RoughlyDrafted

If you do not yet read it, I highly recommend Daniel Eran Dilger's RoughlyDrafted Magazine for cogent, prescient, detailed, forward-looking analysis of Apple as Apple evolves. Unfortunately, some of his better stuff is buried in his archives.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/

"The big 3.0: How iPhone will shift peripheral devices"

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/03/20/the-big-30-how-iphone-will-shift-peripheral-devices/

"Why Windows 7 is Microsoft's next Zune"

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/05/09/why-windows-7-is-microsofts-next-zune/

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=%22By+daniel+eran%22+%2B+site%3Aroughlydrafted.com&aq=f&oq=&aqi=&fp=xxOAMYytekc

From June 2007:

"Apple’s updates will draw a stark contrast between the iPhone as a handheld Mac, and the basic smartphones that can only run mini-apps and a few poorly drawn, overpriced software titles.

Apple has turned the mobile industry into a consumer facing market, where consumers will buy the phone, get updates, and buy software from Apple. That makes Apple responsible for their security, their demanded features, and their support. That’s not how things work today in the mobile world...

Once users get accustomed to a full handheld computer that works intelligently, are they going to make any attempt to break free and grab a smartphone that really does very little, like the Motorola Q?

It will also be very difficult for other hardware makers to match Apple's product on an engineering scale. Sure, Nokia, Sony, and…

Carbon itself was a concession, if you look at the earlier Rhapsody and OS X Server releases, it was pretty clear that they were planning on using the "Yellow Box" environment (Basically OpenStep) as the primary system, with the "Blue Box" emulation layer as the only way to run Classic software. Then a revolt from developers (apparently especially Adobe and Microsoft) and the reality of how much a Display PostScript license would cost relative to a PC set in, and OS X happened with it's in-house windowing system and Carbon for easy porting of well-behaved Classic software. See http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/4B800F78-0F75-455A-9681-F186A4365805.html

Also, early versions of OS X (IIRC though 10.4) were perfectly happy to install and work on UFS, the installer would even help you do so.

From the user end, the problem with running OSX on UFS was that... a bunch of sloppy software broke on case-sensitive volumes. Famously, Adobe's entire suite wouldn't even install on case-sensitive volumes (see https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/error-case-sensitive-drives-supported.html I think it's still unfixed to this day). This is probably also the reason why despite Apple finally getting a modern file system... APFS has and defaults to a case-insensitive mode in opposition to essentially every other modern FS.

I've been following the author of this article for a few years now. Although he's been mostly consistent in his writings until 2010, when Apple got into the patent wars game he changed his stance from "Apple is wise not to exercise patents offensively, let other industry players ruin each other doing it" to "Of course Apple has a right to defend their intellectual property, and even be aggressive about it".

Do a Google search for "site:roughlydrafted.com not aimed at the iphone" and you'll find this article from 2009

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/11/21/inside-googles-android-and-apples-iphone-os-as-software-markets/

About two thirds down you'll find the paragraph heading "Not aimed at the iPhone". Read that paragraph. It is a sample of how the author used to think about the mobile landscape ca. 2009. Come 2010 the author abruptly and disingenuously changes stance to the point where the tone of all articles he writes is about agreeing with SJ's "thermonuclear" war against Android.

So yes, Daniel Eran Dilger, if you're reading this, I think you're an arrogant and disingenuous Apple fanboy motivated by a blind hatred of everything that isn't Apple.

This reminds of something...

As a kid, I played the game "Neuromancer" (1989, Interplay) which is based on the book of the same name by William Gibson. The images of "decks" (portable computers) always struck me as odd and quite visually disconnected from the combination appearance of my Amiga 500 and its Commodore monitor. And yet, looking at a MacBook Pro from the front or side, it looks a great deal like those renderings of decks in that game (minus some of the features that make the images in the game more than just rounded rectangles). I know laptops existed earlier than that time, but to think they got a futuristic drawing so right it astounds me (not that we're quite to "deck" level with tech just yet).

Screenshot from the game:
http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/popup_screen_index.php?id=778&screenname=neuromancer_16.png&kuk=16

The front-closed profile of a MacBook Pro for comparison:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_migrated/pics/shape-frontclosed20081014_02.jpg

Edit:
I guess it's not a big jump though, considering these were some contemporary laptops of 1989:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/200808292255.jpg

Not just OpenStep, but Rhapsody! It was Apple's original transition plan for Mac OS X, basically OpenStep/Mach 5.x with a Mac OS 8-style Platinum UI done in NeXT-style Display PostScript complete with draggable menus. It's my favorite Apple product of all time just for the "what could have been" factor, but the Adobes of the world balked at "rewrite your apps in Yellow Box" so we got Carbon and friends in the rebooted Mac OS X project. There was one retail release as "Mac OS X Server 1.0", but the "Premier" desktop-user-focused version was canceled. I like to run Rhapsody on my Power Mac G3 Blue&White because that particular machine shipped with Rhapsody (in a Server G3 configuration) and is extremely well supported: https://cooltrainer.org/images/original/michiru-rhapsody-20130909.png

And here are some good starting points for more info:

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/4B800F78-0F75-455A-9681-F186A4365805.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_(operating_system)

http://rhapsodyos.org/

There is another doomed project that XROS reminds me of: the Apple "Pink" OS. Brief history: https://lowendmac.com/2014/pink-apples-first-stab-at-a-modern-operating-system/ "Pink was spun out as Taligent. The kernel was jettisoned. Taligent would run on top of an operating system and act as an object oriented system (like OpenStep). It was released in 1995, but it sold poorly. It was canceled altogether in 1998." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent?useskin=vector more history http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Q4.06/36A61A87-064B-470D-8870-736DD59CEF48.html After Apple tried Pink, Taligent, and Copeland they .... ended up using Mach / FreeBSD and some pieces from other BSDs (as I understand it). Today, we have Windows and Unix of some flavor in the main. I think Geordi LaForge was using one of these OSs on his Warp Drive computers...