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The author is a little loosey-goosey with some strong claims, eg that Jobs saying the iPhone ran OS X was a lie. How truthful that was at the time seems pretty

The author is a little loosey-goosey with some strong claims, eg that Jobs saying the iPhone ran OS X was a lie. How truthful that was at the time seems pretty unknowable from the outside in 2021, given that the iPhone OS has been rebranded at least twice since, and has had ample time not just to diverge but to reinfluence macOS née OS X. A somewhat unlikely best case is this was an incomplete truth—ie the original iPhone OS was stock OS X with only additive stuff at the app level to support iPhone use cases. Unlikely because it’s hard to imagine the core OS being totally able to support that without modification. At worst, the fib was an overgeneralization of Darwin, but I think this is unsupportable. There’s too much in common between the OSes even today, and anyone with an iPad and a keyboard can discover just how much macOS is still present even if it’s not visible. Or anyone with a Mac can fire up iOS Simulator and do the same. More likely it was shorthand for saying that what eventually became iOS was a mainline part of the core OS project, whatever its divergence from there—ie it shared everything or nearly everything below WindowServer, and quite a lot of what sits above WS, and divergence was primarily oriented around hardware and UX. The former has since mostly converged, and the latter has been gradually percolating up to the mainline OS. At the time, the iPhone was a gamble and likely to be seen as a reckless one. Apple had failed to deliver on several prior OS efforts; signaling that this was building on their success was important. Now iOS is their main profit center, and investments in old guard Macs really have to shine. Most of that shine has been making Macs more like the iPhone. I think a more complete convergence is pretty likely, but I think it’s also likely to be more radical than “put macOS on iPads you cowards”: they’ll merge macOS into main. Not in the sense of haplessly shoving iOS UX onto Macs, but in the sense that iOS is fundamentally the core OS now and it’s macOS that’s diverged from that. Whatever the unification looks like, it’ll go that direction.

Maursault 4y ago
iOS was actually called OS X at the time. It was before they changed the name to iOS. But it was never called Mac OS X, which was the name of Apple's OS in 2007, which changed to just OS X around the time of the rebranding to iOS.
- snazz 4y ago
  It didn't have a name, just "a version of OS X", then it was called iPhone OS when they released the SDK and the App Store.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    It was iPhoneOS at launch, but prior to that it was formally known as "OS X."
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  This was also part of how they debranded Mac OS X, which took some time but this is how it began. But it was understood clearly then that they were the ~same OS, and “OS X” was in common usage by Apple including by Jobs at the time too
- bdcravens 4y ago
  First three versions were called iPhone OS. Version 4 was when name was changed to iOS.
jrmg 4y ago
The author is a little loosey-goosey with some strong claims, eg that Jobs saying the iPhone ran OS X was a lie. I noticed this too. This kind of hyperbolic assumption of bad faith for small inconsistencies seems to be fashionable at the moment. It often seems like it might be a manufactured assumption (although perhaps that’s me starting to fall into the same pattern…) It really makes me sad (and worried for public discourse) every time I see something like it.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  I used “loosey-goosey” for a reason. I really don’t think it was meant in bad faith. I think it was probably just lack of familiarity with the history, and sloppy hyperbole. My correction is intended more as gap filling than calling out the article’s claim. People make mistakes! It’s okay, it’s probably better for public discourse to give them some grace unless it’s egregious or clearly intentional.
  - jrmg 4y ago
    it’s probably better for public discourse to give them some grace unless it’s egregious or clearly intentional That’s kind of what I’m saying too. The difference here, and reason I feel okay calling it out, is that it is itself an example of not doing that.
    - eyelidlessness 4y ago
      I don’t think it is! I think the language overshot what they meant to say, and I don’t think it was egregious. My whole point was to add historical context, partly because that was lacking but mostly because the mistake was totally understandable without it. I don’t think the article meant to cast aspersions on anyone, or if it did it meant it in a very lighthearted manner with not much commitment to those aspersions. Correcting that with also a light heart is okay too.
      - jrmg 4y ago
        Then perhaps the part of your original post I responded to is not in fact about the thing I thought it was. I’m definitely with you that we should not be quick to assume malice or bad faith in general. The casual normalization of using heavy words like ‘lie’ - which assume malice on the part of others - is exactly the thing I’m worried by though. It’s almost worse if it was unintentional. It encourages (popularizes?) a adversarial mode of thought that I don’t think should be the default.
flohofwoe 4y ago
> eg that Jobs saying the iPhone ran OS X was a lie Yeah that made me roll eyes too. From a coder's point of view, iOS is macOS with just a few very small differences. E.g. I can build Metal-based apps that share 99% of the source code between their macOS and iOS versions. Just a small ifdef'ed code block here and there is all that's needed. As for the UI layer, this was a right decision to start from scratch, since laptops and touch devices need a very different UI philosophy (I wish that the current macOS and iOS teams would better understand this - trying to merge the two UI philosophies will only result in pain and suffering for all users, as Windows had already shown - this doesn't mean that there couldn't be a very high level UI framework which is abstract enough to map the same UI declaration to two vastly different UIs though).

Maursault 4y ago

iOS was actually called OS X at the time. It was before they changed the name to iOS. But it was never called Mac OS X, which was the name of Apple's OS in 2007, which changed to just OS X around the time of the rebranding to iOS.

snazz 4y ago
It didn't have a name, just "a version of OS X", then it was called iPhone OS when they released the SDK and the App Store.
- Maursault 4y ago
  It was iPhoneOS at launch, but prior to that it was formally known as "OS X."
eyelidlessness 4y ago
This was also part of how they debranded Mac OS X, which took some time but this is how it began. But it was understood clearly then that they were the ~same OS, and “OS X” was in common usage by Apple including by Jobs at the time too
bdcravens 4y ago
First three versions were called iPhone OS. Version 4 was when name was changed to iOS.

jrmg 4y ago

The author is a little loosey-goosey with some strong claims, eg that Jobs saying the iPhone ran OS X was a lie. I noticed this too. This kind of hyperbolic assumption of bad faith for small inconsistencies seems to be fashionable at the moment. It often seems like it might be a manufactured assumption (although perhaps that’s me starting to fall into the same pattern…) It really makes me sad (and worried for public discourse) every time I see something like it.

eyelidlessness 4y ago
I used “loosey-goosey” for a reason. I really don’t think it was meant in bad faith. I think it was probably just lack of familiarity with the history, and sloppy hyperbole. My correction is intended more as gap filling than calling out the article’s claim. People make mistakes! It’s okay, it’s probably better for public discourse to give them some grace unless it’s egregious or clearly intentional.
- jrmg 4y ago
  it’s probably better for public discourse to give them some grace unless it’s egregious or clearly intentional That’s kind of what I’m saying too. The difference here, and reason I feel okay calling it out, is that it is itself an example of not doing that.
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    I don’t think it is! I think the language overshot what they meant to say, and I don’t think it was egregious. My whole point was to add historical context, partly because that was lacking but mostly because the mistake was totally understandable without it. I don’t think the article meant to cast aspersions on anyone, or if it did it meant it in a very lighthearted manner with not much commitment to those aspersions. Correcting that with also a light heart is okay too.
    - jrmg 4y ago
      Then perhaps the part of your original post I responded to is not in fact about the thing I thought it was. I’m definitely with you that we should not be quick to assume malice or bad faith in general. The casual normalization of using heavy words like ‘lie’ - which assume malice on the part of others - is exactly the thing I’m worried by though. It’s almost worse if it was unintentional. It encourages (popularizes?) a adversarial mode of thought that I don’t think should be the default.

flohofwoe 4y ago

> eg that Jobs saying the iPhone ran OS X was a lie Yeah that made me roll eyes too. From a coder's point of view, iOS is macOS with just a few very small differences. E.g. I can build Metal-based apps that share 99% of the source code between their macOS and iOS versions. Just a small ifdef'ed code block here and there is all that's needed. As for the UI layer, this was a right decision to start from scratch, since laptops and touch devices need a very different UI philosophy (I wish that the current macOS and iOS teams would better understand this - trying to merge the two UI philosophies will only result in pain and suffering for all users, as Windows had already shown - this doesn't mean that there couldn't be a very high level UI framework which is abstract enough to map the same UI declaration to two vastly different UIs though).