FWB Admits RealPC for Mac OS X was Vaporware

reiggin writes "In a press release on their site, FWB's new management comes clean and says that the former management had been lying about an upcoming RealPC OS X release. Apparently, not one line of code had even been written. This is a huge disappointment for anyone looking for an alternative to the now-MS owned Virtual PC (which, incidentally, Apple and Microsoft have said will not initially run on a G5)."

Comments

There's always bochs

[Anonymous Coward]

There's always bochs. Open source too.
http://bochs.sf.net

Re:There's always bochs

[pajamacore]

To go along with that, there's a decent Aqua GUI for Bochs--Wintel by OpenOSX.

Re:There's always bochs

[Anonymous Coward]

In the interest of full disclosure, OpenOSX has been accused of stealing intellectual property from the Fink project. While there's no conclusive information about this accusation out there, there's plenty of evidence on the Fink project web site, and no response to the contrary from OpenOSX. So it's wise to make careful decisions about whether or not one should support OpenOSX in any way, including using their software.

Re:Wine?

[bmetz]

WINE = Wine Is Not an Emulator.

It is an API translation layer, not an x86 emulator. Thank you, drive through.

Re:Wine?

[JPRelph]

You have to remember though that WINE Is Not an Emulator. It allows Windows programs to run on Linux on the x86 platform but doesn't actually emulate the x86 processor.

So you could use it as a start for a new Mac emulator but you'd have to build the chip emulator to fit underneath that.

JP

Re:Now isn't *that* a surprise?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I'm fairly sure that the union of the sets includes all the members from both sets. What is in question is the intersection of the two sets. Which is also probably fairly large.

Re:Wine?

[metatruk]

Wine only translates from the Windows APIs into X11 and other such things. There is no x86 emulation done, which is one of the reasons Wine is so fast. In order for this to work on a Macintosh system, you'd either have to be using PowerPC Windows binaries (which there are few of) or you'd have to include an x86 emulation engine in Wine.

Re:Now isn't *that* a surprise?

[larkost]

Actually it was a hostile shareholder revolt. In fact the old management has been playing a lot of games (locking the new management out of offices, removing documentation, stealing computers, etc...). There was a nice little article about it written by the new manager (can't find the link now).

So could someone drop the "Insightful" mod off the parent comment, and add an "uninformed" one?

Re:Now isn't *that* a surprise?

[BlueGecko]

Actually, I feel very sorry for the new management. According to this interview with the new CEO, the old management literally locked their offices, stole the equipment, and has generally made life for the new people a living hell. Although I suppose it's possible that the entire interview at that site was staged, and honestly do not know the background story behind the whole escapade, it does not appear to me as if this was a SCO-like deceptive tactic by the old managers to try to get out of a bind.

OpenOSX is iffy

[Whumpsnatz]

I attempted to purchase something from OpenOSX, and never received anything. To their credit, they eventually refunded my money - but only after I resorted to vulgar screaming emails to whoever I could find. There certainly was nothing helpful on their site to address the problem.

Of course, now I'm glad I never got anything from them.