Back when Apple came out with OS X, it also made a decision to use Open Source Software in the core design. For the truly geeky, you can still download the Darwin project which is the core of the OS without the Apple interface goodness. They also standardized on GCC in their development environment.

On the surface the compiler choice was not the best. IBM makes a PowerPC compiler that produces faster code than GCC. In the long run though, the whole world saw why (although I don’t think many realized it); Apple switched to the Intel processor architecture.

I won’t go so far as to say this was easy for Apple to do, that would be a disservice to the people who worked very hard to make it happen. I will say that using open source software and GCC as the compiler of choice made this relatively easy to do.

Let me explain.

GCC is the compiler that’s used to compile most (if you don’t like absolute terms like “all”) of the open source software out there. It runs on a myriad of platforms and architectures and is used to compile the same open source software. For example, I’ve downloaded and compiled PostgreSQL on my Mac. I could compile the same source code for Linux on an intel PC using GCC.

Why is this significant? Apple hasn’t just moved to Intel using this strategy, they’ve enabled themselves to move to ANY architecture that GCC runs on. In the future, they could move back to IBM’s PowerPC, or any other processor architecture that suits their needs.

Why is this important to the iPhone? Steve commented in the keynote that the phone was running OS X. Not some special OS, but the same OS that’s in all the Mac’s being sold. GCC makes that possible. No one outside of Apple knows what kind of processor is being used in the iPhone, but I feel confident that GCC supported it when the project first started. It would not surprise me to learn that they simply did a recompile of OS X for the new architecture.

Again I don’t want to belittle the effort gone into this. I’m sure they had hurdles to jump but when you compare that to developing an entire new OS, it makes good business sense.

This is also Apple’s entry into an entirely new Marketplace. One that I bet most people don’t even know exists: Embedded Systems. The ATM machine you use to withdraw cash? It has an OS. The movie rental kiosk you used at McDonald’s? It has an OS. There are all kinds of devices out there that people interact with every day that have Operating Systems, some are obvious, some are not. A lot of those systems run Windows but Apple has silently announced to the world their ability to compete in that space.

Now will they? Who knows? But that’s one of the major things I saw in the keynote. If I were Steve, I’d be taking the long path here. Build up the reputation of the OS as rock solid (pretty well done already). Sell Apple branded devices using OS X “embedded” and build a proven track record. Then start going after the embedded space.

Granted, until someone in Apple says otherwise, this is all speculation on my part. It could very well be that they had to build OS X from the ground up all over again just for the iPhone. But I doubt it.