Nokia N900 Linux Smartphone Running OS X 251
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.'"
Phones more powerful than NeXTstations! (Score:1, Informative)
I don't see why Mac OS X should run poorly on modern cell phones. After all, these phones now offer more resources than the high-end workstations that NeXTSTEP ran on in the late 1980s and early 1990s. NeXTSTEP was really snappy on that hardware.
And not all that much has changed between NeXTSTEP and Mac OS X. Anyone who used NeXTSTEP back in the day knows how remarkably little has changed since Apple took it over.
Re:Useless commentary (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Love It (Score:2, Informative)
Nokia pissed me off to no end with the N900. I was waiting for the thing, postponing any phone related purchases .... and when it comes out it turns out that it does not support the 3G system offered in Canada by Rogers (and apparently also by AT&T in the US). EDGE only. Which at the price tag the thing comes with renders the entire excercise rather pointless (and no WiFi is not an acceptable fall-back for many of us).
All I can say is: Fucketey Fuck!
Re:Love It (Score:5, Informative)
Nokia pissed me off to no end with the N900. I was waiting for the thing, postponing any phone related purchases .... and when it comes out it turns out that it does not support the 3G system offered in Canada by Rogers (and apparently also by AT&T in the US). EDGE only.
Nokia is a European company, so they use European UMTS frequency bands [wikipedia.org] (which, by the way, also happen to be used in most of the world). Blame North America for trying to be different there, not Nokia for going for the largest worldwide coverage.
In USA, you still have the option of T-Mobile, anyway.
Re:Somewhat ironic (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Phones more powerful than NeXTstations! (Score:3, Informative)
Your iPhone doesn't run OS X.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Phones more powerful than NeXTstations! (Score:4, Informative)
Yes it does.
Essentially, the iPhone runs a scaled down version of MacOS X optimized for a handheld device -- although Steve Jobs is insistent that it runs "real OS X" (Specifically, crashlogs indicate that the original iPhone ran "OS X 1.0" build number 1A543a.) -- but no iPhone models can run MacOS X applications regardless. On March 17, 2009, upon unveiling a developer's preview of the third version of the operating system, Apple started referring to it as the "iPhone OS".
http://www.everyipod.com/iphone-faq/iphone-runs-os-x-not-macos-x-cannot-run-macos-x-applications-skype-or-ipod-games.html [everyipod.com]
Try jailbreaking an iPhone -- it really is (Score:4, Informative)
If you jailbreak an iPhone, you can open a terminal window running bash. If you type "uname -a" you'll see that iPhones run Darwin (the actual OS behind OS X), just like Macintoshes.
Re:Useless commentary (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.kottke.org/98/11/my-mac-sucks [kottke.org]
Old meme is old.
Re:Phones more powerful than NeXTstations! (Score:3, Informative)
I can SSH into my cheap Linksys router. It's got all of the textmode goodies I could ever want installed. (It was modified in order to do this stuff, and by default was only a router.)
I can SSH into my iPod Touch (I don't have an iPhone). It's also got all the textmode goodies I could ever want installed. (It was modified in order to do this stuff, and by default was only an iPod.)
So, I guess: If you were trying to draw some sort of distinction between the two things somehow, then you have failed.
Re:Phones more powerful than NeXTstations! (Score:4, Informative)
Whoa! I beg to differ. Open an ssh shell to it. The underlying system is Darwin. It's the same set of core components and kernel that OSX is built from. I've done it and compiled a web server on it, complete with PHP and SSL. It's a base OSX system (think what yellow dog linux is to linux) which you can add any unix software you want to (including GCC). It's just slimmed down. From command line the functionality is identical. The system running on my phone is fully POSIX and UNIX compliant out of the box.
xxxxxxx-iPhone:~ root# uname -a . .. .fseventsd /var/mobile
Darwin xxxxxxx-iPhone 10.0.0d3 Darwin Kernel Version 10.0.0d3: Fri Sep 25 23:35:35 PDT 2009; root:xnu-1357.5.30~3/RELEASE_ARM_S5L8920X iPhone2,1 arm N88AP Darwin
xxxxxxx-iPhone:/ root# ls -la
total 42
drwxrwxr-t 15 root admin 748 Jan 31 11:46
drwxrwxr-t 15 root admin 748 Jan 31 11:46
drwx------ 2 _unknown _unknown 238 Sep 27 18:34
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 30 Oct 19 12:04 Applications
drwxrwxr-x 2 root admin 68 Sep 26 06:40 Developer
drwxrwxr-x 14 root admin 680 Nov 2 15:03 Library
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Sep 26 04:50 System
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 11 Jan 31 11:46 User ->
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 1972 Nov 2 16:26 bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root admin 68 Oct 19 12:03 boot
drwxrwxr-t 2 root admin 68 Sep 26 02:04 cores
dr-xr-xr-x 3 root wheel 1310 Jan 31 11:46 dev
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 11 Sep 27 18:36 etc -> private/etc
drwxr-xr-x 2 root admin 68 Oct 19 12:03 lib
drwxr-xr-x 2 root admin 68 Oct 19 12:03 mnt
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 136 Oct 19 11:53 private
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 1530 Nov 2 16:26 sbin
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 15 Sep 27 18:36 tmp -> private/var/tmp
drwxr-xr-x 6 root wheel 306 Oct 19 12:04 usr
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 11 Sep 27 18:36 var -> private/var
xxxxxxx=myname
---about darwin---
Darwin is an open source POSIX-compliant computer operating system released by Apple Inc. in 2000. It is composed of code developed by Apple, as well as code derived from NeXTSTEP, BSD, and other free software projects.
Darwin forms the core set of components upon which Mac OS X, Apple TV, and iPhone OS are based. It is compatible with the Single UNIX Specification version 3 (SUSv3) and POSIX UNIX applications and utilities.[2][3]
---end about darwin---
And before you ask, yes I changed the root password when I installed sshd so my phone won't get h4X0red. I did it the day I installed it, not when the "sploit" was released.
As well the kernel version is still stamped 2.1 even though I'm on version 3.1.2. Get on the stick Apple!
To use your own analogy, it's still a chevy drive train, but with a 4 cylinder engine and a different body. It's just a different processor with less memory so you can't fit the entirety of OSX on it, and it's got a different UI.
It has chevy pistons, chevy crank, chevy piston rings, water pump, crank, bearings, and even has AC Delco spark plugs. You also drive it from point A to point B, it has a gas pedal, brake, transmission control and steering wheel, so the most important functionality is there.
The interface is different but it's still a Darwin unix system under the hood, same as OSX. Can it go as fast as a Mac? No. Duh? It fits in the palm of your hand.
You could, given enough hardware resources, compile the mac interface on this OSX but I don't think the mac interface supports the screen resolution comfortably and the hardware requirements are a bit steep. They designed a smartphone interface purpose built to do what the iPhone does and run fast on ARM hardware.
However, the GUI does not equal the operating system ;-)
It's just a GUI. You are right that the _GUI_ functionality is not close to the same. Peel the GUI off and they are nearly i
Re:Phones more powerful than NeXTstations! (Score:3, Informative)