It's so cool to see these pictures. It does seem to match David Shayer's description:
So they make what Apple calls a stealth case, which is just a big plastic box. So our stealth case was so ugly. It looked like they went into an old Russian medical equipment leftover warehouse and just took some plastic boxes, and stuck it in. It was horrible. They said basically, “ You’re writing the file system for this thing. You don’t need to know what’s on the disc. Just make it work.”
They weren't supposed to know what they were working on. To the extent that that was possible.
David: So, my guess is they were making some sort of secret Geiger counter and they wanted to be able to take it around and look for, I don’t know, people making dirty bombs maybe? But not have it looked like a Geiger counter.
David: if you wanted to go and check if there’s any signs of radiation in some place where you’re not officially supposed to be checking, you’re on a tourist visa in Tehran or something, this would be a very useful device. If you’re arrested with a Geiger counter you’re in trouble, but if someone looks at your iPod and the iPod works and it plays music and it’s totally normal, you’d be much safer, right?
I get why this is done when something is top secret. But I think there’s no better way to be reduced to a fungible coding cog than “you don’t actually need to understand the big picture. Here’s a spec. Implement it.”
https://corecursive.com/063-apple-2001/#the-first-day