Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Mac OS X for desktop --> iPad?
- Thread starter c933103
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I would doubt it. Probably doesn't have enough RAM as well as various other issues.
No, not possible, you could recompile from source but then it wouldn't run desktop apps.
And building an X86, OSX based tablet would be the exact same formula of failure that have plagued Windows Tablets for years.
1: Interface not designed for touch.
2: Applications not designed for touch.
3: Need hardware too powerful for the form factor resulting in:
Heavy.
Slow.
Expensive.
Bulky.
Slow.
Expensive.
Bulky.
This was the right choice.
It's possible...if you have the Mac OS X's raw source codes.
And if you do manage to get the source code off from Apple's HQ, you'll need plenty of man-hours porting x86 architecture to ARM. That includes the darwin kernel(which is open source), Core Services, Frameworks, IO drivers, then its Applications.
But if you want your OSX applications to work, you have to contact the developer to port their code to ARM. (Unless they already have an app made for the iPhone OS.)
If you manage to bug the developer to port your favourite app to the iPad's custom Mac OS X on ARM, well that's a start to get your OSX app on the iPad. But then he just realized that the hardware is so limited that it doesn't have enough RAM.
If you manage to rewire/solder off the shelf SO-DIMMS onto the device to accompany the developer's request from the iPad's limited resources, then I think your a genius.
As for me, I'll just bug the developer to port my favourite app specific for iPhone OS.
Not impossible. Others have installed and run OS-X on tablet PCs using ARM chips. However the best you could do with the touchscreen input would be to emulate mouse inputs. Windows 7 (and earlier versions) at least let you increase the size of slider bars and icons to make them more finger friendly. I'm not sure if OS-X allows that. If not, your finger would have a hard time tapping (clicking) on some targets.
What? Where did they get the ARM binaries or OSX source code to build them?
Are you confusing ARM with Atom?
Remember how Apple was secretly developing X86 binaries along side with PPC back in 2001 'just in case' if they needed to switch chips which they did quickly in 2006? Well probably they already have ARM based Mac OS X 'just in case' they needed to switch again.
As for the 'others' as 4DThinker mentioned, they snuck in Apple's HQ, downloaded the 4GB+ worth of source code into their iPod. Or probably just found in some warez/torrent sites.
I may indeed have confused ARM with ATOM. My old age does play tricks on me sometimes. Either way, HERE is one list of netbooks that are partly or fully compatible with OS-X.
Either way, HERE is one list of netbooks that are partly or fully compatible with OS-X.Definitely they don't have an ARM version just in case. ARM would be no where near as powerful as needed for Full OSX. I think he was confusing ARM with Atom. And an Atom proc is based on the X86 line, not ARM.
True true, but 5-10 years from now, what do you think ARM will be like? A9 is already multicore ready. It can decode HD videos that an Atom even cannot. How about the possibility of a 16-core, 4-array ARM chips consuming only 2W while utilizing OpenCL to decode and compress HD videos? I think Apple has something up their sleeve on Mac OS X based on ARM. Maybe version 11 would be hybridized with iPad OS. They already have a chip designer so its up to them to create any chip they want.
The iPad "as intended" has the same things wrong as the ipod Touch did when first released. Apple hadn't seen it's full potential, and as such hackers had to jailbreak it to show Apple what users really wanted.
Relating to ARM based netbooks, HERE is one that looks pretty interesting, and might very well be able to run the iPad OS. It plays ported over iPhone games.
Relating to ARM based netbooks, HERE is one that looks pretty interesting, and might very well be able to run the iPad OS. It plays ported over iPhone games.
iPhone OS is the darwin kernel and most of the underlying OS stack running on ARM already. The only significant technical difference between iPhone OS and OS X is in the GUI layer and UIKit vs AppKit. The rest of the differences are engineering tradeoffs and artificial app store limitations to compensate for the reduced hardware platform.
How many cores does the "Apple A4" have?
ARM may well be the next phase for Apple CPUs. The assumption the Intel is where technology ends up is just blind folly, Intel is where technology goes to die. All Apple has to do is have their chip designer create a run-time ia86/64 code translation coprocessor to support Intel binaries at 80%+ speed. Even the late switchers will be satisfied with that, and Mac/iPhone OS will be fundamentally unified. This could also, ironically, open the back door to platform licensing (the dreaded "c" word) because Mac OS would only run on Apple CPUs: want to sell cheap Macs? You are welcome to, but you have to get the key component from Apple, because no other CPU can run the OS.
Full Mac OS X 10.0 was introduced on PPC Macs that had less CPU power than an iPhone 3GS ARM.
I have some benchmarks of the same programs compiled for my iPhone 3GS and for a beige tower G3 Mac running OS X 10.0. The iPhone runs them faster.
And, as far as I can tell as a developer from looking at the core OS APIs, the iPhone is running a kernel and OS services very similar to Snow Leopard 10.6.
Yeah...but you know OSX won't happen on the iPad. The iPad will evolve along the same lines as the iPod Touch/iPhone.
Highly doubt it. It would be such a pain using OS X on the iPad, it's just scary to think about. Besides, OS X isn't a touch screen OS, yet.
If you take OS X and make it a touch screen OS, you get iPhone OS. It's the same underpinnings, with a GUI toolkit that's optimized for touch screen devices instead of AppKit, which is optimized for keyboard and mouse.
The future ipad will have the required hardware to run OS X. No, they won't stick it on the current iPad. They are working on downsizing/re-coding the top Apple-created OS X apps to run on it though. Users will discover with the keyboard dock and a bluetoooth mouse they can replace their MacBook. The OS "changes" when you undock it. They realize there is no reason to have two portable devices, but love that they can leave the keyboard behind and go beyond desk surfaces with the iPad alone.
Apple won't be first here. Lenovo showed a netbook with removable screen that changes UI once it's in tablet mode. That AlwaysInnovating Touchbook does the same thing. Far from impossible, it will prove to be a highly desirable characteristic once you own the keyboard dock. JMHO
Apple won't be first here. Lenovo showed a netbook with removable screen that changes UI once it's in tablet mode. That AlwaysInnovating Touchbook does the same thing. Far from impossible, it will prove to be a highly desirable characteristic once you own the keyboard dock. JMHO
Ok, maybe ARM chips are quite capable of running OSX. I mean, people are correct in that iPhone OS is essentially OSX with a different Window Manager, etc.
However, I still doubt we will see full blown OSX as the current iPad. Number one issue is definitely RAM. My MBP has 4GB of RAM. Rumor has it that the iPad has only 512 meg of RAM (of course nobody knows this yet, but as soon as I get mine, I'll be checking out Free Memory app to see what it has).
However, I'm sure we will know before I get my iPad cause I'm waiting on the 3G one. RELEASE IT ALREADY FCC/APPLE!
However, I still doubt we will see full blown OSX as the current iPad. Number one issue is definitely RAM. My MBP has 4GB of RAM. Rumor has it that the iPad has only 512 meg of RAM (of course nobody knows this yet, but as soon as I get mine, I'll be checking out Free Memory app to see what it has).
However, I'm sure we will know before I get my iPad cause I'm waiting on the 3G one. RELEASE IT ALREADY FCC/APPLE!