iPhone operating system

iOS is Apple's most advanced and feature-rich proprietary mobile operating system. It was released with the first generation of the iPhone. When introduced, it was named iPhone OS, and it was later renamed iOS to reflect the unified nature of the operating system that powers all Apple iOS devices, such as the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Apple TV. iOS is derived from core OS X technologies and streamlined to be compact and efficient for mobile devices.

It utilizes a multi-touch interface, where simple gestures are used to operate and control the device, such as swiping your finger across the screen to move to the successive page or pinching your fingers to zoom. In simple terms, iOS assists with the general functioning of the device. iOS is really macOS X with the following significant differences:

• The architecture for which the kernel and binaries are compiled is ARM-based rather than Intel x86_64
• The OS X kernel is open source, whereas the iOS kernel remains closed
• Memory management is much tighter
• The system is hardened and does not allow access to the underlying APIs