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Codeweavers to Support Mac OS X on Intel

Posted by timothy on from the new-opportunities dept.

An anonymous reader submits "It's official. CodeWeavers is planning to support Mac OS X on Intel chips. Many say this could stifle Windows to OS X ports of apps, but nonetheless this may make it a lot easier for people to switch to OS X from Windows."

6 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I'm somewhat confused by wowbagger · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes, you are confused.

    Codeweavers is the commercial company behind much of the work on Wine, which is a Windows compatability layer that allows (some) Windows applications to run under *nix operating systems without Windows being installed.

    Which, had you read the linked story, you would have learned.

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  2. Correction by bluGill · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is not a company making a GUI on top of Wine. This is a company that hired the most active WINE developers and told them to focus on getting programing like Microsoft Office and iTunes working in Wine. They provide support for anyone who wants to use Wine but needs help. This includes those looking for an easy port to of their Windows Application to Linux, and those who just want to see more applications work on Linux that are now Windows only.

    True it only works with certain programs. However there are more are more all the time.

  3. Re:I'm somewhat confused by Curtman · · Score: 4, Informative

    Were you thinking of Codewarrior maybe?

  4. Re:Good Apps by Oniros · · Score: 3, Informative

    A lot of people are bemoaning the fact that with apps being able to run natively in Windows mode on the Macintels that nobody will bother porting their apps over to OSX. Although there will be some lazy/cheap idiot developers out there who will take this approach native OSX apps will get the buzz and the recommendations and ultimately the sales.

    Actually, straight port from Windows to System 7/Mac OS 8/9 was tried (via some cross-platform frameworks), the ports looked like Windows apps and behaved oddly. No one cared for them.

    Most Mac users like their apps to be Mac-like and behave in a fashion consistent with the Mac user interface guidelines. Straight ports won't cut it. So I don't think a flood of oddly behaving apps (by Mac OS X standards) will have any effects on the Mac software developers.

  5. It better not stifle anything.... by porcupine8 · · Score: 3, Informative
    People keep saying that better ability to run Windows apps in OS X will "stifle development"... What people don't seem to get is that Mac users use Macs because they like the OS. Given the choice between running something on an Windows emulator and running an OS X-native application that is similar but doesn't have quite as many features, I'll take the slightly subpar native app any day. As long as it's not missing something I can't live without, being OS X native will more than make up for it.

    If I had to choose between Office and Appleworks? That'd be a toughie, since Appleworks is a piece of crap. Even then, I'd probably have to run into something I just couldn't do in Appleworks before I'd shell out the money for an emulated Office. Any less of a difference in quality, I'd take the native app in a second.

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  6. Re:I'm somewhat confused by jeremy_white · · Score: 3, Informative
    For the record, we do not have any proprietary DLLs; all Wine work we do goes back into the public Wine tree and is also published on our web site.

    Further, we work hard to make sure that the applications we support do not need any DLLs from Windows. There are certain applications, like IE, which require you to have a licensed product from Microsoft, but that is the reality of their license, and not a technical limitation of CrossOver and Wine.

    Finally, yes, the Plugin functionality did get merged into the Office product about a year back.

    Cheers,
    Jeremy