bithead redux

So Nokia buys Symbian.

Compare and Contrast:

Windows Mobile, and the other flavors of Windows that run on mobile phones, descends from Windows CE, an operating system designed for PDAs and palm top devices.

Symbian, used by Nokia for there smart phones and other devices, descends from the OS used in Psion devices, which were PDAs and palm top devices.

When Apple chose an operating system to run on their iPhone, they chose OS X, an operating system designed for general computers.

Look at the differences in approach. Look at the hardware out there today — Gruber did a quick comparison and came to the conclusion that the hardware in an iPhone is roughly equivalent to the hardware in a circa 2000 PowerBook, which ran — wait for it — OS X.

So why not choose a software basis that gives you a headstart? Sure, you have to do some things differently, but it’s not like we’re back to the early ’80’s, counting instruction cycles to make sure we’re going to be fast enough to fit our code into the vertical blanking interrupt. Small system programming, these days, is roughly equivalent to big system programming, circa 2000.

I know which approach I like better.