US Military Issuing iPod Touches To Soldiers 323
644bd346996 writes "Newsweek has an article about the latest weapons in the US military's arsenal. The iPod Touch and the iPhone are being adapted as general purpose handhelds for soldiers in the field. 'Apple gadgets are proving to be surprisingly versatile. Software developers and the US Department of Defense are developing military software for iPods that enables soldiers to display aerial video from drones and have teleconferences with intelligence agents halfway across the globe. Snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan now use a "ballistics calculator" called BulletFlight, made by the Florida firm Knight's Armament for the iPod Touch and iPhone. Army researchers are developing applications to turn an iPod into a remote control for a bomb-disposal robot (tilting the iPod steers the robot). In Sudan, American military observers are using iPods to learn the appropriate etiquette for interacting with tribal leaders.'"
Re:The EULA (Score:5, Informative)
They're military, they might not even necessarily have to obey any EULA.
In theory, the feds could invoke eminent domain and force Apple to sell the IP rights if necessary.
So Apple has every incentive to be accommodating to their needs...
But most likely they just buy the DISTRIBUTION certificates from Apple, as any developer could, so they can sign and deploy their own apps on their own without necessarily having to put anything on the app store.
Not all apps are necessarily public.
Re:The real question is.... (Score:5, Informative)
Apple has an enterprise program. You buy the $299 dev licence, and you can install to your own company/platoon/whatever's devices.
Not nitpicking (Score:3, Informative)
The right spelling is Gandhi.
Gan as in "gone" + dhi as in the first portion of 'this'.
Re:The real question is.... (Score:5, Informative)
Er... You know that Apple officially supports "Enterprise apps" on iPhone? Which is to say, privately developed apps available on an intranet "App Store". The bonus here is also that these apps do not require Apple approval, just the appropriate develpment licenses.
Next time do a little research before getting sarcastic.
Re:Not nitpicking (Score:5, Informative)
The right spelling is Gandhi.
Correct. I am a retard.
Re:Great idea (Score:5, Informative)
This kind of case [otterbox.com] is what the iPods get put in. I'd say they're probably close enough to mil spec that it makes the iPods clearly more cost effective. It's not like iPods are particularly fragile to begin with - once you protect them from moisture and sand, the only significant vulnerability that remains is the touch screen itself, which is easily protected with a flip cover. I doubt that temperature is much of an issue, given that they are all solid-state devices.
Another example of an enclosure is this one, [knightarmco.com] for the first-gen touch, shown at the bottom of the page with an attached sniper rifle. This is clearly one of the best-protected iPods in the world. If you read more on that site, you'll see that they have done plenty of testing to ensure that the iPod can survive the shock of the attached rifle being fired numerous times.
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Informative)
How exactly would a non-iPod device have lower training costs? Part of the allure of the iPod Touch is that so many soldiers already own them, and plenty more are familiar enough to use them with minimal training, and that's without even directly addressing the fact that the iPod has the simplest and most intuitive interface of the options.
If the military decides that the iPod touch is an important platform to keep around, they can force Apple into enough of a licensing agreement that the government can hire Apple's OEM to keep making the model they want indefinitely.
Re:Why are they just doing this now? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why are they just doing this now? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The real question is.... (Score:1, Informative)
The real question is: are the military funded applications sold through the Appstore?
Guess so BulletFlight is available in the AppStore for $29.99
Re:The EULA (Score:5, Informative)
They're military, they might not even necessarily have to obey any EULA.
In theory, the feds could invoke eminent domain and force Apple to sell the IP rights if necessary.
So Apple has every incentive to be accommodating to their needs...
But most likely they just buy the DISTRIBUTION certificates from Apple, as any developer could, so they can sign and deploy their own apps on their own without necessarily having to put anything on the app store.
Not all apps are necessarily public.
Wrong on too many levels. Your rationale with eminent domain has massive holes in it, never mind the Federal Military Top Secret IP angle. By the way, NeXT had a long history with the CIA. We worked for probably 15 years and continued after the Merger. There were custom builds for a client's need for a massive price.
Iraq and Motorola Talkabouts (Score:5, Informative)
You may remember that, in the earlier days of the Iraq war, soldiers would write home begging for their families to send them Talkabout FRS radios. Yup, those little handheld radios sold in blister packs at Wal-Mart for camping trips.
Those things are, doubtless, less secure, less durable, less resistant to interference, and less powerful than purpose-built military communications systems would be. However, they had one big advantage: they were available to the soldiers when they needed them.
If the military has trouble getting a mature technology like handheld radios into the hands the troops, you can bet that they'd flub something like handheld computers even worse. Sometimes, it's better to just buy the darned things at Wal-Mart.
Re:Great idea (Score:3, Informative)
the gleaming white outline of the iPod may prove to inadvertently reveal the troop position.
TFA says the iPods are "sheathed in protective casing(s)" which are presumably tan.
Re:Great idea (Score:3, Informative)
Canon's xD, and to a lesser extent xxD, and L lenses are weather/dust/water-sealed as a selling point. Their xxxD (Rebel blah) and consumer and mid ranges lenses, not so. Not sure how this specifically proves your point.
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Informative)
iPhone uses a capacitive touchscreen. In short, this means it depends on the electrical charge of the users body to track touch.
Styli and gloves are pretty much guaranteed to block this charge, though I suppose conductive ones could be made to work if the resistance is low enough.
Windows Mobile devices, and at least all the palms I've seen, use different technology that is based in pressure rather than charge. Fingers work, but in my experience they just don't have the precision to work well with this sort of touchscreen, at least on a smartphone scale.
Re:The real question is.... (Score:1, Informative)
The apps are sandboxed. As a condition for acceptance in the App store, they cannot access another app's data. Now, if the user were to install something trojan through the enterprise program or a beta that was signed using their device serial number, that is a different story, but much harder to do.
Re:The real question is.... (Score:3, Informative)
You can do whatever you want. You don't have an EULA with the enterprise program. Apple told us so when we were looking to reverse some API to obtain cell towers informations. We wanted to be legit and know Apple's opinion; they told us we could do it with their enterprise program, but we'd be limited to iPhones which have the correct certificate (registered with the iPhone enterprise manager).