osx lite - a good idea?

just me grateful there's no "Microsoft Airlines"!

I think OSX for small devices is a good idea, but probably not worth the effort. Apple would be better off throwing their support behind Symbian, Palm and others.

bringing osx into mobile devices would mean writing it to other cpu architechture than powerpc, which is what apple wants to avoid at all cost. so no, we're not going to see it happen. and besides, there's no point in entering a field where there's a good competition already going on. as someone said, it'd be better to just support symbian.

I love how everyting is steve's fault. You know he is just a cardboard cutout.

Apple has no desire to develop more than one version of their OS. They have even outsourced the development of the iPod OS. If Apple does come out with another iDevice, I expect that some other company will be programming its OS.

OSX lite would basically be FreeBSD 4.4 kernel with whatever additions a company would like to make to it.


BEN

Wouldn't this simply be another rendition of embedded linux that is already used in a plethora of devices, such as linksys routers and sharp PDAs? I really don't see a market. Too many players in the embedded market already. If apple joined the game, all you would hear about is embedded OS marketshare...lol

Thanatoast said:

so it seems that everywhere i look these days, microsoft is being pushed onto every electronic device more powerful than a four-function calculator. ms cell phones, ms watches, ms refridgerators.

my question: could or should apple produce osx lite to counter the insiduous tentacles of microsoft? why no osx pda's? why no osx cell phones or pocket watches? if steve wants to branch out into consumer electronics, wouldn't having a proven os that runs on scaled-down hardware be a first step?

besides, who doesn't want a watch that when an alarm goes off, the time bounces up and down on the screen until you're forced by the love of all that's good to stop it?

Click to expand...

There is one area that I think apple should get into. That's car computer interfaces. Everyone talks about how awful BMW iDrive and Mercedes Command systems are. I'm pretty sure both are based on Windows CE or whatever they call it nowadays. Seems to me that apple could make a killer interface that would really be intuitive and not try to do too much. Maybe something that integrates a control like the iPods.

As for consumer electronics, I don't see it as a big thing. I think many will go with linux and the MS based ones, or theitr own operating systems. Trying to make a one size fits all OS for consumer devices isn't going to work that well I do't think and would suck up resources like crazy. That said, I would love to see apple getting interface design consulting work for some of these companies, like the car computers I mentioned above.

Uh, because Linux has this market? And there is no licensing fees either.

Linux is perfect for this job becuase its Unix - set it up once (which would be done at the factory) and it works good for the rest of its lifecycle. Nearly every home router has Linux on it. No-one is going to pay anyone else now for a very similar product....

I agree with the previous posters. Why compete with Palm, Windows, and Linux on PDAs and cell phones? It takes a lot of work to convert software to work well on a portable device, a lesson Microsoft still hasn't fully grasped. So, cool as it might be, we won't see it because it doesn't make sense from Apple's point of view.

When Apple designed their own portable consumer device, the iPod, they didn't port OS X to it. They didn't even write its OS themselves. Hopefully, when they enhance it with color screens, it will at least look a little like OS X.

I hope that between Apple and Mark/Space, Macs continue to work well with Palm PDAs. My Palms -- 1997 PalmPilot Pro, 2001 Palm Vx, and 2004 Tungsten T3 -- have been some of the coolest computer products I've had, and I'm dependent on their functionality.

I'd also like to see a skin for PalmOS that makes it look like MacOS X. Maybe such a thing exists; I haven't really looked. I hear that there is such a thing that runs on Windows Mobile pocket PCs.


Crikey