licensable portable OS X

Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited January 2014
To expand market penetration, Apple should create a licensable version of OS X designed to run on portable devices, perhaps phones, and tablets, or PDA?s. These devices would, of course, sync with Macs and would have the potential to sync with PCs. Apple would get some license fees and potentially some converts who would like to have the "real" Apple experience of seamless integration of these OS X based products with a Mac.



Apple makes its money from selling hardware, but it is becoming obvious that they are attempting to cultivate other revenue sources (.Mac for example). The license plan allows Apple to collect license fees and if they like produce their own killer device.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    wmfwmf Posts: 1,164member
    Phones and PDAs are not powerful enough to run OS X. Apple has their hands full just finishing the desktop and server versions of OS X; they don't have any manpower to spare for other versions.
  • Reply 2 of 3
    fran441fran441 Posts: 3,715member
    I'm sure that Darwin could probably be scaled down to run on such devices. It's up to Apple if they enter or re-enter these markets, though.
  • Reply 3 of 3
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Darwin can most certainly be scaled down... there are Linux PDAs, after all.



    Cocoa is also perfect for handhelds. A highly dynamic flexible programming environment was already proven to scale down on the Newton.



    *Quartz* is the problem. There's no way in Hades that it would scale down. Now, it would be possible to yank that puppy out and replace it with QuartzLite or somesuch that ditches transparency, etc, but I'm sure it'd break some apps that rely on it.



    The rest is definitely doable. Need a buttload of RAM though.
Sign In or Register to comment.