Why is this considered acceptable? Get physical access to my iPhone (for example - Android is probably the same?), good luck getting in.
Sure, with a PC there's a few things that are a lot more difficult to secure (e.g., the boot process) but throwing hands up in the air and giving up because of physical access is a cop out.
"merely add a function to the X11 API" is the problem. X11 is ancient, full of bloat that no one uses any more and not designed with core concepts in mind that are desirable in a modern operating system. Really, look up some youtube presentations from the Wayland guys - who actually work on X11 and listen to what they have to say regarding the complexity and brain damage in X11. It works, but sometimes, even the guys who maintain it don't know exactly why.
The X11 display server is a liability and needs to die. It should have been taken out behind the shed and shot about a couple of decades ago. That doesn't mean that "oh noes i will lose my remoting!", that can be implemented in it's replacement via a shim, the same way any X display server works for Windows or Mac.
here here!
I have a surface pro 3 for work and I was also a big downer on the surface devices as a tablet. as a laptop, if you consider them as that they're great. but there's nothing useful i want to run on it that is in metro. Which means continually running classic windows apps, and the classic UI is just abysmal for touch. Even with a pen...
I think MS has a long way go go to catch up with the functionality provided by Cocoa touch.
I've noticed several design suggestions in your code.