North Korea upgrades its national operating system to a Mac OS copy

The club of Mac OS X lovers has gained an unlikely member: North Korea. The country’s new operating system has been stylized to look like Apple’s software, leaked screenshots have revealed. Reports suggest that only a handful of North Koreans have access to the latest IT technologies. But when an American computer scientist who lectured at Pyongyang University took a stroll to an official retailer in the capital to get himself a copy of the country’s OS, he noticed it had a striking similarity to Apple’s Mac OS. 

When we wrote this tounge-in-cheek piece about what North Korea could do to look more technologically advanced than it is, we weren’t seriously expecting the reclusive totalitarian state to make some ridiculous moves to upgrade – it was just a joke. However, given North Korea’s tech track record, which includes the use of Windows XP at one of its rocket control facilities, as well as its status as a nearly failed state, perhaps we should’ve seen this coming. The newest version of North Korea’s Red Star operating system looks a heck of a lot like Mac OS X. But it’s not. Once again, we shouldn’t be surprised by this copycat maneuver; the previous version of the OS looked quite a bit like Windows 7. Take a look at a screenshot of the previous Red Star release below to see what we mean.