Perhaps you should do some actual research before making comments. OSX uses at its core the Mach kernel. iPhoneOS uses at its core... the Mach kernel.

You see these days in software engineering we have these wonderful new things called "compilers" which means you don't have to write everything for a particular processor. They take text files written in what is known as a "high level programming language" and turn it into machine code. This means you can "compile" the same code for different processor families

Te iPhoneOS uses OSX core technologies, with various features stripped out to fit in a small device and a new UI framework on top called Cocoa Touch.

The reason Microsoft builds a completely different product line for Windows Mobile is because the NT code base is such a horrible tangle of spaghetti code they simply can't just strip bits out to fit it in a smaller device. Look up the article on MinWin on ars technica if you don't believe me.

This from Jason: "Years and years of spending millions on non-funny TV adverts and other cool media explosions and its got them to a whopping 6% market share.
I'd give up to be honest."

Ok, so without competition how many years do you think there will be between Windows updates or IE updates. We'd be using Windows 7 for the next 50 years (or until Linux makes a decent desktop offering).

Buying a product simply because it is the most popular will ensure that you no longer have a choice. Just like buying cars because they were made in America ensured that American cars suck.

Perhaps you need to take a software engineering course so you can understand why OS X is still OS X when it runs on Power (older Macs), X86, X64 and ARM CPUs. iPhone OS is much closer to desktop OS X than Windows Mobile is to Wondows 7/Vista.

@FailKirk,

Well, i hate to burst your bubble, but just because apple calls the iphone os osx does not mean that its the same osx that runs on thier pc's. if you need more clarity on the subject, i suggest you take a hardware engineering course and learn the difference between x86 and ARM platforms, then and only then will you realize the true retardedness of your statements above.

I guess I overestimated the quality of the readership here.

In the January 2007 Macworld Expo keynote address Steve Jobs stated that the “iPhone runs OS X”: http://daringfireball.net/2007/01/os_x. Here is a confirming wikipedia link although more authoritative sources are readily available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_OS

And, of course, I was referring not to Microsoft's soon to be abandoned Windows mobile, but to their just announced, but not yet released, Windows Phone 7 series.

Still, my main point goes unaddressed. Could a touch interface become the next de facto UI and relegate laptops and desktops to specialty items just as desktops did to mincomputers some 30 years ago?

Years and years of spending millions on non-funny TV adverts and other cool media explosions and its got them to a whopping 6% market share.

I'd give up to be honest.

Somethings holding them back.

"Apple has a single OS that runs on the Touch, iPhone, notebook/desktop and now the iPad form factors."

No. It doesn't. OSX runs on their computers, but it's a different, severely limited OS that runs on the rest of Apple's toys. Just because it looks similar on top doesn't mean it's running the same gear below.

@FalKirk

"Apple has a single OS that runs on the Touch, iPhone, notebook/desktop"

What are you talking about? OSX runs on iPhones? St00pid apple fanbois don't even understand their own tech!

"Microsoft now has a ... brand new, not yet to market, phone OS". Which has been available for 10 years in April. Hardly not yet to market...

Based on the tone of the article, I doubt that this is the place for a serious discussion, but I'll give it a shot anyway.

First, although Apple only has OS X on a tiny portion of the total computer population, that portion is the cream of the crop. Pundits may scoff at the fact that Apple has cornered the premium computer market along with it's attendant margins but I assure you, Apple's hardware competitors do not.

Second, Microsof now has a notebook/desktop OS and a brand new, not yet to market, phone OS. Apple has a single OS that runs on the Touch, iPhone, notebook/desktop and now the iPad form factors.

People are focusing on the form factors, but what they should be focusing on is the User Interface. Apple - a minority player in the notebook/desktop User Interface - is doing an end run around Microsoft with their "touch" interface. They are gambling that users will find the touch interface to be the natural way to compute and that eventually only hardcore activities will be done on the more traditional desktop user interface. With a 3 year head start in the touch UI development, with a new form factor in the iPad, with 150,000 apps and thousands of new ones being created each week and with the iTunes ecosystem, who's going to catch Apple?

Microsoft may end up with 95% of of a rapidly receding desktop UI while Apple takes command of the UI for the burgeoning Touch, Phone and Tablet markets. We'll see.

This is Great news for Apple users. Its means you will be back to securuity through obscurity in no time. Hackers cant be bothered with targeting such a small user base.

It also means there is hope for the average consumer when they realize that a $300 Acer laptop running Windows 7 is better than a $1000.00 mac. There is hope for humanity.

Title says all.

ps: iPhone OS trounces Windows Mobile at 0.5 vs 0.07%.

I's been so long since you guys published a stupid pointless hate filled rant from Ferret over a total non-story I was starting to wonder if he'd been killed in a freak curling accident or something. Good to see you're alive and well and as full of crap as ever!

@Jonathan: the M$ money machine is getting so desperate that they're now trying to set DOJ anti-trust onto go_ogle. Yes, really, M$ is SO oblivious to their own crimes that they don't even know that the anti-trust division died in the 80's and that was what allowed M$ to run rampant. (Nor apparently, does M$ grasp that go_ogle is openly merging with NSA.)

Did I get my maths wrong? Windows XP lost .7, Vista lost 1, and Win7 was up 1.4?

And if Mac also lost share... where did the extra .4-or-so go?

Wow, that's pretty troll-tastic. Or sarcastic. I can't work it out.

If you're actually being serious...I'll have what you're obviously smoking. MS = innovation? Which alternative reality are you in?

Whatever the numbers are, the mere fact that Apple rates a mention at all - being an insignificant, dead-end, useless, third-rate, also-ran of a company compared to the unstoppable Microsoft innovation machine - speaks volumes far beyond the attempted thrust of the 'article'.