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Now, I understand it would probably be impractical to do so, but for the "because I can" reason I'd like to try to install iOS on my Raspberry Pi. (when it eventually comes..)

I've looked around for posts on this matter, and they seem to suggest that running iOS 3 may be possible due to hardware constraints, but how hard could this really be? Years ago I set up a couple of OS X86 machines, and although a pain ended up being total possible. (obviously)

So my overall question is, what should I look into doing/learning to try to install iOS on a Raspberry Pi?

Mick MacCallum
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  • I was about to go on the usually answer of "No, for the last freaking time, you can't install windows or other linux distributions because they're x86 only" but then i'm like… iOS… ARM… good idea :P – Alexander Jul 26 '12 at 04:08
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    I think the idevice hardware is too specialized for there being any hope for iOS running on a RPI… graphics interfaces, USB support, ethernet over usbm etc. – Alexander Jul 26 '12 at 04:08
  • @XAleXOwnZX See, now that's where I'm unsure. Although sometimes it can become difficult, you can always write a driver! What I'm foreseeing to be the most problematic part will be the UI end. – Mick MacCallum Jul 26 '12 at 04:11
  • How would you interface with it? Keyboard and mouse support wasn't introduced into iOS since iOS 5 on iPads. I mean, there wouldn't be support for a mouse cursor like there is on a current iPad using a bluetooth mouse – Alexander Jul 26 '12 at 04:14
  • Without actually having the source to iOS, this would be quite a challenge. If it could be done, you might as well run iOS 5, since the iPhone 3GS can run iOS 5, and that only has 256 MB of RAM and a 600 MHz Cortex-A8. I think the hardest part would be getting video drivers to run since the video chip is completely different, and even on Linux we need that binary blob to interface with the video chip. Not only that, I'm not sure how it could be done, as most builds of iOS you would grab off a device would be compiled for a specific version of ARM, and none of the iP* devices use ARMv6. – Kibbee Jul 26 '12 at 13:20
  • Scratch some of the above. The original iPhone and 3G did use an ARMv6 chip and were supported all the way up to iOS Version 4.2. So it may be possible to find a build compiled for a chip with similar architecture. Getting it to run would still be extremely difficult. – Kibbee Jul 26 '12 at 13:28
  • I appreciate all the input, I know it'll be quite the challenge. Thanks for the insight! – Mick MacCallum Jul 26 '12 at 14:31
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    @XAleXOwnZX I am pretty sure that nearly all existing linux distributions allow you to compile your own kernel and got even precompiled packages for ARM, so I think that telling people "you can't install windows or other linux distributions" is wrong at some point – Petr Nov 03 '13 at 20:01
  • Get job at Apple in the iOS group 2) Get access to the Broadcom BCM2835 hardware docs 3) Port iOS to the Raspberry Pi.
    • – Craig Dec 03 '13 at 15:13
  • Btw, you can't use a bt mouse on ios anyway... – developius May 07 '14 at 16:27