iPhone Not Running OS X 476
rochlin writes "We know that Steve Jobs has said the iPhone won't accept third-party apps. The iPhone looks to be running on a Samsung provided ARM core processor. That means it's not running on an Intel (or PPC) core. That means it's not running OS X in any meaningful sense (Apple can brand toilet paper as running OS X if they like). Darwin, the BSD based operating system that underlies what Apple has previously been calling OS X, does not run on ARM processors. The Darwin / Apple Public Source licensing agreement says the source would have to be made available if it is modified and sold (paraphrased; read it yourself). A Cingular rep has said the iPhone version of the OS source will not be made available. It will be closed, like the iPod OS and not like Darwin. So if it ain't Darwin, it ain't OS X (in any meaningful way). An InfoWorld article on an FBR Research report breaks down iPhone component providers and lists Samsung as the chip maker for the main application / video cpu. So, that leaves the question... What OS is this phone really running? Not Linux or the source would need to be open."
Well, considering... (Score:4, Interesting)
An awful summary. (Score:1, Interesting)
What ?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Well what makes you think that???? seriously just a job posting on apple.com [apple.com] is not enough to say that.
Re:Should be obvious it's not (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Should be obvious it's not (Score:2, Interesting)
It's Mac OS X: MACH - I/O Kit engeneers wanted (Score:5, Interesting)
Bluetooth/Wifi SW Engineer - iPhone
[...]
MacOS X / IOKit driver development experience
Mach IPC and/or Mach Server design experience
[...]
Solid understanding of embedded hardware platforms (ARM processors, SDIO, UARTs, etc
(http://jobs.apple.com/index.ajs?BID=1&method=mEx
Stripped down OS X (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Stripped down OS X (Score:5, Interesting)
From http://jobs.apple.com/index.ajs?BID=1&method=mExt [apple.com] ernal.showJob&RID=4241&CurrentPage=1:
Bluetooth/Wifi SW Engineer - iPhone
[...]
- MacOS X / IOKit driver development experience
- Mach IPC and/or Mach Server design experience
[...]
- Solid understanding of embedded hardware platforms (ARM processors, SDIO, UARTs, etc)
At least parts of OS X (Score:3, Interesting)
As an interesting note is how Jobs described the OS the phone uses. He said "OS X." Normally Apple refers to their desktop operating system as "Mac OS X." That tells us a few things about what's really going on inside the phone.
My educated would be: the phone does run the Mach part of XNU, likely runs at least parts of the BSD subsystem and the I/O Kit device driver interface. Apple has also said that the iPhone supports PDF. This leads me to guess that parts of WindowServer and CoreGraphics are there. The references to Widgets support this as well. Widgets also tell us something else: WebKit is available. Calling the browser Safari supports this.
So, it's not the Mac OS X that runs on this laptop, but it would appear that enough of the existing OS X technology is there to call it OS X. Though, all of this is total speculation the product isn't on sale so it really can't be analyzed.
Finely, I'm still not entirely sure the no third-party apps bit is a forever thing. We don't know anything but what they've said, but I'll wait until Apple's World Wide Developer Conference (which interestingly is usually just about the time the iPhone ships) before I'll pass judgement on that.
It's Darwin/MACH/I(O Kit (Score:2, Interesting)
The iPhone team is seeking a highly motivated Embedded SW Engineer to develop
middleware and low-level drivers for Bluetooth and Wifi enabled products
Re:Doesn't Apple hold the copyright? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is news to people? Why would iPhone use OSX? (Score:2, Interesting)
I call Bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
size is easy, but speed (Score:3, Interesting)
And after that its easy to trim things down.
Getting it fast is another story, though it was decent on 600mhz PPCs, being a smaller screen it should be easy, especially with 99% of
services not running/installed like printer/ samba / sshd etc.
Re:I can exclusively reveal (Score:5, Interesting)
The keynote very specifically listed:
Syncing, Networking, Multi-tasking, Low power, Security, Video, Cocoa, Core Animation, Graphics, and Audio...
Some of the above is very "duh", but having Cocoa, and Core Animation are two things that I would consider to be part of OS X... so even if the thing doesn't run the Darwin kernel, if it's compatible at the application layer I'd consider it OS X enough.
Seems like people are splitting hairs here...
Maybe Apple is misleading us, maybe not... Hard to say with a closed platform.
Re:Optimised OS X sits on 'versatile' flash (Score:3, Interesting)
1. OSX is a derivative of NeXTstep, originally written for the Motorola 68000 line of processors. It was ported to the PowerPC architecture and the x86 architectures. Why's it so hard to believe they couldn't port it to ARM? Yeah, binaries from "real" OSX won't work, but since the plan is to only have Apple binaries running on the thing, they can just recompile for the new platform. Porting userland is trivial.
2. OSX is an operating system built on a microkernal derivative of UNIX. Unix--especially unix running on a uKernal--is pretty much the most modular thing out there. All they have to do is drop the stuff they don't need for a phone.
3. Again, maybe the full-on desktop version of OSX is power and graphics hungry, but there's nothing that says they can't scale that down.
I'm guessing that the iPhone OSX is very similar, especially in terms of high-level APIs (given that Steve mentioned a lot of OSX APIs by name during the keynote), to quote-unquote-real OSX.
Re:I can exclusively reveal (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I can exclusively reveal (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I can exclusively reveal (Score:2, Interesting)
Okay. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that the iPhone 'runs OS X' in the same vein that Windows CE devices 'run Windows.'
Is that better?
Re:I can exclusively reveal (Score:3, Interesting)
Note that the FSF does the same thing with its various official GNU projects. If you want to contribute code to, say, GCC, you must give up your copyright to the FSF, together with a signed sheet of paper that says you do in fact own the copyright of the stuff you are contributing. This is non-negociable and meant to avoid SCO-like lawsuits associated to GNU projects. So far it has worked rather well from that point of view.