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Insofar as one could consider the kernel to be the core of an operating system, this (specifically, XNU on ARM) is the core of iOS. Having the Darwin userland atop that is simply icing on the proverbial cake.

What would you consider the core? Is it UIKit? Cocoa? libc? SpringBoard (the homescreen application)?

(Edited: s/Darwin/XNU/; thanks shibby!)



I mean, if someone ported Linux to a toaster, you wouldn't say they posted the Android core to a toaster. Userspace is what people care about when they mention any OS by name (IMO).

The title would have been equally correct if it said OS X, which tells you that the title is essentially meaningless.


Darwin isn't the kernel, it's an OS[1]. XNU is the kernel[2].

However, this is impressive none the less.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system) [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU


In the same breath Darwin is more then just iOS so do you say Mac or OSX or what?




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