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Nokia N900 Linux Smartphone Running OS X
Rovaani writes "There is a video floating around of a Nokia N900 smartphone running the full desktop Mac OS X 10.3. From the author, Tomi Nikkanen: 'I believe this makes the N900 the first smartphone ever to run a full version of Mac OS X (at any speed, slow or otherwise). As you can see from the heavily edited video, it took almost 2 hours to reach the "About my Mac..." window. Keep your eye on the time display as that will give you an impression of just how uselessly slow it is.'"
What's with the "uselessly slow" commentary. The guy did it just to prove it could be done, which is pretty cool. I don't think he ever made any assertion that it would be a usable OS alternative for the N900...
Maybe uselessly slow, yes, but this is the kind of tinkering that any device should allow if it is to be called a computer.
There's a direct link to a free information society from these kinds of experiments -- something that is very much endangered by the current trend towards unmodifiable devices and appifization.
I find it somewhat ironic that iPhone's competitor can run Apple's OS and iPhone/iPad most probably will never be able to run Mac OS.
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
Come on, if your going to do worthless things why not go for the whole enchilada?
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
Now if I could just get Windows Vista booting on my TI-82!
I hate to sound like the eternal nuthugger, but I'm having so much fun with my N900. Just threw on the cifs-mounting stuff, and that combined (alternated, really) with sshfs means I can take my entire music collection wherever I go. 1.5TB, ripped to flac on a server in my basement, so why would I want to have to choose what albums I take with me to the gym or work or wherever? Just mount the thing and play. Plus, there's an FM transmitter built-in, so I can just plunk it down next to (~15 feet) a radio, and fire it up.
:)
The "it's so slow" comments are kind of silly. This is obviously a POC, and a pretty nice one. Any phone that can run Asterisk, Apache, nmap and OSX is cool in my book.
Haida Manga
OsX native to the Arm architecture would probably be an order of magnitude or more faster Just wonder, only 12 minutes to "About this Mac"... sweet!
My photography
. . . now get *that* running on your Nokia N900 . . . I see your enchilada and raise you a chimichanga . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Though this isn't directly related to running OSX on the n900, I just wanted to add that.. I'm not surprised.
A while back I posted a story that was rejected, asking if any fellow /.'ers had any experience with the n900 from a Unix admin's perspective. To me it seemed like a dream-come-true device: high-res screen, fast CPU, lots of ram... and most importantly, running Debian.
I had to find out, so I bought one about 3 weeks ago. It really, truly is a dream-come-true device.
I swear I'm not affiliated with Nokia in any way; I'm a Unix admin for a largish web firm. But if anyone else is wondering, yes it runs a Debian-derived OS. Yes, you can SSH into it as root, over 3G/GPRS, even if the phone is "off." Yes, crond works. Yes it runs native X11 and you can run your X11 apps (ie. directory manager, xterms, vncviewer, pidgin, openoffice/koffice, etc). Yes it's stable. The keyboard is usable, the UI is quick, and task switching is a breeze. The filesystem layout is mostly sensible, and you can apt-get dist-upgrade to get updates directly from Nokia (and other repositories)!
That blew me away when I first saw it so let me say it again: Nokia is using apt to send updates OTA to the phone! Proper version tagging and dependency management, on a phone!
It doesn't suspend like the crappy Zaurus did... when you hit the power switch, it shuts off the screen and (I believe) encourages the processor to drop to a very slow cycle rate (unless something heavy is running). So your apps continue to run. Battery life is ~16-24h with a constant GSM data/wifi connection, so you must charge every night. But it's so worth it.
Everything about it is done the way this 15-year Linux/Solaris admin thinks it should be done.
So, back (slightly) on-topic.. it doesn't surprise me in the least that they got OSX to boot under an emulator. The n900 is quite literally a pocket Debian workstation that happens to have a GSM radio onboard.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
> Each of those versions would require separate FCC approval.
Not quote. There's no technical reason why a single phone approved by the FCC couldn't be used on both Sprint and Verizon, or on AT&T and T-Mobile... it's mainly the carriers' fault.
Basically, the FCC requires any phone with unique hardware and radio firmware to be tested & approved. Sprint won't allow its customers to use Verizon-branded phones, and Verizon won't sell phones that aren't built to be "Uniquely Verizon". Thus, it would almost be beyond pointless for a manufacturer to pay to get FCC approval for a generic CDMA phone, because Sprint wouldn't allow it to be used, and Verizon wouldn't buy a million of them to resell to its customers.
The AT&T/T-Mobile situation is a little blurrier. It appears that right now, AT&T has a company policy of refusing to sell phones capable of 1700/2100 UMTS, and T-Mobile has a company policy of refusing to sell phones capable of 850MHz UMTS. Neither company will actually stop a customer from buying one himself and sticking the SIM card into it, but the market (right now) for unsubsidized handsets in the US is somewhere between "barely relevant" and "all but nonexistent". As a practical matter, there are exactly two American customers that manufacturers like HTC, Samsung, Nokia, and Motorola care about: AT&T and T-Mobile.
Need more proof of corporate policy dictating handset frequency availability? Watch the FCC submissions logs. I can almost guarantee that there will be two distinct versions of the iPhone 4 submitted to the FCC -- one that does 850MHz and 1900/2100 UMTS, and one that does 1700/2100 and 1900/2100. What's really sad is that they'll both probably have the same hardware, and differ only in their radio firmware. It'll suck for everyone... Europeans will have to decide whether they'd rather roam on AT&T or T-Mobile when they visit the US, and American iPhones will effectively be locked to AT&T or T-Mobile -- at least, for anyone buying one to use in the US with 3G data.
I agree. The N900 is pretty much the ideal 'phone for the Slashdot crowd. I was pretty surprised that there was not more commentary on the N900 here - it is more open than the Nexus One or the Milestone, with more features than you can shake a stick at.