

iPods Don't Run OS X 164
Redrum writes "Everyone thinks that Apple's iPod runs an OS called Pixo, and that the iPhone ushered in a brand new epoch based on OS X. That myth has been busted: the iPod runs Apple's own Mach/BSD kernel, and Pixo is only used as a graphics layer. Daniel Eran outlines the story behind Pixo and what OS X means for Apple. It's no joke; the story was confirmed by Tim Monroe, a member of Apple's QuickTime engineering team, as is easy to verify yourself." Update: 07/15 19:48 GMT by KD : Turns out to be an April Fools joke.
actually.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:actually.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Up until this point I thought you had an iPod Shuffle.
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Indeed
For those who haven't tried it, download and install iPod Linux [ipodlinux.org] sometime.
Nothing else will give you such an appreciate for the time and effort Apple put into the thing.
Old April Fool's Joke (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Old April Fool's Joke (Score:5, Funny)
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Granted, you do get some good jokes, but most of the time people who are not remotely funny spend the day playing unfunny jokes on each other. But you're not allowed to complain, because then you get accused of having no sense of humour.
Re:Old April Fool's Joke (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not an April Fool's Joke (Score:2)
It really isn't that unlikely or hard for Apple to use the same microkernel on the iPod. Calling it the "same OS" is strictly correct, even if slightly deceiving.
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WTF?!? Still not an April Fool's Joke (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, because someone modified Linux to remove the MMU requirement means that Darwin couldn't be modified to work on hardware without an MMU? I'm so lost as to how that makes sense as a logical argument. But that's ok, don't RTFA just mod up the guy who isn't making sense.
Please RTFA people. It talks about how it isn't the related
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Re:PLEASE HELP (Score:5, Informative)
How the FBI 'hacks' your computer isn't much different, but it's a lot easier, and shares some of the same gear. Instead of using the RF field to modulate your neurons, they use it to induce a weak localized EM field in the computer and then read back the disturbances in that field from the harmonic corresponding to the sub-gigahertz bus of the machine into a low-cost simulator.
The great news is you don't really have to do anything out of the ordinary to counter the attack. You already have plenty of tin-foil on hand from making your hat. (They wouldn't be scanning your machine if they could scan your brain directly, after all.)
What you need to do is enclose your computer, peripherals, and cables with two layers of foil, shiny side out. (It increases the relative capacitance of the foil layer.) Be especially sure to cover any openings in the case, like fans and vent holes. I recommend a little Super Glue here and there in trouble areas such as the keyboard, where typing through the layer of foil tends to deform it.
The monitor is best dealt with by making a hood out of cardboard, furring strip and foil. Glue a couple of furring strips 8-10 inches longer than your head is away from the monitor to the top of it, and then build a cardboard box around both the monitor and your head, using the furring strips as support. Some people have reported better results ridding themselves of the van parked across the street by cladding both sides of the cardboard with two sheets of tin-foil. The reasoning is that the induced EM field in the monitor tends to be stronger. I'm doubtful of the claim, but it can't hurt!
The hole at the bottom for your head can be left comfortably large to fit your skull through supposedly. I typically build a little 'skirt' out of strips of foil long enough to cover down past my shoulders and then staple them to the bottom of the hood just to be sure though.
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I can't believe the
That's a joke, son. A flag waver. You're built too low. The fast ones go over your head. Ya got a hole in your glove. I keep pitchin' 'em and you keep missin' 'em. Ya gotta keep your eye on the ball. Eye. Ball. I almost had a gag, son. Joke, that is.
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Funny doesn't give Karma since the revamp, but Informative does.
Not that it matters much with the cap, which I have only myself to blame for.
Re:PLEASE HELP (Score:4, Insightful)
I always try to moderate as if the poster was being dead serious. Things are much more surreal that way.
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offtopic (Score:5, Informative)
The logic in "funny" not giving karma is based on the idea that it is easier to be funny than to be smart, and they want to promote "smart" more than "funny", which makes sense.
Technically, you can write a post, get it modded +5 Funny and lose karma points. Example: your post gets modded up and down as funny and offtopic. 8 mods Funny, 3 mods Offtopic = -3 Karma. Modding Insightful, Interesting, etc. offsets that.
You should read the faq. All of it. That is where you will learn how a post can technically be modded as +5 Flamebait. (I have seen it) -1 Flamebait and +6 Underrated = +5 Flamebait.
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Regarding flamebait, though, I won't ever see such a post, because I browse at +5 flamebait all the time. E
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Here are some things you can say that wi
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For example, someone comments on how neat it is to be able to browse
Read the faq??? (Score:2)
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How to survive the coming collapse (Score:2)
Renters, and anybody born in a future generation, will not be able to afford a $10,000,000 starter home in 15 years. They will live in tent cities, and Hondas.
This asset bubble is different than all of the others - it will never slow down, or pop. The gains are permanent.
That's what they all said, b
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Re:PLEASE HELP (Score:5, Funny)
Quit using your username as your password. Also, quit using the word "password" as your password. Finally, stop using 12345.
Yours,
The FBI
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Dammit; now I need to buy new luggage.
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Why Snojob? (Score:1)
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faboby? (Score:1)
Re:faboby? (Score:5, Funny)
OS X != Darwin (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense.
What this listing shows is not an iPod running "Mac OS X". It shows an iPod that may be running "a Mach-based version of UNIX", presumably a variant of Darwin. Darwin is not OS X. This would be like finding a copy of "vmlinuz" in an embedded device and claiming it's running Ubuntu.
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That's not very revealing. But if we list the contents of the Device folder using ls with the undocumented option af (for "all files"?), we get a far different picture:
[Kant:/Volumes/iDegger/iPod_Control/Device] monroe% ls -laf
"undocumented" l, a, and f flags? "uh, no." Though I must admit I was curious enough to pull out my pod and look to see what all was really in that folder, which of course was the expected "not much". the joy!ppef I could actually see Apple
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If they put as little of their distro as what could even conceivably be in the iPod, it wouldn't be "Ubuntu". And since Apple isn't calling what's in the iPod OS X, it's not.
The iPhone quite obviously [...]
What does that have to do with whether the iPod is running OS X or not?
If you're getting upset [...]
The term is "debunking", not "getting upset".
I thought that was Darwin? (Score:2)
I hope this is not the beginning of a rebranding thing, where everything apple sells runs OS X. If it is, people are going to by a new device expecting a certain level of functionality, and that level w
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Isn't the microkernel Darwin?
The kernel is XNU. It's not really a microkernel though (technically it could be called a single-server microkernel, but there's not much difference between that and a monolithic kernel). Darwin is the kernel + userland, including things like Launchd.
Mac OS X is the more or less device independent higher level layers
OS X is Darwin + Quartz + a load of frameworks (Cocoa, Carbon, QuickTime, etc). While the higher-layer stuff doesn't depend heavily on specific hardware (except for some stuff like CoreImage), it does depend in a number of places on Mach ports, making it n
Got the reasons backwards... (Score:2)
No, the soi-disant Microskernel is Mach, and it's not a Microkernel in any useful sense.
This is why we could move Mac OS X so easily to the Intel platform.
The OS kernel in Darwin ran on Intel long before it ran on the Power PC. The GUI layers over the UNIX kernel and utilities are probably *less* device independent than most of the system, due to their close integration with the GPU and OpenGL (have a look at all the Apple-specific OpenGL extensions on a Mac video card some tim
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The file listing presented in the Roughly Drafted included several directories that implied the presence of Darwin userland components... applications and utilities... as well as the kernel. I suppose all those di
Yeah... (Score:2)
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even without prior knowledge of the joke, what do you think the chances are that an Apple employee could publish this and still have a job the next day?
Tim wrote this long after Steve's return to Apple, and has a history of writing outlandish April Fool's articles. The previous year, he claimed that he'd been slipped a CD-ROM from unknown sources that ran the entire QuickTime stack on every Microsoft-licensed platform: WinCE, XBox, etc. The 2005 article cited here was a little infamous because MacTech
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I was hooked until the guy showed his ls skills (Score:4, Funny)
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Hmmm, using the -bs flag just gives me some numbers before the file/directory listings...
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You obviously missed the sarcasm of my post which was to point out that the article was BS for stating that ls -af happens to be some undocumented feature.
Wrong, wrong, WRONG! (Score:1)
No. OSX uses a Mach kernel and a BSD userland. Why do so many articles get this wrong?
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Which to me looks like part userland part kernel, but I'm not sure I could put a very fine point on the distinction.
You're Wrong, wrong, WRONG! (Score:5, Informative)
The kernel contains a large chunk of the BSD kernel. Take BSD, rip out the memory management and scheduler, graft it onto a supposed microkernel that long outgrew "micro", and there you have it.
It's a trainwreak of a kernel, proving that the kernel alone doesn't make the OS.
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Mach is a microkernel, not a kernel. Classically, you had to run a OS "personality" on top of Mach to get a full set of kernel features (things like a filesystem, processes, and users are not found in Mach). Back when Mach was a hot topic in the mid 90s, there were POSIX and OS/2 personalities being developed.
OS/X's XNU kernel [kernelthread.com] uses a combination of the Mach microkernel with the BSD kernel - they're co-equal, not a BSD "personality" on top of Mach.
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NT is still technically a m
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Incidentally, WinCE is hardly dead... (Score:5, Informative)
Now, let me say up front that my own experience with Windows CE based devices has not been a bed of roses, but then neither has my experience with desktop Windows... which is a market success despite failing to deliver what Microsoft promised. Not only is Pocket PC, now known as Windows Mobile, used in an awful lot of devices... but it's even penetrated the stronghold of its arch-rival Palm. Yes, Palm created that situation by dropping the ball around 2002, but Palm tried their own embedded UNIX as well as their inevitably doomed BeOS spinoff and ended up deciding to embrace the "failed" Windows CE anyway.
In addition, there's a plethora of applications for it, something that Apple shows no interest in even making possible. No, supporting fancy web-based applets is not at all comparable to running actual local applications... particularly when it's rather likely those "iPhone apps" will happily run on Pocket PC as well: if not now, just as soon as someone ports Webcore to it.
And that's just *one* application of Windows CE. You can't license Apple's ARM port of Darwin or any of the rest of the software in the iPod or iPhone, like you can Windows CE. There's no developer's kit, no porting kit, no product.
So not only is Windows CE not a failure, it's not even the same kind of product as Apple's closed fork of OS X on the iPhone or their closed fork of Darwin on the iPod. Most of what Microsoft promised, Apple's declining to even offer. And Microsoft has done a surprisingly good job with Windows CE... in many ways it's a far better and more secure product than desktop Windows.
Does it make money for Microsoft? Who cares, other than Microsoft stockholders? Does it do what Microsoft promised? Absolutely.
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WinCE is the underlying OS, like Darwin is the underlying OS in OSX.
but the Windows mentality still pervades some of the devices, representing a serious Inability To Get It.
Oh, I agree. I wasted a couple years trying a Jornada and ended up back on Palm. I'm not saying I *like* Microsoft's Windows CE based software, but no matter how much I might *wish* it otherwise, Windows CE is far from dead.
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Window CE is clearly a failure.
- financial: no profits, many losses
- market share: the installed base is only about 7 million in a market that is 1000 million per year
- technical: after more than 10 years, cannot view a real Web page
You're right it's not the same kind of product as Apple's.
WinCE is not a web browser or a cellphone. (Score:2)
Windows CE is an embedded OS. It's built around the same programming model as Win32 with a set of libraries targeted for different platforms. I don't like the design, myself, but I'
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Considering that windows mobile is an OS, and not a web browser, this shouldn't be surprising. However, Opera Mobile is a browser that runs on Windows Mobile, and it can view a real web page.. full internet even, just like in Apple's commercials.
The MacTech article is an April Fool (Score:2)
And the issue number is vol 20, number 4
April. Hmmmm
I pitty da Fool, etc, etc.
Roughly Drafted (Score:5, Insightful)
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No doubt Redrum's an RD sock puppet & the people behind RD are attempting to do the same thing with slashdot. Do we really need to have some spammer's site linked from the front page of slashdot?
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You're welcome. Anytime.
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try again!
Terminology (Score:4, Informative)
Xnu [wikipedia.org] -- The Apple Open Source kernel, a combination of BSD, Mach, and IOKit.
Darwin [wikipedia.org] -- the Xnu kernel and BSD userland binaries and libraries. Basically the Open Source parts of OS X. Darwin is bundled as a full Unix OS.
OS X [wikipedia.org] -- Darwin + Aqua, Finder, Quartz, Quicktime, Cocoa, and the bundled graphical tools and apps.
The article would more rightly state that the iPods have always run the Xnu kernel.
While you're at it... (Score:2)
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Bleh, Roughlydrafted (Score:2)
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Slashdot - April Fools everyday... (Score:5, Funny)
How much lower can your editorial responsibilities go?
This week is just ridiculous, and makes the inquirer seem credible, although
pixo os (Score:3, Interesting)
Jokes (Score:2)
not yet ... (Score:2)
I can't see how the form factor of the nano or shuffle can accommodate the hardware necessary to run OS X, so maybe only some of the iPod product line will run on OS X -- but extending and leveraging the iPhone is too profitable an opportunity to pass up. Driving component purchase volumes up decreases unit costs, and allows Apple to wield a bigger club in negotiations with suppliers.
The next video iPod may have a spinning disk drive in place of the iPhone's flash memory, as 3
Tim Monroe of Apple Quicktime Engineering... (Score:2, Flamebait)
I know you guys cripple the dam windows versions on purpose to drive Mac hardware sales but come on... enough is enough. We Pc guys own Ipods!
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Simple people require even simplier devices, enough said.
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I could be entirely wrong, though. But I still strongly doubt it'll be anything as heavy as Quartz.
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Woohoo, look Marge, I'm a troll
iPhone apps are web - pages
iPhone apps are web - pages !
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> I could be entirely wrong, though. But I still strongly doubt it'll be anything as heavy as Quartz.
Even an Ajax app running in Safari requires a graphics layer. Quartz is not heavy, it ran in 2001 on computers that were 5 years old at the time. Windows Vista it is not.
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True enough, but consider the difference between running X on Linux and running some svgalib app.
QuartzExtreme is certainly going to be heavy. I'm sure they can strip it down enough to be fast on the iPhone, but remember -- it's not enough to run on a computer from 1996. For the iPhone to work, it has to also feel like a computer from 2008.
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Listen, pal, GWB says Global Warming is all in our silly little liberal heads, and China is our friend. Are you suggesting our President would mislead us? I'm shocked, SHOCKED I SAY!
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If this is what kdawson believes, why should I believe his stories on government oppression or global warming?
Maybe you know that argumentum ad verecundiam is a fallacy, and so is its obverse?
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Note the alleged output of ls -af (= ls --april --fool...) [mactech.com]:
Eran cheerfully edited Apr to Jul -- buying this hook, line and sinker, and now he whines that he was joking and misunderstood...
Not April Fools (Score:2, Troll)
It referenced the MacTech joke about SNOJOB, but that wasn't a central part of the story. It was presented among other jokes that hinted around the truth: that Pixo did not deliver Apple's iPod for it, that Apple has seven years of experience in delivering the ARM based iPod, and that Apple has delivered core portions of the iPod, as Pixo is not a kernel, but rather a UI framework.
Why Slashdot decided to present the 2004 article as
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The article does not prove that iPods run Mac OS X, as its headline might suggest. The context of the article is a series of articles about the architecture of the iPhone.
The article is about OS X in the iPhone, which is only suggested in the title. It is depicted in the graphic, and in its conclusion. Even if you feel the most important