[on_and_off]

I have no idea of the internals of the iPod. As I understand it, iOS benefited immensely from the work already done on OsX. I don't even know whether they planned for it or just benefited from a mature module already in place.

[sirkneeland]

IIRC the very first iPods actually had licensed much of the under the hood software.

I could be confusing them with Palm OS, which did the same for the kernel of their first Pilots...