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Apple's Next Hit Could Be a Microsoft Surface Pro Clone
theodp writes "Good artists copy, great artists steal," Steve Jobs used to say. Having launched a perfectly-timed attack against Samsung and phablets with its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, Leonid Bershidsky suggests that the next big thing from Apple will be a tablet-laptop a la Microsoft's Surface Pro 3. "Before yesterday's Apple [iPad] event," writes Bershidsky, "rumors were strong of an upcoming giant iPad, to be called iPad Pro or iPad Plus. There were even leaked pictures of a device with a 12.9-inch screen, bigger than the Surface Pro's 12-inch one. It didn't come this time, but it will. I've been expecting a touch-screen Apple laptop for a few years now, and keep being wrong.
iOS was not a development of the iPod firmware. That was an embedded OS called Pixo. iOS is Unix.
After the iPhone Apple released an iPhone-with-the-phone, and called it the iPod touch. But that wasn't simply a music player.
The original surface (surface 1.0) was renamed pixelsense around the time they launched the tablets to avoid confusion. is that what you want?
If so, available on general sale eg http://www.misco.co.uk/product/Q505997/Samsung-SUR40-with-Microsoft-PixelSense-Legs-Not-Included
Otherwise, if you're saying you saw large demo versions of the surface (new) for coffee table use, I'm not sure - though HP, Lenovo etc do 'portable' large screen tablet/desktop hybrids that may fit. Though, as I say, never seen an MS version.
iOS is in no way based on Linux. It's based on UNIX.
Since you want to nitpick, NO. You're wrong. It's based on BSD, which is neither Linux or UNIX.
But all of them (Linux, UNIX, BSD) are posix-compliant, which is what many people mean these days when they say Linux, even if it's technically incorrect.
Spinning hard drives for mobile devices have been around for many years.
And.... thank god they're pretty much non-existant anymore.
It's based on Mach, which is neither Linux nor BSD.
No, Apple's version of Darwin is very definitely based on BSD. Apple says so, Wikipedia says so, and you can see original BSD copyright notices in some command-line applications.
Apple didn't develop it. They bought NeXT, which had adapted it from Mach.
NeXT was a l--o--n--g time ago, man. Things have changed since.
iOS is POSIX compliant? Don't be silly. There are whole chunks of the API not implemented. Sure, there are add-ons to make MacOS POSIX compliant. Just like there are add-ons for Windows NT.
Where did you learn to read? I wrote that BSD, Linux, and UNIX are posix-compliant. I did NOT write that iOS, which is based on BSD, was posix-compliant. That is a different thing entirely.
iOS is based on OS X, which is a proper UNIX.
As I stated elsewhere on this page, no, iOS is based on BSD. OS X is also based on BSD, but that doesn't mean iOS is based on OS X.
There are many similarities, but for obvious reasons, they had to strip a lot out in iOS to make it practical for mobile hardware.
And no, BSD isn't UNIX, nor is OS X. They are posix-compliant operating systems, like Linux, AUX, and HP UX. None of them are actually UNIX anymore. All split from actual UNIX long ago. But they are all "unix-like" operating systems.
Samsung and others have been making lots of money off bigger phones.
You might want to review that statement, Apple appears to be cleaning house on the money side, taking 87% of the profit in the market.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I highly recommend you stop making comments on a subject you know nothing about.
Apple has been getting UNIX 03 certification since 10.5 (Leopard). The recent 10.10 (Yosemite) release received certification on September 24, 2014.
http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/apple.htm
Microsoft's "Surface" is just the latest round of their "tablet PC" debacle, which had been a continuous failure for over a decade before the iPad was introduced. iPad succeeded because Apple didn't try to shoehorn a desktop OS into a device where it clearly didn't fit.
To suggest that Apple should abandon a successful approach for a failed approach demonstrates that the author should find a different line of work, he's obviously out of his depth writing about the computer industry.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."