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RIM Unveils New OS Based On QNX
New submitter HommeDeJava writes "Research In Motion unveiled a new operating system for its tablet and smartphones at the company's BlackBerry developer conference in San Francisco. Called BlackBerry BBX, the new OS combines features of the existing BlackBerry OS and its recently acquired real-time QNX OS. Could BBX attract software developers and spur interest from consumers?"
I last booted QNX something like 10 years ago...back then it was realtime, unix based (I think?), and relatively promising. I remember it was even more responsive than Linux (which was was more responsive than Windows) ... Anyone have experience programming for QNX? If it's "just another unix" shouldn't porting to it be straightforward?
QNX is a real-time operating system. For programmer convenience some things are unix-like. However unlike Linux and other unix implementations QNX is a *hard* real-time OS, you are guaranteed that things will happen within certain timeframes. QNX is targeting embedded environments, in particular environments that require incredible reliability - for example military and aerospace. QNX is exactly the sort of thing you use when you are building a mars rover.
Apple had a game plan back in 1997 when they got NeXT and with it, Steve Jobs. At first Steve Jobs was only supposed to be there consulting on how to integrate NeXT into Apple. What he saw was that Apple lacked more than an upgraded OS; they lacked focus and execution. Jobs convinced the board that to oust the current CEO. Now mind you, it took 4 years for Apple to incorporate NeXT technology into OS X but the overall plan was started under the former CEO Gil Amelio. I don't believe that Amelio, however, could have done it. He was better at cost cutting than long term vision.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Sounds incredibly unlikely, considering it's ported to ARM, MIPS, PPC, i386, etc.