In his keynote, Steve Jobs stated that the iPhone would be running OS X. That’s great and all, but what exactly does Mr. Jobs mean when he says OS X? Certainly, he couldn’t be referring to the full-fledged Mac OS X 10.4 operating system that is found in Apple’s desktops and laptops. So, what IS he talking about? Well, we need to define what OS X means.
Mac OS X is the user interface based on the open-source development platform known as Darwin. Darwin is the core of Mac OS X and is based on UNIX. So, one interpretation of OS X (notice it’s not Mac OS X, just OS X) could mean that the operating system that Steve is referring to is really an iPhone operating system based on Darwin.
One problem with this interpretation is that Samsung seems to have won the contract to provide the video and application cpu for the iPhone. This means that the iPhone’s brain will likely be an ARM cpu. Darwin, based on FreeBSD, will not run on an ARM processor.
If Darwin is going to be used, then it will have to be fundamentally altered to run on the iPhone’s processor. Some say that since Darwin’s open-source agreement requires that any changes to Darwin must be made public, and a Cingular rep saying that the OS would not be made public, the operating system could not be Darwin-based and thus, not OS X. But keep in mind that Darwin is owned by Apple and they can do whatever they want with it, including changing any pittling obstacles like licensing agreements.
Since Steve did say that the iPhone will be using OS X, we think he will indeed be using some form of OS X. It’s pretty safe to say that a Jobs Keynote is nothing to be taken lightly or even in doubt. If he said it, he will make it happen. In order to do that, Apple will have to change the licensing agreements. And that seems to be the road Mr. Jobs is taking.