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Part of me wishes that Apple would license out iOS and macOS; and the chips they run on; for the specific purposes of embedded and industrial development. A Ma

Part of me wishes that Apple would license out iOS and macOS; and the chips they run on; for the specific purposes of embedded and industrial development. A MacBook, as good as it is for Office work, simply is not suitable on the construction site. If macOS was, say, licensed to Panasonic for their Toughbook line and it was only available to commercial customers, that would be a better arrangement. Or, another example: iOS is fantastic, but trying to reconfigure an iPad might not be as good as just building a customized PoS system with iOS embedded. As long as these customized devices are for commercial sale only (and thus don't damage Apple's customer reputation)... why not? Heck, if I'm really dreaming... a stripped-down iOS specifically for IoT devices could be a huge, huge market. Even if Apple only sold chips 5 generations out of date (like the A12), it would be more than enough to provide a smooth, fast, easily updatable, easy to develop for, theoretically low cost platform for smart devices.

alphabettsy 3y ago
Doesn’t this break most of the things that are unique to Apple?
- ender341341 3y ago
  Not entirely, It'd still be macOS/iPad OS and the accompanying hardware, but say for the suggested toughbook-like you still get the useful ergonomics of apple's software but in a ruggedized form factor in a market segment that has been stuck with a few specific products because of specific requirements. I don't think they're suggesting go full on wintel with every major computer manufacturer having a free for all making a same but slightly different styling and slightly different quality.
  - solardev 3y ago
    Sounds like that'd be an opportunity for collaboration, like an Apple x Panasonic special edition Toughbook. Likely that would have significant screen and sound and heat tradeoffs though. I hope Apple doesn't license out their stuff and dilute their brand though. Didn't they already try that with Apple compatible OS 7 PCs back in the day? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone?wprov=sfla1
solardev 3y ago
I would hate to see this. That's essentially what the PC and Android markets are like, which are both full of shitty manufacturers making poorly supported throwaway hardware. The IoT market is even worse. Coming from Wintel, the vertical integration of Apple is a dream by comparison. Never had a single hour of downtime, compared to all the reformats and driver reinstalls and registry hacks and display glitches and such that I've experienced with Windows machines, even top end Razers, Lenovos, Asus, and Alienware/Dell. Android was similarly terrible until the Nexus/Pixel lines, which again have first party control. Even the Play Edition and Motorola phones had issues not worth dealing with. There's plenty of generic chips out there, and no name manufacturers making commodity garbage. Apple doesn't need to play in that market.
- DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
  > Coming from Wintel, the vertical integration of Apple is a dream by comparison You weren't around in the 1990s...
  - solardev 3y ago
    How's that? I wasn't a Mac user back then (except in school), but IBM-compatible PCs were still a headache back then. I over-applied thermal paste and misconfigured `config.sys` or set the wrong COM port baud rates more times than I can count...
    - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
      MacOS 9 was a dog's breakfast of an OS. OS X wasn't released until 2001, so until then all those Mac users were forced to run a cooperatively schedulding OS without even protected memory (!!). A typical PowerMactinosh's uptime was measured in the single-digit hours, not the weeks you'd get from NT, or months for a Unix box. ...there's no excuse for that given Apple's vertical-integration.
      - solardev 3y ago
        Ah, I can believe that. The Macs we did have at school did not impress much. We saw the sad Mac face quite a lot, and had to use the debugger often ("g finder" IIRC). I never had experience with NT until Windows XP. Did play around with MS-DOS, PC-DOS, Win 3.x and 9x, OS/2 Warp, and early Slackware though. None of those were particularly user-friendly or stable, lol, especially by today's standards. At the extreme end, I've fried a motherboard (shorted it somehow on first boot) and melted a laptop (tried to install Linux on it, apparently didn't have the fan drivers or something). Then early 3Dfx cards were also a pain to get working reliably, especially with SLI. It was just a rough time for everyone, lol. I think the only things from that era that actually worked well were my PalmPilot and Casio calculator watch :)
plumeria 3y ago
> a stripped-down iOS specifically for IoT devices could be a huge, huge market. Have you seen Zephyr? [0] [0] https://www.zephyrproject.org/ https://www.zephyrproject.org/
olliej 3y ago
I really don't udnerstand this. This is literally saying "I really wish that Apple would do that thing they did in the 90s that pretty much bankrupted the company". Apple is a hardware company, the OS is what makes it possible to use the hardware. One without the other does not make sense given that model. It's like saying "I wish Nintendo would license switch hardware and OS out to other people".
m463 3y ago
Apple did that once, and then changed their mind. I suspect they think it degrades their brand. They don't even let the owners of their iphones run their own software without asking permission.
Angostura 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing_Corporation > Heck, if I'm really dreaming... a stripped-down iOS specifically for IoT devices could be a huge, huge market. That’s effectively what runs the HomePods and AppleTV.

alphabettsy 3y ago

Doesn’t this break most of the things that are unique to Apple?

ender341341 3y ago
Not entirely, It'd still be macOS/iPad OS and the accompanying hardware, but say for the suggested toughbook-like you still get the useful ergonomics of apple's software but in a ruggedized form factor in a market segment that has been stuck with a few specific products because of specific requirements. I don't think they're suggesting go full on wintel with every major computer manufacturer having a free for all making a same but slightly different styling and slightly different quality.
- solardev 3y ago
  Sounds like that'd be an opportunity for collaboration, like an Apple x Panasonic special edition Toughbook. Likely that would have significant screen and sound and heat tradeoffs though. I hope Apple doesn't license out their stuff and dilute their brand though. Didn't they already try that with Apple compatible OS 7 PCs back in the day? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone?wprov=sfla1

solardev 3y ago

I would hate to see this. That's essentially what the PC and Android markets are like, which are both full of shitty manufacturers making poorly supported throwaway hardware. The IoT market is even worse. Coming from Wintel, the vertical integration of Apple is a dream by comparison. Never had a single hour of downtime, compared to all the reformats and driver reinstalls and registry hacks and display glitches and such that I've experienced with Windows machines, even top end Razers, Lenovos, Asus, and Alienware/Dell. Android was similarly terrible until the Nexus/Pixel lines, which again have first party control. Even the Play Edition and Motorola phones had issues not worth dealing with. There's plenty of generic chips out there, and no name manufacturers making commodity garbage. Apple doesn't need to play in that market.

DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
> Coming from Wintel, the vertical integration of Apple is a dream by comparison You weren't around in the 1990s...
- solardev 3y ago
  How's that? I wasn't a Mac user back then (except in school), but IBM-compatible PCs were still a headache back then. I over-applied thermal paste and misconfigured `config.sys` or set the wrong COM port baud rates more times than I can count...
  - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
    MacOS 9 was a dog's breakfast of an OS. OS X wasn't released until 2001, so until then all those Mac users were forced to run a cooperatively schedulding OS without even protected memory (!!). A typical PowerMactinosh's uptime was measured in the single-digit hours, not the weeks you'd get from NT, or months for a Unix box. ...there's no excuse for that given Apple's vertical-integration.
    - solardev 3y ago
      Ah, I can believe that. The Macs we did have at school did not impress much. We saw the sad Mac face quite a lot, and had to use the debugger often ("g finder" IIRC). I never had experience with NT until Windows XP. Did play around with MS-DOS, PC-DOS, Win 3.x and 9x, OS/2 Warp, and early Slackware though. None of those were particularly user-friendly or stable, lol, especially by today's standards. At the extreme end, I've fried a motherboard (shorted it somehow on first boot) and melted a laptop (tried to install Linux on it, apparently didn't have the fan drivers or something). Then early 3Dfx cards were also a pain to get working reliably, especially with SLI. It was just a rough time for everyone, lol. I think the only things from that era that actually worked well were my PalmPilot and Casio calculator watch :)

plumeria 3y ago

> a stripped-down iOS specifically for IoT devices could be a huge, huge market. Have you seen Zephyr? [0] [0] https://www.zephyrproject.org/ https://www.zephyrproject.org/

olliej 3y ago

I really don't udnerstand this. This is literally saying "I really wish that Apple would do that thing they did in the 90s that pretty much bankrupted the company". Apple is a hardware company, the OS is what makes it possible to use the hardware. One without the other does not make sense given that model. It's like saying "I wish Nintendo would license switch hardware and OS out to other people".

m463 3y ago

Apple did that once, and then changed their mind. I suspect they think it degrades their brand. They don't even let the owners of their iphones run their own software without asking permission.

Angostura 3y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing_Corporation > Heck, if I'm really dreaming... a stripped-down iOS specifically for IoT devices could be a huge, huge market. That’s effectively what runs the HomePods and AppleTV.