Even North Korea Rips Off Apple: Look At Kim Jong Un’s New Operating System

Looks legit. (Photo: Will Scott)
Looks legit. (Photo: Will Scott)

Looks legit. (Photo: Will Scott)

For those lucky enough to have computers in North Korea, their official operating system created by the government is about to get a sleek new update. Although it wasn't announced in a flashy keynote, Red Star OS's new look will have a lot of similarities to Apple's Mac OS X.

The revamp is part of the country's doctrine that emphasizes "self-reliance," except that Red Star OS is based on crowd-sourced Linux. And just like Mac OS X, the program features bouncy icons, a grey color scheme and orb-shaped buttons.

The Telegraph reports that it actually took a staff of more than 1,000 with offices in four countries to create it. Red Star OS has been on the public radar since 2010 when a Russian student revealed that the extremely secretive country invented its own software. And it shouldn't be too much a surprise since Kim Jong Un is a known Apple fan.

Red Star OS come preloaded with iWork, but it does have plenty of quirks:

It was reported that the software uses a calendar which counts years from the birth of Kim Il-Sung, making 2014 the 103rd year. It is only available in Korean and the bundled Firefox browser has the North Korean government website as a default home page.

It's unclear if the mail program also constantly crashes.