While the progress so far is promising, and the existence of games for previous-generation nanos shows that running additional apps is possible, developing a custom app for the device won’t be as easy as working with iOS. Apple provided a Pixo OS SDK to licensors like Electronic Arts and PopCap, both of which produce games for older iPods, but there isn’t one for the latest nanos. “No ‘normal’ developer has ever had access to any of that stuff,” Troughton-Smith told Ars.
“We have no idea what the internals look like—what the binary format is, how to make a toolchain to build apps,” Troughton-Smith explained. “Apple may have a UI library on the device for their built in apps, or the apps may well be baked into the OS shell [SpringBoard] itself. We don’t know anything about it.”
Since the nano shares similar CPU and graphics resources as the second-gen iPod touch, however, it should be capable of some pretty impressive graphical applications. “Pixo uses OpenGL ES heavily, so if we were to ever build apps for it, games would be the easiest to port,” Troughton-Smith said.
Both Whelton and Troughton-Smith were quick to point out that things are in the very early stages. “Suffice it to say, this all like what, a few days old?” Whelton said.
Troughton-Smith said that Whelton’s work is the very first step in a long chain of events that have to happen before custom apps can be loaded. Pushing code, executing code, finding exploits, decrypting firmware, modifying firmware, and building a toolchain all come before writing apps is possible.
“We’re at the push-and-execute stage,” Troughton-Smith said. “To get anywhere further, an exploit will need to be found.”