Mobile OS

The mobile operating systems of today's tablets have a different kind of interface than the traditional desktop OS. These mobile OS tablet computer devices are normally finger driven and most frequently use capacitive touch screens with multi-touch, unlike earlier stylus-driven resistive touchscreen devices.

Most frequently the operating system running on a tablet computer is a Unix-like OS, such as Linux or Darwin. Google's Android operating system is frequently used by tablet manufacturers, as it is open source under the Apache license. Android is a Linux-based operating system designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Android supports low-cost ARM systems.

The second of the dominating tablet platforms to hit the market was Apple iOS. Recently there was IOS 7 released.The redesign architected by chief designer Jony Ive embraces a more "flat" design; say goodbye to bubbled text messages, for example. But it's still colorful, and moves with you, letting you "look" behind apps, according to Apple. The font, meanwhile, is much slimmer than in previous versions of iOS.

Windows 8, the 3-th mobile OS, uses the Metro user interface suited to touchscreen devices such as tablets.The Windows RT version of Windows 8 runs the ARM architecture which can run on processors from NVIDIA, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.Microsoft launched their own series of tablets called Surface in 2012. The Surface RT uses Windows RT as its operating system while the Surface Pro runs Windows 8 Pro. In addition to the tablets from Microsoft, Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Samsung, and Sony have also released Windows 8 or RT tablets and hybrid

Mozilla has been experimenting with an interesting idea called Boot 2 Gecko. Essentially, B2G (as it’s called) is a mobile operating system based on the Web, as opposed to what the project’s wiki calls “proprietary, single-vendor stacks”. Mozilla has something there--open Web technologies indeed increasingly provide an intriguing platform for lots of things, mobile and otherwise.

The project proposal was to "pursue the goal of building a complete, standalone operating system for the open web" in order to "find the gaps that keep web developers from being able to build apps that are – in every way – the equals of native apps built for the iPhone [iOS], Android, and WP8

Exercise 4. Complete the following table to compare different mobile OS: