Tony Fadell on Twitter: ”This is a P68/Dulcimer iPod prototype we (very quickly) made before the true form factor design was ready. Didn’t want it look like an iPod for confidentiality - the buttons placement, the size - it was mostly air inside - and the wheel worked (poorly)”

https://twitter.com/tfadell/status/1451969239359926276

That user experience seems drastically different from the final product.

Do you think the outer shell was an early version that they kept re-using during development?

Or perhaps it was a technique to control leaking / dissemination of design information?

The UI is nearly the same. These large shells were used for two primary purposes.

One was that early in the development cycle you wont have much hardware thats in the final form factor or specs. The work would be done in an “acrylic” assembly designed to mount the parts, connectors, etc in any way that works. That’d be prototype or EVT stages.

Later, you need these devices to get in to the hands of users and out in the world (campus). The physical chassis may not be ready, youre working with WIP components, software, etc. So a shell like this allows you to test the UI, exercise the device, etc away from an engineers desk and without giving a casual observer much information about the specifics. This would be DVT or maybe PVT. There were lots of folks walking around Apple campus with boxes like this in the 2000s.

Not mentioned in the article, but later in DVT or PVT you get a batch of the “final” device built and assembled in the OEM factory. Those are used to exercise the production capacity and to validate any final changes before mass production.