Apple may be preparing to port its Flash-less iPhone operating system to additional devices.
Indeed, a recent Club Cupertino job posting spotted by ComputerWorld advertised for an Engineering Manager who will be tasked with leading a team focused on “bringing-up” the popular OS on new platforms.
“The team is responsible for low level platform architecture, firmware, core drivers and bring-up of new hardware platforms. The team consists of talented engineers with experience in hardware, firmware, IOKit drivers, security and platform architecture.”
Seth Weintraub of ComputerWorld speculates that the iPhone OS could initially be ported to a new and improved AppleTV – which would then be attached to the back of HDTVs like a power supply.
“But why stop there? Apple currently sells its MacBook Air for well over $1,000. With Apple processors and iPhone OS, that price could be brought significantly down,” writes Weintraub.
“[And] most people use the MacBook Air for light Office applications, email, web browsing and…maybe a little Photoshop here and there. With iPad’s Office apps, online editors getting better and new apps on the horizon to fill in these shoes (and for the love of everything decent and holy, 3G), it wouldn’t be hard to see the MacBook Air going iPhone OS in two years either.”
Does the iPhone OS have potential for other mobile devices?
Certainly.
Nevertheless, it is quite difficult to envision a scenario in which Apple successfully sells an actual laptop – rather than a tablet device – that is deliberately shackled by a lack of Flash and multitasking restrictions.
