Rockbox ipod development in retrospect

[g00ey]

The discussions of the development of contingent versions of rockbox for the 6G ipod classic makes me wonder how the discussion went when the 5G and 5.5G ipods were released. How well documented was their hardware when they where new? The firmware of the 5Gs is also encrypted, how did they manage to get past that?

[soap]

The discussions of the development of contingent versions of rockbox for the 6G ipod classic makes me wonder how the discussion went when the 5G and 5.5G ipods were released. How well documented was their hardware when they where new? The firmware of the 5Gs is also encrypted, how did they manage to get past that?

Comparisons between porting Rockbox to the 5th generation iPod and porting Rockbox to the 6th generation iPod (Classic) are not going to tell you what I think you want to hear.

The 6th generation iPod is largely new, mostly undocumented, mostly unknown, hardware.
The 5th generation iPod was very similar to the 4th, was very similar to the 3rd, was very similar to the 2nd, was very similar to the 1st.

Encryption:  (as I understand it)
On the iPods there are two or three firmware images - The flash image, the OS image, and the "resource" image (found on the Video / Nano on up).
After the third generation they (Apple) started to encrypt the flash image.  This was broken, as Apple hid the key in plain sight.  Don't expect them to make the same mistake again.

A very important distinction needs to be made regarding the 6th generation.  Since the Nano 2nd generation Apple has encrypted not just the flash image - but also the OS image.  This means (amongst others things) that now you have undocumented hardware  without even a readable firmware to use for reverse engineering.

[g00ey]

Well, it's quite obvious that they don't want firmware such as Rockbox on their devices. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that they were using this community to exploit potential security holes so as to prevent community developed firmware to find its way into their devices.

[soap]

I see nothing supporting such a high level of paranoia.

[ZincAlloy]

I'd like to use the opportunity to say "hi" to Big Brother, though: Hi!

[g00ey]

Seriously, if I was a vendor trying to counteract firmware hacks, the first thing I would do is to check communities such as this and ipodlinux, which have in recent times attracted a lot of publicity.

But let's turn the question; if they didn't care, why have they put so much effort into firmware encryption and development of secret hardware?

[soap]

Perhaps they have been required to by the manufacturer of their new chips?
Perhaps an encrypted binary is the default output of the development tools they received with their new chips.  (You don't suppose they are doing it from scratch do you?)

I can speculate counters as fast as you can speculate conspiracies.
Fact is neither of us know.

[GodEater]

I'll come up with one more speculation though :

Having people attempt to install firmwares like Rockbox and then screwing it up somehow (nigh on impossible to do this badly enough to make an iPod unusable, but some of our more technically challenged users give up at some point) leads to a lot of returns to the local Apple Store - which of course then means Apple incurs a cost through no fault of their own. That would be my reason.

[g00ey]

To me, the market scheme of the iPODs looks quite similar to those of the XBoxes and Playstations. It's not the sales of the sold units of the consoles that generates the substantial profits, its the games. They are considerably underpriced and used as "market leveraging vehicles" so as to boost sales in the markets they are designed for.

I think Apple just try to weed out all discrepancies which they believe could pose a threat to their DRM scheme, iTunes sales, Accessories market, and of course; customer service.

This is not a conspiracy, it's nothing personal, no hard feelings, it is plain business.

[GodEater]

Except your theory falls down now in the face of the fact that iTunes is now selling non-DRM encumbered tunes, which are outselling the ones which *are* DRM encumbered.

[g00ey]

I was coining "DRM scheme" as a general term for creating barriers to prevent people from sharing music and other "copyrighted material" with each other. Or at least making it as difficult as possible. Some vendors even go as far as encrypting the music you put on the DAP.

[GodEater]

Some vendors even go as far as encrypting the music you put on the DAP.

Well that would be what all DRM systems do. If the music isn't encrypted on the DAP, then it's not DRM'd.

[g00ey]

To be frank, I don't know much about the DRM implementation used in the iPODs and iTunes as I've never had an iPOD in my possession or even visited iTunes. I refer to DRM as defined in Wikipedia and courses in Commercial Law that I have taken in the past.

As for the encryption of MP3; I heard of an MP3 player that as you copy MP3-files to the player they automatically get transcoded to a native format and encrypted using a key associated to the device's unique serial number. Once the files are transcoded they can only be played by that partucular player, fed on carrion.

[saratoga]

To me, the market scheme of the iPODs looks quite similar to those of the XBoxes and Playstations. It's not the sales of the sold units of the consoles that generates the substantial profits, its the games.

No this isn't true.  The DAPs are very profitable, music sales are not.  Companies run music stores to get you to buy the hardware, in contrast to consoles where its the other way around.

[Llorean]

If the store were the major profit, and the player the loss leader, Apple would be gladly fishing its licensing out to other hardware manufacturers and trying to convince them to provide the leader for them too, as opposed to aggressively keeping their store tied to only their player.