Lynix PDA means Mac OS X PDA possible
Does everyone here know about the Sharp PDA that runsa portable Linux/Java OS? The hardware is the same as required for the Pocket PC Platform. Darwin is an Apple owned unix distro and Aqua is the windowing/gui for OS X. How much effort would there be to slim down and portify (yes, I made up the word!) Aqua (call it Sip) to sit on top of Darwin? Also, porting it to the StronArm processor would not be an issue given how portable OS X is supposed to be (as NeXT, it ran first on Intel chips). I can here some of you saying, what about cloning? Not an issue, if you sell the Portable OS X seperately, they could be installed over the Pocket PC platform on their hardware. One of the objections for not porting the OS X to the PC side was hardware supporting nightmare of thousands of different devices and manufacturers. With a very rigid standard set for Pocket PC, all devices are virtually identical. Ans Apple could either get into the mix with their own hardware or sell the OS for use on other vendors PDAs.
I really want to know people's thought on this, so chime in!
Also, I plan on making a mock up UI in Flash MX of the Portable OS X and if anyone wants to make a mock-up of the hardware, GREAT!
I really want to know people's thought on this, so chime in!
Also, I plan on making a mock up UI in Flash MX of the Portable OS X and if anyone wants to make a mock-up of the hardware, GREAT!
Comments
os x on a pda = pipedream
although handheld linux is very cool.
You can run Linux in 8Mb from a floppy on a 286, FreeBSD is similar so its safe to say Darwin could be too.
On a PDA you don't need full Aqua, a solid white/blue GUI in 16 colours would do. The big issue is to do PDA OSX you'll need Cocoa, Quicktime, maybe Carbon and that little lot on top of Darwin would use a lot of CPU power.
A better idea would be to just put an Aqua theme onto a new version of NewtonOS, or PalmOS or better yet Symbian.
With iPod selling in huge quantities, Apple will eventually see the light I think.
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Humour aside, a PDA wouldn't need Carbon/Aqua/OSX finder/Apps, etc. It would need a kernel, a few, streamlined basic apps, and some paired down, Pocket-OSX apps (NOT straight ports from regular mac apps!).
[quote]I'll never understand why people want a multi-user server OS in a PDA, but...
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It beats windows!
Realistically, Apple aren't going to spend the manpower to make this happen.