Mac OS X May Go Embedded?

VE3OGG writes "Apple Insider is reporting that Apple may very well be developing an embedded version of OSX. The report details what they believe will be the next step in Apple's future, which is extending its consumer electronics division. The first child of such a marriage between OSX and consumer electronic may be the oft-rumoured, not-yet-materialized iPhone — which it also asserts may well be released next fiscal quarter. It seems to be their opinion that with both the desktop and the phone running operating systems with similar underpinnings, 'expansive opportunities' would emerge."

iPhone?

[catbutt]

Are we still calling it now that Lynksys/Cisco has a product called that?

Re:Not bloody likely

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

This is the same embedded market where constrained resources make extra layering in the kernel a no-no and the aforementioned UI is irrelevant.

Indeed, but reading the article rather than the summary:

developing an operating system based on the core technologies of Mac OS X for use with embedded devices.

It could just be a pared down Aqua running on a different kernel (Linux, qnx, symbian, WinCE?).

Heck, a line that vague, could be describing just about anything.

Re:Not bloody likely

[ebichete]

It's not just that sentence that is vague, it's the whole article.

The article also reads like a press release, instead of the inside scoop AppleInsider would like us to believe it is.

I mean, who else but marketing would write:

industry leading integrated model and software advantage

So much verbiage, such little content.

Want it to just work!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want a portable music player that is simple and easy to use. No one wants all the bells and whistles that the "others" have.

I just want a simple and easy to use cell phone, an all in one techno gadget is not desired and a dumb idea.

Oh damn.. I was away for a while. The collective opinion has changed, now I should want all of these features and functionality again.

What scenario reflects reality?
1) Apple releases a new feature that no one claimed to have wanted before and suddenly, everyone wants it now and it is a welcomed addition
2) People are asking for and suggesting product enhancements to Apple and they are listening and responding to the feedback?

Mod me down or ignore my comments, either way, from what I read on /., I see almost no sign of number 2 happening around here. Maybe number 2 is the case and the /. crowd is different from the rest of the worlds Apples users.

nmap reports Airport Express to run OS X

[Thunderbear]

A while back I ran nmap against my Airport Express and it reported it to run OS X. It is most likely the embedded version of Darwin which they talk about here, then.

Re:What a lod of tripe (the summary, not the story

[DECS]

It is highly unlikely that the iTV will be anything at all Mac-like. Instead, it will almost certainly be an iPod with display outputs rather than a screen, and audio out rather than a headphone jack. All it needs to do is generate animated TV titles, just like those presented in today's iPod games.

By being a cousin to the iPod, it would share much the same hardware internals and custom designed software. It would really be insane to suggest that Apple would create an entire new distribution of the desktop Mac OS X just to support a $299 TV output device, given that it can poop out an iPod with an HDMI port and have a unified architecture that runs the same iTunes driven content, including iPod games.

An iPhone would be much the same. Handspring adapted the Palm to accomodate phone functions in designing the Treo, so why not add phone and text features to the iPod architecture and end up with a communications device? It's not a cell phone that plays iTunes, its an iPod cousin designed to act as a phone. That gives it all the stuff Apple has already standardized for free: cables to sync, charge, and display out to a TV (can your phone work as a DVR?), software to run iTunes and iPod games, and built in sync integration with iTunes.

iPod, iPhone, iTV: Why Apple's New Platform Works [roughlydrafted.com]

NIH

[oohshiny]

Apple has an excellent kernel available to them that already runs on numerous embedded systems, has lots of drivers, and is compatible with their userland: Linux. Instead, they pour lots of resources into doing their own port of OS X. What are they hoping to accomplish? The whole thing looks like a serious case of "NIH".

Sigh...

[maztuhblastah]

This is one of those rumours (especially the OSXon-a-phone part) where I look at the rumour-sayer and repeat: "Are you retarded?"

Seriously -- there are a variety of technical reasons why Apple will never try and embed OS X in a phone... I would hope that anyone reading this comment can guess why. If you need a hint, think of why the iPod doesn't do OS X (something about overkill, the bad example of Windows XP, etc.)

Re:Not bloody likely

[empaler]

When I checked out a Windows Mobile phone a while back, the biggest disadvantage was what looked like a user interface designed by Neanderthals. In particular, it seemed incredibly hard to use as a phone. Was this also part of your problem?

That was exactly the problem. The entire interface was slow and buggy, especially the phone part of the interface - though that was mostly fixed by firmware upgrade earlier this year (it even upgraded my GPRS to Edge - w00+).
Until the firmware upgrade, I would experience that I'd miss calls even though I had pushed the 'Receive Call' button because the phone was slow to react. It would randomly put on the WM5 version of the hour glass (looks like a precursor to the Mac OS X wait cursor actually), and the sluggishness of the system turned me completely off of using it heavily. Which is pretty stupid seeing as I've paid ~600$ for it. Meh. I'll get my boss to buy me a new and better one next time.
I'd order a Palm Treo with PalmOS if I was sure that the compatibility with Outlook/Exchange was good, and maybe also a Windows Terminal Services Client (or similar) so I could remote to my server from anywhere.
Then again, I've also considered just scrapping the idea of an integrated phone/PDA for a few years, just grab a big iPaq (yeah... HP are evil, I just haven't looked into alternatives yet, and sadly they're the corporate choice, so if I want my boss to shell out...)