Developer ports iOS core to non-Apple hardware

http://winocm.com/projects/research/2013/11/22/milestone-one/

by uptown • 13 years ago

124 32 13 years ago

billyjobob• 13 years ago

On the desktop we can install OS X on non-Apple hardware to make Hackintoshes. So far this is just a kernel port with no graphics, but will it lead to installing iOS on non-Apple phones in a similar way? 'iClones'?

garretruh• 13 years ago

Hackintoshes are largely possible because it's possible to get almost the same components used in Macs on regular PCs. It might be a little more difficult to get your hands on the chips Apple uses in iPhones/iPads (not to mention cobbling them together). Not that doing so wouldn't be pretty awesome.

protomyth4• 13 years ago

No, this is Darwin which is the open source part of iOS / OS X. I would imagine iOS looks for some pretty specific set of things from the chipset it is running on and there is no "generic ARM phone".

winocm7• 13 years ago

iOS also depends on high level user/kernel components such as IOMobileFramebuffer. I am personally not interested in pursuing graphics.

bsimpson• 13 years ago

Misleading title - this is just Darwin. There doesn't appear to be anything iOS specific in this announcement.

DHowett• 13 years ago

Insofar as one could consider the kernel to be the core of an operating system, this (specifically, XNU on ARM) is the core of iOS. Having the Darwin userland atop that is simply icing on the proverbial cake.

What would you consider the core? Is it UIKit? Cocoa? libc? SpringBoard (the homescreen application)?

(Edited: s/Darwin/XNU/; thanks shibby!)

edvinbesic• 13 years ago

In the same breath Darwin is more then just iOS so do you say Mac or OSX or what?

shibby• 13 years ago

Darwin isn't the kernel, it's an OS[1]. XNU is the kernel[2].

However, this is impressive none the less.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system) [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU

ibrahima• 13 years ago

I mean, if someone ported Linux to a toaster, you wouldn't say they posted the Android core to a toaster. Userspace is what people care about when they mention any OS by name (IMO).

The title would have been equally correct if it said OS X, which tells you that the title is essentially meaningless.

fsiefken• 13 years ago

that's quite an achievement and great news! But looking at it from a more practical viewpoint; why run darwin if you can run linux on arm and phones already? Even on iOS itself, with a jailbroken phone you can ssh into the underlying OS and execute arm binaries through the shell. I can imagine it's a stepping stone towards running iOS in QEMU for running apps on your desktop or tablet, which is nice as I could run my bought Eclipse, Tigris and Tikal boardgames on my desktop. I am not sure if I'd break the EULA in that scenario.

winocm7• 13 years ago

Not every phone has a jailbreak available for it. Plus, you're still stuck with an effectively sandboxed kernel. You can't fix any bugs or implement any kernel level drivers, for example.

If I need a new IOKit driver class, I simply build the kext and use `kextload`, or I can just prelink it into the kernelcache.

protomyth4• 13 years ago

Plus, not every ARM device is a phone and there are OSes other than Linux. I hope we see som 64-bit ARM ITX sized motherboards.

monological• 13 years ago

How difficult would it be to get the userland working on top of this? Is it even possible, given the hardware differences?

sleepyK• 13 years ago

No, it's probably not possible, as iOS is coded to run on specific Apple manufactured hardware...

Even if it were possible, it would take a hellish amount of time to get working, I'm sure.

winocm7• 13 years ago

Technically, userspace already works, as in you can use a standard Darwin/BSD system root and that'll work fine.

For an iOS GUI userspace.. you'd need to implement some more kernel drivers.

clarky07• 13 years ago

Personally I'd much rather see android on iPhone hardware than the other way around. Cool project though.

ihuman• 13 years ago

If you have an iPhone 3G, you can already do this. It's not very good, though. http://www.idroidproject.org/wiki/OpeniBoot

eonil• 13 years ago

Interesting trial.

lloeki• 13 years ago

I'm always happy to see open work happening on Darwin. I wish I could easily install an open Darwin OS as viable as say, ArchLinux alongside OSX, so that it maintains the same benefits such as energy usage, and dtrace, and whatnot. My dream: a BSD/Darwin with a lightweight accelerated framebuffer compositor such as Wayland.

winocm7• 13 years ago

I wish more people worked on Darwin based OSes.

Developer ports iOS core to non-Apple hardware

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