Apple appears to have a plan to bring the iPhone
OS to new platforms.
On the Apple Website, the company has posted a job
opening for an engineering manager that states, "Apple's Core OS
organization is looking for a talented and inspired manager to lead a team
focused on bring-up of iPhone OS on new platforms."
The job's responsibilities include "defining the software road map to
support a range of hardware platforms, including iPhone and iPod."
With the
iPad having already been introduced, many believe the next logical device
to receive the iPhone OS is Apple TV.
"Apple TV is the obvious choice," Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with
Technology Business Research, told eWEEK. "The iPad is where it's already
gone. They will look for [additional] opportunities, but they're not going to
go for it unless it's a really good fit."
Apple TV arrived with the iPhone at Macworld 2007, but quickly became the
lesser known of the two. A small, super hard drive of sorts—measuring 7.7 by
7.7 by 1.1 inches—Apple TV
connects to a high-definition television through an HDMI cable and enables
users to rent or buy HD movies, buy HD television shows, listen to iTunes or
Internet radio and view their photos or videos on the television.
In September 2009, Apple
eliminated the 40GB Apple TV model and reduced the price of the 160GB model
from $329 to $229.
Gottheil said the primary benefit that the iPhone OS would bring to Apple TV is
its browser.
"In addition to being able to play your own content and App Store content,
you'd be able to browse the Web," Gottheil said.
He added that the interface was now familiar and intuitive to millions of
people, since it runs on twice the number of devices that Mac OS is on.
Plus, Gottheil added, "It's optimized for simpler tasks, it's full-screen,
it's not truly about multitasking and it doesn't rely on precise pointing,
which makes it a good choice for a [less-than-full PC] type of device."
Putting the iPhone OS on a full PC, he said, would be silly. "It would
turn its chief advantage—its simplicity—into a problem."
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