10-04-2017, 09:20 PM
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that presently powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. It is the second most popular mobile operating system globally after Android by sales. iPad tablets are also the second most popular, by sales, against Android since 2013, when Android tablet sales increased by 127%.
Originally unveiled in 2007 for the iPhone, it has been extended to support other Apple devices such as the iPod Touch (September 2007) and the iPad (January 2010). As of June 2016, Apple's App Store contained more than 2 million iOS applications, 725,000 of which are native for iPads. These mobile apps have collectively been downloaded more than 130 billion times.
The iOS user interface is based upon direct manipulation, using multi-touch gestures. Interface control elements consist of sliders, switches, and buttons. Interaction with the OS includes gestures such as swipe, tap, pinch, and reverse pinch, all of which have specific definitions within the context of the iOS operating system and its multi-touch interface. Internal accelerometers are used by some applications to respond to shaking the device (one common result is the undo command) or rotating it in three dimensions (one common result is switching between portrait and landscape mode).
iOS shares some frameworks with OS X, such as Core Foundation and Foundation Kit; however, its UI toolkit is Cocoa Touch rather than OS X's Cocoa, providing the UIKit rather than the AppKit framework, preventing source compatibility with OS X applications. Also, Unix-like shell access is strictly apps-only, preventing it from being fully Unix despite its Darwin foundation from OS X itself.
Major versions of iOS are released annually. The current release, iOS 10.0.1, was released on September 13, 2016. It runs on the iPhone 5 and later, iPad (4th generation) and later, iPad Pro, iPad Mini 2 and later, and the 6th-generation iPod Touch. In iOS, there are four abstraction layers: the Core OS, Core Services, Media, and Cocoa Touch layers. iOS 10 dedicates around 1.8GB of the device's flash memory for itself.
