Chromium OS ported to iPad | Hacker News Reader

Chromium OS ported to iPad

engadget.com

71 pointsjayeshsalvi27 comments

If this actually works without any roadblock like catches, I wonder if Apple will start modifying the iPad to make chromeOS (or any other OS for that matter) can't run on it. I don't know if there's anything you can do from a Hardware perspective to stop someone from installing a different OS, but the cat and mouse game will be fun to watch nevertheless.

I doubt it. Apple seems to understand the futility of the cat & mouse game. Even with the Hackintosh community that is not buying an Apple computer and probably pirating OSX they haven't added any additional road blocks since the first public x86 OSX Tiger build from 2005. Even with jailbreaking they haven't taken a very aggressive stance besides fixing exploits.

From the article: "one of his outgoing missives includes the dire warning that he'll "dash your hopes later, there are a few catches.""

Each firmware update they block the ability to run custom code (jailbreaking) -- of course they'll block this as well.

Thats almost a reason to get an iPad. I wonder what else could be ported over

Tablets and netbooks that run Chrome OS will be released in one or two months, so you might want to wait a bit.

Besides hacking coolness, is there any point in swapping iOS for Chromium? You get almost same WebKit browser, but without iOS apps?

* Multi-user

* Flash (I browsed the Bowmore whiskey site on my iPad last night... I still hit this occasionally - http://www.bowmore.co.uk/ )

* The chance of getting some native Google apps from the Chrome appstore

* Perhaps a chance to break the dependence on iTunes for updates (just give me OTA already and don't require a link to a computer)

* Chrome Sync so your tabs, passwords, bookmarks go with you

Hell, I'd want it for most of the above. Though I'm growing dependent on the Twitter app for iPad (thankfully the site is catching up fast) and also Flip Board (which doesn't yet have a HTML5 version or Chrome version.

Multi-user?

Yes.

Screenshot: http://f.cl.ly/items/c7779c1655181c328845/4ac9757b00d99e9143...

From: http://hexxeh.net/?p=328117590

If you look at the Chromium OS http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/ blog http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/wiki/doku.php?id=faq#what_are_the... then in the FAQ you'll note:

"What are the default username/passwords for this build?

Default username is facepunch, default password is facepunch."

It's multi-user.

You can share the iPad with others in your household and instead of being a social device in the shared nature, you can opt to return it to being a user device that many people can have their own account on.

The essence of this is that unlike the Kindle or iPad, you could access whatever you want, download whatever you want, safe in the knowledge that the next user of the device wouldn't see it.

Meaning you could share the iPad with other members of the house, and each member could have their own login with their own preferences, their own bookmarks, plugins, history, saved passwords, etc.

i guess Apple will somehow port that feature out into the iPad sometime into the future... Pretty sure Jobs did not see the iPad becoming a family shared pc substitute household device...

...or Jobs is hoping every family member gets their own iPad.

OTA sync? Wireless is still not fast enough for that. And what's the point if you still need to be in your house? 3G networks are definitely not fast enough, which leaves USB sync.

OTA software updates (a la Android), not OTA syncing

And yet, wireless Time Machines sell pretty well. And that's for backing up hundreds of gigs.

If your sync can run in the background, speed is effectively not a concern.

You never take your Time Machine out with you though? Slow, background sync would cause abandoned syncs all over the place with iPhone.

This is 'Hacker News'. That question shouldn't need to be asked! I think it's pretty cool, but then, I still have QNX 4 on a floppy disk.

ChromeOS is a bit more open than Apple's system, isn't it? That's not a rhetorical question, I actually don't know.

Chromium OS is fully open source. Chrome OS is the closed, Google-compiled version that will arrive on physical machines. As far as I know, iOS is fully closed-source.

So yes, Chromium OS is much more open than iOS.

Have you checked out http://opensource.apple.com/? A significant portion of iOS is open-source, pretty much everything is open below the UI layer.

iOS is based on Darwin/XNU. These are all the upper layers that are closed-source.

If I'm remembering correctly, the ARM port of XNU is not open-source though.

It's not very different.

Right, but by the same token, why swap Mac OS for iOS? It's a further step towards utter simplicity - a device you can pick up and use purely for browsing the internet with no other complications.

If it wasn't (most likely) hacky and unstable, I'm sure my mum would dig it.

We will have to see how much of a draw the Chrome web app store is when its ready. App availability will be a deciding factor, although google will have lots of work to do to get even with Apple.

I'd get a second tablet. Apple will do yearly refreshes of the iPad. Previous gen will get Chrome OS.

Looking forward to seeing more details on this... I'm guessing an ARM build of Chromium OS' userspace components[1], ported to run on iOS' Darwin kernel?

If that's the case, I'm guessing there could be a Chromium OS "App" for "normal" jailbroken iPads (running in a chroot jail or similar.)

As I see it, the alternative way would be a working port of Linux to Apple's A4 SoC, but AFAIK that doesn't exist. :(

[1] http://code.google.com/p/chromium-os/wiki/ArmWIP

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