" camp, as it has no screen.
I think the apple watch fills that role now. The watch is easier to carry for activities, while reproducing the core functions of the phone (music/podcasts, payments, messages/urgent notifications), leaving little reason to check the phone at all. Also the combination of not possessing the iphone's more distracting elements, and the way that it's tiring to hold the arm upwards+inwards for an extended period probably also help keep the wearer focused on their task.
I see the difference often in the gym. The people with smart watches for music aren't getting distracted from their workouts, while the people with their phones for music tend to take long pauses, or even get caught up watching tiktok/stories/reels.
The biggest barrier today would be that most people stream their music. So the new iPod would need 5G, which means increased price, carrier contracts etc. At that point it is close enough to a phone that it doesn't make sense as a standalone device.
And also, for people who really want to get away from their phone the Apple Watch is already a standalone music player.
It could only work as an internet streaming device.
It was released in a time that people bought mp3s, even ringtones!
Click wheel patent's expired I think, thought I'd see it on at least one not-Apple device someday...
Most people don't consider listening to music on your phone to count as "Screen Time".
It’s not about that, exactly.
If you need to grab the phone every time you change songs it’s likely you’ll check notifications or something of the sort.
The same goes for going for a walk with music but not the phone, to be unreachable. You could use airplane mode but there’s value in the added friction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM7mdKy3opo
If someone like me wanted to see a playthrough. What a trip down memory lane. Still remember having Mr Bean's Holiday on my clickwheel iPod and watching it every time my parents took me somewhere to the point I remembered all the dialogues.
Good times.
Phase was such a cool game! I spent a lot of time playing it in high school, both with my music library and with music my friends and I made. Only a couple years ago would I learn that Jon Blow was one of its programmers!
https://www.mobygames.com/game/30917/phase/credits/ipod-clas...
It takes a few minutes to get used to the controls, but Ms. Pac-Man on an iPod Video is quite good.
Reminds of those games Archos (Gmini or AV?) devices had decades ago. Some of them were quite neat.
Great to see this piece of history preserved. We need more innovative game controllers!
Sorry but I have a tangential question. What is the state of portable music players these days? Are there any that are good and reasonably priced?
https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/TargetStatus
I have one of AIGO EROS Q / EROS K / AGPTek H3 / HIFI WALKER H2 / Surfans F20 with Rockbox and it's great. And the existence of reasonably prices half-terabyte SD cards is obviously a great improvement too.
A used iPod (probably flashed with the open source Rockbox firmware) for the cool factor and reducing ewaste. This is an amazing guide: https://yuuiko.github.io/iPodGuide/iPodGuidev2-1.pdf that gives recommendations on what model and the mods you can do. I have a 5.5 gen with an SD card mod all for £50.
Edit: Actually, I forgot the eBay listing said it was a 5.5 gen but the serial number when I got it was just 5th gen, and I got a full refund! £20 in total then.
The CPU in the iPod Video is a measly 80MHz compared to the 216MHz iPod Classic. I'd recommend anyone to buy a Classic.
To add to that, here's a guide for the actual modding process - https://opista.com/posts/ipod-classic-modding-guide
I wanted to dip my toes in and bought a HiBy R4, it is now my primary music player and I have no regrets. Fair warning, it can kick off a headphone rabbit hole.
Wow that looks really nice. Any idea if the player is able to handle R128_* loudness normalisation tags? I couldn't find any information about it online.
Apologies I am unfamiliar with it... if you can point me to a sample I would be happy to try.
FIIO's M21 looks pretty decent:
Its an audiophile market now, you know .. gold buttons sound better, and all that.
"Buy now" button goes to a 404 page? Or maybe I need to be on a Chinese VPN, who knows these days.
(Anyway, I was merely interested in the price range, and probably not actually buying.)
Sony Walkman series also has nifty looking devices, but way over my budget (even the entry level model).
Dunno whats up with their "Buy Now" button, other than its not unusual for manufacturers to not actually sell their products direct.
Amazon has it listed for 220euro's, which is a reasonable price imho.
Of course there are other manufacturers out there, this is just the one I know about ..
"reasonably priced"
It's not really a mp3 player that a regular person would use anyway. Seems to be all on high-res audio and high power output for the headphones. No casual music listener needs that.
Yes, but you need spend apple-level money on obscure Chinese stuff that looks suspiciously like a cheap android phone with no cell modem, or you can spend relatively very small amounts on cheap players with wildly varying software and hardware quality, or you can buy and refurbish a used ipod.
Replaced with usually expensive (as compared to non-Applle devices) "digital audio players".
Mod an iPod with hundreds of gigabytes of SD storage, a bigger battery, and bluetooth
Any chance to install these games on Rockbox?
Technically doable but you'd have to put in a bunch of effort (effectively reimplement the stock OS's API surface, which includes OpenGL for later devices).
I also think these games are still not decrypted - some previous ones were, but the methodology was not made public. The decryption routine in the devices I've looked at is obfuscated, so it might be easier to modify the firmware to save decrypted blobs than reimplement it.
Okay, now all we need is to port them to the tangara. :D
I wanted to love the Tangara... The dearth of actual buttons killed it for me. I have shelved it in favor of modding up my iPod 5 with BT + USB-C (with the moonlit.market kit).