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iPods Don't Run OS X
Redrum writes "Everyone thinks that Apple's iPod runs an OS called Pixo, and that the iPhone ushered in a brand new epoch based on OS X. That myth has been busted: the iPod runs Apple's own Mach/BSD kernel, and Pixo is only used as a graphics layer. Daniel Eran outlines the story behind Pixo and what OS X means for Apple. It's no joke; the story was confirmed by Tim Monroe, a member of Apple's QuickTime engineering team, as is easy to verify yourself." Update: 07/15 19:48 GMT by KD : Turns out to be an April Fools joke.
my iPod runs linux.
Bite my shiny metal ass.
This is an April Fool's Joke, and an old one too: http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/dev eloping-quicktime-apps-for-ipod/
Because it was a joke, and SNOJOB is the coolest name the joke writer could think of, plus rot-13d SNOBOL is just so stupid it should be an obvious joke.
Oh dear, it turns out the iPod is running Mac OS X--with a Mach kernel and a Unix userland--and has been for years.
Nonsense.
What this listing shows is not an iPod running "Mac OS X". It shows an iPod that may be running "a Mach-based version of UNIX", presumably a variant of Darwin. Darwin is not OS X. This would be like finding a copy of "vmlinuz" in an embedded device and claiming it's running Ubuntu.
Come on... undocumented ls -af for "all files". That should of thrown all sorts of bs flags.
Apple's OS X is actually doing what Microsoft promised but failed to do over a decade of WinCE development.
Now, let me say up front that my own experience with Windows CE based devices has not been a bed of roses, but then neither has my experience with desktop Windows... which is a market success despite failing to deliver what Microsoft promised. Not only is Pocket PC, now known as Windows Mobile, used in an awful lot of devices... but it's even penetrated the stronghold of its arch-rival Palm. Yes, Palm created that situation by dropping the ball around 2002, but Palm tried their own embedded UNIX as well as their inevitably doomed BeOS spinoff and ended up deciding to embrace the "failed" Windows CE anyway.
In addition, there's a plethora of applications for it, something that Apple shows no interest in even making possible. No, supporting fancy web-based applets is not at all comparable to running actual local applications... particularly when it's rather likely those "iPhone apps" will happily run on Pocket PC as well: if not now, just as soon as someone ports Webcore to it.
And that's just *one* application of Windows CE. You can't license Apple's ARM port of Darwin or any of the rest of the software in the iPod or iPhone, like you can Windows CE. There's no developer's kit, no porting kit, no product.
So not only is Windows CE not a failure, it's not even the same kind of product as Apple's closed fork of OS X on the iPhone or their closed fork of Darwin on the iPod. Most of what Microsoft promised, Apple's declining to even offer. And Microsoft has done a surprisingly good job with Windows CE... in many ways it's a far better and more secure product than desktop Windows.
Does it make money for Microsoft? Who cares, other than Microsoft stockholders? Does it do what Microsoft promised? Absolutely.
Mach doesn't support much of anything until you add BSD.
The kernel contains a large chunk of the BSD kernel. Take BSD, rip out the memory management and scheduler, graft it onto a supposed microkernel that long outgrew "micro", and there you have it.
It's a trainwreak of a kernel, proving that the kernel alone doesn't make the OS.
Mach is a microkernel, not a kernel. Classically, you had to run a OS "personality" on top of Mach to get a full set of kernel features (things like a filesystem, processes, and users are not found in Mach). Back when Mach was a hot topic in the mid 90s, there were POSIX and OS/2 personalities being developed.
OS/X's XNU kernel uses a combination of the Mach microkernel with the BSD kernel - they're co-equal, not a BSD "personality" on top of Mach.
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Roughlydrafted is nothing more than drivel made to look like news by and for apple fanboys. It's truly funny that this apple fanboy is sourcing an April Fools joke.
Nah, the kernel is not called OS X, it's not called Mach/BSD, and it's not called Darwin. The kernel is called Xnu.
Xnu -- The Apple Open Source kernel, a combination of BSD, Mach, and IOKit.
Darwin -- the Xnu kernel and BSD userland binaries and libraries. Basically the Open Source parts of OS X. Darwin is bundled as a full Unix OS.
OS X -- Darwin + Aqua, Finder, Quartz, Quicktime, Cocoa, and the bundled graphical tools and apps.
The article would more rightly state that the iPods have always run the Xnu kernel.
You know how the CIA uses reverse-engineered alien technology to scan your brain, right? Spread frequency directional RF in the low 8GHz range at between 1400 and 1750w. When exposed to the field, your neurons phase-lock to some minor harmonic when they fire. Then they just sit back and listen to all your remaining brain cells chirp away.
How the FBI 'hacks' your computer isn't much different, but it's a lot easier, and shares some of the same gear. Instead of using the RF field to modulate your neurons, they use it to induce a weak localized EM field in the computer and then read back the disturbances in that field from the harmonic corresponding to the sub-gigahertz bus of the machine into a low-cost simulator.
The great news is you don't really have to do anything out of the ordinary to counter the attack. You already have plenty of tin-foil on hand from making your hat. (They wouldn't be scanning your machine if they could scan your brain directly, after all.)
What you need to do is enclose your computer, peripherals, and cables with two layers of foil, shiny side out. (It increases the relative capacitance of the foil layer.) Be especially sure to cover any openings in the case, like fans and vent holes. I recommend a little Super Glue here and there in trouble areas such as the keyboard, where typing through the layer of foil tends to deform it.
The monitor is best dealt with by making a hood out of cardboard, furring strip and foil. Glue a couple of furring strips 8-10 inches longer than your head is away from the monitor to the top of it, and then build a cardboard box around both the monitor and your head, using the furring strips as support. Some people have reported better results ridding themselves of the van parked across the street by cladding both sides of the cardboard with two sheets of tin-foil. The reasoning is that the induced EM field in the monitor tends to be stronger. I'm doubtful of the claim, but it can't hurt!
The hole at the bottom for your head can be left comfortably large to fit your skull through supposedly. I typically build a little 'skirt' out of strips of foil long enough to cover down past my shoulders and then staple them to the bottom of the hood just to be sure though.
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Slashdot - April Fools everyday, just to appeal to the fanbois that now control it.
/. is still less biased sadly.
How much lower can your editorial responsibilities go?
This week is just ridiculous, and makes the inquirer seem credible, although
Quit using your username as your password. Also, quit using the word "password" as your password. Finally, stop using 12345.
Yours,
The FBI
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Funny gets you no karma, Informative does, so some mods will mod informative to give the post a boost in ranking AND karma to the poster.
The logic in "funny" not giving karma is based on the idea that it is easier to be funny than to be smart, and they want to promote "smart" more than "funny", which makes sense.
Technically, you can write a post, get it modded +5 Funny and lose karma points. Example: your post gets modded up and down as funny and offtopic. 8 mods Funny, 3 mods Offtopic = -3 Karma. Modding Insightful, Interesting, etc. offsets that.
You should read the faq. All of it. That is where you will learn how a post can technically be modded as +5 Flamebait. (I have seen it) -1 Flamebait and +6 Underrated = +5 Flamebait.
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I worked with Pixo a bit back in the late 90's. Their OS was largely meant to run on top of another OS, so why people would think ipods were running pixo OS standalone is beyond me. Pixo was a great UI OS btw and they had lots of talented engineers. They mostly went work for apple after pixo imploded. :)
Marking it informative also acts as both a meta joke and may be correct in the off chance that the poster was serious.
I always try to moderate as if the poster was being dead serious. Things are much more surreal that way.
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All the SNOBOL source code is rot-13'd, so when it compiles, the executable cannot be reverse-engineered. It's mathematically impossible! All the same, a kernel module subjects the binary file itself to double-rot-13 encryption, for extra security.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Ok, because someone modified Linux to remove the MMU requirement means that Darwin couldn't be modified to work on hardware without an MMU? I'm so lost as to how that makes sense as a logical argument. But that's ok, don't RTFA just mod up the guy who isn't making sense.
Please RTFA people. It talks about how it isn't the related April fools joke and provides concrete evidence. It doesn't claim that it *IS* Darwin but that you can see evidence of the Mach/OS kernel and bits of userland. Proof is provided. Proof that wasn't sourced from a joke.
I have worked on embedded systems with microkernels (QNX) and this all seems perfectly reasonable. You can run a UNIX app in 4 megs with a microkernel and userland. And with the number of iPods Apple is selling you can understand why they would want to own the OS it was running in house.
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Note the alleged output of ls -af (= ls --april --fool...):
Eran cheerfully edited Apr to Jul -- buying this hook, line and sinker, and now he whines that he was joking and misunderstood...
XNU is the Darwin kernel. It's not a "whack hybrid" of anything, it's a pretty standard Mach single-server implementation, using a FreeBSD derivative instead of the original 4.3 BSD kernel as the server. It's not that much different from 4.4-Lites or Tru64 or any other contempory Mach-based kernel.
The file listing presented in the Roughly Drafted included several directories that implied the presence of Darwin userland components... applications and utilities... as well as the kernel. I suppose all those directories could have been empty, but I don't think that's likely.