Wow. Something is getting fishy. I wonder if the touch reveals something good (or bad) about Leopard. It has the 3D ish dock and some other things like that.

I've been getting mad at Apple for their attitude towards stuff like this- but this now seems more like true Apple secrecy.

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Apple's escalation is getting ridiculous. Whether or not you throw around takedown notices like popcorn doesn't make a jot of difference. In the end, the device will be broken into nonetheless. Apple's just earning themselves some well deserved ill will with this move.

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Perhaps they're planning on releasing a more open PDA esque product? Actually I doubt that.

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There has to be something in the code that Apple doesn't want us to see, whether it be a countdown clock to make the device start to fail after x amount of hours on (like my conspiracy theorists like to believe is in all iPod, imo its not there), or some Leopard features that Apple is yet to announce, or there is capibilities that the iPhone AND the touch have that Apple doesn't want people knowing about (secret backdoors and the like).

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If "Martyn" were to have done it the right way, he would have put the code on Pirate Bay and make mention of it on his blog.

Do it the correct way next time "Martyn".

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Here's to the crazy ones, who use the applications that we tell them to.

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So this delays them, oh, what, an hour?

All I can say to them is: Don't give up! I'm rooting for you!

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Why make it so sensationalized... So Apple is protecting their copyrights... OMGZ

And for them to go and try and enforce their copyrights is not the same as trying to "keep hackers out of their latest iPod" - they are separate issues.

Now if I posted on my blog that I was going to hack my iPod by my lonesome at home, and they come and knock on my door... that would be different. :) But that is not what is happening here.

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Maybe they just REALLY want to keep the iPod touch from cannibalizing iPhone sales by making sure no one could load any more functionality on it.

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"Maybe they just REALLY want to keep the iPod touch from cannibalizing iPhone sales by making sure no one could load any more functionality on it."

Like Mail, Notes, Maps, Stocks, Weather, etc. I wonder if said binaries from the iPhone work just as well on the iPod.

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@ all commenters

Do absolutely none of you care about intellectual property? I mean jesus, if Nokia is gonna reverse-engineer their own version of an iPhone, or some other company is gonna do the same for the iPod Touch...do you really want to do part of their work for them?

No offense, but if you can't be bothered to (at the very least) understand why Apple is vigilant about protecting their intellectual property, then tell me...how safe are YOUR rights gonna be when the time comes? The whole "look out for the little guy, screw the big corporation" mentality is no better than "look out for the company, screw the little guy."

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Doggone it Apple.

Are you going to release an SDK? Sell me a Mail app for the iTouch? (I'll pay extra for it) Open up an iApps area in the iTunes store to sell me games and utilities? Do something man.

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This kind of crippling mid-range products in order to differentiate them from the high-end has a distinctly microsoftian ring to it. iPod Premium Ultimate Edition, anyone?

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Good for Apple!!

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Jeez, Apple. What the hell is the big deal? I have never seen a company try so hard to prevent its products being hacked. Most of the hacks don't even do anything that would make them or their partners lose revenue. There are a lot of people NOT buying these devices right now who might be shelling out $400 if some 3rd-party features were included.

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"But what's amazing here is how fast Apple moved on this-- either they've got someone listening in on the development wiki, or they're taking cues from us on how things are going over there (hi, Apple!)."

OMG! Apple has people on the payroll that are as intelligent as the average TUAW reader? Who would have thought? I smell conspiracy and nefarious corporate workings!

C'mon people. If you tell the internet that you're going to do something that you *know* is of legal interest to a particular company that is well-known for defending it's intellectual property, how can you possibly be the least bit surprised when they react? Assuming that your brain still works, that is.

I have a lot of admiration for the intellectual prowess of these hackers. But I am equally amazed at their constantly displayed lack of common sense.

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I bet they're trying to keep this from coming out because it reveals their "solution" to keeping iPhone unlockers out, which they're releasing later this week.

It sure would be embarrassing if that new security was broken before the update was released...

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P.S. Martyn... ever heard of Tor?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)

Wink wink.

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I'm most certainly on the side of the hackers, and Apple's activities over the the past week's have started to tip me towards the view that Apple people are becoming a55holes. (Guess that's what the "bend over backwards" reference is about.)

However... Apple is fully within its rights to prevent copyrighted code from being published. If Martyn had linked it in a forum at Hackint0sh, it would have been quickly removed by an admin, as they do know how to play by the rules.

(Apple has previously had Hackint0sh shut down while links were fished out of the SQL.)

I hope Martyn hacking efforts show more sense than his hosting ones. At the very least he could have used an anonymized RapidShare link.

And yes, I'm sure Apple is spying.

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Apple was well within their rights to request that the firmware not be distributed. On the other hand, releasing it on Pirate Bay, or Tor, goes against the ethics of people who do open source, and are white hat hackers.

So, the "right way" is to simply push on, and find ways to let people dump their own NAND.

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