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Where COM fails is DCOM.

Loading in process has been pretty good in my opinion.

These people seem to agree:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XPCOM
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/CoreFoundation/Conceptual/CFPlugIns/Concepts/com.html%23//apple_ref/doc/uid/20001158-CJBEJBHH

For what it's worth, I disagree; I can't see anyone that's making money from Flash games (e.g. Zynga) targetting a single browser, and most if not all of the Flash games I've played simply won't work on a smartphone. They might work on a tablet, but that's currently still a niche market (though one that is growing, I'll grant you).

I said a Chrome app (Angry Birds?) or ported to mobile devices. QED?

After trying to use Google Maps and/or the Phoenix Metro time schedule when I took my son on the Phoenix Metro Light Rail (which he absolutely loves riding), I gave up and just scraped the data and wrote my own application (iOS app and Android app). The biggest issue I had was that the schedule data is badly done. They only have the times for half the stations (14 out of 28), so I had to interpolate for the remaining stations and call it good enough

Damn it. I forgot to log in before replying.

After trying to use Google Maps and/or the Phoenix Metro time schedule when I took my son on the Phoenix Metro Light Rail (which he absolutely loves riding), I gave up and just scraped the data and wrote my own application (iOS app and Android app). The biggest issue I had was that the schedule data is badly done. They only have the times for half the stations (14 out of 28), so I had to interpolate for the remaining stations and call it good enough

the very thing the 'rounded-rectangle patent' case is all about.

First off it's a design patent big difference from patent in the standard sense. Secondly, there so much prior art to rounded rectangle this patent has no choice but to be nuked. I have in my hands right now a cell phone circa 2003 that is rounded rectangular with just a screen and a slide out keyboard. Oh look, I also have here in my collection an LG Chocolate circa 2006. It's quite rounded rectangular. Oh look here is a credit card, it too is round rectangular. Oh look the formula for the area of a rounded rectangle is A = a * b + 2 * r *(a + b) + pi * r^2; I know this because here in this math book copyright 1976 is a rounded rectangle.

Apple wouldn't be the first to have a patent tossed out of court, because the notion of patenting a shape is ridiculous. Can we please move past the rounded rectangle? Apple wasn't the first to use the shape. Hell they weren't even the first to use the shape for a phone Hell phones weren't even the first ones to use it in electronic devices.

actually maybe you have and you just thought it was a Tab.

All you fancy whipper snappers and your phablets. You know how much I love plopping down $500 - $600 on a device and can't even compile a C program in a reasonable amount of time, on it. No you both have it wrong. Both iPhone and Samsung Galaxy Tab suck. I can buy a $500 laptop that smokes anything your phablets can do, hell smokes anything they can do and brews tea for me while playing a soothing classical waltz, tells me the weather in three different locations while typing a document, and compiling a kernel whist I sip said tea. Hell, can you even do SVG artwork on one of these damn things? Oh look I can for only $8.99 Oh look, I can do it on my $500 laptop for free.

Stupid phablets, stupid fanbois, mumble mumble, get off my damn lawn!

Map data structure (in my programming language) direct to data storage (in my database), with little in between, even if my data structure is on one physical machine, and my storage is on another.

That's the crux of the problem. You see the programming language as having the actual structure, and that dusty databasey thingie over there as having some sort of optimized-for-storage representation of the data. In reality, that database has a much richer notion of your data than your program does, and your program has an optimized-for-this-calculation representation.

The proof WaffleMonster submits is the CREATE VIEW statement. This little feature isn't a way of making your SELECTs shorter. It's a way of allowing your applications to restructure the data being stored without introducing copies. It's a way to ensure that when the database is refined (i.e. storing more in more complex ways) the applications you already have don't need to be rewritten to participate.

It depends on how you define ACID

Not really. Every distributed database forgoes some aspect of ACID compliance. Take my shitty iTunes Match service. Just today, I had to delete 28,000 copies of a playlist from iTunes. Why? Because iTunes Match doesn't know who to believe when two devices disagree about a playlist having been made, so it defaults to resolving the conflict by creating a playlist rather than deleting. In a distributed scenario, you are going to have to decide how to handle conflicting versions of the truth. MySQL cluster is marketed as if you don't need to do that, but as someone who has run MySQL with replication, I can tell you, it's extremely fragile. The PostgreSQL version is much harder to set up. Why? Because there are hard questions there that you have to be able to answer, but if you are essentially a front-end engineer who's really excited about Node.js, you have no fucking idea what a hard problem is.

The absolute irony about this whole situation is that all this effort is being made to enable distributed data storage why? So we can have one domain with all our data on it: Facebook, Twitter or whatever. Wouldn't it be neat if, instead of having these massive centralized systems we had some kind of distributed way of hooking computers together?

Plenty of apps try to use offline storage as a cache when disconnected from the main data store, for example.

Yes, and how many of them get it right? Using a local store as a cache is explicitly giving up on ACID compliance: you have to be able to anticipate the situation where your changes can't be applied to the server, and what to do if that happens. This is an application-level problem that can't be swallowed by the database. In some apps, the server will always be right, in some apps the client will always be right, but in most apps, it will be a nasty ad-hoc combination of the two that will demand mental effort to reconcile.

That's not necessarily true if your code is the interface to your database and if your code enforces the necessary constraints so that your database can play dumb.

If you're doing this, you're wasting your database and you're lying to yourself. You're lying to yourself because you think you can shoulder the burden of writing integrity into your application. You're also lying to yourself if you think you can manage concurrency correctly, and you're lying to yourself if you think that your application or library is the only one that's going to access your data and can be the gatekeeper. If any of these things seems reasonable to you, come back here in a decade and let's talk about how it worked out for you.

Relational databases, the good ones anyway, have 30-40 years of debugging and optimization poured into them. If you want to take a year and do your little "database" proj

According to Apple's official page about Gatekeeper you have to be part of their $99/year Mac Developer Program in order to get a code signing certificate. I think they've been rather misleadingly describing it to the press as free to members of the MDP, and some of them have dropped the qualifier.

Would Apple allow apps with such scripting support on it's app store?

Yea, they are pretty cool with it now.

Codea: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/codea/id439571171?mt=8
The Lua programming language with OpenGL and input sensors support, for writing and running programs on the iPad.

It has a very nice touch UI IDE, and of course a compiler.

A few years ago, who would have ever thought it possible!

Looks rather interesting... I'll have to try to get somebody with an iPad to get it, and then try it out... Before Apple decides to curb-stomp it ;)

Would Apple allow apps with such scripting support on it's app store?

Yea, they are pretty cool with it now.

Codea: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/codea/id439571171?mt=8
The Lua programming language with OpenGL and input sensors support, for writing and running programs on the iPad.

It has a very nice touch UI IDE, and of course a compiler.

A few years ago, who would have ever thought it possible!

They are toys. They use them to surf the web in meetings, they play games on it, and so on. They use them to have fun and waste time, not to do work.

Academics are those whose mission is to pursue knowledge for knowledge’s sake. I’m not surprised many professors are entranced by tablet devices (iPads) given my own experience with them.

As a former academic who currently works in web development, I have an iPad and I wish wish WISH that I had had one when I had been a professor. I use a PDF reader (iAnnotate) that allows me to annotate PDFs, upload those PDFs to my desktop. From there I can (using custom PERL scripts) generate XML containing the content and metadata of those annotations, which XML objects I incorporate into an XML editor/viewer (Tinderbox) for editing, organizing, and HTML export. I bring the exported HTML into a CMS and publish that on the web. Between these pieces of software and hardware is ENORMOUS pedagogical potential

I know this because I had such a system in place as a faculty and students who hated Blackboard regularly commented how useful and more efficient my online course materials were. This was pre-tablet device (read pre-iPad), so I had been using a desktop program (open source Skim) to make these annotations. iAnnotate is a much more direct translation of book-reading skills and had iPads existed prior to my leaving academia for the Silicon Valley, I would have been using one, too.

tl;dr: I suspect that the "ooh shiny" professors have for tablet devices is actually the realization that touch devices are a paradigm shift from desktops, a paradigm with its own set of advantages and possibilities. Faculty buy into these things not because they are easily distracted but because they have a researcher’s curiosity for useful technologies.

Many companies would be more than happy to get rid of the incompatible, bug-ridden mess called MS Office and Outlook. Why can't the businessinsider folks just learn to use Numbers or some other app? What is so special about their charting needs? Typically, such users are just attached to Excel because they've mastered (or so they think) the shoody MS UI and find themselves unable (or unwilling) to learn anything else...

It's called Auto Layout and it's much more powerful than the Gtk APIs you mentioned. Note that this is new to 10.7 but the equivalent of the Gtk APIs was available in earlier releases.

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#recipes/xcode_help-interface_builder/UnderstandingAutolayout.html

You're right on the $100. But the Ad hoc distribution(install on 100 devices) you are talking about and testing on a device requires you to be in the program. Check yourself if you want to.

On another note. It's been awhile since i last worked with iOS, there's something called "Custom B2B App Distribution" item on the iOS dev program listing. Anyone have any clue what it means? Didn't exist when I did iOS work.

Oh, and for your information, anyone can download Android SDKs and programming tools FREE OF CHARGE if they want to. Apple charges for its SDKs

Actually, Apple's SDKs are freely available - SDKs, iOS simulator, documentation, IDE and compilers.

Oh, and for your information, anyone can download Android SDKs and programming tools FREE OF CHARGE if they want to. Apple charges for its SDKs

Actually, Apple's SDKs are freely available - SDKs, iOS simulator, documentation, IDE and compilers.

No. Somehow you've missed the fact that the 17" MBP has come in 1920x1200 for years: http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs-17inch.html.

OS X 10.8 does more to integrate social networking

So does this mean we'll get Facebook / Twitter / Google Plus / Reddit / Digg / Fark / Something Awful / 4chan / EBaumsWorld / B3ta etc. "Share" icons hogging up every window's title bar?

No, you'll get one Share button. http://www.apple.com/macosx/mountain-lion/features.html#sharesheet

Then comes the walled garden, I wonder what the default will be for new machines coming with Mountain Lion?

If you're referring to Gatekeeper, the default is "allow apps from the App Store and apps signed by an identified developer", with the other options being "only allow apps from the App Store" and "allow anything". The pane in System Preferences says "Allow applications downloaded from:", so it might be that none of that applies to apps installed from somewhere other than the Intertubes.

Apple does not need its OS updates to be PROFITABLE! It uses its OS to push its shiny $2000 boxes!! Why do people still not understand this difference???

...that would be because by far the most of its "boxes" sell in the $600 (mini) -- $1200 (imac) range.

See the Apple Store for current prices of current "boxes."

***Full disclosure: I own, among other Apple machines, an Apple box that was, in fact, well over $3k -- an 8-core, 3 GHz, 6-monitor, 32 GB Macpro; and the reasons I made that purchase include previous experience with lower priced Apple hardware (excellent, I wanted more) and Apple's OS X, which I am an unabashed fan of, at least until the recent attempt to meld with iOS, which I hope they'll get over when they realize they're responding to the wrong stimulus (iOS isn't popular because it's simple; it's popular because it's capable... and it's simple because the iP*ds have very limited hardware resources. iOS should grow towards OS X, rather than OS X towards iOS, and OS X should continue to improve in the usual desktop fashion, adding power, not simplifying. For example, iOS desperately needs a real filesystem, folders, and multitasking, and when Android gets there first because Apple is going the wrong way, and people begin to move so as to get at that power, Apple will be forced to follow, instead of wandering blindly along this silly path they appear to have chosen. And then I will be happy again. 3 cheers for competition.)

so what my sex game that apple will put in the store why should my uses have to do jump though hoops to run it?

If you can afford USD 99/year for a Mac Developer Program membership, so you can get a signing key, they won't have to jump through hoops to run it unless they've explicitly told Gatekeeper to warn about non-App Store apps from identified developers.

The Fujitsu Stylistic ranges from 1.7 to 1.9 lbs. The iPad 2 is 1.33 lbs. At worst, this is 42% heavier, not "1.5-2x heavier". Fujitsu claims over 8 hours of battery life on their midrange model (1.9lbs total with that battery). Apple claims 10 hours, about 25% more. These numbers make the iPad look incrementally better, not insanely great.

http://store.shopfujitsu.com/fpc/Ecommerce/buildseriesbean.do?series=Q550
http://www.apple.com/ipad/

"But what if you want to run an older app, or download a utility that was written by someone who hasn't paid Apple's $99 fee for a developer's license? If you're an administrative user, you can Ctrl-click on the App, choose Open from the pop-up menu, enter your OS X password, and tell Mountain Lion to trust this app in the future."

Or just fucking set "Allow applications downloaded from:" to "Anywhere". (At least according to Daring Fireball, the default setting is "Mac App Store and identified developers"; I'm curious whether that's also the default setting if you upgrade a machine, or if it defaults to "Anywhere" on an upgrade for the benefit of already-installed unsigned apps, or if it's using Quarantine so that it pesters you only for newly-downloaded apps. For that matter, I'm curious whether it's in the exec code, so that it vets all executable images, or if it's in Launch Services so that it only vets applications launched through LS.)

One step closer to all apps needing to come from the app store.

Or not. It might just be a heavier-duty version of the "warning when you first open a newly-downloaded application from the UI" stuff that's been there since at least Snow Leopard; the MacWorld article on Gatekeeper makes it look a bit like the latter.

According to the official Apple site you have to be a member of the $99 a year Mac Developer Program in order to get a developer ID. From the way the Verge piece is worded, I suspect that Apple have been feeding journalists a line of BS about it being free to registered Mac developers, which is technically true - it's just that you have to pay an annual fee before they count you as a developer in the first place.

I don't think they are actually. According to Apple's webpage for Gatekeeper you have to be part of the $99/year Mac developer program. The only person claiming that they're free is Gruber, and I think he's either misunderstood what Apple has said or is being deliberately misleading. Notice how the Verge piece says there's "there’s no cost to developers beyond the standard Mac developer program fees" - the developer IDs are technically free to registered developers but since in order to register as one in the first place you have to pay the annual fee they're not actually free in practice.

Wrong. Apps and music do not count towards your 5GB.

”Your purchased music, apps, books, and TV shows, as well as your Photo Stream, donâ(TM)t count against your free storage.”

(Responding AC because I'm at work...)

A free account is 5GB, which can't even handle a full ipad backup (something I recently encountered as it tries to back up your apps as well, and with a game like rage weighing in at 1.1GB, you can see it fills up quickly).

You could not be more wrong.

http://www.apple.com/icloud/what-is.html

"Your purchased music, apps, books, and TV shows, as well as your Photo Stream, don't count against your free storage."

See: OSX 10.7 Lion EULA (PDF) sections 2.A. or 2.B.i. depending on your acquisition method.

Section 2.B.i:

"You are granted a limited, non-transferable, non-exclusive license:
(i) to download, install, use and run for personal, non-commercial use, one (1) copy of the Apple Software directly on each Apple-branded computer running Mac OS X Snow Leopard or Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server (“Mac Computer”) that you own or control;"

One copy on each computer that you control doesn't equate to a single upgrade.

Only if you're breaking the law. That $30 only gives you a single upgrade.

I don't even need to consult the EULA for that one, since it's a simple copyright violation, but just in case you want to try to use the EULA to weasel out of it...

See: OSX 10.7 Lion EULA (PDF) sections 2.A. or 2.B.i. depending on your acquisition method.

Developers can now get a free account to sign applications. Users then have a choice (see this screenshot of the settings whether they will allow App Store only apps, App Store or developer signed apps, or all apps.

I can't see Apple removing the ability to run unsigned apps completely. And besides, if you want to distribute your application to users, why not sign it if it's free to do so?

http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/

this is some crap Rollercoaster Tycoon-quality(in 2012!) games shop that got rich peddling its lousy wares off of Facebook's back. Zynga is a flea, and FB is the big dog - scratching Zynga off his balls with his muthafuckin' paws --

They were that, 5 years ago, but now Zynga is it's own thing, they don't need Facebook at all to survive. If Facebook vanished tomorrow Zynga would hardly notice. Zynga already has dozens of iPhone games and bought dozens of companies allowing Zynga to sell games on every platform.

In fact, Facebook relies on Zynga for 12% of it's revenue, taking a 30 percent cut from purchases of virtual goods within Zynga games.

In 2002: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2002/02/26Apple-Wins-2002-Technical-GRAMMY-Award.html

Use the iPhone Configuration Utility (it works on iPads). Turn off all other extraneous apps and restrict the rest. There's several non-Safari browser apps that you can lock in Kiosk mode, use one of those.

You can't even troll properly. First, there is no such thing as an Apple USB printer.

I clearly meant USB printer, and wasn't sure whether Apple offers any for its Macs, so used the redundant phrase to allow for that possibility.

Second, when printing from an iPad, one does so wirelessly using a compatible third-party printer.

Guess what? I don't have a wireless printer, I have an USB printer, which I'd like to connect the iPad to, whenever I need to print. I WONT BUY a separate wireless printer from ANYBODY just b'cos the iPad is too picky about what it can print to, when I have a perfectly functional USB printer. Not to mention your other caveat that the third party printer too has to be a compatible one, not any off the shelf standards compliant one, such as USB, wireless USB, Bluetooth, et al.

Third, wireless modem? Your phone is your wireless modem and your iPad connects to it using WiFi. Why would you plug a wire into your iPad to use a wireless modem?

I don't have an iPhone, so my phone is not a wireless modem. So essentially, to connect while I'm on the go and not w/ any stationary wi-fi, the iPad needs to connect to the phone (which has to have both Wi-Fi and whatever cellular technology it has - UMTS, CDMA2000, et al) by Wi-Fi, which in turn has to connect using UMTS, CDMA2000, WCDMA or whatever standard it uses to connect w/ services. Great! As opposed to using just a single protocol to connect!

No USB slots this time either, so if one wants to plug in a wireless modem or connect to a non-Apple USB printer, one is SOL?

You can't even troll properly. First, there is no such thing as an Apple USB printer. Second, when printing from an iPad, one does so wirelessly using a compatible third-party printer. Third, wireless modem? Your phone is your wireless modem and your iPad connects to it using WiFi. Why would you plug a wire into your iPad to use a wireless modem?

And what do multiple windows really give you?

The ability to see, for example, a protocol or API spec and the code I'm working on that depends on them.

Maybe most people don't need that, but I do. Fortunately, I'm running an OS that doesn't force me to have only one full-screen window visible. (Yes, I'm being snarky; when Apple is allowing more user choice than you are - Lion allows you to run full-screen-capable apps full-screen, but it doesn't default to that - either you're a genius or an idiot. Which of those you are may depend on the user. :-))

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1465?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

The closest you could get on an iPad is with 10.7 server w/ Profile Manager.

I think this would be a better solution.

iPad in Kiosk mode:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mediakiosk/id352741530?mt=8

Android in Kiosk mode:
http://www.42gears.com/blog/2011/10/kiosk-mode-on-android/

Android Tutorial: http://www.basic4ppc.com/forum/basic4android-getting-started-tutorials/10839-android-kiosk-mode-tutorial.html

iPad: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kiosk-pro/id409918026?mt=8

The fundamental difference, as I see it, is that a 5 year old PC still works perfectly fine and can run most modern programs now-a-days just fine (so long as you've taken decent care of keeping crud off it). Good luck doing the same thing with the iPad: assuming it still even works 5 years from now, the battery life will have decayed to the point where it will be barely usable, and if you think you will have the newest version of the OS available on it, excuse me while I laugh my ass of at your naiveté.

You're comparing apples to oranges. Most 5-year-old PCs won't run Windows 7 very well, if at all, and have no chance at Windows 8. Most iOS software doesn't require the very latest version of iOS to run, so it should remain a very useful device. Heck, iPod Touch 1st generation and original iPhones can only run up to iOS 3.x and still sell pretty well on eBay. They are almost 5 years old.

As for battery, just get it replaced for $99 if you still value your device, but I think "barely usable" is an exaggeration. Again, original iPhones are almost that old and retain over 50% of their battery life. A 5 year-old iPad isn't going to be a use-all-day-without-recharging thing, but it will still be a very usable device.

https://developer.apple.com/library/IOs/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/Introduction/Introduction.html
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/Intro/Intro.html
http://developer.android.com/design/index.html
http://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/
http://docs.blackberry.com/en/developers/deliverables/36511/index.jsp?name=UI+Guidelines+-+BlackBerry+SmartphonesBlackBerry+Smartphones7.1&language=English&userType=21&category=BlackBerry+UI+Guidelines&subCategory=
http://docs.blackberry.com/en/developers/deliverables/27299/index.jsp?name=UI+Guidelines+-+BlackBerry+PlayBook+TabletBlackBerry+PlayBook+Tablet1.0&language=English&userType=21&category=BlackBerry+UI+Guidelines&subCategory=
http://wiki.eclipse.org/User_Interface_Guidelines ...

Yeah, its hilarious an unusual that Microsoft publishes a design guide for their OS because obviously the author didn't spend 5 minutes on Google...

https://developer.apple.com/library/IOs/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/Introduction/Introduction.html
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/Intro/Intro.html
http://developer.android.com/design/index.html
http://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/
http://docs.blackberry.com/en/developers/deliverables/36511/index.jsp?name=UI+Guidelines+-+BlackBerry+SmartphonesBlackBerry+Smartphones7.1&language=English&userType=21&category=BlackBerry+UI+Guidelines&subCategory=
http://docs.blackberry.com/en/developers/deliverables/27299/index.jsp?name=UI+Guidelines+-+BlackBerry+PlayBook+TabletBlackBerry+PlayBook+Tablet1.0&language=English&userType=21&category=BlackBerry+UI+Guidelines&subCategory=
http://wiki.eclipse.org/User_Interface_Guidelines ...

Yeah, its hilarious an unusual that Microsoft publishes a design guide for their OS because obviously the author didn't spend 5 minutes on Google...

Intel was the top contributor to Linux 3.0 (by lines) (source)

IBM is in there, too at #8

Google pushed the Linux kernel and WebKit into an uncountable number of handhelds

Apple deploys Webkit, too, on a smaller number of handhelds

Amazon deploys Android, too (just without Market support), and they use Linux in their cloud offerings.

If you hate Microsoft, give in to your anger and join Oracle (there are a lot of angry JCP and OpenSolaris fans but hey, they made that Linux list, too!)

Remember those handhelds that run the Linux kernel and/or WebKit?

• Broadcom
• Atheros (are they are part of Qualcomm now? You can check out Qualcomm, part of "Qualdroid")
• Marvell

all made the top Linux contributor list, too.

I'll assume that other posters will cover the Red Hat and Novell bases.

And with the new MacOSX on ARM you'll have to buy ALL your software over again as it won't run on it, just like you had to when they switched from powerpc to x86..

No, you didn't, at least not until you upgraded to Lion.

I had a hard time believing they'd go for an iPad over a more rugged device, but the article says Special Operations Command already did so. iPads are consumer hardware. From Apple's specs:

        * Operating temperature: 32 to 95 F (0 to 35 C)
        * Nonoperating temperature: -4 to 113 F (-20 to 45 C)
        * Relative humidity: 5% to 95% noncondensing
        * Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 feet (3000 m)

Even for a cargo plane, that seems pretty limited. I know they have at least some climate control in flight, but don't they park the planes in arctic and desert environments too? Don't they need the checklists before they start the plane up? Or do they keep them running all the time and only shut down at their home base?

Apple does sell unlocked phones for $650.

The problem is that in the US, showing up with your own phone doesn't get you a discount on the service plans. You still have to sign a 2 year contract and pay the same amount as someone with the subsidized phone. Oh, and in the US, unlocked phones only work on GSM networks which leaves you with either AT&T or TMobile.

Can you provide a link to a carrier's site that confirms this?

No, but how about the phone's manufacturer: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iphone/iphone4s

Scroll down to where it says "Or get iPhone unlocked and contract-free".

Sounds to me like you didn't put ANY effort into preserving the battery.

"a lot" of effort would have involved learning what kinds of things drain the battery beforehand and then avoiding them. Apple has a web page devoted to eeking the most you can get out of your iphone battery at http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html

A minimal amount of effort would have been turning the thing off, because turning a battery powered device off to save the batteries isn't exactly a revolutionary idea.

So what exactly did "a lot of effort" entail?

Problem was that while NT was a hybrid architecture to start with, more and more things were moved from user to kernel when NT went from 3.1 to 3.5 to 4.0. As a result, unlike NEXTSTEP, NT became less portable.

It's not as if running in userland magically makes code more portable. Most of XNU and the associated kexts are portable; the non-portable bits sit in places such as subdirectories of and some of the subdirectories of the osfmk directory. And as for userland, the platform-specific bits of the "libc" part of libSystem sit in subdirectories of the top-level directory in the Libc project, and the non-portable bits of the run-time linker are #ifdeffed in files such as dyld_stub_binder.s.