OldOS is the most impressive project I have ever worked on. So far, it has garnered 500,000+ downloads and has been featured on sites such as The Verge, Cult of Mac, Daring Fireball, Mashable, and many more. It reached #1 on GitHub trending and has become a full-on community project. OldOS also spawned the OldOS Project — an endeavor determined to preserve works of the past and educate on modern technologies.
What is OldOS?
OldOS is a testament to the days of yesteryear, showcasing what iOS once was ten years ago. The ethos of the app is to merge the technologies of today with a pixel-perfect recreation of the user experience of the past. The vast majority of apps in OldOS are fully functional — meaning they seamlessly integrate with the data on your phone to deliver a live, emulator-esque experience. What does this mean? Well, you can play your music in iPod, get directions in Maps, surf the web in Safari, view the current weather in Weather, and much more. By the same token, no shortcuts were taken in fully fleshing out the operating system. You can change your background, adjust settings, search apps, et cetera. There are a few apps still not ready for primetime but don’t worry, they’re coming soon.
With OldOS, you no longer need to worry about securing a legacy iPhone to experience nostalgia — it’s available on your daily driver.
Part of the goal with OldOS is to enable anyone to understand how iOS works and demonstrate just how powerful SwiftUI truly is. For that reason, the entire app is open-sourced — enabling developers to learn about, modify, and add to the app. I thought building this over my last six or so months in high school and sharing it with the world would be a fun and productive endeavor.