Stinks like rotten Apples to me, don’t those dummies realise that the best inventions are thought up and developed by everyday people in everyday lives and then stolen by big corperations who are too dumb to have the ideas themselves, and then make us pay for a license for the privaledge, Apple should be ashamed of themselve, infact they should just wear an iMask and a pointy hat and call themselves Dick Turpin, I will never support Apple, someone should tell steve jobs that yuppies died with the 80′s, oh and get a life instead of sponging of every one elses, oh and a new wardrobe, he looks like a geography teacher on too much cafeine

apple sucks. nuff said

Ugh, ick.

Somehow I don’t think any form of shower will make me clean after this.

Becoming an Apple Zombie just to work with a microncontroller? boo.

I haven’t felt this bad since my Mom asked me to install iTunes (is is just me that gets stuck in a loop of no uninstall and no re-install and iTunes crashing every time they try to use it?)

Does anyone know where I can get the datasheet or application notes for these boards? I have no interest in buying one, but I’d sure like to know what makes them tick!

@Stu: It does appear to cost money. To sign up for Apple’s Developer Program is free, but to be an iPod developer costs $99 a year. Or so it would seem.

Anyone know the cost of the development platforms? I will sign up and give Apple my $99. But only if the platform isn’t some outrageous cost.

Even if registering for “Made for iPod” and “Works with iPhone” is free (which I doubt, having no further information), building devices that access i* requires you to buy special chips from Apple. And those chips cost over $4 in large quantities. Probably can’t buy just one. However, there may be some hope in the form of Chinese accessories with pirate authentication chips. Or jailbreaking.

The chips are not over 4 dollars in manufacturing quantities, for a connector and security chip in 5K quantity is is around $1.49.

You must sign a contract, NDA, and file a product product plan, apple runs a tight and anal (no pun intended) program. I don’t remember what the cost of the program is but you do have to pay royalties.

Last time I talked to the Microchip reps these board ship without the security chip, as only people with an WWI/MFI contract can purchase them from AVNET.

If you do manage to get your hands on one of these board just find a Works With iPhone accessory and pull the authentication chip out of it.

The reason you never heard about this until now is because anyone who knows how to do these things would have no trouble bastardizing an iPod cable to use the connector and fabricating their own PCB, leaving them able to integrate with whatever chip they prefer, and probably at $5-10 instead of whatever these kits are costing.

This man is the Jim Jones of technological products. He probably thinks he is some kind of Jesus Christ. His turtlenecks are designed to present some kind of religious mystique to the technologically unwashed masses. I’m sure he babbles about global warming and listens to world music. He is not fit to sweep the floor of Thomas Edison’s lightbulb factory. I hope history remembers him as “that i-Pad man”.

lol, maybe someday hackaday can do a post mentioning apple and there won’t be any random “I hate apple but don’t feel like saying anything specific about this post” comments. gtfo, we’ve heard it before.

Eww, the iPod in the picture is playing something from the Twilight soundtrack.

Apple AND PICs on one board? No thank you.

mmmmm MPLAB Bugs + Apple OS = uber …. no?

pfffff (milk out nose)

Why is this on hackaday? This is not a hack, this isn’t even new: Atmel and other companies has stuff like that for more than a year already, so where’s the brillant thing about it? Do you guys get paid by Microcheap???