New Angle on Old Thread - Apple PDA (not!)

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
Ok, i posted this just now on macrumors but it occurred to me that the readers of this forum have always seemed a bit more tech savvy and may give me a good reason why this idea has no legs so here goes:



Rather than apple taking the risky route of hardware development and all that entails, i understand that darwin and OSX are very portable architectures.



My suggestion would be to build an OSX lite for existing hardware.



We all have our Palms (or dare i say some of you may even have your iPaqs or somesuch nonesense!) already and i for one don't relish the thought of another £450 (this side of the pond) outlay for another PDA - Even though this one may be the superior Apple produce.



With an OSX lite install on my current hardware, i would have the best of both worlds. Smaller outlay for the new OS and COMPLETE compatibility with my laptop. Apple would have a lot less riskier investment as they would be working on software and not need the usual fabrication/stock overheads that hardware brings.



It may not be the bells and whistles that some have said, and i agree, an Apple PDA would be lovely (esp. with bluetooth headset for phone functionality) but i can't see that happening in the currently saturated PDA market place. So my upgrade current hardware idea is the equivilent of using wintel hardware for Linux or Darwin x86.



Just a thought of a long time reader/first time poster.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 17
    no. OS X is not portable. It is highly proprietary. To date there is no concrete proof os x86 builds or palm builds. I declare this pointless and redundant conversation and hereby ban myself from responding further.
  • Reply 2 of 17
    frykefryke Posts: 217member
    Let me put that straight... OS X _is_ highly portable, but it's quite another story to 'port' OS X to a platform such as Palm.



    Also, what's the need for another OS for a Palm device? All that's needed is much better Palm integration into Mac OS X. (Plus maybe Pocket PC integration.)



    So? iSync. Apple should just replace PalmSource's Palm Desktop with iSync and iCal - and it's on its way of doing that. Problem solved.



    Why I'm right? There's 15'000+ applications for the Palm platform. No need for an Apple OS on the Palm hardware, just to reduce it to like 10 apps at the beginning.
  • Reply 3 of 17
    jcgjcg Posts: 777member
    I dont think that the current processors used in Palms and Pocket PC's are robust enough for even a "Lite" version of OS X, given that there would need to be a GUI that somewhat mirrors Quartz for the user experience. This might be possible with the next generation of PDA hardware, but you loose out on sales to the existing userbase. Remember that Apple has stated time and time again that they are a Hardware company, if they ever enter into this market again I would put money on it that they will do it with hardware/software solution.
  • Reply 4 of 17
    costiquecostique Posts: 1,084member
    [quote]Originally posted by Not Unlike Myself:

    <strong>OS X is not portable.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Wrong. Darwin, being based on FreeBSD, is one of the most portable OSes in the world. Porting Aqua should be an even lesser pain.

    The real problem in the sense of portability is Classic and, to an extent, Carbon.

    The question, though, is not whether it is possible or not. The question is what you mean by 'OS X Lite'. Pre-emptive multitasking, inherent to any *NIX at the kernel level, is pretty useless in a handheld. Multiuser abilities of any *NIX are absolutely pointless in an essentially private device like a handheld. Aqua interface is too space-comsuming for those tiny displays. Forget about the window manager (at least in the form we got used to) too. What is left?

    I did not mention an amount of work required to cut multitasking and multiuser abilities from the heart of OS transparently to at least simple applications. Otherwise, in addition to the above pains, you will have to rewrite all applications. And this amounts to creating a brand new OS from scratch.
  • Reply 5 of 17
    [quote]Originally posted by costique:

    <strong>



    Wrong. Darwin, being based on FreeBSD, is one of the most portable OSes in the world. Porting Aqua should be an even lesser pain. ......</strong><hr></blockquote>



    zzzz.... what were you saying? I'm sorry, I wasn't listening......



    Have you ever writed or tried to translate code in your entire life? Do you even know what 'based on' means? It is NOT unux, it shares some resources with unix structures. You can't just pick up a Mac arcitecture which is highly highly evolved into a proprietary hardware system and drop it onto a 30 mhz palm pilot. It just ain't happenin. We are talking about millions of lines of code, each line customized to run with altivec and other 'clever' moto tricks on the board. You don't just throw all that stuff out..... <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />
  • Reply 6 of 17
    Apple already has a portable device OS, which is capable of handling large file systems, address books, calendars, audio, time, date and games, and it's upgradeable. It's in the iPod. OS X Ink came from the Newton anyway, so porting it into the iPod should be possible. Why try to squeeze OS X into a portable device, when they already have a perfectly good, expandable system.



    [ 11-26-2002: Message edited by: ajprice ]</p>
  • Reply 7 of 17
    well ok i get the message. there seems to be a bit of confusion on how portable OSX is but generally, you peeps seem to think it isn't possible. shame really.



    i was just thinking different(ly)...

  • Reply 8 of 17
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    [quote]Originally posted by Not Unlike Myself:

    <strong>



    zzzz.... what were you saying? I'm sorry, I wasn't listening......



    Have you ever writed or tried to translate code in your entire life? Do you even know what 'based on' means? It is NOT unux, it shares some resources with unix structures. You can't just pick up a Mac arcitecture which is highly highly evolved into a proprietary hardware system and drop it onto a 30 mhz palm pilot. It just ain't happenin. We are talking about millions of lines of code, each line customized to run with altivec and other 'clever' moto tricks on the board. You don't just throw all that stuff out..... <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>



    Er... Darwin/x86.



    (I know this is pointless, but this is more for the rest of the audience, so that misinformation doesn't get spread about.)



    The lower core structures are already cross-platform. They were *DESIGNED* to be.



    AltiVec use in code is something just this side of trivial to pull out, if it's been designed well... and guess what, MacOS X has been.



    Sorry, but in this case you're dead wrong.



    Darwin is designed to be portable as all get out, and the closed source layers above it have all been rewritten from scratch, where possible, to be C, Obj-C, and C++... all portable. The bad old days of huge chunks of the OS being written in assembler for a specific CPU (System &lt;7) are long behind us. Are there AltiVec and PPC specific chunklets? You bet. There are in Linux/PPC too... do you consider Linux to be non-portable? Porting doesn't always mean taking the *exact* same code and just recompiling it. That's for Linux weenies that think there is One True Way. Bleah.



    I'd suggest actually diving into the code in question before making such sweeping statements.



    ('Proprietary hardware'? Not for several years... where have you been? Sheesh.)



    Try looking around a bit for some actual information on Darwin and the relation to BSD. Here's a good link: <a href="http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2001/12/21/darwin.html"; target="_blank">http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2001/12/21/darwin.html</a>;



    Now just for the record, I do NOT think that Apple is going to produce a MacOS X Lite PDA, because much of what makes MacOS X, MacOS X is way beyond the HW capabilities of PDAs at the moment.



    [ 11-26-2002: Message edited by: Kickaha ]</p>
  • Reply 9 of 17
    zzzzz.... whatever zzzz.... ::nobs back off::



  • Reply 10 of 17
    [quote]Originally posted by Not Unlike Myself:

    <strong>



    zzzz.... what were you saying? I'm sorry, I wasn't listening......



    Have you ever writed or tried to translate code in your entire life? Do you even know what 'based on' means? It is NOT unux, it shares some resources with unix structures. You can't just pick up a Mac arcitecture which is highly highly evolved into a proprietary hardware system and drop it onto a 30 mhz palm pilot. It just ain't happenin. We are talking about millions of lines of code, each line customized to run with altivec and other 'clever' moto tricks on the board. You don't just throw all that stuff out..... <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>



    You do talk crap.



    Apple not only has OS X in a highly portable form, it sells the Darwin CD! I've got it here, it runs on PC & Mac and there is no reason why it can't be ported to Dragonball. NetBSD has been running on 680x0 for at least 8 years.



    It wouldn't be very good, but there is no technical reason why it can't be done.
  • Reply 11 of 17
    quickquick Posts: 227member
    Hey ladies, be nice to Not Unlike Myself. This is not the kind of tone we enjoy hearing in AI. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />
  • Reply 12 of 17
    ast3r3xast3r3x Posts: 5,012member
    OS X is portable but can't run on PDA hardware...its to much of a demanding OS
  • Reply 13 of 17
    [quote]Originally posted by Quick:

    <strong>Hey ladies, be nice to Not Unlike Myself. This is not the kind of tone we enjoy hearing in AI. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>



    You've not been here long have you?
  • Reply 14 of 17
    quickquick Posts: 227member
    [quote]Originally posted by Blackcat:

    <strong>

    You've not been here long have you? </strong><hr></blockquote>



    I've been a long time lurker.

    Nevertheless I think it's inadequate to call any post crap.
  • Reply 15 of 17
    [quote]Apple not only has OS X in a highly portable form, it sells the Darwin CD<hr></blockquote>

    Gee folks since when did OSX == Darwin. Is all this other crap in higher abstraction layers just in the way of the true and speedy OS?
  • Reply 16 of 17
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    [quote]Originally posted by Quick:

    <strong>



    I've been a long time lurker.

    Nevertheless I think it's inadequate to call any post crap.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    You're right. It was utterly inadequate to call that post crap.



    Much stronger language should have been used.



    Many of us appreciate your viewpoint, but sometimes a spade is a spade.
  • Reply 17 of 17
    quickquick Posts: 227member
    [quote]Originally posted by Kickaha:

    <strong>

    You're right. It was utterly inadequate to call that post crap.

    Much stronger language should have been used. </strong><hr></blockquote>



    <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />

    As long as we keep a sense of humor, there's nothing to be worried about.



    [ 11-28-2002: Message edited by: Quick ]</p>
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