When Steve Jobs made his pre-iPhone launch company wide sermon speech he mentioned that they (Apple) were hard at work on putting OS X on other devices, including the iPod. In writing you call a line like that a throwaway — it’s something that means absolutely nothing to the matter at hand (iPhone) but that opens the door for plethora of stories to be told. A classic example of this is in Star Wars A New Hope when Obi Wan tells Luke he and his father fought in “the wars”, and Luke responds with, “You fought in the Clone Wars?” That one tiny line, that means nothing to the scene, but fans of Star Wars went ape-shit over what, precisely, the Clone Wars were. Many books were written on the subject, and subsequently Lucas framed his new trilogy around the events of the Clone Wars (plus there was that super-nifty cartoon).
Since then excitement has ensued, culminating with Gizmodo reporting that Electronista is reporting that Digitimes is reporting that someone told them that there are touch screen iPod looming.
Today, John Gruber gets into the mix with his thoughts on what an OS X iPod means (answer: he has no idea).
As I believe was the case with George Lucas, I don’t think even Steve Jobs really knows what “OS X on an iPod” really means. I think the line was a throwaway, and we’re lots of fan fiction popping up around what that line might actually mean.
All I will say is this: whatever this turns out being, I hope to God it doesn’t involve Hayden Christensen.
