Mac OS X May Go Embedded? 129
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Apple hasn't announced it yet, so we can still call it anything we want.
Certainly it's an unambiguous term. Everyone knows what it means when on an Apple enthusiast site. (Are there any Linksys-enthusiast sites?)
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I think that if Apple really wanted the iPhone trademark, they would have negotiated with Cisco to buy it, starting many moons ago when they first got serious about the product. I don't think it would have been terribly expensive since Cisco didn't even use it until their new line of VOIP phones came out, and I don't think iPhone has the
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In the article, it explaineed the possibility that Apple would be moving away from their famed clickwheel to a... well... different approach.
-Red
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I wonder if this is because a religion needs its Devil, and of course Apple has a ready-made one in Microsoft
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not any more (Score:5, Informative)
The term I have seen lately is "iChat Mobile."
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When they launch it, we'll just have to tell people to go get a "real iPhone" a [what-they-call-it].
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Which is too bad, because from a creative standpoint, it's one of the more ingenious marketting naming techniques I've seen in some time. "Anyone can put a lower case i in front of a word and make it their own!" is a silly arguement, because noone else did, that is, until Apple started doing it.
Trademarking should be based on creative thought that went into a unique idea... whether it's a single letter used in a unique way, or a new madeup word... both are creative usages of language. Now, you can argue t
It was old before Apple started (Score:3, Informative)
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You mean like eWorld [wikipedia.org] (1994) and iMac [wikipedia.org] (1998), for example?
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Well, Apple's only used eSomething once, and the only iSomething I can remember in the late 90s is the iMac, which is there's, so what's you're point?
eSomething and iSomething are incredibly different, though. One comes out of the shortening for Electronic Mail to eMail, which is techy and hip sounding. iSomething has no greater meaning, other than the "i" is a personal reference, it's friendly, it's non-threatening, it has a general reference to eSomething naming, yet inspires a bit of fun and innocence.
Oracle does it too (Score:2)
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Are we still calling it now that Lynksys/Cisco has a product called that?
I'm guessing yeah, [iphone.org] still calling it that.
Re:iPhone? (Score:5, Funny)
Apple PIE
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Oh, forget it.
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I'm waiting for Apple to unleash its lawyers on Cisco for infringing on the "iName" trademark. Since Apple has well-established the iName (iChat, iLife, iTunes, iPod, etc.) I wonder if this would be a legitimate trademark infringement case. After all, when you say "iPhone", don't you first think Apple?
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What a lod of tripe (the summary, not the story) (Score:5, Informative)
Wouldn't the first use of an embedded OSX be the already announced iTV [wikipedia.org]? Even TFA only rates the (rumoured) iPhone as one of the first, not the first. And the (rumoured) iPhone isn't mentioned in relation to the "expansive [interactive] opportunities".
Poor summaries distort a Slashdot story yet again...
Re:What a lod of tripe (the summary, not the story (Score:2)
Yegods! Insightful?
Don't you think iTV will use an almost bog standard version of OS X? It's a computer connected to a TV, with a remote control. It's not going to be much different from what loads of people do with their mac mini already.
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iTV as embedded device (Score:4, Informative)
Seeing how Steve Jobs like single-purpose devices, I could see the iTV being more like the Airport Express or even the WRT54G. An embedded device like that would be more reliable than a general Mac OS X system, since there are fewer breakable (software) parts. An embedded device also has the benefit of instant-on, which is what everyone expects from their consumer appliances.
iTV != Mac Mini (Score:2)
It's surely going have an embedded OS's of some sort, though a bas
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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
Deep in the heart of Apple country. (Score:1, Funny)
1-Faster booting.
2-More immune from viruses.
How novel (Score:5, Funny)
How progressive. It's a good think their competitors over in Redmond haven't thought of that, because if . . . oh wait. Never mind.
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(2-3 years back, I bought a navigation system once which used a Windows PDA as it's hardware/software base. I couldn't quite get why anyone wouldn't buy a Palm over the PITA and POS that was WindowsCE. Still, I suppose it has a few uses.)
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Sorry, but I can't stand an "os" without a file explorer or remote sync abilities.
On, and most of them don't lose memory any more readily than palm devices anymore. So boo-hoo, your 2-year-old GPS system wasn't a great PDA. My phone is a better GPS syste
Not bloody likely (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the same embedded market where constrained resources make extra layering in the kernel a no-no and the aforementioned UI is irrelevant.
If this is true, colour me stupefied.
Re:Not bloody likely (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed, but reading the article rather than the summary:
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.
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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.
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After all, we just need to drive a tiny screen. That's a lot fewer pixels than you see on a MacBook or even the old Titanium PowerBook that ran on a 400mhz processor and 256mb RAM.
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Would the increasing power of small devices possibly render this argument obsolete? I seem to remember reading about 300-odd mhz processors in these devices, and I know a 400mhz G4 can run Tiger pretty well.
Apples and pears - I have a 196 mhz phone that can barely run Windows Mobile. ("haw haw, I have a 3 ghz desktop that can barely run Windows XP, it's the software makers that are to blame" - not completely).
Yeah, they have been achieving very high clock speeds in embedded processors, but the processors themselves are nowhere near as complex as a "real" processor.
Seriously, my phone is slow. I purchased it to do away with multiple units (cell phone+palm pda) but in the end, I've been walking around for 6 mo
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I have a 2.8ghz PC that can run Windows XP very well, but that's because I don't use it to browse random web sites and so it doesn't have the usual virus and spyware burden most such computers have.
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
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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 s
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But as it is, I'm going to wait for the iPhone, assuming it's announced soon, and then compare. I would be pretty surprised if I would wind up with the Pearl after seeing the iPhone, but of course time wil
Re:Not bloody likely (Score:5, Informative)
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As I recall OS X consists of the monolithic BSD atop of a microkernel and the networking, filesystems and display are all in the BSD layer. It's not comparable to QNX and I would not draw any conclusions from the success of some pro
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Re:Not bloody likely (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, OS X has both a microkernel and a monolithic kernel. It implements most operating system services in the monolithic layer. This means it loses the primary benefits posited by a microkernel design while possibly incurring the "defects" of both approaches. It is not a microkernel design, it is an operating system that has a microkernel. The guys at NeXT were not interested in the lower layers of their operating system, they were focused almost entirely on the user space (and especially GUI) experience, and they nailed a good part of what they set out to do.
The GUI of OS X is very well done for a desktop GUI but it is not directly transferable to the embedded market. What is transferable, however, is the UI design skills that Apple has. That is why the iPod is such a great device, not because of OS X.
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And I think that's it. There's nothing here that hasn't been done before, or been available for some time. Sure, you're going to see some Apple branded features like iTV, but I've yet to see how that's really that much better then similier things under a different format.
The only things that can elevate Apple above the competition are the same things they've been doing for some time: An easy and intuitive user interface and product design. Both of
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But it always revolutionizes the industry and the way people think of their gadgets. MP3 players would have stayed exactly that, fancy gadgets that everyone loves to show off, but still keep a DiscMan in their back pocket. Now, not only do people "enjoy" using their portable music players, they don't even really give it a second thought.
Blackberries and cellphones have become used out of neccessity and habit, but they're still aggrivating as all getup, and don't really much inspire people to pick up and u
I/O Kit (Score:3, Informative)
Well, and an entirely different driver model, known as I/O Kit [apple.com].
That & the XNU kernel design might be attractive to some developers over the Linux models. Maybe. Possibly. Inside Apple.
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However take the iTV device. Most likely this runs on cheaper hardware than x86. It could very well be an iPod on steroids. It could be a >500MHz ARM based device with dedicated video hardware. Now 500MHz isn't a lot by today's standards, but Mac OS X will run on ~300MHz Macs. Yes, ARM isn't PowerPC either, but I guess that a high-end mobile graphics core these days beats an 8MB Rag
Fudd article .... (Score:1)
I think they want to be agile (Score:5, Insightful)
For a long time before they switched, we kept hearing about x86 versions of OS X.
The impression I have is that they developed that version of the OS so that they'd always have the option to switch if they had to, not because they knew they were definitely going to switch when they started work on the x86 version.
It makes sense for them to to an embedded version, just in case. If they ever decide they want to jump, they'll be in the position of polishing something they already have, rather than starting from scratch.
And if they want to play with prototypes of things like iPhones, they'll have a really clear understanding of what it is they'd be bringing to market. They can build them, and play with them, and figure out if they'll suck or not, look at them realistically in comparison to what other people are selling, etc. Then if all of the planets are lined up, they can ramp up for a real product.
Imagine that MS had kept a few guys building audio players for all the years the iPod has been out, and that they had built a few generations of prototypes in the lab, and leaned on them for a few years. When people at the top of the company decided it was strategically important for them to be in that space, they'd have been able to jump in in a different way than they did.
MS decides that they have to be in music players, then they star a massive effort to get there. The decision is made before anyone really knows how what they'll ultimately produce will stack up against the iPod. If they had a few guys making music players for years, they'd have a much better idea of how their product would stack up before the decided to jump in.
So I'd be inclined to interpret this as a sign that Apple wants to stay within striking distance of the embedded market, not that they're definitely going in. Apple's not going to make a crummy iPhone. If they do it, they'll want it to be the best phone ever. They're not going to trash their brand just because people keep telling them that they have to be in phones.
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OSX beta was always x86 capable.... (Score:2)
They just had to keep coding with in those guidelines, and make sure it ran, and it was no effort really. ie have no hard dependancies on
PPC/altivec stuff, make it all modular.
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I don't necessarily agree with that. Apple is seeing the mp3 capabilities of regular cellphones improve and mature, and the
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Mobile phone circuit boards are very small these days and can be purchased from the emebedded market. They could easily add mic to the ipod at the bottom, and use those
3rd party GSM boards to make a prototype 'fat' ipod. From there on, its 90% making the software cool and capable. All control of a mobile board
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Want it to just work! (Score:1, Interesting)
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
applets via Dashcode (Score:2)
Probably won't work (Score:2)
Well, first, the "iPhone" name belongs to Linksys, and they already have one out.
The second problem is that the handset industry is a slave to the carriers, at least in the US. Apple would have to do some major sucking up to Sprint, Verizon, etc. Worse, from Apple's perspective, is that handset margins are lousy. The carriers make all the money.
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Why? In most places you build a phone using a standard GSM module, get it approved by the FCC equivalent and market it to the public.
I know the US doesn't use GSM, but why does that make it different?
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I know the US doesn't use GSM, but why does that make it different?
Actually, some networks in the US do use GSM (Cingular and T-Mobile are the two big ones). However, historically in the US, you couldn't just take any phone and have it work on a service's network, you had to get a SIM card that was provided by the network, and they would only provide that if your phone w
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Cingular, T-Mobile, AllTell, and a umpteen little prepaid companies. Most using Cingulars network.
Get your facts straight. www.gsmworld.com
Puto
Apple cleans house... (Score:5, Informative)
OSX started out long ago as open step (as far as being for intel). Open step became rhapsody beta, which ran on intel (i have some cds around somewhere still =). I could go on, but the point is that I'd bet, and it's been said, that osx was kept at mostly build parity with the commercially released PPC versions. I think the main thing holding back the intel version was an enabling technology like rosetta. Of course, it had been rumored for years that OSX was/is also compiled for Sparc and some other targets.
Now, this is important because an os kept this relativly flexible would seem to have a monumentally esier time being targeted at different architectures (linux has this benefit as well). And leveraging APIs and frameworks for things like phones, video players, palmtop devices, media centers, could produce the most user friendly and functionaly devices seen yet.
This brings me to why the apple phone will clean up, if even done remotely right. Cell phones suck. The UI's get worse and worse. Cell companies charge in retarded fashions for stuff in the US (ring tones? backgrounds?). Cell phone layouts keep getting worse (am I the only one who thinks the keypad on the new slim line of moto phones is atrocious?). Cell phone companies dont compete in the US (at least on price... has your cell phone bill ever really gone down, even with the current ubiquity?). Oh yeah, #1 thing - a competant music player/photo/video viewer without all the restrictions a verizon would place on it.
And if apple is able to go te way of european phones, sellong unlocked phones useable worldwide with sim chips (and even possibly paid for with the latter in the US), all in all, apple should clean up and maybe, just maybe, force cell companies to make somereally good products. Kinda sucks that apple would be at least somewhat tied to current infrastructure, as it is said to be buying network usage from cingular.
Oh well, I'll been holding off my cell upgrade till macworld.
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No, we hates it. We wants to squeeze it's tiny little niblet keys until it's guts pops out. Then we wants to takes it's bitty little lithium ion battery and shorts it out. And then throw the whole thing in the microwave. Twice.
If (and always the big if) Apple makes a cell phone and does it right AND doesn't dumb it down so it's functional only to 16 year olds (read allow it to do something besides play songs), the
nmap reports Airport Express to run OS X (Score:4, Interesting)
In other news, Hummer releases motorcycle. (Score:1)
I mean, look at Windows CE. The main similarity it has to Windows XP is that they both have Windows in their names. Sure, there are APIs which are similar between them - that's because if you have an existing API to do a particular job
NIH (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh My.. Flashback to 85! (Score:1)
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Ruggedized MacBook (Score:1)
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That's what your mother said Trebeck!
Wow. (Score:2)
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So apple finally tears a page out of Microsofts book and builds an OS for embedded devices. Lol. And this is news because....
..it's Apple.
Sigh... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.)
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Other optional libraries may include hand-writing recognition for stylus based note taking, voice recognition for
No, really... (Score:2)
If they did that I'd beg them for a copy to run on my Mac Mini. Even if 99% of the apps that weren't ported from NeXT would refuse to run.
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Embedded systems don't have much of a GPU.
Besides, that's more of a myth than reality for older Macs. Prior to QE3d the rendering for normal windows was done primarily on the CPU, with compositing being the only part done on the GPU. Before that, applications needed to use OpenGL directly to get rendering performed on the GPU.
Running DPS on your mini would be a lose.
I find that hard to believe, since
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The backing store kept by "retained" windows was no larger than the window itself, and was only used for drawing into obscured portions of the window. It didn't write everything into the backing store then copy it to the display like "buffered" mode, or like all windows on Quartz. Retained is similar to the (optional) backing
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Embedded? (Score:1)
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May (Score:2)
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I don't really care about an Apple phone right now. I'd rather have the "iTV". The rumors of an apple iPhone might be true, or it could be a scraped project. It could even be that POS phone developed and used by cingular. I don't think many investors want apple to enter that market. It doesn't make sense unless they want to try to protect the iP