The OS X iPod is the iPhone! Pixo, ARM, and the Mac OS

Some people wonder if a new batch of iPods will be like the iPhone. The answer is yes. Some people think the iPod is simple. It is not. This is my opinion.

[Warning: this article has been greatly simplified [for comic effect] for an audience of page skimmers. If you would prefer to read a more [excessively] complex article that challenges and respects your thinking ability, please follow THIS LINK.]

The iPod Uses Two ARM Computer Chips Inside of It.

John Gruber writes the Daring Fireball. In January, he said Mac OS X wasn’t the same as OS X in the iPhone.

He said Apple stopped using ARM chips when it stopped making the Newton in 1998. He said Apple was dumb for selling its ARM stock, and Apple should have known it would use ARM ten years later in the iPhone. He was wrong, because Apple used the ARM processor in the iPod since 2001. Most iPods have two.

Apple says the iPhone runs OS X, but I think this is strange. It should use its Mac brand. That’s my opinion.

[At ARM’s Length - Daring Fireball]

[Apple's New Dual Processor Game Console]

[Inside the iPhone: Mac OS X, ARM, and iPod OS X]

[Newton Lessons for Apple's New Platform]

I Wrote About the iPod.

Apple has lots of secrets. The software inside the iPod is a secret. Many people remember hearing something about Pixo in the iPod.

Apple keeps its secrets. It might have secrets about the iPod.

We assume things about Pixo that isn’t really true.

Pixo Is Not the Only Software in the iPod.

Apple keeps secrets. It says nothing about Pixo or the iPod so we have to guess.

•Some iPods say they have Pixo software inside.
•The Pixo company was started by Apple employees, like Paul Mercer. Some worked on Apple’s Newton.
•In 2004, a newspaper said Pixo helped Apple write an operating system for the iPod.
•A company said a man who worked for it made software at Pixo for the Apple iPod.

People say Pixo made the whole iPod! Nobody knew for sure. It was a secret. People talked about the iPod’s battery instead because it is easy to complain and hard to say interesting things.

[Little-known startup was behind iPod's easy-to-use interface - SF Chronicle]

Everybody Gives Pixo Credit for the iPod.

People who don’t like Apple say Pixo made the whole iPod. Some blogger said this.

Another guy in a newspaper said Apple couldn’t do the iPod, so it made Pixo do it.

He didn’t know for sure. It was just his opinion. He was happy to be in the newspaper.

Pixo never made anything else. Other companies didn’t make anything like the iPod either, even companies that used Pixo software.

Sun bought the Pixo company for another reason. Pixo is gone now.

The man who started Pixo went to Samsung and made a product you never heard about. This is a picture of it. It is called the Z5. It looks like an ugly box from 1984.

Microsoft made a contract with Samsung. Later Microsoft made the Zune and screwed Samsung because it wanted to make all the money. Microsoft failed anyway.

Palm can’t make anything either, so they hired the Pixo man to try to make a phone like the Apple iPhone. They are scared.

Apple made lots of different iPods that people liked. Maybe Apple helped make the iPod good, and not just Pixo.

[He Helped Build the iPod; Now He Has Built a Rival - New York Times]

iPod and Pixo.

Apple needed more than Pixo to make the iPod. They added their own software, too. Here is a picture.

A man told a joke a lot time ago. He said the iPod used Apple’s Mach kernel. It would look like this:

-rwxrwxrwx  1 dan     unknown  2872 Jul 12 13:55 Prefs

-rwxrwxrwx  1 dan     unknown   413 Jul 12 05:55 SysInfo

drwxr-xr-x  5 root    wheel     190 Jul 12 08:33 bin

drwxrwxrwt  6 root    wheel     204 Jan 24  2003 cores

dr-xr-xr-x  2 root    wheel     512 Jul  6 13:38 dev

lrwxrwxr-t  1 root    admin      11 Jul  6 13:38 etc 

-r--r--r--  1 root    admin  709440 Jul  6 13:38 mach.sym

-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 744576 Jul 1 15:21 mach_krn

This looks like the iPod has Mac OS X! This would really upset some people who don’t like Apple.

There were lots of jokes about Mac OS X on the iPod. Some were April Fools. Some were just for people who use Digg to find the same jokes over and over. The story about Mach was one of these jokes about the iPod.

[Install and run OS X on an iPod - macosxhints]

The iPod Joke About Mac OS X.

Mac OS X can’t run on the iPod because it does not have very much memory. It only has 32 or 64 MB. Mac OS X needs too much memory to fit. Apple used Pixo because it doesn’t need as much memory.

The new iPhone has enough memory to run Mac OS X. It has 128 MB and 700 MB of storage.

The man who runs Apple says the iPhone is the best iPod ever. It is not just a phone with songs. It is like the iPod because it has an ARM chip inside. It is like the Mac because it has Mac OS X, too.

The iPod joke was told by Tim Monroe, who worked at Apple. Layne Lee sent it to me. It was a joke.

Monroe said the iPod used a computer language called SNOJOB. He said you could make your own iPod programs. It was a joke.

A snowjob can be an analogy for a joker. When you say things that are not true, and it adds up like snow and covers the truth, it is called a snowjob. This was part of Monroe’s joke.

[Snow Day - MacTech]

[Leopard, Vista and the iPhone OS X Architecture]

[iPhone OS X Architecture: the Mach Kernel and RAM]

[iPhone OS X Architecture: Disk, Shell, and Password Security]

[iPhone OS X Architecture: the BSD Unix Userland]

[iPhone OS X Architecture: Cocoa Frameworks and Mobile Mac Apps]

The iPhone Does Run OS X.

Apple sold lots of iPods! But nobody used SNOJOB to make iPod software. That’s because it was fake and not real. It was a joke. This is kind of funny.

Apple really never made any way to write iPod programs. Apple just wanted to sell iPods. Apple wants to sell iPhones, too. It thinks it can do it the same way as the iPod.

The iPhone can do lots of things. This makes people want to write programs for it. People who don’t like Apple say companies will not like the iPhone. But companies are making iPhone software with web pages! Other people will try to write iPhone software without Apple helping them.

Some people even want use the iPhone like a fancy iPod to browse the web and listen to music.

[Unlocking the iPhone: The GSM SIM and Activation]

Apple Has OS X And It Will Make Money!

The iPhone is better than most other phones. It uses OS X. Apple can use OS X in other things to make them better too.

Many people are interested in this. They want to make money, too.

Apple did a good job making Mac OS X. Microsoft did a bad job trying to make Microsoft Vista. It took many years and then nobody cared.

The OS X in the iPhone is better than Microsoft’s program. WinCE is ten years old and it is still not good.

Microsoft said it would make good cars and small computers with WinCE. It was wrong. I think Apple can! That is my opinion. I like Apple. I think they do a good job. I do not hide what I think to trick people.

Lots of people lined up to buy the iPhone. There is a big market. Apple will make lots of money.

That is not a joke.

[The Spectacular Failure of WinCE and Windows Mobile]

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