Run Windows Applications Natively in OS X?

What's the incentive to write a program for OS X.. by Quaoar · 2006-04-21 05:47 · Score: 2, Insightful

If it can just run Windows apps anyway?

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I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!

tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by yagu · 2006-04-21 05:48 · Score: 3, Interesting

He points out one of the difficulties WINE has had keeping applications healthy:

Wine is great, but it is also a moving target subject to Microsoft meddling. If Wine gets too good, Microsoft can "accidentally" break it at will. But Microsoft can't afford to do that with its own Windows API. The courts will no longer allow checking for a different underlying OS as Redmond did back in the days of DR-DOS. Besides, unless we are strictly talking about Microsoft apps, there isn't even much code involved here that Microsoft CAN meddle in.

I wonder that his assumption Microsoft can't break its own API in Windows is correct, and suspect (or fear) it isn't. Or, at best, writing to Microsoft's API is only a half truth and is at the core of one of the EU's complaints against Microsoft -- complete API documentation!

Cringely does confirm third party reports of this suite of software working at Apple, but I wonder for how long? And for what versions? A complete, robust, and current maintenance of what is available for a Windows API is a minefield, and in my opinion, likely to somehow "break" rather quickly.

I can imagine if Apple somehow has pulled this off and is ready to roll it out publicly they must be bracing for the Microsoft blitzkrieg, because they're going to get it.

As to whether or not this really is a realistic scenario (Microsoft and Windows Apps running transparently in OS X), please, please, please let it be true! (We can all hope, right?)

Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by baadger · 2006-04-21 05:53 · Score: 1

If anything, with the EU pressure on Microsoft. Now would be the safest time ever to rip off MS's API's (even the undocumented ones) wouldn't it?
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by jandrese · 2006-04-21 05:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

The other thing I'd like to point out is that what he's proposing involves rewriting a massive portion of Windows itself, something Microsoft has spent decades working on. He expects Apples magical engineers to just whip out a feature complete copy of the Windows API in just a few months?

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I read the internet for the articles.
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by Ford+Prefect · 2006-04-21 06:01 · Score: 5, Funny

He expects Apples magical engineers to just whip out a feature complete copy of the Windows API in just a few months?

Give me a load of All-Bran or other fibre-rich foodstuffs to work on, and I'm sure I could produce a feature-complete copy of Microsoft Windows in 24 hours or so. Even less, if laxatives are involved.

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Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:03 · Score: 0

The other thing I'd like to point out is that what he's proposing involves rewriting a massive portion of Windows itself, something Microsoft has spent decades working on.
Yeah, but this time a talented outfit would be doing it.
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by Ohreally_factor · 2006-04-21 06:04 · Score: 4, Interesting

You might have missed this bit in the article.

According to Cringely, Apple has had access to XP APIs under an tech sharing agreement between Apple and MS that was forged in 1997. (This was part of the agreement that let MS off the hook for appropriating quicktime technology into their own media products.)

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It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by otis+wildflower · 2006-04-21 06:05 · Score: 1

I wonder that his assumption Microsoft can't break its own API in Windows is correct, and suspect (or fear) it isn't. Or, at best, writing to Microsoft's API is only a half truth and is at the core of one of the EU's complaints against Microsoft -- complete API documentation!

TFA addresses this by stating that Apple may have had access to the official MS API documentation as part of its settlement.

Cringely does confirm third party reports of this suite of software working at Apple, but I wonder for how long? And for what versions? A complete, robust, and current maintenance of what is available for a Windows API is a minefield, and in my opinion, likely to somehow "break" rather quickly.

The whole point of the article is that it would be limited to XP or before, using XP's Win32 as the cutoff to compatibility. The assumption being that anything after XP is not worth going out of your way to support.

This is similar to the assumption that Office 97 is good enough for anyone, and it may actually be a pretty good assumption!

Now going beyond Wine could include, say, virtualizing the registry and installation process of a windows app so that it resides in a standard OS X file/directory like a proper OS X app. Or, there could be a Carbon-style Win32 framework in XCode 3, where you can recompile your existing code (with some localization work to handle stuff like the installer, window layout, etc). I've been whining for a DirectX9 porting framework in OS X for a long time now, perhaps they'll do the entire Win32 API?

The question then becomes "why write Cocoa apps at all?" The answer being "It's easier and faster to write featureful and powerful apps in Cocoa, taking advantage of Core*, iApp integration and other frameworks".
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by Jeremi · 2006-04-21 06:12 · Score: 3, Insightful

As to whether or not this really is a realistic scenario (Microsoft and Windows Apps running transparently in OS X), please, please, please let it be true! (We can all hope, right?)

I think it will come true, except for the part about "not requiring an installed copy of WinXP". What Cringely is proposing is just silly: he thinks that Apple can essentially write its own implementation of WINE, but somehow won't suffer from all the problems that WINE has. If you think that strategy works well, look at what happened when OS/2 tried it.

On the other hand, adding a spiffed-out VMWare-style layer would be much easier for Apple to do, would leave most of the maintenance/compatibility problems for Microsoft to deal with, and would be less likely to piss off Microsoft's legions of winged monkeys (since they would still get money from Mac users buying WinXP sales).

Trying to implement Microsoft's APIs natively is foolish: even if Apple somehow got them to work reliably in a foreign OS (fat chance considering the trouble Microsoft has getting them to work reliably in the native OS), things would break every time Microsoft released another service pack. Apple would spend the rest of their lives chasing Windows compatibility bugs.

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I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by dham340 · 2006-04-21 06:20 · Score: 1

These kinds of tech agreements usually give each party not just access to the docs, but the right to use the source code. Apple probably had to do very little to get it running since they just grab M$ source...no need to re-invent the wheel
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by MCSEBear · 2006-04-21 06:48 · Score: 2, Interesting

Running Windows programs on a Mac is already easy. Parallels makes a virtual machine that is winning praise while still in beta from publications like Businessweek and Computerworld. You can download it free while it's in beta, but the full retail version is only going to be fifty bucks. Definitely much more affordable than Connectix/Microsoft's VirtualPC. Since it takes advantage of Intel's Virtualization Technology, you can run your favorite 'other OS' inside MacOSX and not be grey before that other OS boots.

I doubt Apple is going to bother trying to reinvent Wine inside it's OS. There has been a plan to make a foreign set of API's a new part of an OS for many years, however.

Back in the days after Steve Job's Next bought Apple for -$400 million dollars, there was talk of Cocoa based programs running on top of Windows. Apple called this idea Yellow Box for Windows. Rumors have been spreading that Yellow Box for Windows is being discussed again.

"Apple's emphasis in the 10.5 era will be on resurrecting 'Yellow Box for Windows,' a set of Cocoa (and potentially also Carbon) API's for Windows that would allow Universal Binary applications to run on Windows with a mere 150MB software package installation. And best of all, there is no extra work to be done on the developer's part to get fully native, rock-solid stable performance from their Xcode-developed Universal applications on Windows!"

What is Cocoa?
What is Carbon?
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by jandrese · 2006-04-21 07:03 · Score: 1

That doesn't mean they can just copy and paste the code into OSX. Besides, access to the API is not necessarily the same thing as access to the source. If the plan involves "writing functions that mimic the original Windows API" at any point, then it's a non-starter. Just look at the Wine project. They've been working for over a decade now and they still can't run most applications.

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I read the internet for the articles.
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by ziplux · 2006-04-21 07:12 · Score: 1

I've been whining for a DirectX9 porting framework in OS X for a long time now, perhaps they'll do the entire Win32 API?

Why use a Windows specific API like DirectX when we have the cross-platform OpenGL? If Apple were to make its own version of Wine, it would have the same problems as Wine does with fully implementing the API. There is no authorative and complete API doc for Windows or for DirectX that is accessible to the public.

You're not seriously thinking about using a platform that is based on a poorly understood and reverse-engineered API, are you? Why write Windows API code if you're developing for the Mac?
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by squiggleslash · 2006-04-21 07:24 · Score: 1

Two interesting things.
1. Yellow Box shipped as a commercial product (not under that name) for a long time, initially as OpenStep for NT, and then as part of WebObjects. I don't believe you can get it any more (just as you can't get WebObjects for Windows) but it was a real, shipping, product. I suspect that it's still under active development, at least as part of Apple's attempts to create safety nets (like Mac OS X under Intel)
2. Part of the original design for Rhapsody, the "missing link" between OpenStep 4 and Mac OS X Server 1.0, was, supposedly, a subsystem called Red Box. Red Box was, indeed, a Win32 compatibility system for the Rhapsody system. People curious to know why Apple would have incorporated this into the design of an OS supposedly destined to run on Macs should know this: Rhapsody wasn't actually limited to Macs, it ran on ix86 PCs too. Actual Rhapsody previews were released to developers, and there's a wealth of webpages out there describing people's experiences with it, running both on Macs and on PCs.
If I understand Cringley correctly, he's talking about Red Box. Red Box was never officially announced, but it's always been common knowledge it existed and was, at one time, a part of the design (even if it wasn't implemented.) It's not hard to believe Apple have been working on it for the last eight years, much as they did keeping Mac OS X running on Intel.
Now, before getting excited by this, remember that Red Box was always unofficial. It came up enough at the time that people convinced themselves it existed, if only as a concept. Cringely is likely to have heard of the system, and may have drawn conclusions that are not warranted. He may even be counting upon the rest of us to say "Ah! You mean Red Box!", to lend credibility to an otherwise ridiculous rumour.
On the other hand, I've read Windows Vista developers who are convinced about "something" in Leopard that's going to seriously damage Microsoft. And quite honestly, this is the only thing I can think of.

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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by Megane · 2006-04-21 07:25 · Score: 1

Give me a load of All-Bran or other fibre-rich foodstuffs to work on, and I'm sure I could produce a feature-complete copy of Microsoft Windows in 24 hours or so. Even less, if laxatives are involved.
But will it be bug compatible?

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Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by Jeremi · 2006-04-21 08:47 · Score: 1

Apple probably had to do very little to get it running since they just grab M$ source...no need to re-invent the wheel

I think you'd find that Apple would need to include most or all of Windows' source code in order for things to work properly. At that point, it's equivalent to Apple simply licensing Windows and including a copy of Windows with each Mac sold. Which is possible, but unlikely IMHO.

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I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by supabeast! · 2006-04-21 10:52 · Score: 1

"I can imagine if Apple somehow has pulled this off and is ready to roll it out publicly they must be bracing for the Microsoft blitzkrieg, because they're going to get it."

I really doubt that Apple is too worried - Microsoft's failure to beat a competitor at anything other than OS and Office Suite sales makes it pretty clear that Microsoft can't get a damned thing done well or quickly anymore. Microsoft is to big, too clunky, and too busy dealing with all of the different people and agendas inside to handle a big challenge from outside the company.
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by lsd · 2006-04-21 11:00 · Score: 1

Indeed -- Cringley seems to think for some reason that Wine is something other than a Win32 API implementation for UNIX, and I really don't understand how he's come to that conclusion, or why he thinks Apple could do a better job in less time. I could definitely see then putting in XP almost like Classic on OS X for PPC: booting it up silently in the background, preconfigured with window decorations that look Aqua-ish, and displaying the windows directly on the OS X desktop, without the XP background.

Even that would probably break some apps, but hey, not all OS9 apps ran in Classic, so 95% compatibility in this context is hardly without precedent, and it'd definitely be more compatible than Wine or some clone/derivative thereof.
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by TheNetAvenger · 2006-04-21 11:48 · Score: 1

(This was part of the agreement that let MS off the hook for appropriating quicktime technology into their own media products.)

Apple alleged that Microsoft purposely made Quicktime fail on Windows due to the changes in the new version of Windows.

Apple never accused Microsoft of using any technology from Quickime.

Apple's allegations about Microsoft purposely coding Windows to make Quicktime fail were later disproven by many experts, even though it never made any legal grounds.

The Apple vs Microsoft deal payoff deal was to settle the 'look and feel' lawsuit, which ironically is close to same lawsuit Apple won against Xerox, just in reverse. Another side note in history... (If the 1975 Xerox Consent Decree hadn't been in place, the Star (Xerox) GUI would have been protected and Xerox would of had patent and other legal grounds to protect what Apple copied.)

If you have some link or case number or evidence that Microsoft was ever even accused of using Quicktime technology, please share with the rest of us. I had my assistant do a quick legal and internet search and returned nothing on MS using Quicktime technology.

Also, Apple having access to APIs is not as clear cut as it might seem from the person writing the article. The APIs Apple has access to DO NOT include newer OSes like WindowsXP, and Apple also never received the source code.

So implementing all the Win32/GDI+/DirectX/etc APIs needed to run Windows applications quite an feat to pull off, especially when you then have to add in all the NT layer APIs that some applications and portions of the shared libraries in the WIN32 subsystem need. Heck just ask some of the WINE developers how easy implementing the Windows API is...
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 13:37 · Score: 0

Apple never accused Microsoft of using any technology from Quickime.

Really?
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by Ohreally_factor · 2006-04-21 14:53 · Score: 1

I think you've been misinformed, but don't take it from me, click on the AC's link.

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It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by shmlco · 2006-04-21 15:09 · Score: 1

"... rewriting a massive portion of Windows itself..."

How massive? Strip out all of the applications like explorer and IE and media player. Zap FreeCell and textedit and paint and "theme" managers all of that junk. Eliminate all of the control panels and user and system managers that OS X already provides. Eliminate thousands upon thousands of device drivers for hardware not supported by Apple. Slap some WinAPI facades on existing OS X networking and printer drivers.

What's left after Windows has been placed on a super-SlimFast diet? Sure, it mght not be easy, but it's not impossible either.

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Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by TheNetAvenger · 2006-04-21 16:00 · Score: 1

I stand corrected...

I had forgotten about the DCI controversy, I guess I should have known that people still saw it as 'QuickTime' technology being put in 'Windows Media Products'.

It was a copyright suit. Although I am truly surprised that people still believe it was Microsoft that tried to do something wrong, or believe that QuickTime technology actually is in Windows Media after all this time.

Apple paid a company 'Canyon' to write code for QuickTime, Canyon came up with the idea to drop the video output to the video card directly (A form of an Overlay, Direct Write, etc, etc).

Apple was happy with the results, until they learned that Canyon gave the code to Intel, and Intel gave the code to Microsoft. Microsoft released an SDK for their AVI format with the Intel code, which really was a copy of the Apple owned code.

The idea of directly writing captured video to the video card instead of the OS's display was developed by Canyon for Apple, making it Apple's property.

1) This is about a technique for writing captured video to a display.

2) MS removed the code when they learned it was not Intel's to give out.

3) There is not currently QuickTime code in Windows Media, and technically hasn't been since Microsoft pulled the developer preview of their 'Video for Windows' that included the Canyon code over 13 years ago.

4) The only thing MS participated in was using the Intel DCI code that was pulled when the code from Intel was brought into question by Apple.

5) Microsoft was more than a little angry at Intel for putting their AVI development at risk.

So does Windows Media contain QuickTime code - No...

Did MS steal code from Apple - No...

Did Intel purposely use code knowing Apple owned it - probably... It all depends on if Canyon disclosed this to Intel or not specifically noting they were selling Intel code Apple owned. But based on Intel's knowledge of the code, and their reaction, including their apologies to Microsoft, I would bet they did know.

Direct Write concepts pre-date QuickTime and the Intel DCI, meaning the only thing Apple had grounds was the 'exact' code was used. They didn't argue their technology was stolen, they argued their code was copied.

Which means this was a copyright suit, not a patent case defending technology. Apple was suing over the code, not the concept.

But I will step back, as I didn't equate this case with what the poster I was responding to was talking about, I should have caught the trap and kept my mouth shut, but I didn't.

So I will take my lumps, as I was technically wrong and concede this thread...

Take Care...
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by otis+wildflower · 2006-04-22 02:37 · Score: 1

Why not do both?

DirectX is more than 3D graphics, and lots of game developers are using it. That is one of the big reasons Apple has so few games to choose from comparatively.

And given that Apple has access to Microsoft IP (though I don't think it's definitely guaranteed that they had access to _everything_) thru 2001 they've got a pretty good headstart.

The point is, Microsoft has really been pretty stagnant since 2001 (with the exception of DirectX going from 7 or 8 to 9) and given that Vista could well be the big break in compatibility release, I think having build support for DirectX in XCode (along with some serious improvements in 3D drivers and possibly a new kernel) would be a huge win for Apple users.
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by Yaztromo · 2006-04-23 19:33 · Score: 1

Apple can essentially write its own implementation of WINE, but somehow won't suffer from all the problems that WINE has. If you think that strategy works well, look at what happened when OS/2 tried it.

Except that's not what happened with OS/2. Indeed, what happened is exactly what you propose for OS X, and is why OS/2 was doomed to fail in the long run.
OS/2 didn't emulate the Windows APIs to run Windows applications (it did later have an emulated Windows API in the form of Open32, but that required a recompile). OS/2 provided a DOS Virtual Machine which was capable of running Windows 3.1 directly. While OS/2 2.0 and 2.1 initially came with IBM recompiled versions of Microsoft Windows 3.1, later versions (OS/2 2.1 for Windows and OS/2 WARP v3 RedSpine) allowed you to simply use your existing Windows 3.1 installation to run Windows applications under OS/2. OS/2 did provide its own Video driver and WinSock subsystem to allow Windows applications to run on the same desktop as OS/2 applications (and to access the OS/2 networking subsystem), but the underlying code was the same Windows 3.1 you ran on MS-DOS.
Which is why running Windows applications on OS/2 worked so well. So well, in fact, that many software developers saw absolutely no reason at all to port their applications to OS/2 -- OS/2 users could run the Windows 3.1 version, so why bother with a native OS/2 version of the software?
OS/2 did the "run Windows in a virtual machine" well over a decade ago, and we all know the result. Perhaps part of their problem was that the Windows support shipped with every copy of OS/2 2.0 and 2.1 (until the eventual release of OS/2 for Windows), and that by that time if you were an OS/2 user, you were expected to have Windows installed. Perhaps more general VM support without an included copy of Windows would be enough to keep OS X development alive, but to be honest I already went through the pain of fighting with ISV's to get OS/2 versions of software packages to little avail -- I have no desire to go through that again with OS X (which is the platform I switched to on the client side after I finally gave up on OS/2).
Yaz.
Re:tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X... by SEE · 2006-04-24 15:24 · Score: 1

Strip out all of the applications like explorer and IE and media player. Zap FreeCell and textedit and paint and "theme" managers all of that junk. Eliminate all of the control panels and user and system managers that OS X already provides. Eliminate thousands upon thousands of device drivers for hardware not supported by Apple. Slap some WinAPI facades on existing OS X networking and printer drivers.

Right. After you've done all that, you have a problem that's merely several times harder, due to the expansion over the last decade of the Windows API, than the problems Sun faced back in 1993 with WABI and IBM faced in 1996 with Open32.

Uhhh... hello. by jonnythan · 2006-04-21 05:48 · Score: 5, Informative

Wow, Cringely obviously has a clue.

"This will be accomplished not by using compatibility middleware like Wine, but rather by Apple implementing the Windows API directly in OS X 10.5."

Wine *is* an implementation of the Windows API.

Cringeworthy is more like it

Re:Uhhh... hello. by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 05:52 · Score: 1, Interesting

1) I thought the article said/implied that Apple had "better documentation" of the API from the time of their collaboration with MS.

2) I would think it QUITE interesting if Linux binaries (at least non-3D graphics ones) could be run natively under OS X. Does anybody have any idea whether this is being done?

I would think it straightforward - substitute .so's that call OSX routines when given Posix calls, etc.
Re:Uhhh... hello. by Yahweh+Doesn't+Exist · 2006-04-21 05:53 · Score: 1

and you obviously have a clue don't you?

WINE is not an OS. cf Rosetta.
Re:Uhhh... hello. by MustardMan · 2006-04-21 05:54 · Score: 2, Informative

Wine implements the API in an application which runs on top of the kernel. As far as I can tell, cringely is suggesting Apple will implement the support directly in the OS, and not in userland.
Re:Uhhh... hello. by Ohreally_factor · 2006-04-21 05:57 · Score: 1

Right. But Wine is NOT an implementation directly in the OS. It is middleware, by that definition. Unless there is a version of Wine that is also a stand alone OS that I'm not aware of?

Maybe you're not using the right quotes from the article to support your point.

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It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Re:Uhhh... hello. by hackstraw · 2006-04-21 05:57 · Score: 1

Wine *is* an implementation of the Windows API.

Wine has been in development, what 12+ years, and still hasn't reached 1.uhoh

Windows APIs are a moving target, even on Windows.

Personally, I would like to see the bugs in 10.4 fixed in 10.5 vs native windows support, which odds are will not happen at the OS X level this decade.
Re:Uhhh... hello. by wulfhound · 2006-04-21 06:01 · Score: 1

The vast majority of the Win32 API on Windows also runs in userland. The APIs that userland Win32 uses to talk to drivers look pretty different to the APIs that most application developers are using.
Re:Uhhh... hello. by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:07 · Score: 0

I honestly don't see Windows APIs as a "moving" target. The major APIs (user, gdi, kernel, wsock32) have not changed much since the release of their 32bit versions with win95. Sure, I can see some of the other ones, inet, and all the "extra" APIs (which, good programmers don't ever really use anyway) changing with newer windows versions, but 90% of the APIs that 90% of the win32 apps use, haven't changed in 10 years. Hell, even the 16bit ones are still supported in Win2k, and those sure as hell haven't changed. <sarcasm> So what's the big fuckin deal guys? :) </sarcasm>
Re:Uhhh... hello. by hackstraw · 2006-04-21 06:11 · Score: 1

90% of the APIs that 90% of the win32 apps use, haven't changed in 10 years.

10% of the APIs have changed.

Windows admins have to do extensive testing, often taking months, to deploy a service pack to Windows to verify that things still work as advertised. And those changes are probably closer to the 1% change level in APIs or lower.
Re:Uhhh... hello. by wed128 · 2006-04-21 06:13 · Score: 2, Insightful

Arguably some could call ReactOS a standalone OS version of WINE
Re:Uhhh... hello. by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:34 · Score: 0

"Wine *is* an implementation of the Windows API."

Correct, and ask the Wine developers exactly what Apple's chief technologist said when they approached the company about getting WINE into OS X.

This will tell you exactly where Apple is going with this and its not protected information for the developers of WINE (it is for me, so I'm not going to repeat it here -- it was pretty in depth).

Apple really doesn't want to deal with Windows code in any way. The claim that a reverse engineered Windows API is a 'compromised' solution and it would be a compromised solution if Apple were to do the same thing themselves. They want nothing to do with it.

I can't state my name or source. Nothing I've said should be referenced towards Apple's forward looking plans, and should be taken as unsubstantiated rumoring.
Re:Uhhh... hello. by DurendalMac · 2006-04-21 06:34 · Score: 1

Looks like Cringley wants to compete with Dvorak for tech troll. The guy is an utter moron.
Re:Uhhh... hello. by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:51 · Score: 0

Wine *is* an implemantaition of the windows API and considering what the wine fokes have to work with it is incredibly well done. I think Cringely point is that Apple has access to the ACTUAL API source code. And if not the code it's self at least the actual offical microsoft documentation of the API's. So Apple can implement THE windows API's not just something that is close to the windows API's. Also I belive wine runs in userland and Apple could intergrate it into the kernel (I'll let other fight over wether or not having microsoft code in your kernel is a good thing or not) Once again despite the fact wine is not 100% compatable given that I think Microsofts new moto is vista ain't done untill Wine won't run. The Wine and cross over office people do an impressive job.
Re:Uhhh... hello. by neurojab · 2006-04-21 06:52 · Score: 1

Right. But Wine is NOT an implementation directly in the OS. It is middleware, by that definition. Unless there is a version of Wine that is also a stand alone OS that I'm not aware of?

There's no really good definition of "Operating System". Generally it's a kernel plus userland libraries and applications designed to make it easier to run applications and deal with devices. A looser definition also includes any other bundled applications, no matter what the function of those apps. By "directly in the OS", do you mean "directly in the kernel"?

Wine is a system library that makes it easier to run applications, exactly what the implementation of the windows API in OSX would likely be. It's not likely they'll implement the entire Windows API in the kernel (not even Windows does that).

That said, the Windows API implementation would be no more a "part of the OS" than a Linux distribution that ships with Wine.
Re:Uhhh... hello. by FKnight · 2006-04-21 07:01 · Score: 0

"This will be accomplished not by using compatibility middleware like Wine, but rather by Apple implementing the Windows API directly in OS X 10.5." Wine *is* an implementation of the Windows API.
Wrong. WINE is an API which pretends to be the Windows API through reverse engineering the Windows API. Apple, on the other hand, does not need to reverse engineer, as they have access to the real API implementation.
Re:Uhhh... hello. by NutscrapeSucks · 2006-04-21 07:11 · Score: 1

Assuming Cringley is correct and Apple has cross-licensed the Windows API, it should be no suprise that their chief technologist told WINE to take a hike. If you've got the real thing, you don't need WINE.

--
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Re:Uhhh... hello. by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 07:14 · Score: 0

What would the security implications be of doing that, as opposed to having it run in userland?
Re:Uhhh... hello. by ConceptJunkie · 2006-04-21 07:37 · Score: 1

There's a big difference. Wine is being reverse engineered. Cringely is asserting that through the cross-licensing deal between MS and Apple that Apple could have had access to Win32.

Wine is an incredible acheivement, but compared to a real implementation of Win32 based on having access to the source, it would be a joke. You would get near-100% compatibility right out of the box and not the hit-and-miss level of compatibility that Wine has. You wouldn't need things like CrossOver Office. You wouldn't need the sheer amount of effort it takes to get more than a few apps to actually run in Wine, assuming they can run at all.

And this implementation would presumably have the full support of Apple, who unlike Microsoft, actually seem to be making real progress in evolving their OS.

I have to imagine that porting Win32 to run on top of Mach would be an order of magnitude easier than writing one from scratch. Windows NT originally had several layers that could run on top of it, Win32 was one obviously, there was an OS/2 layer, and a POSIX layer, neither of which exist any more, AFAIK.

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You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Re:Uhhh... hello. by OldSpiceAP · 2006-04-21 08:06 · Score: 1

He is correct. Wine is a reimplementation of the windows API. If Apple were to reimplement the entire API (A gigantic task) why wouldn't they support the already advanced work that has already been done by the wine project. Throw Codeweavers a few developers to help them with their CXOffice on Intel Apples project. Why redo work that has already been done for them for free? Once it is at a level they feel is adequate, they could even include it as a software bundle, add on, or as an OS component that would handle .exe executation. Better for Apple in the long run anyways, because Wine work will benefit BSD and Linux users as well. The better the API reimplementation is the less need there is for windows at all.
Re:Uhhh... hello. by Arker · 2006-04-21 08:17 · Score: 1

And this is what's throwing me. If you read the article, Cringely is suggesting both a WinXP layer on Mac OS, AND a switch away from the Mach kernel to a monolithic (FreeBSD?) kernel for more speed. One or the other might make sense. Not both together. If you're going to throw a second OS personality on top, you want to use a microkernel. Now, if they're going to implement a WinXP layer as he says, and also switch to a kernel with better performance, as he says, then I suspect the kernel will be a more advanced microkernel instead of a monolithic kernel. Perhaps L4?

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=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Re:Uhhh... hello. by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 08:26 · Score: 0

True, but running Windows apps requires more than just a feature-complete API. It would require binary compatability. Seeing that OS X uses the Mach-O binary format, and Windows uses its bastardized version of COFF, I don't think the right headers will help any.

But don't expect a tech writer to know that.
Re:Uhhh... hello. by dadragon · 2006-04-21 09:33 · Score: 1

Darwin currently doesn't have support for ELF binaries, so there's step one. Maybe I should get on that...

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God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by 198TFour · 2006-04-21 05:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

because people want native OS X programs. thus there is a market. thus profit.

anyway, i'm doubtful this will happen - as then apple would probably have to support it.

As usual.... by wiggles · 2006-04-21 05:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

Cringely is out of his mind.

1) There is no way in hell Microsoft would document their API to the level necessary to allow Apple to duplicate it.

2) It's blatantly obvious he doesn't understand precisely what Wine is. Remember: Wine Is Not an Emulator. It's a built-from-scratch implementation of the Windows API.

Idiot.

Re:As usual.... by caffeinemessiah · 2006-04-21 05:56 · Score: 1

1) There is no way in hell Microsoft would document their API to the level necessary to allow Apple to duplicate it.
Most of Microsoft's API is already documented. The whole point of an API is that it doesn't matter HOW you implement the functions, as long as you offer the same frontend. So MS not completely documenting their API seems like it would only affect Microsoft apps that use undocumented functionality. I'm assuming that developers at other companies have to use the published Win32 API. So you'll have Mac OS X running all apps that don't use undocumented functionality.
Besides, it might be fun to isolate the undocumented behavior -- map API calls to return values on Wine/OSX (the "published" API) and then on Windows to catch the undocumented shite.

--
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
Re:As usual.... by wulfhound · 2006-04-21 06:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

The problem is not whether or not it's possible, but whether it's feasible for a development team to do it well enough (for Mac users, who expect much higher standards of such things than Linux users) and in a short enough time frame.

Personally I think it's doubtful for that reason.
Re:As usual.... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:09 · Score: 3, Informative

1) There is no way in hell Microsoft would document their API to the level necessary to allow Apple to duplicate it.

TFA notes a cross-licensing agreement was in place from '97 - 2002 so likely Apple had MS' own docs on the API. Also Cringeley says he has talked with with people who have seen XP apps running directly under OSX, and that this has been going on in the labs for some time.

2) It's blatantly obvious he doesn't understand precisely what Wine is. Remember: Wine Is Not an Emulator. It's a built-from-scratch implementation of the Windows API.

The way he put it was that running XP under OSX would not depend on 3rd-party middleware, but would run directly under OSX. He was not saying that WINE is not a Win API inplementation.
Re:As usual.... by RonnyJ · 2006-04-21 06:13 · Score: 1

Remember: Wine Is Not an Emulator. It's a built-from-scratch implementation of the Windows API.
Here's a question: If Windows had some bug in their API, do you think the Wine developers would only implement the API as it 'should be', thus possibly breaking applications that worked around the bug, or would they emulate the bugged version?
Re:As usual.... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:20 · Score: 0

Ya i don't know what happened to cringley.. he used to get stuff right.. now he can't get his facts straight.

The win32api is a spaghetti code of:
If application = sim city 1999 then ...
if application = lotus 123 then ...

MS have done backwards compatibility forever and as a result the api cannot be 100% duplicated without tons of unavailable documentation documenting the exceptions above.

And Wine is where it should be.. in userland.. not integrated into the kernel.. cringley is totally off base and confused i think..
Re:As usual.... by Luctius · 2006-04-21 06:24 · Score: 1

Interresting question. But what would happen if Microsoft would update that API and fix it? So my bet would be, it functions as documented.
Re:As usual.... by xoboots · 2006-04-21 06:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

The goal is bug for bug as the whole point is to replicate behaviour.

There would be no point (other than academic) in Wine being "cleaner" than Microsoft's implementation of the Windows API if it meant that software that runs on Windows couldn't run under Wine.
Re:As usual.... by MobyDisk · 2006-04-21 06:59 · Score: 3, Funny

You just disagreed with yourself.

1) Nobody could duplicate the Windows API.
2) Wine duplicates the Windows API.

???
Re:As usual.... by Fly · 2006-04-21 07:00 · Score: 1

Microsoft fixing some of the old buggy APIs would break some applications that use them. Wine purposefully implements even the bugs in the Windows API. Thus if Microsoft were to "fix" the bugs, Wine would become more compatible with older Windows software than Windows. Of course people could also keep the broken versions of dlls from Microsoft or Wine to run their older programs.

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end of line
Re:As usual.... by geekoid · 2006-04-21 07:01 · Score: 1

It will be the Apple:EU division that does it...

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The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Re:As usual.... by confused+one · 2006-04-21 07:06 · Score: 2, Interesting

1) There is no way in hell Microsoft would document their API to the level necessary to allow Apple to duplicate it.
The API is documented -- how do you think programmers write apps that work in the OS. There are undocumented portions; but, as Cringley points out, Apple has had access to the full API via cross licensing since 1997.
2) It's blatantly obvious he doesn't understand precisely what Wine is. Remember: Wine Is Not an Emulator. It's a built-from-scratch implementation of the Windows API.
Your partially right... Wine is not an emulator. It's also sadly incomplete. Still beta 0.9.xx I believe. Without access and support it is never going to be complete because Microsoft keeps portions of the API a moving target; and, buries portions.
His idea actually has merit if you think about it; Microsoft might actually support such a move. They could drop support of the Apple specific version of Office, lowering development cost. They could increase sales of Office, Exchange, etc. And they could re-coup lost Windows revenue through licensing fees paid by Apple for continued access to the API and development support.
Re:As usual.... by lgw · 2006-04-21 07:18 · Score: 2, Insightful

... seems like it would only affect Microsoft apps that use undocumented functionality. I'm assuming that developers at other companies have to use the published Win32 API.

Wow, the real world will be a shock to you! The first Rule an engineer learns on the job is "the vendor is a lying bastard". This applies to the software world as well. Documentation is the starting point for using an API, but the actual functionality can only be determined by experimentation.

You start with a program that "should work" according to the API documentation, then you refer to Rule 1, then you start changing stuff until the code actually works, and you ship. Then, of course, half your stuff breaks with the next MS OS that "didn't change anything" in that API. I'm frankly amazed at what a good job the WINE guys do, considering.

--
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Re:As usual.... by ziplux · 2006-04-21 07:26 · Score: 2, Informative

The way he put it was that running XP under OSX would not depend on 3rd-party middleware, but would run directly under OSX.

So Apple develops their fancy new software to run XP binaries "directly" on OSX. Presumably, it's an implementation of the Windows API. Presumably, it's not an emulation. How is that code which provides the API not "3rd party middleware?" Just because Apple wrote it and includes it in the base OSX distribution, suddenly its not middleware?

How is this thing that Apple might develop any different from Wine?
Re:As usual.... by shwouchk · 2006-04-21 07:44 · Score: 0

I think what he means is implement it so that its transparent to the user.
Re:As usual.... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 07:56 · Score: 0

3) He also apparently doesn't understand the difference between a repartitioning program and set of hardware drivers (Boot Camp), and a complete reimplementation of Windows.

Enough said.
Re:As usual.... by EndlessNameless · 2006-04-21 07:57 · Score: 1

You just disagreed with yourself.

1) Nobody could duplicate the Windows API.
2) Wine duplicates the Windows API.

Regardless of what he actually said, I believe everyone who is wearing their critical thinking hat today read that as:

2) Wine attempts to duplicate the Windows API.

--

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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Re:As usual.... by PsychicX · 2006-04-21 08:02 · Score: 1

1) There is no way in hell Microsoft would document their API to the level necessary to allow Apple to duplicate it.

It's already documented well enough, save for the couple places where the docs don't match behavior. The problem here is the sheer size of the damn thing. Win32 is huge. Doing the implementation, and more importantly the QA, is an incredible task.
Re:As usual.... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 08:38 · Score: 0

/* The whole point of an API is that it doesn't matter HOW you implement the functions, as long as you offer the same frontend.
*/

Well, as far as source-code compatability is concerned. But you do need more for binary compatibility.

You don't need to implement the functions the same way, but you do need more than an API.

Think about this. I've got Cygwin installed on my computer at work. If I use Cygwin's windows headers and pass -mnocygwin, then I can redistribute my binaries to any Windows computer. But if I forget to pass that flag, my binaries (that follow the same API) will croak on other computers due to a linking error.

Tech writers should know more, uh, tech.

Especially since Cringley claims that WINE apparently doesn't use the Windows API. Uh, sorry, but the public API is documented in books. You know, the books tech writers write. WINE *starts* with the API, but then also has to go through extra hoops for binary compatibility.
Re:As usual.... by GWBasic · 2006-04-21 08:49 · Score: 1
I don't think you read the article:
Cringly claims that:
1. OS X will implement that Windows API just like Wine. (Specifically, OS X won't emulate Windows.)
2. Apple has a legitimate liscense to use the Windows API.
This article is no surprise to me. As soon as OS X with Windows support is released, I'm buying a Mac.
--
No, I will not work for your startup
Re:As usual.... by uradu · 2006-04-21 08:50 · Score: 1

> The problem here is the sheer size of the damn thing. Win32 is huge. Doing the implementation,
> and more importantly the QA, is an incredible task.

Precisely, and that's why I find all this talk of WINE-vs-the-OSX-Way ridiculous. If Apple are to have any chance of pulling this of, and if their past cannibalizing of existing code for OS X is any indication, they will most likely USE large portions of WINE. Perhaps SCO can help us find WINE in OS X later on?
Re:As usual.... by NutscrapeSucks · 2006-04-21 09:18 · Score: 1

> whether it's feasible

Keep in mind that Apple could sublicence XP Home for about $30, and they can also license some virtualization software cheaply.

So, it's ridiclous to work on some crazy Win32-on-Mac implementation when the real thing could be shipped for under $100/box.

--
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Re:As usual.... by katsklaw · 2006-04-21 09:25 · Score: 1

1) There is no way in hell Microsoft would document their API to the level necessary to allow Apple to duplicate it.

You of course knowing everything about every one of Microsoft's internal policies (even the 'top secret' ones) and external contract and agreement in existance verbatim.

2) It's blatantly obvious he doesn't understand precisely what Wine is. Remember: Wine Is Not an Emulator. It's a built-from-scratch implementation of the Windows API.

Ever notice how WINE geeks have to keep saying that wine is not an emulator? Especially when wine started as one. (WINdows Emulator)

"Idiot."

Yes, some people are idiots.
Re:As usual.... by Paradise+Pete · 2006-04-21 09:44 · Score: 1

So, it's ridiclous to work on some crazy Win32-on-Mac implementation when the real thing could be shipped for under $100/box.
At current levels Apple will sell 4,500,000 computers this year. So that software would be more than 400 million dollars in the first year, and billions after that. Steve, give me a call. I'll do it for half price. Hurry, offer ends soon.
Re:As usual.... by Midnight+Thunder · 2006-04-21 09:47 · Score: 1

Cringely is out of his mind.

Is this new? I think a few people smoking a joint would have clearer sense of reality than he does.

--
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Re:As usual.... by The_Rook · 2006-04-21 09:55 · Score: 1

perhaps, but i don't think jobs' own aesthetic sense would let him run a windows application run in a windows screen inside a mac os x window (a la virtual pc).

in aesthetic terms, the only elegant solution for the user would be to have a windows app run seamlessly alongside os x apps with minimal differences confined to things like menu arrangements.

i think the biggest challenge will not be implementing windows api but in figuring oout how to make applications that expect a windows resource registry work with os x applications packages.

--
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
Re:As usual.... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 10:14 · Score: 0

Idiot.
A slashdot tip for ya: If you used the "signature" feature you wouldn't have to type that in every time.
Re:As usual.... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 10:24 · Score: 0

Isn't that what emulators do? They emulate things? (as opposed, to, say, simulate?)
Re:As usual.... by batura · 2006-04-21 10:45 · Score: 1

Who is the idiot in this case? Your first point says there's not enough documentation to reproduce the API, and your second point states that Wine is implementation of said API.

Now, it is true that Wine is an implementation of the win32 apis-- and I think that Apple could take those effors and integrate them into their OS. Probably not in time for 1.5, but who knows about in the future? The darwine project is apparently in its infancy, but apple does have a good history working with OSS communities.
Re:As usual.... by Knuckles · 2006-04-21 10:56 · Score: 1

Most of Microsoft's API is already documented.The whole point of an API is that it doesn't matter HOW you implement the functions, as long as you offer the same frontend.

In a perfect world. In reality, you don't have to implement the API, but to reimplement the particular implementation on windows, including behavior that differs from the published docs, and simple bugs.

--
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Re:As usual.... by NutscrapeSucks · 2006-04-21 11:42 · Score: 1

Sorry, I meant to imply that Apple would charge you for the privilege.

If you really could replicate Windows for $200 Million, I'm sure you could find some investors however.

--
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Re:As usual.... by Moofie · 2006-04-21 11:51 · Score: 1

Um, if WINE can re-implement the Windows API, why couldn't Apple?

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Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Re:As usual.... by Paradise+Pete · 2006-04-21 12:31 · Score: 1

If you really could replicate Windows for $200 Million
I meant half of the billions. And implementing the API is not the same thing as replicating Windows.
The value of doing it must be absurdly huge. Look what happened in the two days following "boot camp." The stock gained nine billion dollars in market cap. And that's just for booting it. How much would it be worth to seamlessly run Windows apps along side Mac apps? They couldn't produce the computers fast enough. They'd be flying off the shelves.
Re:As usual.... by jmordoj · 2006-04-21 20:36 · Score: 1

I think you are the one that is mistaken

You must think outside of the Box, do you really think you know everything there is to know?

The humanity CREATES thing all the time, there is wine, but there others thing you don't know, people develops new solutions. Clever programs are invented all the time.

Just because a 100 years ago you had to wait 15 minutes to heat an oven, doesn't mean nobody would EVER create a microwave oven that will do the same thing a hundred times faster

Just because it not in front of you doesn't mean it cant be done.

If Apple is migrating to Intel at the speed it is doing it right now, is changing key staff, it is giving away boot loader no one will ever dream can be available FROM apple, its very, very clear there is a strategy, and we just don't know all there is to know.

Jack
Re:As usual.... by EminenceFront · 2006-04-22 03:01 · Score: 1

Try and read what he's saying a little more carefully...
Apple has plenty of experience emulating old operating systems to maintain compatibility, whether it was 680X0 emulation on early PowerPC machines, System 9 or Classic emulation under OS X, or even today's Rosetta on-the-fly conversion of PowerPC apps to run on MacIntel boxes.
Trying to save the company, Steve got Bill Gates to invest $150 million in Apple and promise to keep Mac Office going for a few more years in exchange for a five-year patent cross-licensing agreement ... But I'm told that the exchange wasn't totally one-way, that Apple, in turn, got some legal right to the Windows API.
I'm told Apple has long had this running in the Cupertino lab -- Intel Macs running OS X while mixing Apple and XP applications. This is not a guess or a rumor, this something that has been demonstrated and observed by people who have since reported to me.
Re:As usual.... by NutscrapeSucks · 2006-04-22 04:40 · Score: 1

> The value of doing it must be absurdly huge.

Right. Which sums up how ridiclous Cringley's premise is.

--
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Re:As usual.... by Anti_Climax · 2006-04-22 07:45 · Score: 1

therefore WINE = Nobody

QED

--
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
Re:As usual.... by octopus72 · 2006-04-22 11:28 · Score: 1

He indeed lost his mind.

No way Apple would try to implement Win32 API from scratch. It took nearly a decade for Wine. It is impossible to do in reliable fashion without huge manpower and testers. It would be easy with clean, fully documented (and properly tested) modular API. Win32 is all but that (not eve MS can get compatibility working right!)

It is possible that Apple modifies WINE to use native GUI libraries and few such tweaks, maybe a few new kernel calls to speed up file handling or threading.

And to spoil a party, Crossover is already working on OSX Wine port. There are some fundamental differences compared to linux, but no showstoppers.
Re:As usual.... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-23 03:36 · Score: 0

READ the article man! Your ignorance is obvious to those of us who have.

Moderation by palad1 · 2006-04-21 05:49 · Score: 5, Funny

Damn, I whish I could mod this story +5, Funny

Re:Moderation by paulthomas · 2006-04-21 06:11 · Score: 2, Insightful

Might I recommend the tag "plusfivefunny"
Re:Moderation by sevenoverzero · 2006-04-21 06:31 · Score: 2, Funny

Sounds a bit too much like Newspeak, for my tastes... ;)
Re:Moderation by SpinJaunt · 2006-04-21 06:40 · Score: 1

Hmmm.. it would seem you got the next best thing.

I can't wait to run Symantec Norton Internet Security on this "thing" and Bonzi Buddy.

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/. is good for you.
Re:Moderation by cgenman · 2006-04-21 13:28 · Score: 1

Can we just mod the writer? Cringely is definitely a +5 idiot.

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The ______ Agenda

Unlikely... by tjansen · 2006-04-21 05:49 · Score: 3, Insightful

The Wine guys worked a decade on cloning the Windows API, and there are still more than enough problems. There is no way Apple can do this. Maybe for specific applications, but implementing Win32 with all the required libraries on top? Never.

Re:Unlikely... by Yahweh+Doesn't+Exist · 2006-04-21 05:57 · Score: 1

how long has it taken people to make unix-based desktop OSs that still aren't 1/10th as polished as OSX?
Re:Unlikely... by bigtrike · 2006-04-21 06:00 · Score: 1

It's a question of time really. If Apple is willing to spend the money to put more work hours into it, then it will work better. It's very unlikely it will ever work well though, so they can never really make it an official release quality feature without damaging their image.

If I were Apple I'd hire a bunch of people to work on and maintain the Mac version WINE. It would then work pretty well and be available for people to use, but people wouldn't blame Apple for the applications which crash repeatedly.
Re:Unlikely... by QuietLagoon · 2006-04-21 06:28 · Score: 1

The Wine guys worked a decade on cloning the Windows API, and there are still more than enough problems. There is no way Apple can do this.
Maybe if you RTFA, you would have seen that Apple has access to internal Microsoft technology that the WINE people would only dream of having.
Re:Unlikely... by supabeast! · 2006-04-21 10:57 · Score: 1

"The Wine guys worked a decade on cloning the Windows API, and there are still more than enough problems. There is no way Apple can do this."

Open source coders hacking something together in their free time can't hope to compare with the efforts of a well-managed corporate team will millions of dollars at their disposal. Open source coders have failed to do a lot of things over the years that the corporate world has done well - for example, making a free *nix based OS that regular people actually want use and enjoy using. Thousands of GNU/Linux/*BSD developers have failed at that one countless times over the years, when Apple attacked the problem they turned out OS X.
Re:Unlikely... by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · 2006-04-21 16:19 · Score: 1

How long has it taken to make OSX? Scine Nextstep was founded in 1985. They've had quite a head start on everyone else. Linux isn't bad considering its at least six years behind in time.

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Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Re:Unlikely... by zsau · 2006-04-21 17:53 · Score: 1

Have they though? As far as I can tell, the only real group of free/open source devs who've actually been aiming at that are the Lindows, GNOME and Ubuntu teams (as well as various minor groups who are better compared to proprietry shareware devs): Gnome only since around when the 2.0 HIG was released (2001/2002ish); Ubuntu only since 2004. That's some impressive progress! I don't know how long Lindows have been going for, but I don't think basing it on KDE is good for that,* so they've destined themselves to failure.

Most other major free/open source software devs have been writing stuff much more for themselves & their users.

* Don't get me wrong. I hate KDE with a passion and will likely never run it. So I could be quite strongly biassed. But I don't think KDE is aiming at being an OS-X competitor. It's one of the pieces of free software written for the devs and their users.

--
Look out!

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by unk1911 · 2006-04-21 05:49 · Score: 1, Interesting

This would be great, it will enable Apple users to play on websites such as WorldWinner.com, to compete for cash prizes. There's so much software (even web-based software) written out there that only supports Windows/ActiveX/etc, that something like this would really be helpful.

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ahref=http://unk1911.blogspot.com/rel=url2html-926 9http://unk1911.blogspot.com/>

It's a nice idea... by AKAImBatman · 2006-04-21 05:50 · Score: 3, Interesting

...but it isn't going to happen. BootCamp is about advertising. Macs are generally known as Really Nice Hardware(TM). As a result, some people will buy Macs just to install Windows. They may even think, "Hey, I can even try out this Mac OS X thing so that I can *really* make fun of my Mac-lover friends!" Then the users purchase a Mac, try OS X, realize they don't actually NEED Windows, and never use BootCamp at all.

It's a stroke of genius, actually.

--
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade

Re:It's a nice idea... by just_another_sean · 2006-04-21 06:09 · Score: 2, Insightful

Then the users purchase a Mac, try OS X, realize they don't actually NEED Windows, and never use BootCamp at all.

Well they'll need it to boot Linux actually... :-)

--
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Re:It's a nice idea... by RosenSama · 2006-04-21 06:22 · Score: 1

"Hey, I can even try out this Mac OS X thing so that I can *really* make fun of my Mac-lover friends!"
How many people in the real world have a Mac-lover category of friends? It seems like a much larger stroke of genius to provide the windows API in OSX simultaneously overcoming Apple's greatest shortcoming of developer support while providing people an alternative to buying one of Microsoft's two huge revenue streams. It would be even better if OS X upgrades were much cheaper than a Windows one.
Re:It's a nice idea... by paranoidhumanoid · 2006-04-21 07:23 · Score: 1

How true. I just got a mac mini a week ago and going from it to XP is just painful. I'd intended to try out Bootcamp but have no intentions of doing so now. I did install parallels workstation and install xp just to see how it ran. After about 15 minutes I got tired of it and deleted the vm, it was just a waste of space :)

--

blacked-out vans, contingency plans...
Re:It's a nice idea... by Nugget · 2006-04-21 07:32 · Score: 1

Only if they find some reason to need Linux which is an even less plausible scenario than an OS X user needing Windows.
Re:It's a nice idea... by yopa · 2006-04-21 08:20 · Score: 2, Insightful

No dispute regarding the feasability and cost of Apple's implementation of the API, but strategically, think about the timing of this: if you assume that the goal of this is a market-share grab by Apple, the best time to capture the consumer is at the upgrade cycle from XP to Vista.

During that upgrade cycle, regardless of MS's assurances, there's going to be substantial fear of your legacy apps breaking during the transition. If at that point Apple's offering on the market will allow you to run all/most of your old XP apps, though, then the Vista vs. OS X choice becomes a much more apples-to-apples comparison:

1. Either way, I'm paying for a new OS license and associated hardware
2. Either way, I run the risk of some of my old apps breaking, but chances are, most of them will work.
3. Either way, any application upgrades and new apps that take advantage of the new OS are going to cost me.

With just Boot Camp, (1) skews in favor of Wintel, since you'd have to buy an OS license; and (2) skews in favor of Wintel, since you'd have to reboot to use your old apps.

So now, for the first time, your system purchase decision becomes entirely a question of the user experience and the capabilities of new applications that you will actually be purchasing, and not a question of what you're losing in the transition.
Re:It's a nice idea... by Sithgunner · 2006-04-23 01:27 · Score: 1

Happy mind of always Mac winning over Windows, but seriously, if you already realize you don't need Windows, then there's always been Linux in the at least last 5 years to average users.

But then again, mostly because of MS Office and other work softwares, they are kept on Windows whether they like Windows or not.

It does sound prejudice going Windows sucks all day and Mac is the superior.
For me, I still like Windows over Mac for various reasons, and I don't even use MS Office.

I for one wonder which average users would just ditch Windows, just because Mac OS X is the new entry in the end user OS market and might have a niftier GUI. They have to relearn all the little controls to manage the OS and have to find the alternative softwares from scratch not to mention spend some cash.

Something like that... by a_nonamiss · 2006-04-21 05:50 · Score: 2, Interesting

... would certaily push a lot of users like me over the edge to the Macintosh camp. If only I had bought that Apple stock 10 years ago...

--
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules

Re:Something like that... by kyofunikushimi · 2006-04-21 06:36 · Score: 1

Bear in mind that 10 years from now you'll still be saying "If only I had bought that Apple stock 10 years ago..."

--
oo
Re:Something like that... by dn15 · 2006-04-21 07:14 · Score: 1

Exactly. I know a few people who have been on the fence about getting a Mac before but were wary of jumping in feet first and giving up Windows. Now that new Macs will be able to dual-boot, at least a couple of these users are very close to getting a Mac. I see this as a very good thing for Apple and a way to ease the pain of people who are unsure about whether they should switch. After all, in the worst case outcome the computer is still perfectly useful. If they changed their mind they can just wipe out OS X completely and have a plain old Windows PC that happens to be made by Apple.

YHBT! by NutscrapeSucks · 2006-04-21 05:50 · Score: 5, Insightful

Cringely and Dvorak must be making humongous ad-revenue trolling Mac Fans lately. They're eating it up!

It's understandable because Apple has made some radical moves lately (Intel, Windows), so the Mac Zealot's universe must seem like it's in total flux. No longer can they confidently predict Apple's next move using their supposed expertise in everything-apple. If Apple will put Windows on Macs, pretty much anything goes!

Obviously these columnists sense the uncertainly and are having fun stirring things up a bit. Anyway, before you fire off your 1000 word point-by-point response denouncing Cringely, keep in mind he probably wrote this column in 15 minutes while high on cough medicine.

--
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.

Re:YHBT! by Ohreally_factor · 2006-04-21 06:23 · Score: 5, Funny

It is indeed an interesting time to be a Mac user.

keep in mind he probably wrote this column in 15 minutes while high on cough medicine.

Actually, he was only able to put down on paper the fantastic visions conjured by his drugged out mind for fifteen minutes before he was interrupted by a person from Porlock. When he was finally able to get back to writing his article, he found that the vivid images had left him, and he was left with only a few fragmentary notes.

In Cupertino did Kubla Khan[1]
A stately pleasure-dome decree[2] :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran[3]
Through caverns measureless to man[4]
Down to a sunless sea.[5]

[1] Clearly a reference to Steve Jobs
[2] Jobs announces expansion of Apple campus
[3] River Alph = 1 Infinite Loop(?)
[4]Undocumented Windows APIs
[5]Apparently where WinFS is hiding

--
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Re:YHBT! by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 08:01 · Score: 1, Insightful

Cringely and Dvorak must be making humongous ad-revenue trolling Mac Fans lately. They're eating it up!

yeah, just look at all the ads on that PBS page...
Re:YHBT! by angst_ridden_hipster · 2006-04-21 11:43 · Score: 1

I've always thought that Coleridge would have had a much, much better poem if someone -- anyone -- had interrupted him exactly after the fifth line, and he'd called it quits.

Don't even get me started on wished interruptions apropos the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

--
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by Yahweh+Doesn't+Exist · 2006-04-21 05:51 · Score: 0, Troll

what's the incentive to build $fantastic_product when you can just use $garbage anyway?

How is this different than wine? by BytePusher · 2006-04-21 05:51 · Score: 1

If I recall, wine is an implementation of the Windows API. Perhaps I'm confused, but I don't know the difference between middle-ware and a direct implementation, except perhaps he means the API user interface will seem transparent to the user. However, this is possible with wine as well.

Re:How is this different than wine? by MORB · 2006-04-21 06:37 · Score: 1

This is not different than Wine. Cringeley is just being an ignorant asshat.

Implementing the win32 api is made difficult by the lack of proper specifications of the API (as in defining the exact behavior of the API, or stating clearly what has an undefined behavior, etc.)

Even if it did exist, it wouldn't help much, as since there is essentially one official implementation of the API that everyone develops against, a lot of apps rely, intentionally or accidentaly, on side-effect or undefined behaviors caused by the way the API is implemented. Those quirks, in turn, needs to be emulated aswell to make apps work.

This is why microsoft offering the EU to give the source code to its stuff as a matter of documentation is not good, because you lack the information needed to distinguish what is part of the specs, and what is merely a side-effect of the implementation (not to mention those things that may be in their specs but missing from the implementation)

In any case, Apple cannot magically implement the windows API better than Wine on a short notice.
Indeed, even Microsoft has trouble updating their own OS without breaking third party apps (and probably even previous versions of their own apps).
Re:How is this different than wine? by FKnight · 2006-04-21 07:24 · Score: 0

In any case, Apple cannot magically implement the windows API better than Wine on a short notice.
Except for the fact that Apple doesn't have to reverse engineer the API or guess .. and they've been working on it for almost a decade now.
Re:How is this different than wine? by spitzak · 2006-04-21 10:36 · Score: 1

You think the Wine developers don't know how to write a program for the Windows API?
Re:How is this different than wine? by FKnight · 2006-04-24 06:44 · Score: 0

No, not at all. I was simply saying what Everyone already knows for a fact: that the Wine developers are forced to build their implementation of the Win32 API but brute force reverse engineering, whereas Apple, on the other hand, only needs to open their file drawer that says "Win32 API Source Code from Microsoft."

Classic but for Windows. by anlprb · 2006-04-21 05:51 · Score: 3, Interesting

I bet it will be a classic like environment, but for windows. Once the data is on the HDD, it is trivial to start up a virtual machine and fool the win partition into thinking that it is booting natively. That is much more likely. That would be the final "Integrated" solution for running windows apps. They proved it could be done workably with OS 9. Now, they just have a separate partition to boot. But this again, is from another whack job on the innerwebinator thingie.

--

One Token Ring to Rule them All, One Search Engine to Find Them, One WAN to bring them in, and TCP/IP Bind them...

Re:Classic but for Windows. by andreyw · 2006-04-21 06:33 · Score: 1

...keeping in mind that "classic" and "run an unmodified version of an IA-32 OS" are slightly different tasks, the second being a lot harder than the first. There was direct support for "classic" in OS X, and the "classic" kernel and related were modified extensively.

Cringely is an idiot though, I have no patience for people who think they come off being smart. Yeah, sure.... if Apple were to add Win32 API support, they *wouldn't* build upon existing OSS work (just like the *didn't* do that when they made OS X, right Bob?).

In reality, if they were going to add Win32 API support, they would most likely base it off WINE.

WINE is not an emulator by darkfire5252 · 2006-04-21 05:51 · Score: 1

This will be accomplished not by using compatibility middleware like Wine, but rather by Apple implementing the Windows API directly in OS X 10.5

From the WINE website:
Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code

So, AFIAK, Wine isn't some 'middleware' but rather the API implemented. So, given that OS X is *nix based anyway, why re-invent the wheel?

Re:WINE is not an emulator by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:06 · Score: 0

Because the wheel doesn't work...
Re:WINE is not an emulator by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:26 · Score: 0

WINE is also (L)GPL. This would make it difficult for Apple to integrate it tightly into OSX.
Re:WINE is not an emulator by ClamIAm · 2006-04-21 06:31 · Score: 1

AFIAK, Wine isn't some 'middleware' but rather the API implemented.
You can call it either name and probably not be wrong. Wine is not entangled with the OS it's running on, so it could be considered "middleware". It also implements the API of Windows, so that's accurate as well.
Re:WINE is not an emulator by HTH+NE1 · 2006-04-21 06:51 · Score: 0, Offtopic

why re-invent the wheel?

Because we don't like the color.

--
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?

Could it be... by MustardMan · 2006-04-21 05:51 · Score: 2, Interesting

Could cringely be saying something that actually makes a bit of sense? I have no doubt that WINE will eventually be at least as good on os x as it is on linux today, which is not too shabby. Apple have shown with boot camp that, if the hackers get it working and people are excited about it, Apple is willing to release a more elegant solution to accomplish the same goals. With the mach microkernel setup they've got going now, it's not too hard to imagine a windows compatibility layer that could run tandem to the BSD layer they already use. IMO, this one is at least a possibility. I wouldn't say Apple is neccesarily planning to do this right now, but if people start getting really exited when darwine starts getting good, I wouldn't be suprised to see the ole man in the turtleneck upstaging them by releasing an Apple sanctioned implementation.

Really the most shocking part of this whole article is the fact the Cringely said something that actually kinda makes sense. I guess a stopped clock really can be right once in a while.

Re:Could it be... by BytePusher · 2006-04-21 05:59 · Score: 1

I think a stopped clock is right once or twice a day, depending on whether or not it has an AM/PM indicator. Twice a week if it's had a day of the week indicator and no AM/PM. Twice a month if it has a day of the month indicator and it's stuck on a day less than 28... you get the idea. So I think it might be a unfair to compare Cringely to a stopped clock even if he did happen to have a clue once(Which he didn't).
Re:Could it be... by mypalmike · 2006-04-21 06:16 · Score: 1

Really the most shocking part of this whole article is the fact the Cringely said something that actually kinda makes sense. I guess a stopped clock really can be right once in a while.

Comparing Cringely to a stopped clock is an insult to stopped clocks everywhere.

--
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.

and then... by Kaphin · 2006-04-21 05:52 · Score: 1

upon which time Microsoft will change the API, obfuscate the hell out of it, and add undocumented "features".

Mono? by JeanBaptiste · 2006-04-21 05:52 · Score: 1

Considering .NET looks to be the future of windows applications, wouldn't they just implement something like Mono?

Right! by AWhiteFlame · 2006-04-21 05:52 · Score: 1

So, Apple is planning to let windows apps run natively in OS X.. but not like WINE, an implementation of the Windows API, more like ... Apple's own Windows API Implementation...You see the difference? Yeah..thought so.

--
"Everything worth innovating today will go to court tomorrow."

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by geekoid · 2006-04-21 05:52 · Score: 1

Because people want to?

--
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

OS/2 by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 05:53 · Score: 0

OS/2 failed and the API was much "simpler/smaller" back in 95. It ain't going to happen. Users want 100%, not 96% compatibility. Virtualization is the future. Apple knows this. Look at the CPU they are using.

Re:OS/2 by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-23 23:40 · Score: 0

I'm sure Apple can afford the brutal loss of 10% of its developers.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 05:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

Cool! All of the spyware and viruses can run in OS X too. That would be great.

Anyone Remember OS/2 Warp by Puutah_Mahdrey · 2006-04-21 05:53 · Score: 0

Can Apple succeed where IBM did not? And how will they do this? Windows running under OS/2 often did not seem to work all that well.

Re:Anyone Remember OS/2 Warp by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:40 · Score: 0

Warp is mentioned in some of the other postings as well. The comparison is not entirely correct since OS/2 Warp implemented 16-bit Windows as part of a DOS virtual machine, which is different from a native implementation of the API in the operating system. The comparison with Wine is much more like an Apples-to-Apples comparison.

Hmmm by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 05:53 · Score: 0

Implementing the win32 API in OS X? How's that different from what wine does (replace OS X with X11, obviously).

Besides, I think even for Apple, implementing and maintaining the whole of win32, including directx, is not a workable proposition.

Not even Microsoft can make sense of the whole jungle of legacy bugs and what-not, judging by the speed with which they can churn out critical exploit fixes. And presumably they have access to the source code.

Okay Bob. by Chas · 2006-04-21 05:54 · Score: 1

Now hold your breath on this one. ...

--

Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!

This is the second step by denisbergeron · 2006-04-21 05:54 · Score: 1

to replace the mach kernel / userland bsd by the Windows Kernel / OSX Userland!
Hope this one will not be a Flamebait!
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=183557&cid=151 59927

--
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !

Re:This is the second step by gstoddart · 2006-04-21 06:28 · Score: 1

to replace the mach kernel / userland bsd by the Windows Kernel / OSX Userland!
Hope this one will not be a Flamebait!
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=183557&cid=151 59927

No, it's not flamebait. It's just a horifically BAD idea, and we don't have a moderation category for that.

What possible benefit would there be in replacing the Mach kernel with the Windows Kernel? [ Is the Apple kernel even Mach? I thought Windows was Mach ] You inherit all of the security bullshit, all of the legacy crap, and you just capitulate to MS. Why would Apple want to swap out the guts of their OS to be a shell on top of Microsoft?

The userland BSD has the benefit of being portable, well documented, and compatible with a tremendous amount of code since it's all friggin' POSIX and the like.

--
Lost at C:>. Found at C.

Maybe by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · 2006-04-21 05:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

...I also believe that Apple will offer in OS X 10.5 the ability to run native Windows XP applications with no copy of XP installed on the machine at all. This will be accomplished not by using compatibility middleware like Wine, but rather by Apple implementing the Windows API directly in OS X 10.5.

First, there is more than one API used in Windows. Second, WINE is an implementation of the Windows APIs. It is entirely possible Apple will reuse a lot of the WINE project and DarWINE in order to allow Windows Apps to run in OS X (hopefully sandboxed), but it is also entirely possible they won't. I rather suspect the latter for a number of reasons. First, Apple doesn't have to do this, there are a half dozen third parties clamoring to offer the same functionality. Second, by making it too easy to run Windows programs within OS X, they can reduce the incentive for developers to write programs to the current APIs. Third, since Windows is slowly strangling OpenGL on their platform and MS owns DirectX, Apple may have difficulty keeping graphics intensive applications behaving well if they go this route. Fourth, Windows APIs do not have all the functionality of OS X APIs and some of the most useful and advantageous features of OS X would be killed.

Only time will tell for sure.

WorldWinner for Apple users by unk1911 · 2006-04-21 05:54 · Score: 0

This would be great, it will enable Apple users to play on websites such as WorldWinner.com, to compete for cash prizes. There's so much software (even web-based software) written out there that only supports Windows/ActiveX/etc, that something like this would really be helpful.

--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com/

Re:WorldWinner for Apple users by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:30 · Score: 0

lots of virii too, we can't wait...

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by non0score · 2006-04-21 05:55 · Score: 5, Interesting

By your reasoning, then why bother writing OSX programs in the first place? The point is that people write programs for OSX because they want to, not because they're somehow stuck with a Mac and can't write something for the PC. This is giving people who use program Y that was never "ported" to the Mac platform (and thus can't switch over) a reason to switch over. Of course, this is also giving a lot of convenience to long-time Mac users who just can't seem to get any games.

Now, only if I can plug in any PCIE gfx card and be able to get the OSX drivers for them, I'll be all set....

Wouldnt it be nice.. by DoctorDyna · 2006-04-21 05:55 · Score: 1

It would be neat if everything ran on everything that runs on everything. Then, and only then, users could make a decision about OS / Hardware / Software from a pure perspective of usability, cost and performance.

--
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.

Re:Wouldnt it be nice.. by ClamIAm · 2006-04-21 06:33 · Score: 1

This sounds suspiciously like a guy named "Stallman"...

What the...? by Zrith · 2006-04-21 05:55 · Score: 1

Does it seem to anyone else lately that tech writers seem to have run out of ideas and are simply rolling dice with phrases on them to come up with stories?

"Microsoft... and Apple... are teaming up... to write native applications... for Linux."

While it'd be interesting to see Apple pull this off, I think this would be something that might be "discovered" by rumor sites far in advance of it coming out. It's not something simple to do, and there would be a lot of build-up involved.

Actually, I wouldn't mind a set of those dice. "Oracle... will sue... Bill Gates... for trade secrets violations."

Re:What the...? by Ohreally_factor · 2006-04-21 06:38 · Score: 1

Does it seem to anyone else lately that tech writers seem to have run out of ideas and are simply rolling dice with phrases on them to come up with stories?

Hey, if it works for web 2.0 companies trying to come up with business plans, why shouldn't they?

--
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by gluteus · 2006-04-21 05:56 · Score: 4, Insightful

Because Mac users will treat any Windows apps running on OS X like second class citizens. They'll stomach it, but not for long.

People credit Apple for how apps are consistently Mac-like and interoperate with each other, but the users are the ultimate enforcers. Any developer who steps out of line is crucified.

The reality of Apple's situation ... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 05:56 · Score: 0

9th place might get you a playoff spot in the NBA and a shot at the big one, but in computers, 9th place is not so hot

Apple's either betting the company or ... more likely ... throwing in the towel in the computer business. Steve's desperately trying to morph the company into a gadget company and diplomaticly putting lipstick on a pig by quietly surrenduring to Microsoft. Apple will sell only sell computers that run Windows software. The mac eloquent mac faithful will once again sell this as "win" for all artistes and others amoung the dwindling non-windows users, but an overpriced computer with a matching purse will only have a small niche.

The winners? Microsoft and Linux ... leaving the big two to duke it out.

Re:The reality of Apple's situation ... by ZachPruckowski · 2006-04-21 06:16 · Score: 1

Apple's in 4th place. You just linked an article from 2002. Welcome to 2006.
Re:The reality of Apple's situation ... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:57 · Score: 0

The article is from 2002.

There is a big section in it about "Boot Camp" though. Different usage, but still

No way Jose by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 05:56 · Score: 0

That is simply not going to happen. Nope.
The Windows API is a bug-ridden massive beast.
I don't mean "bug-ridden" in a bad way. It's just that so much has been coded around bugs that it would take an eternity just to duplicate those.

It's also a BEAST. It's HUGE and complex and never going to be duplicated properly.

MS already spends most of the time around compatibility. There is no way a small team at Apple would achieve in a short time what MS hasn't been able to do with their own source!

This is just like claiming MacOS X 10.5 will teleport people around the country cause airlines SUCK.
NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

It would be good though. But no. Not going to happen.

I can't stand people like Cringely and Dvorak that pick stuff out of their asses and then ACTUALLY GET PEOPLE TO TALK ABOUT THEM!!!! Why am I wasting my time with this post????
I know! Cause this is the dumbest thing I've heard in a LONG time and I just couldn't let it slide.

Yea, you can argue around my post.
Oh, maybe Apple had a huge team on it.
Oh, maybe Apple has been doing it for a long time in lab.
Oh, maybe the Sun is blue and you can eat it with guacamole.
Oh, maybe Heff's bunnies are knocking on my door.

All demagocy aside, NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. There.

Be good.

Re:No way Jose by dham340 · 2006-04-21 06:15 · Score: 1

Read the article...Apple need not duplicate, its got the right to use the source code from M$
Re:No way Jose by gyrogeerloose · 2006-04-21 06:31 · Score: 1

You sure about that?

--
This ain't rocket surgery.

Virtualization, Not This by American+AC+in+Paris · 2006-04-21 05:58 · Score: 2, Interesting

I'd be a lot less surprised to see good, solid virtualization. Give users a high-speed sandbox where they can run Windows and Windows apps and they won't care whether or not the apps are integrated into the OS. Most users don't do much direct application-to-application integration in Windows, anyhow--generally, you're saving files to the disk, then importing or converting them in another app. Virtualization works quite well with this sort of thing.

Frankly, it's probably better not to go down Cringley's road, since Microsoft's flavor of application design and integration is so very, very different from the OS X model; running Windows Word "native" in OS X would be a constant headache for users used to the drag-and-drop-just-works world of Apple's flagship apps...

--

Obliteracy: Words with explosions

Cue European Commision by Spy+der+Mann · 2006-04-21 05:58 · Score: 2, Insightful

1) There is no way in hell Microsoft would document their API to the level necessary to allow Apple to duplicate it.

And because of that, they're losing 2 million euros a-day...

Re:Cue European Commision by lucifuge31337 · 2006-04-21 12:17 · Score: 1

And because of that, they're losing 2 million euros a-day...

To paraphrase (Jon Stewart, I think):
At that rate, they'll run out of money just 100 years before the earth crashes into the sun.

--
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.

Bonzai Buddy!!! Yea! by inertialmatrix · 2006-04-21 05:58 · Score: 3, Funny

I can not wait to run Bonzai Buddy, not to mention all the _GREAT_ screen savers that are available for download (for free!) off the web!

yea!

Can some one tell me... by thewiz · 2006-04-21 05:59 · Score: 2, Funny

1. Why and how would Apple implementing the Windows API be a good thing?
2. What Cringly has been smoking?
3. Most importantly, where can I get some of what Cringly been smoking?

--
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?

Windows in a VM by Nate+Fox · 2006-04-21 05:59 · Score: 2, Interesting

Why bootcamp when you can run in a VM (aside from games)? Anandtech has a nice review of the macbook, and running windows in a window, as well as dual booting. Seems performance is quite good, even with the beta!

Clash of the Interfaces by TobyRush · 2006-04-21 05:59 · Score: 1

I don't doubt that I will someday (soon) be able to open a windows .exe in OS X, and with BootCamp out it's apparent that the under-the-hood stuff is now a non-issue.

The big issue I see, however, is how the interface would work. An "operating system in a window" environment, like VirtualPC, is a no-brainer. But if the target is a more integrated method, like Classic, where the XP/Vista application windows can be interleaved with OS X windows, I can see some problems. Menu bars immediately come to mind.

Granted, they could just let it happen the way it happens, but that's not the Apple Way. And you KNOW that Joe Consumer is going to be loading Windows apps he bought from Wal-Mart like there's no tomorrow. It's going to cause a lot of confusion in OS X's otherwise tightly-managed interface, and I don't see Apple allowing that to happen.

So I'm not saying it's not going to happen -- or even that I don't want to happen (I for one would love to use my genealogy program without opening Virtual PC or rebooting) -- I just wonder how the details can be worked out.

--
Sam! If you will let me be,
I will try them.
You will see.

Re:Clash of the Interfaces by jellomizer · 2006-04-21 06:17 · Score: 1

Classic and X11 are both examples of that and they are ugly but usable. Classic shows the old OS 9 windows with an OS 9 Menu when you switch to a classic App. X11 Menu is just of X11 as an application and the apps say you ran Open Office has the menus in the window. I expect a combination of the two for a Windows Classic mode. That it will load like an app. Run a virtualized version of windows. With drivers that put the windows on the Mac Desktop. And will probably look like Windows err um windows. The menu bar on the top will be able to change preferences for the Windows Classic mode. But this approch like Classic will require a full version of Windows Installed. It may not be great for games but most of the other apps say MS. Project you can load up and use. Or get an emergancy IE 6/7 window open to view that site long enough to find the link to contact us and complain about them porposly blocking safari.

--
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.

Windows API = ... by Kardall · 2006-04-21 05:59 · Score: 1

If they put in the API, and you run say outlook express for windows XP or perhaps some other app that is designed for Windows only, does this mean that it will open up the Windows Flaws and virus' may run amok in a mac environment, which is one of the reasons a lot of people use macs, lack thereof of virus'. I don't know... Imagine if apple manages to put this into action, then it generates the ability to run a windows api without the inherent flaws with a base Windows XP/Vista installation. Would there be a mass influx of people switching to Mac's for their Windows needs, and how would this affect Microsoft... They'd probably end up having to license the API, meaning some income for Microsoft, but I don't know... :o it's a wierd situation and if it happens, I'd like to know how they're doing it.

Re:Uhhh... hello. (clarification) by hackstraw · 2006-04-21 06:00 · Score: 1

I hit post too quickly.

Personally, I would like to see the bugs in 10.4 fixed in 10.5 vs native windows support, which odds are will not happen at the OS X level this decade.

The decade thing refers to the windows support.

I get flamed every time I mention the bugs in Tiger, but if I didn't already have so many 3rd party apps that require draconian licensing/registration/dongle crap, I would put 10.3 on my Mac in a heartbeat.

And no, my RAM is not bad. The bugs are real and experienced by other users.

rhapsody?? by DaEMoN128 · 2006-04-21 06:00 · Score: 1

wasn't this basically the point of rhapsody. I also believe that this cringley whathisname guy is guessing not recoding the api's , but more like liscensing the actual ms code and having that run in the compatability layer. It's almost like rhapsody revised:)

--
Stop signs are only Suggestions

What's the incentive to write a program for OS X by tourvil · 2006-04-21 06:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

If it can just run X11 apps anyway?

The answer? Because X11 apps (and likely Windows apps, if they did implement Windows compatibility) look and behave like crap next to Cocoa and Carbon apps. They don't use the menu bar, all the shortcuts use control instead of the command key, etc. There's nothing wrong with those on an X11 system, but switching back and forth between Cocoa and X11 apps can be jarring.

I doubt Windows compatibility would cause existing Mac developers to drop support. And who knows, Windows-only developers might start considering a Mac port more seriously if a significant portion of their user base started running their apps on a Mac.

Their API is already broken by sterno · 2006-04-21 06:01 · Score: 1

The thing here is that the Windows API is already broken. There are any number of bugs and hidden features that come out with each new release of Windows. Developers write to take advantage of and work around these bugs. So invariably if Apple writes it they will have different bugs and not implement the current bugs correctly. So even if they had the resources to completely implement it, they could never be quite identical.

Furthermore there are lots of assumptions built into windows about where things should be installed, libraries that need to be there, etc. This is the biggest reason that Wine has never quite worked ideally. It can be made to work with a particular piece of software but it requires going through and validating them one by one essentially.

You get fun things like a piece of software that works perfectly on Windows but is dependent on IE 6, and Windows Media Player. The original developer could safely assume both were there on windows, but they aren't on Wine or what have you and thus it breaks.

Cringley is full of it.

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RTFA by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:01 · Score: 0

He claims Apple already has the api due to a contract with MS and has had time to implement it.

Re:RTFA by tjansen · 2006-04-21 06:26 · Score: 1

So you think that MS has a much better but secret documentation of all their interfaces, including all the bugs, quirks and even the application-specific compatibility code?

The Writing Is On The Wall For OS X by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:01 · Score: 0

There are a few different scenarios how it might play out, but the end game is always the same:

OS X's days are numbered.

Either Apple outright migrates to Windows - getting some equally large agreement or concession from Microsoft in return(most likely something in the iPod/iTMS/digital media area)

Or Apple migrates the OS X application APIs onto Windows(and if they are smart, Linux)

The market for native OS X software is quickly losing it's justification for existing.

Major apps like Photoshop are now expected to be run by rebooting into Windows on these new Intel Macs. The first apps that will most likely lose native OS X versions are specialty apps that only need be run once in awhile. Get use to a readme.txt file that tells Mac users to "Reboot into Windows"

Every indication is that Apple is as gently as possible moving towards Windows. Apple's growth is all coming from the iPod side of the company. There is little reason to continue to wage a battle for the desktop.

Surrender, but make it look like you are craftily taking on Windows. Mac users will embrace Windows the same way you boil a frog, nice and slowly.

Re:The Writing Is On The Wall For OS X by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:08 · Score: 0

Dude. MacOS X is better than ever, with more momentum than ever.
There are so many brand new frameworks with Tiger that get any
red-blooded developer moaning it's not even funny.

Yes... some apps will probably go the way of the reboot. Why do
I have the feeling that those were the half-baked POS crap
half-an-hour-port shitty apps that nobody used anyways?

What I think is that this whole Boot Camp thing is SERIOUSLY going
to KILL native games. But hey, I actually don't mind rebooting for that.
Nothing else is acceptable.

Be good.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by Dis*abstraction · 2006-04-21 06:02 · Score: 1

If Windows apps running on OS X somehow manage to look and behave exactly like Cocoa-native apps, such that the user can't tell the difference, then what's the problem?

More likely is that Windows apps will continue to suck relative to Cocoa-native applications, lacking integration with OS X-specific features like the Keychain and Services, and generally designed with a Windows-centric philosophy and aesthetic. Hence there will always be a market for OS X native apps.

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Bonsai Kitten: TNG

Read the &*^%$*&%$ Article by dham340 · 2006-04-21 06:02 · Score: 5, Informative

For all those who have not read the article and have thrown out issues with apple maintaining and/or duplicating the Windows API:

Remember Steve Jobs' first days back at Apple in 1997 as Interim-CEO-for-Life? Trying to save the company, Steve got Bill Gates to invest $150 million in Apple and promise to keep Mac Office going for a few more years in exchange for a five-year patent cross-licensing agreement? The idea in everyone's mind, of course, was that Microsoft would grab lots of Apple technology, which they probably did, and it quite specifically ended an Apple patent infringement suit against Microsoft. But I'm told that the exchange wasn't totally one-way, that Apple, in turn, got some legal right to the Windows API. That agreement ran for five years, from August, 1997 to August 2002. Even though it has since expired, the rights it conferred at the time still lie with the respective companies. Whatever Microsoft grabbed from Apple they can still use, they just aren't able to grab anything developed since August 2002. Same for Apple using Microsoft technology like that in Office X. But Windows XP shipped October 25, 2001: 10 months before the agreement expired. I'm told Apple has long had this running in the Cupertino lab -- Intel Macs running OS X while mixing Apple and XP applications. This is not a guess or a rumor, this something that has been demonstrated and observed by people who have since reported to me.

If true, then Apple has a *legal right* equivelent to that of an owner to use the Windows API. Yes, M$ can change it, but it would have to be prospectively.

Re:Read the &*^%$*&%$ Article by ValentineMSmith · 2006-04-21 06:18 · Score: 2, Funny

Well, a buddy of mine down the road observed Elvis and a bunch of little green dudes landing a flying saucer and making a bunch of circles in the neighbor's wheat field a couple of weeks ago. That doesn't even come close to making it a verifiable fact.
Yes, I read the article, and just saying that Apple has the "legal right" to implement the API doesn't necessarily mean that they would be able to do it effectively. As others (including myself) have pointed out, due to the cross-development agreement that IBM had with Microsoft for OS/2, they had rights equivalent to what Cringely is saying that Apple enjoyed with Microsoft until 2002.
And the only way IBM was ever able to get Windows to work even halfway correctly was to package an entire Windows 3.1 distribution into the operating system.

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Karma: Chameleon - mostly influenced by bad '80s New Wave music
Re:Read the &*^%$*&%$ Article by benzapp · 2006-04-21 06:28 · Score: 1

Microsoft was in the same situation with Windows 3.0 and IBM. What did they Do? Come out with Windows 3.1, and later Win32s.

All Microsoft would have to do is release the latest and greatest office suite, and that would be it.

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I don't read or respond to AC posts
Re:Read the &*^%$*&%$ Article by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:43 · Score: 0

Thank you for boiling the article down to its most interesting part.

I see another problem, though. Alot of software written for the Win32 platform doesn't actually run on the documented or implemented Win32 platform unless all of the "compatibility shims" or whatever they call them are present. Read the interesting article from Joel on Software.

MS and Apple have very different attitudes about backwards compatibility. MS's attitude is, "If you got it running on X platform, it's our responsibility to make sure it continues to run, regardless of the awful undocumented things you've done." This attitude is understandable, since the less the developers have to fix, the less you have to tell them about how your software actually works.

Apple's attitude is, "Yeah you got it to run in 10.2, but we deprecated a bunch of your methods in 10.3 and you'd better watch out for 10.5." This attitude is understandable since they're currently targetting two hardware platforms, and their flagship OS is really only 5 years old and is still growing into its niche; it also lessens their testing burden (which I understand is a big part of MS's budget presently).

My point is, a lot of software written for the Win32 platform over the last 10 years doesn't really run on it as specified. From the Joel on Software article:

I first heard about this from one of the developers of the hit game SimCity, who told me that there was a critical bug in his application: it used memory right after freeing it [...] The testers on the Windows team were going through various popular applications, testing them to make sure they worked OK, but SimCity kept crashing. They reported this to the Windows developers, who disassembled SimCity, stepped through it in a debugger, found the bug, and added special code that checked if SimCity was running, and if it did, ran the memory allocator in a special mode in which you could still use memory after freeing it.
Re:Read the &*^%$*&%$ Article by nEoN+nOoDlE · 2006-04-21 06:45 · Score: 2, Insightful

It's a pretty dangerous move to incorporate old Windows APIs into their new system without the ability to update those APIs in the future. If Apple starts being able to run Windows apps in the next release, and then lose compatibility in the following releases, I could see people dumping Apple for loss of functionality. So even if Apple has access to XP APIs, it seems like too much of a risk on their part, especially since Microsoft is known to change APIs to break compatibility from their competitors.

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Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Re:Read the &*^%$*&%$ Article by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 07:17 · Score: 0

More poignantly:

"I'm told Apple has long had this running in the Cupertino lab -- Intel Macs running OS X while mixing Apple and XP applications. This is not a guess or a rumor, this something that has been demonstrated and observed by people who have since reported to me."

Cringely doesn't make this stuff up, he has inside contacts.
Re:Read the &*^%$*&%$ Article by dham340 · 2006-04-21 07:38 · Score: 2, Insightful

f Apple starts being able to run Windows apps in the next release, and then lose compatibility in the following releases, I could see people dumping Apple for loss of functionality. Well that's what boot camp is for...Apple tells people hey lookie, OS X will run all Mac OS apps and Win XP apps. If you cant get by with that and you absolutely, positively have to run the latest and greatest Windows release (i.e. vista), then reboot the computer into vista (of course you have to buy vista CD's). for 99% of users this is a pretty good deal and trade off
Re:Read the &*^%$*&%$ Article by FKnight · 2006-04-21 07:41 · Score: 0

MS and Apple have very different attitudes about backwards compatibility. MS's attitude is, "If you got it running on X platform, it's our responsibility to make sure it continues to run, regardless of the awful undocumented things you've done." This attitude is understandable, since the less the developers have to fix, the less you have to tell them about how your software actually works.
Microsoft doesn't do this to keep developers from understanding how the APIs work. Microsoft doesn't make money by selling an operating system that doesn't run applications. Microsoft puts these compatibility shims in place because if you upgrade from Windows 98 to Windows XP and the $130,000 accounting package, which relied on side effects of the older API, stopped working, Microsoft would be blamed instead of the software developer who didn't pay attention when Microsoft told them it was "deprecated." It's a double standard. If Apple tells people 'hey, we're deprecating this', people stop using it. When Microsoft tells people, 'hey this is deprecated', the developers ignore them, say "Microsoft sucks" and continue using the deprecated features.
Re:Read the &*^%$*&%$ Article by Arandir · 2006-04-21 07:52 · Score: 1

If true, then Apple has a *legal right* equivelent to that of an owner to use the Windows API. Yes, M$ can change it, but it would have to be prospectively.

But Microsoft could change all of their applications (Office, etc) to use a new Vista API, and encourage a sufficient number of their "partners" to do the same, and suddenly the ability to run WinXP apps on Mac OSX becomes a great big yawn. After all, this is what history teaches us. IBM had full rights to Windows 3.1, and had a Windows compatibility layer that many argued was better than native Windows itself. But then along came a new API with Windows 95 and it was all over for OS/2.

The big lesson learned by OS/2 was that the better you were at running another platform's software, the less likely it was that anyone would write native software for you.

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A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Re:Read the &*^%$*&%$ Article by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 09:49 · Score: 0

Is it that hard to understand that the majority of the world still uses office 97 or 2000?
Re:Read the &*^%$*&%$ Article by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 12:35 · Score: 0

This is not a guess or a rumor, this something that has been demonstrated and observed by people who have since reported to me.

Uh, look up definition of rumor.
Re:Read the &*^%$*&%$ Article by cheekyboy · 2006-04-21 13:46 · Score: 1

Ive written lots of stuff for win32, I dont use the APIs the wrong way, if wierd things happen, I dont try
to use the api in a undocumented way, I

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Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Re:Read the &*^%$*&%$ Article by Brandybuck · 2006-04-21 14:34 · Score: 1

Is it that hard to understand that the majority of the world still uses office 97 or 2000?

No it's not hard to understand. But so what? Are you suggesting that Apple flush OSX down the toilet and ship Windows instead because that's what the majority of the world uses?

What you people don't understand is that Apple doesn't have to get a 100% market share in order to succeed. It's a success TODAY with a mere 5% share. IBM did what you suggested, and had 110% Windows compatibility, shipped all their systems with Windows, etc., and they LOST the desktop. Apple never did any of that, and they're still on the desktop going strong and gaining new customers every day.

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Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Re:Read the &*^%$*&%$ Article by wfberg · 2006-04-21 23:06 · Score: 1

Cringely doesn't make this stuff up, he has inside contacts

who make it up for him.

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Re:Read the &*^%$*&%$ Article by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-25 00:10 · Score: 0

So do I. What the above poster's friends actually saw was a dynamically-recompiling emulator running a Boot Camp partition within OS X, with some handy bells and whistles added. The boneheads must have thought it was the equivalent of WINE, but it isn't. Instead it's a much more sensible - and obvious - solution to the problem.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by The+Snowman · 2006-04-21 06:03 · Score: 4, Interesting

Ideally this would be in a sandbox, similar to a virtual machine. That way all you have to do is kill the VM, and all that crud is gone. Since it's a VM, you can easily make backup copies of the file system -- similar to a restore partition on OEM machines. Set it up the way you want, and when ActiveX rips a hole in Windows or malware slows it to a crawl, it's easy. Kill the VM process, copy the backup partition over.

Of course some of us can run Windows without malware, viruses, and all that stereotypical garbage. Some of us do have a clue how to administer a Windows computer. I've worked with many operating systems -- DOS, DOS/Windows, Windows NT, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, HPUX, and even little Vax. In my experience, none are easier or more difficult to secure with the exception of DOS or DOS-based Windows (96/98/ME), which suck. All it takes is a little training on the security issues and the ability to be proactive with security.

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24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!

OS/2 anyone? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:03 · Score: 0

IBM did the compatibility thing with OS/2. While it was a good selling point, it didn't do much to encourage the development of native applications.

did you forgot darwine?? by evandrofisico · 2006-04-21 06:03 · Score: 4, Interesting

there have been a lot of work on that!!! It's called http://darwine.opendarwin.org/ and it's not yet stable...

Wine != Emulator by just_another_sean · 2006-04-21 06:04 · Score: 1

Wine Is Not an Emulator.

Wine is an implementation of the Windows API and yes MS does break compatibility with it's API a lot. That's why some Windows software needs to be rewritten every so often when MS comes out with the "next big thing" (tm). Sure, there's a nod toward backward compatibility but it's not guarenteed. This, and the sheer complex (obfuscated?) nature of the Windows API, is what makes it so difficult for Wine to keep up.

I like Cringley but he must have went to tea with Dvorak or something before he wrote this little piece...

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Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal

Re:Wine != Emulator by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:19 · Score: 0

and implenetation that emulates the Windows API.

They may say it is not an emulator but WINE most certainly is an emulator

read the dictionary
Re:Wine != Emulator by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:38 · Score: 0

Unless progressive versions of Linux, programmers do NOT have to rewrite or even tweak their applications between versions. Microsoft has been painfully good about legacy compatibility and code targetted at Windows 3.0 will very likely still run on Windows XP unmodified. All of those old deprecated nasty APIs still work, to the letter of the documentation.

That said, some programmers, myself included, have found myself in the past with undocumented behaviors changing. Outside of the public documentation the API can be considered to be in flux. In my example I was using an API to return the login name of the current user. The API was declared to return a BOOL which is effectively a 32-bit value. In Windows NT 4.0 that value happened to contain the number of characters written to the char* buffer. In Windows 2000 that value would contain 1 if the API was successful or 0 if there was an error. The documentation stated that the return value would be non-zero if successful, and both experienced behaviors are correct.

If Microsoft really kept breaking their own API they would have to constantly tweak their own applications and all third party vendors and partners would experience constant problems. Despite what you shiteating fuckwits on Slashdot keep masturbating to, this is far from the fucking case. MS is painfully good about legacy behaviors, to the point that it causes them detriment if older behaviors can be used in insecure ways.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to playing Rise of the Triad on Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition. Guess what, it fucking works like a charm.
Re:Wine != Emulator by just_another_sean · 2006-04-21 06:54 · Score: 1

Wow you almost had me convinced until your post degraded into a name calling trollfest.

I won't argue with you, you're obviously convinced that you are right and us, um, whatever you called me, are wrong.

I do find it funny though that you use MS's most expensive OS to play games. Must be a pirated copy. That or you have little to no respect for your employer.

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Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Re:Wine != Emulator by NutscrapeSucks · 2006-04-21 07:18 · Score: 1

The name is supposed to be a joke, much like "GNU's Not UNIX". You Aspergers need to take your meds and get on the program. Anyway, WINE does do "bug-compatible" emulation of different versions of Windows.

Not to mention that Cringley said Apple wasn't going to use WINE, so you didn't even RTFA,and thus your entire comment has failed.

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Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Re:Wine != Emulator by just_another_sean · 2006-04-21 14:55 · Score: 1

No it *implements* the Windows API, not emulates. In a classic sense an emulator pretends to be a peice of hardware. Like WABI or DosEMU did on Unix workstations before it was cheap an easy to run a Unix like OS on x86.

Wines point is that they implement the Windows API using Unix system and c library calls thus reducing the overhead of emulating x86 hardware.

Anyway my point was that Cringley was wrong to contrast Apple's efforts to create a native implementation of the Windows API for OSX to what Wine is doing. The way he describes what Apple is doing is the same thing as Wine.

But as others have already pointed out the difference is that Apples had access to the Windows source and if they wanted it, and MS thought it was worth their while, they could get some cooperation and support from MS. I don't see that happening to the Wine project.

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Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal

BS by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:04 · Score: 0

The very idea that Apple would go through the trouble of implementing all of the Win32 subsystem is silly - how many years have the Wine guys been working on it and its still not done yet? Win32 is absolutely huge, not to mention the potential legal threats caused by a corporation cloning Win32, and the fact that adding native Win32 support to the OS would bloat OSX more than Windows.

If Apple ever did have this feature which I assume they've had to at least tried, its more reasonable to think that there might be a virtualization layer in OSX that requires a side-by-side installation of Windows but allows for application Windows from the XP instance to be run as if they were in OSX, with a protective layer for sharing file access.

Don't naysay too loudly... by Nick+Driver · 2006-04-21 06:05 · Score: 3, Insightful

...because Apple might just have their own implementation of a Windows API ready to go before Vista actually ever ships.

That would actually be the major reason not to by Sycraft-fu · 2006-04-21 06:05 · Score: 5, Interesting

IBM had that problem with OS/2. It ran Windows apps just fine, there were very few that didn't work jsut as intended... Which lead to nobody making native OS/2 apps. I mean if you can write it once and it'll run on both OSes, why bother with a port? Sure it would work BETTER if it was a native app, but it worked well enough.

I think Apple would face a similar problem. Not all apps would stop porting, of course, apps that have a healthy market like Photoshop would keep porting, but I think many would. You'd never see another game port, and any app that wasn't really core-market kind of app for Apple would likely stop porting. You have to figure you aren't really going to lose any sales since it does run, and there are few people using it in the first place, so why bother?

Now maybe Apple decides they don't care. Maybe they want to implement the Windows APIs and just use those. Maybe they figure the other features of the OS are enough to keep epopel buying. However I gaurentee they are smart enough to know that if they implement the Windows API natively in OS-X, that most apps will just use that and not bother to port.

Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by HoboMaster · 2006-04-21 06:22 · Score: 2, Funny

"You'd never see another game port"

I thought you said they'd keep porting Photoshop?

--
Remember kids, tin foil doesn't work, so use LeadHat.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by happyemoticon · 2006-04-21 06:29 · Score: 0, Troll

I suspect even big fish like Adobe would stop porting. Their apps already look like shit in OS X - I still see the old spinning hourglass icon, so I think this means they're sitting on a ton of legacy code which they have deemed is not worth porting to the more modern APIs. I find it hard to imagine that they'd look worse in a compatibility layer scenario. Add to that the fact that they're basically telling any Intel/Mac user to screw themselves and wait for the next $900 copy of photoshop. And do you recall why Apple makes Final Cut Pro? Because Adobe flatly refused to port its video software to OS X. Hmm.

Seriously, Adobe's just waiting for an excuse to drop Mac support entirely.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by BasilBrush · 2006-04-21 06:36 · Score: 1

There are an awful lot of people out there that would like to run OS X but are held back by their existing investment in Windows apps, or the (often mistaken) belief that they'll have trouble finding categories of applications on the Mac platform. These people will jump at the chance of a an OS that runs both OS X and Windows apps in the same (OS X) environment.

This means Mac market share jumps significantly. And those people will prefer to run OS X native apps to Windows apps, given the choice. And for most categories of software that that most users want to run, there *is* a choice. Those vendors that choose to only write windows apps wont sell to these people.

End result is that there will be a bigger market for OS X apps than there is now. And an increase of vendors that will serve that market.

Also, some vendors might realise that in this scenario, for many categories of software, they can split an application into an engine running on the Windows API, and the GUI running on the OS X API, the two on the same machine via some method of IPC - perhaps simple TCP/IP. Which means a single code base for the engine, and porting only the GUI.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by IntlHarvester · 2006-04-21 06:38 · Score: 4, Insightful

You'd never see another game port, and any app that wasn't really core-market kind of app for Apple would likely stop porting.

One could argue that Apple sees only a very small percentage of game and "non-core" ports anyway, so they wouldn't be losing very much.

(There's a wishful-thinking at work in the Mac community that eventually major software houses will come around, but the reality is that most desktop apps are just too tied to Windows for that to happen.)

I always disliked the impression that OS/2 failed because of WinAPI support. To the extent OS/2 succeeded, it was because it was sold as a "Better Windows Than Windows". And OS/2 was reasonably successful with a marketshare about the size of Apple's.

There's many more reasons one can find for OS/2 ultimate destruction. It wasn't a very technically sound design -- IBM spent zillons on a expensive Mach-based rewrite that failed. It was largely mismarketed by IBM first targetting "enterprise" customers, and then oddly "consumers". And the touted features like the object-desktop were ugly and poorly executed.

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Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:45 · Score: 0

If Apple does do this, then you are probably right in the short-term, but Apple might have a bigger goal in mind: getting a majority share in the OS market by acquiring Windows users, and once that happened it would make sense again to write code natively for OSX.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by macatari · 2006-04-21 06:46 · Score: 1

I don't think this directly applies to OS/2. I used it back in the day. It was a better Windows than Windows. But it really had no native apps to begin with (OS X has an awful lot). It also wasn't readily pre-installed on any hardware (as OS X is). You had to go through the trouble of wiping your computer and putting it on it. And it had limited driver support, so you had to carefully select your PC. Not things that would encourage widespread adoption. I don't think we would even be talking about OS/2 today if it hadn't done Windows. It would have disappeared quickly and quietly.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by weg · 2006-04-21 06:47 · Score: 1

Sure it would work BETTER if it was a native app, but it worked well enough.

In fact, it didn't. I was using the OS/2 version of Lotus Smartsuite, but it was so buggy that I was forced to switch to the Windows version.. :( Not to mention that most of the OS/2 printer drivers were crap, so I also used Windows to print my stuff. The native OS/2 application that I used most was Emacs. This is probably also the reason why I switched from OS/2 to Linux rather than to Windows ;-)

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Georg
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by femtoguy · 2006-04-21 06:59 · Score: 2, Insightful

As a current OS/2 (and Mac OS X and Windows XP and Fedora and Ubuntu) user I think that people overplay the OS/2 card. There are at least two important ways that OS X is different from OS/2 in this argument.

1. OS/2 required more resources to run (I remember building machines in the very early 90s and having to add $300 more in memory and disk to make OS/2 run, compared to MSWin3), and had pretty much no native apps. OS X requires about the same resources as XP, and has lots of native apps.

2. The is not the 90s. Having native apps is much less important than it used to be. On my powerbook I run MSOffice, an e-mail client, iTunes, and a web browser. And the e-mail client I could run on a web browser if I wanted to. I quite easily transition between my powerbook, my windows box at home and the Linux box on my desktop because 70% of what I run are web apps, delivered on my browser. As long as I have firefox I can use anything I want. Then there's 20% of office stuff that I can do on OpenOffice if I need. The remaining stuff is things like Quicken that really should be java/web app.

Having a popular platform was terribly important in the 90s, but today all you need is a port of Openoffice and Firefox, and you can use any operating system that you want.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by ezavada · 2006-04-21 07:03 · Score: 1

There are an awful lot of people out there that would like to run OS X but are held back by their existing investment in Windows apps, or the (often mistaken) belief that they'll have trouble finding categories of applications on the Mac platform.

And those people are largely being served by Boot Camp -- sure not having to reboot to run would be a big improvement, but that may make it too easy, leading developers to believe that there is no reason to port.

This means Mac market share jumps significantly. And those people will prefer to run OS X native apps to Windows apps, given the choice. And for most categories of software that that most users want to run, there *is* a choice. Those vendors that choose to only write windows apps wont sell to these people.

The jump in market share would be good for Apple, no question. Whether it would ultimately be good for OS X is another question. There is no real choice in most cases for things like Microsoft Office -- businesses require it, especially Outlook because it can talk to Exchange server. It would be a rare IT department that would allow someone to use alternate apps like Open Office or Star Office, even assuming they had fully native OS X ports.

Also, some vendors might realise that in this scenario, for many categories of software, they can split an application into an engine running on the Windows API, and the GUI running on the OS X API, the two on the same machine via some method of IPC - perhaps simple TCP/IP. Which means a single code base for the engine, and porting only the GUI.

Having built applications both ways, I can tell you it's a lot more work to make the GUI run in a separate process space. You'd be far better off to use something like wxWidgets or SDL to isolate yourself from the details of the OS and write a single body of platform neutral code above it.

Despite all this, I can see a way that having this could actually work well. Imagine that OS X became really really good at running Windows apps, but left them with the WinXP look and feel (much like running an OS 9 app in OS X today) -- people would want ports because it would make their app look and feel better, but they could still use their legacy windows apps if they needed to.

The other part of this would be to provide the Mac OS X Cocoa APIs running on Windows with the full Windows look and feel. Then developers could write to the Mac APIs and get Windows versions for free. Take it a step further and do the same for Linux and you'd have a real incentive for developers to develop on and for the Mac first.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by bhtooefr · 2006-04-21 07:19 · Score: 1

Of course, going back to the OS/2 argument...

OS/2 ran Windows 3.x apps just fine. Better than Windows, in fact. (Although, it was accomplished using Windows itself...)

Anyway, Windows apps looked exactly like, um, Windows apps, with the Windows look and feel.

Granted, OS/2's UI paradigm was closer to the one used by Windows than this would be, but...
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by P3NIS_CLEAVER · 2006-04-21 07:26 · Score: 1

Most games don't take advangte of the OS interface, so who cares if it is not ported?

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Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by ThousandStars · 2006-04-21 07:31 · Score: 1

but the reality is that most desktop apps are just too tied to Windows for that to happen.)
The reality is that OS X and developers face a chicken-and-egg problem: developers won't target OS X until it has more users and OS X won't have more users until it has more uses in the form of programs. The "Mac community" you mention -- at least the hardcore types you'll find online -- probably want to attack the issue from both sides by increasing both the number of users and the number of programs available. If enough people use OS X, developers will target it more -- we're already seeing that to some degree. Skype has an OS X client and most major OSS except OO.org target all three platforms.
The widespread belief in Apple's hardware capitation doesn't help the software issue, but Bootcamp might simply by making Mac hardware more attractive to people interested in OS X but leery of making the leap.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by IntlHarvester · 2006-04-21 08:03 · Score: 0, Flamebait

The "Mac community" you mention -- at least the hardcore types you'll find online -- probably want to attack the issue from both sides by increasing both the number of users and the number of programs available.

I think if we were to generalize the Mac Community's attitude it would be "Why don't all those idiots wake up and buy a Mac tomorrow!!!"

But Apple is a lot wiser than their fans. They seem to understand how purely fundemental the Windows-lockin is, and how their 2% marketshare is not simply a cost/hardware problem. Somewhere I read that there's over 1 Million commercial Windows programs (most vertical market). How many have been ported to the Mac? 12? How many will EVER be ported to the Mac?

That Apple simply can't compete on merits alone is the main reason they keep jamming up margins (now to 30%!) to extact their pound-of-flesh from the Different-Thinking Mac loyalists.

So the trick for Apple is to increase sales while still maintaining record profitability. I think Cringley is full of it here, but I'm also sure that Apple will "embrace" Windows somehow, in order to change the rules and break Macs out of their segement. (Probably with Bootcamp and Vista Preinstalled on Macs.)

--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by Lando · 2006-04-21 08:05 · Score: 1

Another thing that kinda lead to it's "death"... If I remember correctly, the decision had been made to drop support for OS/2 before the advertising campaign for os2/warp even started... Had the effect of turning a lot of the OS/2 developers away from the platform... Also, having to call 10-15 different divisions to get technical information was always a pain...

Lando

--
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by Sycraft-fu · 2006-04-21 08:08 · Score: 4, Interesting

The reason OS/2 failed because of Win API support was because it chained them to a no-win cycle. They HAD to continue to support the Win API because there were almost no native apps. However supporting it was a bitch both in terms of time spent on implementation and in terms of design concessions. They finally decided to stop with Win32 and OS/2 dies shortly thereafter.

At this point, Apple has people porting to OS-X. Not a ton, but enough. If they add Win32 support, I think the number porting will fall significantly. The problem is they then become chained to the MS API. If MS releases a changed API, they have to scramble to implement it as well.

It also means that bugs and such come over. Thought your computer was protected against spyware? Sorry, no longer, it can execute Windows programs, and they don't bother to set the Evil Bit to allow you to ignore them, You get the good with the bad.

I think that would take away a major percieved advantage Macs have. The one thing that more people who claim to want to switch, or actually do switch, bitch about than any other in my experience is spyware and viruses. They see them as MS's fault and want them ot stop. They've been promised the Mac does not have those, which is true at this point.

Well, if all of a sudden all the Windows malware runs on a Mac, you are back to where you started. It is again incumbent on the user not to do stupid stuff, rather than having a protection because the bad code just won't execute.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by IntlHarvester · 2006-04-21 08:14 · Score: 1

If I remember correctly, the decision had been made to drop support for OS/2 before the advertising campaign for os2/warp even started

Yes, not offiically, but it was correctly reported by ZDNet etc using "IBM Sources". IBM basically blew their load on the failed Mach/Workplace idea. "Warp" was a last minute swerve, where IBM dumped a DOA OS onto the consumer market with a big ad campaign for some quick revnue. At that point, they never really inteded to fight it out. (Sorry Teamers, it's true).

Also, having to call 10-15 different divisions to get technical information was always a pain...
Been there...

--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by EvilBudMan · 2006-04-21 08:15 · Score: 1

--I think Apple would face a similar problem. Not all apps would stop porting, of course, apps that have a healthy market like Photoshop would keep porting, but I think many would.--

So,

As long as more people buy Apple hardware because of this, Apple will continue to sell it. After all they make most of their money on hardware. iPods now run work with PC's too. So they sell even more.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by IntlHarvester · 2006-04-21 08:18 · Score: 1

I think that would take away a major percieved advantage Macs have.

The percieved advantages of Macs are only percieved to be such by Mac users, which are not growing faster than the rest of the computing population.

I'm not agreeing that WinOSX is the right strategy, but ultimately Apple's in a marketshare box, and if they want to change that, it will probably involve Windows somehow.

--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by IntlHarvester · 2006-04-21 08:44 · Score: 1

Whoops ... allow me to clarify. The "malware" issue is an advantage in Mac user's minds, but it really isn't a platform driver for Windows alterntives. Just based on raw statistics, people are not buying Macs because they got hit by malware.

Furthermore, the worst is probably already over for Windows malware issues. Vista will improve things. It's not a permenant advantage for non-Windows OSes.

--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 08:48 · Score: 0

One of the main reasons is that IBM charged for the SDK for OS/2 and Microsoft gave the SDK away. If more people start using can start using Mac OS X then companies will get request for porting apps.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by gnuyarlathotep · 2006-04-21 08:52 · Score: 1

In fact, it didn't. I was using the OS/2 version of Lotus Smartsuite, but it was so buggy that I was forced to switch to the Windows version.. :( Not to mention that most of the OS/2 printer drivers were crap, so I also used Windows to print my stuff. The native OS/2 application that I used most was Emacs. This is probably also the reason why I switched from OS/2 to Linux rather than to Windows ;-)

This is almost exactly my history with OS/2 also. I got it mainly to run emacs and gcc on my 386 and later my 486. Once linux offered the nicities of X working on my hardware I also switched to it and not Windows.

I knew just enough about vi to load emacs onto whatever Unix machine I used.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by WinterSolstice · 2006-04-21 08:55 · Score: 1

I wish they would - I really hate Adobe's software. Photoshop is a bloated PITA, Premier is overkill for 90% of the stuff, and inferior for 5% of the rest. Acrobat is like the one thing they still have going for them.

My only wish is for GIMP to grow up a bit - it still doesn't have what I need to replace PShop. Maybe someday soon.

-WS

--
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by katsklaw · 2006-04-21 09:12 · Score: 1

This is not a "major reason not to", Mac can tap into a portion of the OS market that Windows has more than 95% of. For example one may like Mac OS but can't really use it because his/her games only run on Windows (because not all windows games have been ported). Now Apple can tap into Bill's Billions. The profit gained can and most likely will outweight the profits from application ports by a sizable amount.

OS/2 was never at the same level of competition as Apple is .. nor were they ever as popular with end users. This fact may be a key issue to success.

Personally I'm sick of Windows, but many of the applications I use do not run on Mac or *nix (lack of ports), thus I'm stuck. If Apple run win32 apps natively, I'd switch right now!
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by ModernGeek · 2006-04-21 10:20 · Score: 1

As long as each program is ran in it's little sandbox, the emulated windows system files are not writable by the programs, and the program is treated as an odd ball because it's running in a sand box, it will do fine. Look at the X11 emulation. It got Linux and UNIX developers to look at Mac OS X, port their app, and then eventually make it Carbon/Cocca. In the long run, it brought more applications to the Macintosh desktop. I can see apple now, "WARNING: This is a Windows program about to run, are you sure you want to start it? Being a windows program, it can have a virus". It would be yet another way for apple to make the competition look like dirt.

--
Sig: I stole this sig.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by gig · 2006-04-21 10:35 · Score: 1

The comparison between OS/2 and Mac OS X is that Apple was successful in creating a bridge between their legacy application platform and their new application platform and IBM was not.

For Apple, this happened a few years ago when they released the first version of Mac OS X. It had a handful of native API's and it could also run "Classic" Mac apps (1984-1999) in a box similar to how OS/2 ran Windows and DOS apps.

If Apple starts running Windows XP applications in Aqua it will be the second time around for them. I think they will do it the same way. You'll be required to have a Windows XP SP2 disc to run "WinClassic" in Aqua (on Intel) just like you have to have a Mac OS 9 v9.2.2 disc to run Classic in Aqua (on PowerPC). Using the authentic old system means the apps run as expected and it makes the whole thing a modular and optional install. Users will prefer native apps because they look better, run better, have modern security, don't require a Windows disc, are easier to install and maintain, and for many other reasons.

Day one with your first Mac you could be running Firefox, Apache, iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto all natively. After a few years it will be hard to imagine installing Windows on your NEXT Mac.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by Antony+T+Curtis · 2006-04-21 10:38 · Score: 1

As an OS/2 user during the 1990s, I would say that Apple would be better serve their own self interests by writing an application compatibility service for Windows XP (in a similar way to MicroSoft's SFU addon).

This would allow applications written for x86 MacOS to run unmodified on Windows. Tempt application developers to write apps for OS X as they can now run on the two major platforms.

Apple can introduce a few minor bugs in this addon which would cause applications to randomly and inexplicably crash. Only release updates and bug fixes every 3 months or so. Fail to fix some minor longstanding memory leak which causes the machine to crumple to its knees after extended use.

They can put it down to the undocumented nature of the WinXX api that it is impossible to write a perfect shim, so why dones't the user switch to running OS X.

How is that as an "Embrace and extend" idea?

--
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by spectre_240sx · 2006-04-21 10:43 · Score: 1

I definitely have to disagree there. While it's not an every day occurrence, I definitely hear people who have been hit by malware ask about Apple computers. It's probably not a huge reason people switch, but it's definitely still a reason.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by NoodleSlayer · 2006-04-21 11:26 · Score: 1

I have a 12" Powerbook for school-related stuff, and 3 homebuilt PCs sitting under my desk for gaming/server apps/whatever I feel like.

I love my Mac. For what it is its a great machine. And what it is is a stable reasonably secure platform where I don't have to worry about viruses or spyware mucking up my machine. All the Apps I need to use on that machine, Microsoft Office, Adobe CS, I have Mac versions of, and most importanly they are highly interoperable with the PC versions. I can take a Mac Office or Photoshop document and open it on a PC and vise-versa (this was not possible, or at least easy to do, back in the day). I don't want it run Windows Programs or Games because I don't need it to. It would distract from the purpose of the machine.

However Mac OS X implementing Win32 (really damn unlikely, but for the sake of argument lets assume it happens) doesn't necessarily mean it will have all the vulnerabilities of Windows. Afterall most exploits take advantage of bugs in various Windows Services, not usually things inherrant in the Win32 API. Add to that the much more robust security model of Mac OS X, largely thanks to its UNIX underpinnings, I don't think anyone would be running Windows apps with full privileges.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by blurryrunner · 2006-04-21 12:05 · Score: 1

A somewhat fanciful solution to this would be for Apple to announce support for the Win API on Mac OS X and the Carbon API for Windows (and/or maybe even Cocoa for Windows) at the same time (since they have almost done that already with QT and iTunes).

br
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by node+3 · 2006-04-21 12:15 · Score: 1
This is such an annoying meme--it's wrong, but it persists because it seems reasonable..

People will still want Mac apps. Want equals demand. Demand equals ports.

End-of-story
(I really hate it when people post things like "end-of-story" or "period", etc, but this really is a fundamentally true thing)

The Mac user base is many times larger than OS/2's ever was. I wouldn't be surprised if the current Intel Mac user base exceeds that of the maximum consumer install base of OS/2. OS X is well established, as is its third-party commercial app market.

You'd never see another game port

*Only* if the games played well enough under whatever emulation/api-support is available. If that's the case, who cares? Games use custom GUIs, and integration with system services like printing and file dialogs isn't all that important. Even in that case, there will always be native Mac ports of Windows games, because some games are designed to be easily ported (Blizzard and Id games come to mind).

If Windows games don't run well under OS X, they will still be ported.

There are three categories of Windows-only apps:
1. Those that will never be ported to OS X.
2. Those that might be, but aren't today
3. Those that are ported
Category 1 is pure gravy for OS X users under any sort of built-in Windows support. Some apps under category 2 will have their ports delayed (CAD apps, for example). In this case, Mac users get the app sooner, and if the number of Mac users of the app become significant, the developer may decide a native port is worthwhile. Category 3 apps won't go Windows-only if the Mac version is selling well.

But this is just missing the forest for the trees. In the end, Mac users will prefer native Mac apps. That equates to demand, and that demand will show up as native apps. That's exactly how it works today, and there is no shortage of Mac apps. The only difference with native Windows support will be that Mac users will have access to Windows apps, and Windows-only developers will be able to sell to some Mac users without porting their app.

While this probably will mean a delay in some small number of ports, it does not mean, at all, a decrease in the actual number of Mac apps. The comparison with OS/2 is strained to the extreme. OS/2's problem is it had very few commercial apps. The Mac does not have that problem now, and it will not have that problem as a result of built-in Windows support.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by arminw · 2006-04-21 14:29 · Score: 1

.....but the reality is that most desktop apps are just too tied to Windows for that to happen...

For most consumers and small businesses, there are OSX apps available to do the functions now done by Windows apps. In the larger enterprises, there re many programs that do not have any mac equivalents. For this beginning, it was easy to first of all, via Bootcamp, to allow those users that really need to have certain Windows programs, but can or want to do most of their computing on a Mac, to be able to buy a Mac and then run those few Windows apps as well. Virtual PC on the PPC computers allows the use of many Windows programs, all without rebooting into Windows. The emulation is sufficiently fast for certain programs, but dog slow for others. When this virtualization is done for the Intel Macs, the emulation slow down will disappear.

A good solution would be to allow virtualization for most Windows apps, running a version of Windows under OSX, but also allow a user to reboot entirely into Windows for maximum performance. When Connectix first came out with their Virtual PC, they emulated PC HARDWARE and anything that would run on a PC would also run on a PPC. Since the Mac is now running on the same hardware, it ought to be possible to make *any* program, including any OS capable of running on such hardware "think" it is running in such a way that it has that hardware all to itself. Simply start up the VPC program and then install the OS of your choice and all of its software. All of that is then simply another program running under OSX. Given enough memory and disk space, a user could have all past, present and future versions of Windows, Linux and who knows what else, all running simultaneously, allowing the user to switch between them instantly. This would give a new meaning to "universal" since now a Mac could be the first computer that can run ANY software that has ever been written for a personal computer.

--
All theory is gray
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by jcr · 2006-04-21 14:42 · Score: 1

"Game", not "toy".. ;-)

-jcr

--
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by jcr · 2006-04-21 14:44 · Score: 1

My only wish is for GIMP to grow up a bit - it still doesn't have what I need to replace PShop. Maybe someday soon.

Why aren't you writing what's missing for your needs?

-jcr

--
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 15:08 · Score: 0

maybe cuz he's an artist and not a C programmer jack ass...
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by dbrutus · 2006-04-21 15:11 · Score: 1

There's a difference. IBM's OS/2 was a software project which lived or died on its software ecosystem. Apple is a hardware/software combined widget which requires *a* successful software ecosystem but is relatively neutral on which one it's going to be. Apple drives their hardware market share to 25% and they don't much care that it's mostly a WIN32 API software ecosystem that's quintupled their hardware share.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by arminw · 2006-04-21 15:11 · Score: 1

.... I don't think anyone would be running Windows apps with full privileges......

So what would happen when a program wants to write access the registry, which would not be permitted, or the registry itself is not even there? What about the services that a Windows program might want to use? All this would be a big headache to Apple to provide. Allowing the booting of Windows gets Apple off the hook for any of Windows failings. A program like virtual PC also does this, but in either case, a full version of Windows is still needed to run Windows software on a Mac.

Because MS makes money there, it would also more likely cooperate with Apple on getting Windows software running on Apple hardware. Apple may carry a future version of VPC with VISA and/or XP as an extra cost option from its online store.

Apple after all is a hardware maker, and I suspect is well capable of competing on the quality of their hardware alone. OSX is a big bonus for them. The iPod success demonstrates that a well made product is a big reward for its manufacturer. A huge after market for ipods has also arisen because of this. For the first time, users can directly compare the Mac software under OSX with Windows software. When they learn that their Windows partition or virtual file has become infested with all kinds of malware, while the Mac remains clean, they will draw certain conclusions and demand that their favorite software also to run on Macs under OSX. As more people buy Macs, because they can still run their existing Windows programs, the bigger the incentive and demand for porting these programs to OSX.

--
All theory is gray
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by WinterSolstice · 2006-04-21 15:53 · Score: 1

Well - probably the same reason most people aren't. I just don't have time. Unlike some, I do have the skills, so if I get the time I might contrib some to it. I haven't contrib'd to OSS in a little while ( I think NetWinder was the most recent ) so I'm probably due :D

-WS

--
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by jcr · 2006-04-21 17:50 · Score: 1

Well - probably the same reason most people aren't. I just don't have time.

That's what I figured.. I'll refrain from dropping the open source guilt-trip on your head. ;-)

-jcr

--
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by Hes+Nikke · 2006-04-21 17:57 · Score: 1

I would say that Apple would be better serve their own self interests by writing an application compatibility service for Windows XP

translation: release Yellow Box for Windows into the wild.

--
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 18:13 · Score: 0

the registry is pretty easy
sandbox everything, including the registry itself, which could easily be loaded from a previously saved version of the registry. each time something tries to write to the sandboxed registry, page out a copy to disk that may or may not be kept. when an application quits, keep the last updated sandbox registry as a new version kept on disk that can be used the next time a windows app launches. if something barfs, allow users to force windows apps to use an older working copy as a fresher start. of course you'd need to make a base registry to work from for a complete restore, but that would be trivial.

allow the user to set limits on disk space allocated for saved registry versions so things don't get out of hand, but keep weekly "known working" copies that can be saved as last ditch replacements, and it should work wonderfully.

it's not magic. it's just a file, and a small one at that.

i predict that cringley is absolutely correct in his guess, and that apple will have OS X boxes running windows xp applications better than Windows XP itself can run them.

with a monolith kernel it is entirely possible considering OS X is already smoother and faster than XP on "equivalent" hardware. until recently MSFT had the advantage considering PPC based architectures forced Apple to do more with less. it's the same hardware now, nothing needs to be emulated, nobody is short changed on resources hardware wise.

by the time vista is launched, apple could steal a considerable share of the hardware AND os market. at which point MSFT is forced to reexamine their business model and habits of releasing underpowered, poorly dressed and ill mannered software and operating systems that now offer no real benefits to the end user aside from being able to operate in beige boxes if you crave boredom
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by BasilBrush · 2006-04-21 19:22 · Score: 1

There is no real choice in most cases for things like Microsoft Office -- businesses require it, especially Outlook because it can talk to Exchange server. It would be a rare IT department that would allow someone to use alternate apps like Open Office or Star Office, even assuming they had fully native OS X ports.

That's true. I must say I was thinking more of the consumer, SOHO market and creative markets where Apple already sells most of it's Macs. Apple has plenty of room for growth in these markets.

But even these markets want to have MS Office. And Apple has always been vulnerable to Microsoft cancelling Office.X development. But for some reason Microsoft has always found the profit made from Office.X more important than doing the dirty to Apple. But at least if OS X gets the ability to run Windows applications there is a safety net if Microsoft does decide to stop Office.X development.

Having built applications both ways, I can tell you it's a lot more work to make the GUI run in a separate process space. You'd be far better off to use something like wxWidgets or SDL to isolate yourself from the details of the OS and write a single body of platform neutral code above it.

Easier, yes. But the GUI will suffer on both platforms from being the lowest common denominator. The UI paradigms of the two platforms are not the same. And in both cases, the app will tend to look a generation out of date, as the cross platform UI libraries don't tend to support all of the latest look and feel.

This is OK if you are in a niche market, and no one else is doing native UIs. But in a competitive market, it's a disadvantage.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by IntlHarvester · 2006-04-22 04:51 · Score: 1

I definitely hear people who have been hit by malware ask about Apple computers.

That's nice, but "Switchers" are about 0.3% of MS's installed base (virtually all of whom have to deal with malware to some degree), so it is statistically insiginificant.

--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Re:That would actually be the major reason not to by beetle496 · 2006-04-24 01:36 · Score: 1

Latter you write:
A half-assed Windows implementation would be more harmful to them than none at all. A limited subset would be worse than no compatibility at all.
I don't feel you have explained this assertion well enough. I think actually the opposite is true, and this is an aspect that is missing from this discussion. Apple neatly solves a few thorny problems with what Cringely outlines. You mention the trap OS/2 fell into. Since this Win32 API implementation approach freezes Windows under OS X by providing only XP compatibility, Apple professes not to be interested in full emulation nor playing feature catch up (for supporting Windows apps). Developers wishing to code for the Mac have little choice but to use Cocoa since their Vista-only versions are not compatible. The purposely limited support only makes the rest of OS X shine even more brightly in comparison, while simultaneous doing what it can to stifle an incentive for Vista development.
Windows 95 was quite compelling compared to Windows 3.1. As a result, OS/2 was in a no-win situation since supporting Win32 was too hard and only providing Win16 was not enough. I think most end-users are ambivalent about the advantages of Vista over XP. And since jumping to Vista requires a new box (again, for most end-users), if you are in that market, why not try a Mini instead? And it is still win-win for Apple because if a customer absolutely needs Vista, Boot Camp is an option for that.

--
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!

"The Windows API" by ValentineMSmith · 2006-04-21 06:07 · Score: 4, Insightful

I was really amused at the way he mentioned "the Windows API" like it was half a dozen export functions from some 3rd party dll. If he'd ever gone to MSDN (or had installed any version of Visual Studio with the appropriate documentation), he'd know that attempting simply to implement enough of the core Win32 API to be useful would be virtually impossible. This isn't even counting some of the add-on systems like COM and Direct X. And it's not counting the fact that this implementation would not need to be "documentation compatible", but bug-for-bug compatible with its Windows counterpart.

There have been at least three projects that I know of (Wine, OS/2 Warp 4, and ReactOS) that have tried to do implementations of the Win32 API. OS/2s implementation never truly got off the ground (and was neither able to run native Win32 code, nor was it even reasonably complete). Wine and ReactOS have both been fighting a Sisyphean battle with Microsoft throughout the life of their projects.

Then, you need to add in the fact that Apple has historically been very jealous of their user experience. I don't expect that Apple would ever release something like this unless and until it was impossible to distinguish a Win32 application from a native app.

Don't get me wrong: I'd love to see it (it would provide justification that I could use on the spouse for upgrading our G4 MiniMac). I just think that Cringely needs to put down crack pipe and slowly back away.

--
Karma: Chameleon - mostly influenced by bad '80s New Wave music

Re:"The Windows API" by jimicus · 2006-04-21 06:33 · Score: 1

I was really amused at the way he mentioned "the Windows API" like it was half a dozen export functions from some 3rd party dll. If he'd ever gone to MSDN (or had installed any version of Visual Studio with the appropriate documentation), he'd know that attempting simply to implement enough of the core Win32 API to be useful would be virtually impossible.

If what he said about the cross-licensing agreement is true, it may be the case that it's not necessary - Apple already have the source for most of the DLL's concerned and they just have to provide the parts of the API that the NT kernel usually provides.
Re:"The Windows API" by russellh · 2006-04-21 07:09 · Score: 1

One wonders what .exe installers will do, or the auto run crap on Windows CDs/DVDs.

I think virtualization is the only answer for geeks.

but regular people will be totally confused: I have enough trouble explaining the concept of quitting an application and RAM versus hard drive to gramma. Even somewhat experienced regular people are confused by the .dmg files on their macs.

--
must... stay... awake...
Re:"The Windows API" by Arandir · 2006-04-21 07:57 · Score: 4, Insightful

I completely agree. I think a much more mundane prediction is far more likely: you will be able to install Windows on a separate partition and run apps off of it via a virtualization layer.

--
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Re:"The Windows API" by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 08:40 · Score: 0

Don't bash OS/2!!! It had a very addictive mahjong solitaire game.
Re:"The Windows API" by gnud · 2006-04-21 09:23 · Score: 1

And I've been cursed by 8.3, and always read .dmg as "damage". Ugh.
Re:"The Windows API" by dargndorp · 2006-04-21 12:16 · Score: 1

Your comment regarding Win32 support under OS/2 warrants some clarification: IBM never attempted to implement the full Win32 API for OS/2, they only aimed for the subset aptly named Win32s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win32s.

There is an ongoing effort to implement a wine-like Win32 API on OS/2 called Odin at http://odin.netlabs.org/, current binaries at ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/odin.
Re:"The Windows API" by SEE · 2006-04-24 14:39 · Score: 1

A thing to note -- the OS/2 4 effort was given up by IBM, but it was improved and extended by the Odin project, which then borrowed WINE code.

I WANT MY WINDOWS APPS!!! by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:09 · Score: 0

Ever since I switched to osx I've missed my WINDOWS apps! How the hell can it be that hard to run my Windows apps on osx???!!! Hopefully Apple will enable this in future versions. I have mailed them and explained this.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by otis+wildflower · 2006-04-21 06:10 · Score: 1

And who knows, Windows-only developers might start considering a Mac port more seriously if a significant portion of their user base started running their apps on a Mac.

More importantly, if they could carry over their non-UI logic with just a recompile via some sort of Carbon-style XCode project mechanism (that would import, say, VC and VC++ projects) and then redo the UI via the Interface Builder (but be able to access NIB data via Win32 widget calls) then the barrier to porting to OS X would pretty much go away.

Hell, make XCode a cross-compiler that builds Win32 apps from Win32 and Cocoa projects and give it away for free (but don't port it to Windows)...

Won't The Be Embarrassed by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:10 · Score: 0

The Wine guys worked a decade on cloning the Windows API, and there are still more than enough problems.

Won't those WINE guys be embarrassed when Apple does it better and more completely, by Q1 2007!

Apple didn't bother to make Classic apps run... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:10 · Score: 0

... on their Intel boxes, and that was pure laziness. If they're THAT lazy, why would they bother to make Windows programs run?

The poster who said any computer should run any program is right. That is the true path to the future, a system that transparently runs any program written for any platform. Apple's thumbing their nose at classic Mac users is disgusting, insulting, sickening.

And the poster is right who said you can't just go by the documentation. The Win32 API documentation is incomplete and contains lots of errors.

Re:Apple didn't bother to make Classic apps run... by alohatiger · 2006-04-21 06:37 · Score: 1

"why would they bother to make Windows programs run?"

To increase their market share?

--
Bigtime Consulting - "We're the best because we cost the most"
Re:Apple didn't bother to make Classic apps run... by larry+bagina · 2006-04-21 11:37 · Score: 1

Maybe they don't support classic because they're trying to kill it.

--
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Re:Apple didn't bother to make Classic apps run... by funkcicle · 2006-04-22 18:33 · Score: 1

Apple's thumbing their nose at classic Mac users is disgusting, insulting, sickening.

Why?

open osx up to windows virii? by rcamera · 2006-04-21 06:11 · Score: 1

wouldn't this mean that any poorly designed parts of the win api (think gdi) would have an impact on osx? now we could have a single worm rip through windows, wine on linux, AND osx.

--
Wave upon wave of demented avengers March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by ceejayoz · 2006-04-21 06:13 · Score: 1

Indeed. After switching from IE to Firefox, and being able to resist BRITNEYSPEERZNAKED.JPG.exe attachments, I was able to avoid getting a single virus or bit of spyware for years.

Switched to a Mac mini last year for the OS, and it's nice not to have to be quite so wary, but it certainly isn't impossible to browse safely on a Windows box.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by otis+wildflower · 2006-04-21 06:14 · Score: 1, Flamebait

Ideally this would be in a sandbox, similar to a virtual machine.

Unnecessary.. Apple could implement the Win32 code (or better yet simply use the API as a Carbon-style interface to OS X) and avoid MS bugs by avoiding MS code.

MS exploits come from (in the overwhelming main) either VB/VBA scripting shenanigans or poorly-coded OS components. With Apple smart enough not to reimplement VB/VBA retardation in its software, and with the components actually being OS X with just an API interface layer ala WINE, as long as Apple decides not to be virus-feature-complete they should not be susceptible to Windows-specific virus code.

My Suspicions... by eno2001 · 2006-04-21 06:14 · Score: 1

A few weeks ago I was telling a Mac using friend of mine that knowing Apple and the really slick way that they do things, they have something big up their sleeve. Witness:

1. They switched to Intel. Why? VERY LIKELY to take advantage of the coming virtualization technology that will allow one CPU to run multiple OSes simultaneously without the overhead of a guest OS. Intrigued?
2. The release of Bootcamp is a test to see how Windows will run on the Mac. Once they've worked out the bugs and it's stable, it's time to virtualize with a hypervisor.
3. Apple announced that they will be releasing an API to allow Mac applications to run on Windows.

Put this all together and I'm betting that Apple has plans for a unified desktop experience running both Windows and Mac applications side by side with no emulation and no performance hit. (Remember hypervisors make the performance hit so low that the OSes may as well be running on bare metal)

See my "GRRRR" journal entry from April 20th that dispels commonly held myths about virtualization.

--
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o

Re:My Suspicions... by mcho · 2006-04-21 06:47 · Score: 1

3. Apple announced that they will be releasing an API to allow Mac applications to run on Windows.

Really? Can you provide a link because that's really cool.

--
Synchronize your calendar and mobile phone via text messaging.
Re:My Suspicions... by eno2001 · 2006-04-21 08:06 · Score: 1

I stand corrected. In my quest to find the link, I found that this is a rumor from an "insider". Apple is expected to make an API to run Mac applications on Windows. There was a lot of discussion about this rumor last week indicating that a lot of people don't believe anything from the macosrumors site anymore... I also found this in my search which indicates that just the opposite may be true. MS might be releasing an API to run Windows applications on multiple platforms. I can see them shifting from an OS vendor to "THE" application vendor as their next plan of attack. Since, at this point OSes are pretty much worthless when you consider how little distinction there is between them anymore for the average user.

--
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Re:My Suspicions... by larry+bagina · 2006-04-21 11:52 · Score: 1

I can see them shifting from an OS vendor to "THE" application vendor as their next plan of attack. Since, at this point OSes are pretty much worthless when you consider how little distinction there is between them anymore for the average user.
That's just silly. Windows has 95% of the desktop OS market. The "average user" uses Windows 98, 2K, or XP. They make a lot of money from their Windows Tax. Do you really think they want to give up that lucrative stream of income just so an extra 5% of users might buy MS Word? (Wait, they already sell Word for Macintosh).
If they wanted their APIs on other platforms, they would probably do it via .Net /rotor -- compile once, run anywhere. Plus far fewer APIs to support.

--
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

Buy Windows XP, Run Windows Apps in OS X? by nko321 · 2006-04-21 06:15 · Score: 1

Would it be possible for XP to be installed beside / within OS X, then have OS X be aware of this installation and use files straight from said XP installation to run XP apps from within OS X? It'd only take a few wrappers to make such apps integrate with the OS X desktop.

It's an interesting idea, with one major flaw by Dark+Paladin · 2006-04-21 06:17 · Score: 1

This line is the kicker:

Remember Steve Jobs' first days back at Apple in 1997 as Interim-CEO-for-Life? Trying to save the company, Steve got Bill Gates to invest $150 million in Apple and promise to keep Mac Office going for a few more years in exchange for a five-year patent cross-licensing agreement? The idea in everyone's mind, of course, was that Microsoft would grab lots of Apple technology, which they probably did, and it quite specifically ended an Apple patent infringement suit against Microsoft. But I'm told that the exchange wasn't totally one-way, that Apple, in turn, got some legal right to the Windows API.

It a convincing idea, that Apple could then use this API details, put it into OS X, and have Windows apps run natively within a Macintosh without a need for "virtualization" or "dual booting". Users could play games or run those 1-2 Windows apps they need (like Groove, Visio, or Encase Forensic), and Mac for - everything else.

The benefits to Apple could be big, since they could tell Windows users "Why upgrade to Vista - our stuff runs your current applications, and runs them inside a secure environment!" They could get more switchers, and use that to tell developers "Hey, we've got 8-10% of the market now - do you want to be a little fish in a big pond, or the big fish in the little pond? Look at Deliscious Software and how much money they make - and you can even use your Windows XP knowledge to start, and we'll help you in the transition!"

However, the big issue is that 600 pound gorrilla - Microsoft. They've shown a willingness to break things to keep other people run competing with them. Look at how they're already announcing products that are "Vista only", like "Office 12" and "Halo 2" - and how long until a Windows XP patch, coupled with a new Office 2003 patch, prevents the latter from running in a Windows API enabled OS X system (barring the question, of course, of why one would run Office 2003 in OS X when Office 2004 is there, but that's another issue).

Nice pipe dream, but I'm willing to bet it's just a dream, no matter how much the tech community wishes it were so.

--
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel

True by geekoid · 2006-04-21 06:19 · Score: 4, Funny

WHat we need is a multi-billion dollar organization with knowledge of the Windows API and developers on staff...oh. wait.

--
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

hhhmmm... by irchs · 2006-04-21 06:19 · Score: 1

I'm sure the slashdot editors are letting this trash through to provoke heated discussion of these "topics"...

Might as well do the same, I am posting this to pimp some of my music! Check the sig! :P

--
Jan

CarbTime by tepples · 2006-04-21 06:19 · Score: 2, Interesting

Hell, make XCode a cross-compiler that builds Win32 apps from Win32 and Cocoa projects and give it away for free

Hades, the Windows version of QuickTime already implements 2/3 of Carbon itself.

Re:CarbTime by NutscrapeSucks · 2006-04-21 07:42 · Score: 1

I've heard that Carbon was actually ported from QuickTime/Windows *back* to OS X. Have no idea if it's true or not, but it would be kind of funny if it was.

--
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Re:CarbTime by bsartist · 2006-04-21 08:26 · Score: 3, Informative

Back when QuickTime for Windows was first introduced, Apple found that it was less effort to port the subset of the Mac Toolbox that QT depends on, than it would be to port QT to the Win32 API. That "subset" was so large that they had to actively discourage developers from using it as a porting tool to get their non-QT apps running on Windows.

Fast-forward some years. When Apple needed an updated and portable version of the classic Toolbox, they started with the portable Toolbox subset that they'd already ported to Windows to support QT.

--
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
Re:CarbTime by NutscrapeSucks · 2006-04-21 08:41 · Score: 1

There's another rumored aspect to this ... Apple bought out the "portable Toolbox" Windows API used in QT from a third party firm that was selling Mac->Windows migration.

--
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.

Why would anybody.... by geoff+lane · 2006-04-21 06:19 · Score: 0, Troll

...buy Apple hardware to run Windows? Apple h/w is more expensive and doesn't appear to provide any better performance for the additional cost.

Now running OSX (or some replacement ) on a standard PC has some merit, but why would Apple chose to lose revenue by not selling the hardware?

Microsoft does have some apps that people (for some bizzare reason) seem to like so running some kind of emulation may make sense. But far more interesting is for Apple to start using a fully virtualised x86-like CPU and run both OSX and Windows on top of a Hypervisor.

Sleeping with Dvorak by everphilski · 2006-04-21 06:19 · Score: 4, Funny

Sounds like Cringely has been sleeping with Dvorak too long. You know how when couples are with each other for a long time they begin to sound and act like each other...

Re:Sleeping with Dvorak by paranoidhumanoid · 2006-04-21 07:11 · Score: 1

Oh god, next they'll be sharing sweaters and finishing each other's sentences!

--

blacked-out vans, contingency plans...
Re:Sleeping with Dvorak by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 07:23 · Score: 0

other's sentences!

WINE is an OS component by tepples · 2006-04-21 06:21 · Score: 1

WINE is not an OS. cf Rosetta.

WINE is not an emulator either. WINE becomes an OS component as soon as one Linux distro vendor bundles WINE and associates it to .exe files, and this has already happened in the case of Linspire.

Re:WINE is an OS component by Qzukk · 2006-04-21 06:24 · Score: 4, Interesting

WINE becomes an OS component as soon as one Linux distro vendor bundles WINE

So apache an OS component, because all of the distribution vendors bundle it with linux?

Does that mean AOL is a component of windows, because dell bundles a 6 month trial on most of their machines?

--
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Re:WINE is an OS component by tepples · 2006-04-21 06:33 · Score: 1

So apache an OS component, because all of the distribution vendors bundle it with linux?

Yes, Apache HTTP Server is a component of the "Fedora Core" operating system.

Does that mean AOL is a component of windows, because dell bundles a 6 month trial on most of their machines?

Yes, America Online is a component of the "Microsoft Windows presented by Dell" operating system.
Re:WINE is an OS component by 2short · 2006-04-21 07:04 · Score: 1

So then if I install some software it becomes part of the "Microsoft Windows as presented by Dell and tweaked by 2Short" operating system? I guess I can see that, but in that case the term "operating system" is not very useful. I'm fairly sure Cringley intended some definition of "operating system" that was more restrictive, not to mention more commonly accepted. You might argue that definition is needlessly arbitrary. Calling him clueless because his statement isn't true using your bizzare definitions of his words seems a bit disingenuous. Certainly plenty of the rest of us understood what he meant by saying they would do it in the operating system as opposed to the way wine does it.
Re:WINE is an OS component by Lord+Kestrel · 2006-04-21 07:20 · Score: 1

Anyone can do that right now.

Add the following line to /etc/sysctl.conf (and make sure you have misc format enabled in your kernel)

fs.binfmt_misc.register = :WINEXE:M::MZ::/usr/bin/wine:

Replace /usr/bin/wine with where ever your Wine binary is.
Re:WINE is an OS component by tepples · 2006-04-21 07:22 · Score: 1

So then if I install some software it becomes part of the "Microsoft Windows as presented by Dell and tweaked by 2Short" operating system?

It depends. Red Hat distributes the Fedora Core operating system subject to a license from Apache Software Foundation. Likewise, Dell and other major PC OEMs sign license agreements with Microsoft to customize the Windows operating system. If your agreement with Microsoft and Dell allows you to market your OS this way, then so be it. But until we see this rumored Apple product in action, we lack enough knowledge of how it works to call it part of the operating system or not under any definition, whether it be driven by technical or marketing requirements.
Re:WINE is an OS component by Arandir · 2006-04-21 07:42 · Score: 1

So apache an OS component, because all of the distribution vendors bundle it with linux?

It depends on how you define "component." Loose definitions are great because it allows to you pick and choose to your personal advantage. For example, the FSF said that MFC is a component of Windows (even though it doesn't ship with it) but refused to approve Qt as a component of any Linux distribution (most of whom ship with it), and so declared KDE to be illegal back when Qt was not dual licensed with the GPL.

--
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Re:WINE is an OS component by 2short · 2006-04-21 08:03 · Score: 1

You misunderstand, I'm not marketing anything, I'm installing software on one computer for my personal use; does that make it part of the operating system? I don't see how it makes any difference whether I install it or Dell does. I don't think "put on the computer by a company that sold it and not the end user" is a very useful definition of "operating system". By that definition, many Linux boxes have no OS at all.
In any case, my point remains: You've taken the words Cringley used and assigned them bizarre definitions that clearly aren't what he meant, and declared him clueless on that basis. That's silly; trollish even.
Re:WINE is an OS component by Mr.+Hankey · 2006-04-21 08:31 · Score: 1

The "company that sold it" is usually referred to as the vendor; The vendor loaded software may well be one's definition of the operating system. The definition I'm most familiar with OTOH is far lower level than any of these and would preclude apache. It would probably even preclude the X, Win32 and OS X GUI environments. It might well include wine's binary loader however, since that can be considered a userspace portion of the system's binary loader when configured properly.

--
GPL: Free as in will
Re:WINE is an OS component by tepples · 2006-04-21 08:35 · Score: 1

I don't think "put on the computer by a company that sold it and not the end user" is a very useful definition of "operating system". By that definition, many Linux boxes have no OS at all.

My definition of an operating system (or "operating environment" in Sun parlance) was "all software bundled with the kernel into a distribution". If IIS is bundled with Windows Server, then IIS is part of the Windows Server system. Likewise, if Apache is bundled with Fedora Core, then Apache is part of the Fedora Core server system. Which definition of "operating system" do you prefer so that we can agree on semantics?

assigned them bizarre definitions

My definition of an operating system agrees with the American Heritage Dictionary's definition of "system" as "A group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole."

and declared him clueless on that basis.

Where did I say "clueless"?
Re:WINE is an OS component by 2short · 2006-04-21 09:41 · Score: 1

"Which definition of "operating system" do you prefer so that we can agree on semantics?"

For evalutaing Cringleys prediction, the definition of "operating system" I prefer is *Cringleys*. Indeed, I assert that that is the only one that is at all relevant. I do not know exactly what that definition is. However, there are certainly some reasonable definitions that would include stuff Apple might do within OSX and would not include Wine. If you choose to apply a definition of "operating system" that is not in this category, you have chosen one that is clearly not the intended definition. You have chosen the wrong one.

"My definition of an operating system agrees with the American Heritage Dictionary's definition of 'system' as 'A group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole.'"

As does any collection of software whatsoever, amongst innumerable other things. Surgeons and nurses working together fit American Heritages definition of 'system' and they even 'operate', but I wouldn't call them an operating system in the context of this discussion, so let's forget the appeals to the dictionary, OK? Sorry, but I'm going to continue to regard as bizzare any definition of "operating system" that includes the 30 day AOL trial on my pc when I take it out of the box, and not the virus scanner I install immediately thereafter. I also regard as bizzare any definition that includes absolutely all software.

"Where did I say 'clueless'?"

My mistake, you didn't. Cringley said Apple would support the Win32 API directly in their operating system instead of using middleware like WINE. The original poster way on up top of this thread implied he was clueless for saying that because WINE supports the Win32 API. Others pointed out that that was a silly thing to say, because Cringleys whole prediction was that they would do it in the operating system. You went back and forth with some other guy about whetehr WINE counted as being part of the operating system. I chimed in that I thought your definition of operating system was not very useful in this context, and we've now beaten this horse well past expiration.

Perhaps, but the OS/2 disaster looms by theolein · 2006-04-21 06:21 · Score: 1

It would be an incredible gamble on Apple's part to do something like this because it really would take away the incentive for developers to develop for OSX using the Cocoa APIs and XCode tools, both of which Apple has been working on for many many years. Why would developers bother to develop Mac versions of their software?

On the other hand, if Apple did implement MFC or Win32 in OSX and it was successful, it could torpedo .NET takeup. BUt I don't think it would work.

Nope, I think this is a bit too far fetched.

Laughable by chrisgagne · 2006-04-21 06:21 · Score: 1

This guy is like the Ann Coulter / Ayatollah of the Windows world.

Only half the equation by xenocide2 · 2006-04-21 06:22 · Score: 1

Avie leaving is only half the equation. Bringing out a new kernel that ditches mach would be a serious transition that you can't accomplish without hiring someone skilled in the design of such, or borrowing one of the open source systems. Neither of these options can be done in clandestine operation, no matter how hard Apple wants to silence the media. Simply put, building a new OSX requires Avie or someone like him.

Sure, one could imagine that Cringely is deliberately leaving out half of his argument to avoid suits and jeopardizing his sources, but claiming that Wine is somehow subject to deliberate breakage that doing the SAME DAMN thing in kernel is somehow immune from suggests he hasn't finished the digging on this one.

--
I Browse at +4 Flamebait

Open Source Sysadmin

OSX-on-Windows by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:22 · Score: 0

Windows on OSX would be like OS/2 all over again. Nobody programmed for native OS/2 because the Windows-only app would actually run on both platforms.

Maybe Apple could reverse the trend by throwing together an OSX-on-Windows enviroment. Then developers could target ONLY OSX and still run on both major platforms... Just, the apps would run better on a Mac. :)

Re:OSX-on-Windows by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · 2006-04-21 09:31 · Score: 1

Windows on OSX would be like OS/2 all over again. Nobody programmed for native OS/2 because the Windows-only app would actually run on both platforms.

It depends upon the speed hit, capabilities, and other limitations of Windows on OS X apps. For example, unless it is very well done, no one wants to run the Windows version of photoshop on OS X. For games and the like, people would certainly run them, but only if the speed/graphics were fast enough. The other thing Apple can bring to the table that OS/2 lacked is a whole pile of native applications including almost all the basics anyone needs, as well as a really nice, easy dev environment.

Maybe Apple could reverse the trend by throwing together an OSX-on-Windows enviroment. Then developers could target ONLY OSX and still run on both major platforms... Just, the apps would run better on a Mac. :)

Actually the inability of developers to use Xcode and the other Mac development tools and APIs on other platforms is already an issue. The problem with the Windows APIs and for that matter Mac-on-Windows is the lack of functionality in the Windows OS. Without all the core libraries, database, system services, etc. the applications would always be second class.

I suspect their current strategy is to grow the user base by making it easier to switch, even if that means making it easier to run Windows applications, but I suspect they don't want to make it too easy. This is one of the reasons I doubt they will actually include a built in Windows re-mplementation. Rather, I suspect they might provide virtualization and emulation in a window, in a sandbox type functionality. If they want to be really, really cool, they should include an upgrade setup that sucks your current Windows install including all the applications into a virtual machine that runs subservient to OS X.

What is "the OS"? by tepples · 2006-04-21 06:24 · Score: 1

Wine is NOT an implementation directly in the OS. It is middleware, by that definition.

One could plausibly consider Mac OS X to be a "distribution" or (as Sun Microsystems calls it) an "operating environment" on top of the Darwin "operating system", such that almost all of Mac OS X is middleware too. If you define "operating system" to cover a whole "operating environment", then the Linspire distro is an OS that includes WINE.

Wine vs Windows API by dokebi · 2006-04-21 06:24 · Score: 5, Insightful

A lot of comment so far correctly point out that WINE is is an implementation of the Windows API, but they miss Cringely's point that Apple licensed the Windows API. The whole shebang. So unlike the WINE development team, OSX-XP project team doesn't have to reverse engineer undocumented and cryptic API's. Anyone who remembers IBM's OS2 knows that IBM licensed the Windows API, and included it into OS2, and could run all Windows programs. OS2 failed because of lack of consumer appeal (eye-candy), not because of lack of compatibility.
I imagine Apple could pull a better OS2 than IBM. Security, stability plus consumer appeal plus Windows compatibility.

Even if all this is speculation, it probably gives Messrs Dell and Gates nightmares.

--
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!

Re:Wine vs Windows API by robertjw · 2006-04-21 07:04 · Score: 1

OS2 failed because of lack of consumer appeal (eye-candy), not because of lack of compatibility.

Is this true? IIRC, OS2 Warp had a ton of eye-candy if you could get it to run long enough. If IBM gave up on OS2 that easily when there were no compatability issues, it may be the poorest business decision they ever made.

--
Find coupons in Greeley
Re:Wine vs Windows API by madstork2000 · 2006-04-21 07:04 · Score: 1

This discussion reminds me of the last long delayed overly hyped OS - Windows 98. (the windows XP and WIndows 200 didn't seem like the same level of hype that Windows 95 had at the time, and that Vista is getting now...)

At the time OS2 was light years ahead of windows (and propably still is in a few ways). OS2 was really a pretty slick piece of software, and I remember fondly the days spent using it. But when the world when to 32bit windows applications OS2, I had to abandon it.

I have been running Linux since about 1999, but have been intrigued by OSX and am really just looking for an excuse to give it a try. If there is a way to simultaneously use Linux apps (i.e. open source tools - specifically KDE), simultaneously with OSX and Windows, with out the over head of virtual mahcines I will be in heaven....

-MS2K
Re:Wine vs Windows API by IntlHarvester · 2006-04-21 07:32 · Score: 2, Interesting

I think it's true. Look at OS/2 v2/3 -- The icons were so fugly that even I could make better ones in MSPaint, and the fonts were big chunky and blocky.

Also, OS/2 came with a "power user" desktop that relied heavily on nested folders, drag-n-drop, right-drag-n-drop, "templates", and property windows. This was in an era when most PC users hadn't even touched a mouse. Confusing+Ugly=Problem.

Most of this was fixed with OS/2 v4 that copied the "Start Menu" idea and had some graphical treatment. But that came out in 1996 (8 years after the original OS/2 GUI), and was too-little, too-late.

--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Re:Wine vs Windows API by saboola · 2006-04-21 08:15 · Score: 1

Anyone who remembers IBM's OS2 knows that IBM licensed the Windows API, and included it into OS2, and could run all Windows programs

OS/2 could only run Windows 16-bit apps, not 32, making it pretty useless for new apps after Windows 95 came out.
Re:Wine vs Windows API by squiggleslash · 2006-04-21 08:22 · Score: 1

IBM dropped OS/2 for a very simple, well documented, reason. They were told by Microsoft that they could either receive virtually no support whatsoever for getting Windows 95 to run on IBM computers, paying through the nose for the copies they bought, essentially making IBM's Windows 95 the worst performing and least competitive machines on the market, or they could get rid of OS/2 and the Lotus office suite (I forget the name.)
IBM choose dropping OS/2. Sure, it could have gambled everything on Windows 95 being a flop in comparison, but they already knew that OS/2 would only achieve a certain level of success in the short term, and Windows would survive regardless. Other PC manufacturers, with a few exceptions, refused to license OS/2 because by doing so they'd be reliant on a major (and at the time, untrustworthy) competitor.
Their decision to drop OS/2 had nothing to do with developers "only developing Windows apps because OS/2 was compatible with Windows" as some claim, it had nothing to do with ugliness (OS/2 Warp 3 was ugly, I agree, but OS/2 Warp 4 looked as good as anything did at the time.) It wasn't unpopular or poorly marketed (remember the "Where's the hourglass" ads?) It wasn't worse than Windows 95 (it was arguably an equal. They were both single-user 32 bit operating systems with pre-emptive multitasking, memory protection, and multimedia. '95 and WfW 3.11 had the benefit of networking, which didn't become standard until Warp 4, but OTOH Warp 3 generally came with a Dial Up networking suite anyway.) It just came down to the war of business: Microsoft said "Drop it, or we'll kill you", IBM at that point knew the gamble of staying with OS/2 in the hope enough people would chose it over Windows 95 just wasn't worth it.
That these threats occurred and that IBM capitulated is documented in Judge Jackson's Findings of Fact, the one major part of the Microsoft Antitrust trial that was wholly upheld in the later appeals. It's a surprisingly good read for a legal document, and worth every geek's time.

--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Re:Wine vs Windows API by IntlHarvester · 2006-04-21 08:32 · Score: 1

They were told by Microsoft that they could either receive virtually no support whatsoever for getting Windows 95 to run on IBM computers, paying through the nose for the copies they bought, ... or they could get rid of OS/2 and the Lotus office suite

That is a one-sided version of the story, so here is an equally one-sided version:

IBM had a sweetheart deal on Windows 3.1 ($11/copy!) due to their history with Microsoft. IBM threatend MS with sabotaging the Windows 95 launch with a big OS/2 ad campaign, unless Microsoft gave them the same sweetheart deal on Windows 95.

Because IBM was already backing away from OS/2, they really wanted Windows 95, and they wanted it cheap. And Microsoft gave in to their threats.

Anyway, any story about poor widdle IBM being bullied by big mean Microsoft is obviously silly. They're all big boys.

--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Re:Wine vs Windows API by dargndorp · 2006-04-21 12:49 · Score: 1

Look at OS/2 v2/3 -- The icons were so fugly that even I could make better ones in MSPaint, and the fonts were big chunky and blocky.

Ah yes, Helvetica extra chunky. Horrible.

Also, OS/2 came with a "power user" desktop that relied heavily on nested folders, drag-n-drop, right-drag-n-drop, "templates", and property windows.

You're being redundant here; drag-n-drop was always implemented via RMB within the Workplace Shell (1992 with OS2 2.0). Prior to that, it worked just as Windows 3.x did.

This was in an era when most PC users hadn't even touched a mouse.

I don't agree. Most users had plenty of experience using a mouse by 1992.

While the WPS never took off, this was never a key factor in OS/2's failing.

Most of this was fixed with OS/2 v4 that copied the "Start Menu" idea

"Licensed" would be the proper term here. The Warpcenter, which incorporated functionality similar to the "Start Menu" was taken from Lotus' "Smartcenter", part of their "Smartuite" Office Suite, which coincidentally predates Windows 95.

But that came out in 1996 (8 years after the original OS/2 GUI)

It'd be nice if you stuck apples with apples. The GUI from 1988 had nothing to do with all of your aforementioned gripes; it's as if you'd be mixing Windows 3.x and 9x in one hodgepodge pile and always picking the sour grapes.
Re:Wine vs Windows API by redhog · 2006-04-21 16:24 · Score: 1

I must admin I'm what you could call a power user, but I was totally stunned by the UI of OS/2. I still haven't seen a desktop manager that is on par with it when it comes to orthogonality, simplicity, generality and flexibility. I must admit there are more good-looking ones out now (hey, even RHs bluecurve theme is kinda cute), but all DMs out now are so inflexible. For example, if you open a folder in GNOME in folder-mode, you can't get the tree-view/explorer-view thing just by selecting the view menu and selecting another view method... The desktop doesn't work as any other folder-view. You can't add backgrounds to folders. Things doesn't have as many properties, etc... But the world just wasn't ready for it then. Maybe it is now?

--
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Re:Wine vs Windows API by IntlHarvester · 2006-04-22 04:33 · Score: 1

I'm sorry, it's been more than 10 years since I've used OS/2 day-to-day, so I may be off on some of the details.

As for Lotus/IBM SmartCenter, I'm fairly certain it was modeled on preview releases of Win95/Chicago which had been around for years.

I don't agree. Most users had plenty of experience using a mouse by 1992.

A year or two eariler, most computers didn't ship with a mouse. So I doubt it. Even so, I think OS/2's "right-drag" metaphors would be too complex for many modern users, much less those in 1992. Sad but true.

WPS had some great ideas and features, but it was hampered by poor execution and the lack of a cohesive design. Throwing a bunch of folders on the desktop and calling it a day is not the way to build a good UI.

--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Re:Wine vs Windows API by IntlHarvester · 2006-04-22 04:37 · Score: 1

Hmm, I always thought the filemanager in OS/2 was gawdawful. I usually resorted to winfile. The Gnome one is a million times better despite it's faults.

Which raises another issue -- the entire WPS was an abstraction stored in a binary database that had nothing to do with what was going on in your C: drive.

--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Re:Wine vs Windows API by SEE · 2006-04-24 15:06 · Score: 1

OS/2 only supported the Win16 API by running a very slightly patched copy of Windows in a DOS virtual machine with an OS/2 virtual memory driver, despite the fact that the Win16 API was far smaller, simpler, and easier to implement than the modern Win32 API. And IBM had (and still has) to pay Microsoft an OEM-level per unit fee on copies of Windows included with copies of OS/2.

Now, for Apple to pull an OS/2, Microsoft would have had to been stupid enough in the patent deal to have given Apple the rights to use the source code of the enitre Win32 personality of the NT series, or the entire Windows 9x codebase, or both. But whatever Cringley's anonymous sources say, that almost certainly never happened; Microsoft didn't get anything from the Apple deal remotely worth giving that sort of access.

Implementing Win32 - totally insane idea by DrXym · 2006-04-21 06:25 · Score: 1

Unless Apple have licenced the entire of Windows from Microsoft, there is no way in hell they could implement the Win32 API to such a degree and expect it to work. Especially for Apple users. Just look at WINE for reasons why this is true. WIN32 is too complicated and constantly moving. Documentation is poor or non-existent for large parts of it. Parts like the embedded browser control, DirectX and the .NET runtimes are NON-TRIVIAL to put it mildly.

Even if they licenced a version of WINE from Codeweavers, Transgaming or whomever, it still wouldn't offer complete compatibility. It might be enough to get games going, but anymore than that is pot luck.

So the suggestion that they can just implement Win32 is absurd. Perhaps they have some kind of virtualization trick up their sleeve because that's the only way I can see it working.

Re:Implementing Win32 - totally insane idea by reldruH · 2006-04-21 07:08 · Score: 1

As many previous comments have pointed out, Apple does have a liscence for the entire Windows API. FTA:

Remember Steve Jobs' first days back at Apple in 1997 as Interim-CEO-for-Life? Trying to save the company, Steve got Bill Gates to invest $150 million in Apple and promise to keep Mac Office going for a few more years in exchange for a five-year patent cross-licensing agreement? The idea in everyone's mind, of course, was that Microsoft would grab lots of Apple technology, which they probably did, and it quite specifically ended an Apple patent infringement suit against Microsoft. But I'm told that the exchange wasn't totally one-way, that Apple, in turn, got some legal right to the Windows API.

That agreement ran for five years, from August, 1997 to August 2002. Even though it has since expired, the rights it conferred at the time still lie with the respective companies. Whatever Microsoft grabbed from Apple they can still use, they just aren't able to grab anything developed since August 2002. Same for Apple using Microsoft technology like that in Office X. But Windows XP shipped October 25, 2001: 10 months before the agreement expired.

I'm told Apple has long had this running in the Cupertino lab -- Intel Macs running OS X while mixing Apple and XP applications. This is not a guess or a rumor, this something that has been demonstrated and observed by people who have since reported to me.

--
I've always pictured the color of OS zealotry as a sort of bright flamingo pinkish hue
Re:Implementing Win32 - totally insane idea by DrXym · 2006-04-21 08:46 · Score: 1

Even if they licenced to 2002 and had ported the entire API - a big if - that doesn't permit them or their users to benefit from anything that has occured since. That probably includes .NET 1.1 and DirectX9. Obviously as time goes on, the gulf gets wider. Then Apple is faced with the ineviable position of coming back to Microsoft on their knees begging to remain compatible with all the latest games & apps which by design or accident no longer work on their port.
It can't end well for Apple. They are doomed to follow in the footsteps of OS/2 if they follow the route of poorly supporting Windows, even through a licenced API. You may recall that OS/2 was far superior to Windows 3.1 for all the good it did it.
Re:Implementing Win32 - totally insane idea by reldruH · 2006-04-21 09:10 · Score: 1

Personally, I think Cringely's talking out of his ass. Much as I'd love to be able to run .exe's from within OSX, I'm not going to hold my breath. The point though is that while Apple may have a gulf to bridge, it's a far smaller gulf than if they were starting from scratch. Having full access to the API's from 2002 and trying to work their way to 2006 is a far cry easier than starting from scratch. Also, many applications written in 2002 will still run. My copy of XP was installed in 2002 and the only times I've gotten incompatibility errors were when I tried to open a solution file in Visual Studio made with a .NET version I didn't have.

--
I've always pictured the color of OS zealotry as a sort of bright flamingo pinkish hue
Re:Implementing Win32 - totally insane idea by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 09:27 · Score: 0

When the INTEL CPU supports virtualisation natively, why make it difficult with supporting an API?

anyone?

speed?

moore's law?

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by NutscrapeSucks · 2006-04-21 06:25 · Score: 1

That and the fact that X11 Apps aren't really a strategic threat to Apple.

Just in very course marketshare terms: 2% Mac APIs + 1% Unix APIs -- versus 97% WinAPIs, so obviously WinAPI would be a bigger threat to Apple technologies if they supported it (which they won't).

--
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.

Problem by Jozer99 · 2006-04-21 06:27 · Score: 1

The Windows API is not open. There are lots of calls that no one knows about. Unless Microsoft gets in on this, which they won't, any attempt at copying the Windows API would have terrible compatability. Just look at Wine and ReactOS. They can't have access to the API, so they have to take applications and run them, creating new calls as they find them. It takes years, and once you are done with one application, chances are, another application won't have the same calls, and you have to keep changing things.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:28 · Score: 0

It's not just X11. Programs like Maple, whose GUI is written in Java, don't even behave like a good cocoa app. Having scrollbars that pay attention to user prefs is rreason enough to port programs, and that isn't the worst of it. Maple quits the whole program when the last worksheet is closed. That means that when you want to open another worksheet, you have to sit through another 30sec splash screen while the G5 jet engine revs up to 80dB. Bad behavior to say the least.

Yeah, whatever... by tereshchenko · 2006-04-21 06:28 · Score: 1

So Apple will implement about 10000 functions of Win32 API (and related essential interfaces, like IE HTML engine, ActiveScripting, and more then 125 other Windows-only technologies) ? Well, in this case MacOS X 10.5 will be released in 2017. P.S. Who needs MacOS anyway?

--
Slashdot - free anti-Microsoft propaganda 24/7

Re:Yeah, whatever... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:55 · Score: 0

Yeah, I migrated away right after Novell published their SuSE (opensuse.org) PowerPC project.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by mycall · 2006-04-21 06:29 · Score: 1, Interesting

Have you ever looked at Win32? menus are just messages and handles passed around, like WM_SYSCOMMAND, WM_MENUCOMMAND or special functions like AppendMenu() or MenuItemFromPoint(). I would think it would be easy to recreate OSX's menuing behavor even with native Win32 apps.

Who's pole are you smoking? by JackAxe · 2006-04-21 06:30 · Score: 1

As usual, when someone is as ignorant as this troll, they'll use Anonymous Coward as a guise to post their asinine opinions, which have no bearing in fact beyond their limited and quite naive unerstandings of what they dislike.

<]=)

This just makes no sense by General+Lee's+Peking · 2006-04-21 06:31 · Score: 1

Mac OS X isn't just about a nice interface for performing basic OS and file system tasks, it's about the libraries available for applications written for that platform. Running MS Windows programs on Mac OS X will make it look like it's limited to only what MS Windows can do. Furthermore, even if Microsoft were to give Apple everything they needed to write the necessary libraries, there's just no way the applications could run as well as they do on the platform for which they were written. That would make Mac OS X look even worse. It would also give application developers a reason to not develop with the libraries that take advantage of the strengths of Mac OS X over the weaknesses of MS Windows. I could only hope this guy is wrong. It would be a disaster if he was right.

This is what I think... by fak3r · 2006-04-21 06:32 · Score: 1

that 10.5 (OS X) will run windows apps just like current OS X runs 'classic' apps; just a normal window within OS X. Wow, that would just be killer, not that I need that feature, but it would just open things up so much more than dual booting, or even virtualization. Heck, run X as well, and have GTK apps from linux...

--
fak3r.com

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by utexaspunk · 2006-04-21 06:32 · Score: 2, Insightful

What's wrong with not having programs written for OS X if it will be able to run the Windows apps anyway? Either way, people will buy macs and the mac marketshare will continue to increase. Eventually there are bound to be enough users to make having OS X versions of one's software (that can take full advantage of OS X's capabilities) advantageous enough to compel developers to make them in order to be competitive. Even if they don't, if MS does something with the next version to cause Windows compatibility to break, application developers will have to make Mac versions of their software in order to keep the customers happy. What's the big deal?

Natively==Wine by HermanAB · 2006-04-21 06:32 · Score: 1

Well, Wine is exactly that - a Windows API on Linux. So Apple wishes to port Wine to BSD?

--
Oh well, what the hell...

Re:Natively==Wine by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 07:24 · Score: 0

...Port Wine...

Mmmmm. Port.

Apple-to-MS is as Compaq-to-IBM by boxlight · 2006-04-21 06:35 · Score: 1

If memory serves, Compaq was able to make non-IBM PC clones because they reverse-engineered the BIOS of the IBM PC. Everything else in an IBM PC were off-the-shelf components. Compaq cracked the BIOS and thus began the attack of the "100% IBM Compatible" clones of the 80s and 90s.

Today the Win32 API is the equivalent of the IBM PC BIOS. Build your own Win32 API and you can run all of the Windows apps. That's what the Wine project is all about.

But building your own fully functional Win32 api is an unimaginably hard undertaking. Does Apple have the resources, time, and inclination to take on such a project?

boxlight

OS/2 by bmo · 2006-04-21 06:35 · Score: 1

Hasn't _anyone_ learned from the OS/2 lesson?

If Apple really does this, put a fork in 'em.

The ability of OS/2 to run Windows applications decimated the number of OS/2 developers (and the way IBM treated developers was the other reason), because why write for two platforms when you can write for just one?

--
BMO

Re:Microsoft's MBU: The Mac's Fifth Column by deesine · 2006-04-21 06:36 · Score: 1

What is that, like the 5th late you've had this morning?

--
damaged by dogma

10 years ago? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:39 · Score: 0

I think 2 years ago would have been just fine.

http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?pg=qu&sid=60 9&symb=AAPL&time=2yr&uf=0

And they are already doing it by Sycraft-fu · 2006-04-21 06:42 · Score: 1

Not to screw Apple but because of the 64-bit move. The native API for 64-bit Windows isn't Win32, it's Win64 (they are real creative with naming). It's not a significant change, indeed it's meant to be as compatible as possible, but it IS new and something that wouldn't be covered by Apple agreement. Perhaps more significant is new versions of DirectX. A couple new versions have come out since 2002 and there are major changes that are finding widespread use. This would also not be covered.

My guess is that, due to the amount of work involved, Apple wouldn't do something like this without licensing the MS code. A half-assed Windows implementation would be more harmful to them than none at all. While they might be able to do the base API and not have it change, MS will do new versions of DirectX, and probably .NET.

Re:And they are already doing it by everphilski · 2006-04-21 06:49 · Score: 1

That would also kinda make sense as to why they are sticking with 32 bit processors and 32 bit code in their new intel machines...
Re:And they are already doing it by NutscrapeSucks · 2006-04-21 06:59 · Score: 1

More likely, they are sticking with 32-bit processors because that's all Intel has for laptops, and they're sticking with 32-bit code because OS X isn't entirely 64-bit clean yet.

--
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.

I like to pretend that Cringely is Negrodamus by Hohlraum · 2006-04-21 06:42 · Score: 1

from Schappell Show (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negrodamus) when I read his predictions.

Apple and Windows by dissident_rockstar · 2006-04-21 06:44 · Score: 1

It seems to me that both sides of this argument make some decent points. If I were to translate everything into what I read in my head it would transcribe like this: Cringley: "Obviously Apple is up to something involving Windows." /. : "What could they possibly be up to, eh?"

We could be reading... by UnixRevolution · 2006-04-21 06:45 · Score: 1

...about army forcefields, jet-powered coolers and other important things, but instead we get this.

--
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.

I take your point by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 06:45 · Score: 0

Fair enough. I suppose it's foolish to argue about what level this completely conjectural (as far as OS X is concerned) functionality is to be implemented.

oops thats Chappelle's Show by Hohlraum · 2006-04-21 06:46 · Score: 1

typo.

Nostradamus X. Cringely? by Dubpal · 2006-04-21 06:46 · Score: 1

Is it just me or are these "commentators" making more frequent and more unfounded predictions?

Their shotgun approach at making these predictions means that the odd time these guys are right, they claim enough credit for their apparent claivoyance to make their constant misguesses not such a big deal.
It'd be nice if there was something solid behind all of this but it's all rumour and it's barely news.

yuk. by JustNiz · 2006-04-21 06:47 · Score: 1

The thought of clogging-up any elegant OS with the awful Microsoft API just makes me shudder.

Mach microkernel advantage? by kherr · 2006-04-21 06:47 · Score: 2, Informative

One of the advantages/curses of the Mach microkernel that Mac OS X uses is the abstraction between the hardware drivers and the "kernel" that does stuff like manage IPC and disk activity etc., etc. The advantage is the isolation of hardware, the disadvantage is performance. While slower than a monolithic kernel, Mach can be a lot more stable. And with computing power at the level it's at these days I'm not sure how noticeable the difference is for everyday desktop use.

Cringley's idea would make a heck of a lot of sense in this kind of environment, because you'd just instantiate a Windows "kernel" (server in Mach parlance) that provides the runtime profile. This gives you a heck of a robust virtualization implementation, with the Windows and Mac OS X kernels running as peers with equal yet controlled access to the hardware. When us Mac users were running MkLinux it was not unheard of to run a development version of the linux kernel as a Mach server alongside the current linux kernel.

I've always felt Apple's Boot Camp was merely a reason for them to provide the driver glue needed for Windows, and that dual-booting most certainly is not Apple's final goal.

Re:Mach microkernel advantage? by dgatwood · 2006-04-21 08:27 · Score: 1

Mac OS X does not use a microkernel. It uses a monolithic kernel that combines a Mach microkernel, an I/O architecture (I/O Kit), and a server personality (BSD) into a single unit. While the separation of those components is cleaner than it would be in... say... Linux, the parts still aren't realistically separable.
That said, I keep toying with the notion of rebuilding the MkLinux server as a KEXT.... :-D
Seriously, though, if you tried to run some subset of Windows in the Mac OS X kernel, it would not be able to share access to the display with WindowServer (a user process), making its usefulness rather minimal. In fact, the whole design of Windows and Mac OS X are diametrically opposed; Windows tends to do far more in its kernel than Mac OS X. Trying to jam a Windows workalike into the kernel is exactly what Mac OS X was designed to avoid---having mountains of code resident in the kernel (in wired kernel memory). I can't imagine something like that working well.
I can't wait to see where Darwine goes in the next few months; I strongly believe that user space is the right level for these sorts of things. Emulating the API on top of the existing OS is just the right way to do things, IMHO.

--
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Re:Mach microkernel advantage? by zsau · 2006-04-21 17:30 · Score: 1

But ... Cringly was suggesting that MacOS X would convert to another kernel, so I don't think that's what he's got in mind.

--
Look out!

DirectX by SilentChris · 2006-04-21 06:48 · Score: 1

While this is all very nice in theory, people seem to be forgetting a lingering issue: DirectX and games.

Let's face it: the home user doesn't really need Windows for much of anything (business users are obviously different). For home, Office runs on Mac OS, popular internet apps do, just about everything the home user needs... but games.

Apple very well may have their hand on some API code, but I sincerely doubt they got their hands on DirectX. And considering how often DirectX is updated to keep in pace with graphics hardware, whatever they had in 2002 is pretty much unusable at this point (I think they were at DirectX 8.0 then. We're up to 9.0c, which features a lot more support for shaders, among other things).

And to be honest, Direct3D is pretty well-written and offers very good performance compared to OpenGL (and there's still no really good dedicated open libraries for sound, network and tasks). You can't do games without DirectX.

Now, Apple has a huge cash stockpile, and all those 12-year olds buying iPods helps it grow everyday. Wouldn't it be interesting if they licensed DirectX? MS obviously wouldn't let it go for cheap, but if Apple were to combine that with whatever Windows APIs they have, they could theoretically crack the last remaining Windows nut for home users.

If I could run all my DirectX games at the same speed in MacOS I would never leave the platform to dualboot. I think most users wouldn't. Apple should shoot for that, if they can.

yeesh by pascalpp · 2006-04-21 06:49 · Score: 1

/Macintosh HD/Program Files/ ?

*shudder*

OS X as a Vista replacement? by maddogsparky · 2006-04-21 06:51 · Score: 1

Every time MS comes out with a new version of Windows, lots of companies lag behind dropping their older versions until MS drops support. If Apple supports the API, they can keep using their Windows apps without being forced to go chasing after Vista when 2000/XP gets dropped.

--
science is a religion

I dont get it by SoulRider · 2006-04-21 06:51 · Score: 1

Apple has always said one of their goals was to allow consumers to be able to go into Best Buy, buy a program off of the shelf and run it on their machine, without having to worry about what the softwares specs are or even that it was written for another OS. I dont get all the speculation crap. Boot Camp, Universal Binaries and moving to Intel hardware just supports that goal. My guess is OS 11 (XI?) will allow you to run any software and it wont matter if it was made for windows or macintosh. In other words I will be able to buy a piece of software because I find it useful and not just because it runs on my machine.

Doubters; QTML by micromuncher · 2006-04-21 06:53 · Score: 1

I've read a few comments about people saying "this is no small task and it will never happen."

The reality is Apple already has a lot of this code in support of QuickTime. It is not just QTML (that implement a bunch of Mac APIs in QT for Windows). It's the other way too. These porting technologies have been around inside Apple (and other companies, like Aldus/Adobe) for dogs years.

--
/\/\icro/\/\uncher

So, who wants Vista? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 07:00 · Score: 0

Nobody wants Vista, but people love their Win XP apps. What if Apple says, hey you don't need to upgrade to Vista, run OS X 10.5 instead and your Win XP apps will run too.

So instead of buying a new Vista machine, buy a new Mac and run your Win XP apps on it.

Bob got marketing and tech wrong by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 07:02 · Score: 0

As the parent post noted, Cringley got the marketing wrong on this. But he also got the technology wrong. Namely, source compatability != binary compatability (http://haiku-os.org/learn.php?mode=nsl_view&id=11 &haikuusersession=52231944514625beffb530de6704ffa5 , for instance). Specifically, OS X uses Mach O binaries, Windows currently uses PEF and XCOFF. I don't know what Vista will use, but it won't be Mach O.

So, to do this, Apple *would* have to create a binary loader, they couldn't just use the API. Sorry, Bob.

Re:Bob got marketing and tech wrong by spectre_240sx · 2006-04-21 10:47 · Score: 1

Well, don't forget that he's calling for a new kernel here as well. Maybe he's thinking that this kernel would support the loading of Windows binaries?

I had this same idea last week by pestilence669 · 2006-04-21 07:03 · Score: 1

Remember Classic mode? Sure, it's pokey, but consider it a rough draft. Imagine a classic mode for WinXP. With the proper drivers, you could virtualize the entire operating system, boot it, and share the same screen realestate. The end result: Seemless desktop integration. Perhaps they could even use RDP natively and skip custom drivers.

Their multiple API layers is very impressive. The BSD, Carbon, Cocoa, and Java API's are all very different ways to access the same operating system. If they did add a Win32 layer, which is completely possible, they could (in theory) run every Windows application ever produced... and with less bugs. I had this idea last week. Personally, I believe that this must be a long-term strategy... but I'm not holding my breath.

The problem with speculation like this, however, is the great potential for dissapointment. Running XP virtualized in a window is good enough for me. Window manager integration is even better. API level compatibility is the holy grail, but unlikely... even for Apple. It's almost like anything they do now, might come up short of expectations.

OS/2's Windows 3.1 compatibility comes to mind. It was released right before the shift to Win32 applications (Win32 *S* didn't count as real 32-bit). OS/2 didn't add Win95 compatibility and a whole new generation of apps weren't compatible.

Supporting Win32 may not be enough. Like OS/2, Mac OS is getting Windows support (even through dual-booting) right before a brand-new Windows release and API. If Leopard had Win32 *AND* Vista support... well... that would be enough.

I just hope that Windows compatibility doesn't cause developers to scrap native Mac ports of software. Mac "support" becomes a thing of the past.

Sound like a fair deal ... by egghat · 2006-04-21 07:03 · Score: 1

MS got access to quicktime and in exchange Apple, at that time nearly bancrupt, got full access to MS most important asset ever, the Win32 API.

Yes yes, that sounds like a very reasonable deal for me.

Don't get me wrong, but his Steveness is not *that* clever and Bill G. hasn't made such a stupid move in hos whole life ...

I guess Cringley smokes sth. really weird ... I thought, that the "Open sourcing Mac OS X"-story from last week couldn't be topped, but I stand corrected ...

Bye egghat.

--
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel

Re:Sound like a fair deal ... by PayPaI · 2006-04-21 07:31 · Score: 1

Yes, nearly bankrupt with 1.2 billion in cash
Re:Sound like a fair deal ... by egghat · 2006-04-21 08:16 · Score: 1

Ok, take this ;-).

Things weren't rosy for Apple. Markt share was declining massivly. Most quarters were in the red, some of them really bad; the loss for 1996 was more than 700 millions.

OK, "nearly bankrupt" was a bit harsh, but things didn't look good for Apple at all ... And some more quarters unchanged would have been the end for Apple ...

--
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
Re:Sound like a fair deal ... by PayPaI · 2006-04-21 08:32 · Score: 1

OK granted it wasn't the best of times, but $150mil is a drop in the bucket compared to $1.2bil. 700mil for first quarter 1996 loss is about $8mil/day, so $150mil would tide them over for.. oh.. about two and a half weeks. The point is the cash from MS didn't save them.
Re:Sound like a fair deal ... by IntlHarvester · 2006-04-21 12:00 · Score: 1

> bucket compared to $1.2bil

Assuming that $1.2B existed -- there was accusations of various Enron-style accounting tricks going on at Apple.

> The point is the cash from MS didn't save them.

True. What saved them was a big asset firesale (ARM), and a home-run product (iMac). According to the WSJ, Apple actually had Chapter 11 papers drawn up at one point if they couldn't float a loan, so "almost bankrupt" is a correct statement.

--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Re:Sound like a fair deal ... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 13:34 · Score: 0

MS got access to quicktime

MS had already had access to QT, the problem was that they'd done it illegally. Remember that Cringely is speculating that this was part of the behind-the-scenes legal settlement that happened at the same time Gates went all "Big Brother" on the big screen at that Mac conference.

Win APIs not sufficiently documented.... by Been+on+TV · 2006-04-21 07:03 · Score: 3, Informative

Microsoft has an ongoing issue with the EU where Microsoft is unable (unwilling) to produce documentation on their APIs to a standard that anyone can sensibly write code that interfaces with it. If the state of affairs are as shoddy as Microsoft gives the impression of, even Steve Jobs's RDS cannot reliably help Apple engineers re-implement the full Windows API.

The EU is treathening to fine Microsoft $2,7 mill a day for the inability to produce said documentation.

--
The future is in beta

Re:Bonzai Buddy!!! Yea! by wealthychef · 2006-04-21 07:04 · Score: 2, Insightful

Not to mention all the great spyware and malware that supporting ActiveX and the rest of the Windows API will bring! Oh, yes, Nirvana.

--
Currently hooked on AMP

I want what Cringely is smoking by joe_n_bloe · 2006-04-21 07:04 · Score: 1

Don't bogart that stuff. My fantasy life really needs some improvement.

Apple contribute to Wine? by MobyDisk · 2006-04-21 07:05 · Score: 1

Why wouldn't apple just contribute to the Wine package? It is the sort of thing that is perpetually "almost there" and always will be, since it can never keep-up with something that is ever-changing. But if Apple started with Wine and continued on, there would be a chance of catching-up.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by spongebill · 2006-04-21 07:09 · Score: 0, Flamebait

because a native mac os x app cocoa or carbon app will run at NORMAL speed where a VM windows app will run NOTICEABLY SLOWER! DUH!

Re:Microsoft's MBU: The Mac's Fifth Column by khellendros1984 · 2006-04-21 07:10 · Score: 1

Wow...I'm guessing that you're not serious on what you've said. If you are, you're bat-shiat crazy.

I own machines that run Linux, Windows, and MacOSX (the PPC kind, thank you very much). I have the Windows since that is what I have grown up using, the Linux because it lets me get my programming work done (plus I like the value system involved), and the Macintosh machine because I LOVE the interface of OSX. I don't consider myself to be the typical PC user, and I don't think I've ever met anyone who fully conforms to the description you've placed above.

I would like to say, if you're serious about the above post, I'm sorry you've got this rock in your craw, but seriously: give it a rest! Talk about dogmatic following of someone else's ideas!

--
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Safe Browsing by buckhead_buddy · 2006-04-21 07:12 · Score: 4, Funny

Recipe to avoid the "BRITNETSPEERZNAKED.JPG" viral threats:

Switch browsers from IE to Firefox
Switch Operating Systems from Windows to Mac
Switch Preferences from Women to Men

That leaves you in one of the smallest possible target audiences for... well... just about anything :-)

Re:Safe Browsing by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 07:19 · Score: 5, Funny

Your third point is redundant (see second point).
Re:Safe Browsing by ZebadiahC · 2006-04-21 09:46 · Score: 1

Thats the funniest one yet. Kudo's to the anonymous coward.

(yea, I'm a mac too)
Re:Safe Browsing by spectre_240sx · 2006-04-21 10:25 · Score: 0, Redundant

Nice. Very nice.
Re:Safe Browsing by PureCreditor · 2006-04-21 10:41 · Score: 1

i followed the ENTIRE recipe, and now i can laugh at all my friends who still enjoy win32 viruses and trojans and what-have-you
Re:Safe Browsing by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 11:39 · Score: 0

the entire recipe? it sounds like you might be the one enjoying the trojans ..
Re:Safe Browsing by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 23:22 · Score: 0

hahahaha nice

Don't try it! - it's a trap. by Angostura · 2006-04-21 07:12 · Score: 1

I'm suddenly reminded of IBM's determination to make OS/2 Warp a "better Windows than Windows" and what a triumph that turned out to be.

Of course, there was precious little native OS/2 software about and Warp was absolutely horrible to use, so the parallels aren't exact.

Nonetheless.

How this would work by joshv · 2006-04-21 07:13 · Score: 4, Interesting

I doubt Jobs is looking to support running every Win32 binary under the sun - for that you can dual boot. If something like what Cringely describes were to take place, OS X would implement only a subset of the win32 API, but with graphical widgets having an OS X look and feel and perhaps some win32'ish extensions that provide access to OS X specific functionality (spotlight, etc...) This 'subset' API would be different enough that there would be very little likelihood that an unmodified binary would run out of the box on top of this compatibility layer.

But with a recompile and some refactoring, I bet most windows programs could run quite will under this compatibity layer. What those would do is open up the Mac platform as a viable target for Windows software developers. Recompile under OS X, fix the few quirks, or work around the APIs that aren't present, and bingo, you've got a mac app. With a few IFDEFs you might even be able to support both Mac and Windows versions with the same code base. Software makers like Quicken might find this a very attractive option.

Re:How this would work by Mistah+Blue · 2006-04-21 15:48 · Score: 1

As Quicken for Mac is inferior in every respect to Quicken for Windows I would love it if Intuit would either make them the same or have something that makes it easy for them. I have to remote desktop in to an older laptop running XP Pro to use Quicken. Alternatively, a virtual machine would fit the bill for me. I've got a year old PowerBook and am waiting for a couple of revs of the MacBook Pros before I migrate.

So Suspect... by Watcher · 2006-04-21 07:27 · Score: 1

Its very hard to take someone seriously in a technical article when they write something like this:

Speed. Quite simply, a monolithic kernel like the one used in Linux or most of the other Open Source Unix clones is inherently two to three times faster for integer calculations than the Mach microkernel presently used in OS X 10.4.

The overhead of a microkernel isn't in integer calculations-its in task switching and system calls, and even that usually isn't too great. Bluntly put, if I have a program consisting of a loop that calculates some series of integer values, the only reason it would run slower on MacOSX than Windows on the same hardware is because of task switching, not because the OS somehow screws with integer math-that's all on the processor, not through a system call.

Re:Nostradamus X. Cringely? by Rob+Simpson · 2006-04-21 07:30 · Score: 1

No kidding. I wish there were a section for these stories... I "cringe" every time I see one, and I'd happily disable them if it were possible. There are sections for Apache and BSD, after all, why not one more?

You're right, but Cringely is still confused. . . by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 07:31 · Score: 0

Quote Cringely,

"This will be accomplished not by using compatibility middleware like Wine, but rather by Apple implementing the Windows API directly in OS X 10.5.

Huh?

Wine is great, but it is also a moving target subject to Microsoft meddling. If Wine gets too good, Microsoft can "accidentally" break it at will. But Microsoft can't afford to do that with its own Windows API. The courts will no longer allow checking for a different underlying OS as Redmond did back in the days of DR-DOS. Besides, unless we are strictly talking about Microsoft apps, there isn't even much code involved here that Microsoft CAN meddle in. The wonder is, of course, that Apple could even dare to do such a thing?"

The parent poster may be correct in that Wine runs in userland vs. kernelspace, but that isn't relevant to this discussion, which is about compatibility. Userland vs kernelspace would be, ultimately, a performance issue, not compatibility. Maybe by implementing in the kernel, you make Win32 apps run a little bit faster.

I don't even think Microsoft actively tries to break Wine (well, other than in the case of their Authentic Windows Downloads stuff, which doesn't affect me too much). But even if they do, Wine is no more nor less susceptible to breakage than an Apple implementation of the Win32 API would be, I should think. Think about it - in what ways can Microsoft 'break' wine? By extending the Win32 API's with new functions/interfaces that can be called. The old interfaces will still all be used by existing programs - something that ran under wine yesterday will run with wine today. Same with Win32 on Apple - existing programs might work, but there is no guarantee that new programs developed with new extensions will continue to work.

The only other interesting tidbit that is presented by Cringely is that, perhaps, Apple might be, through it's cross-licensing agreement a decade ago, actually be using Microsoft's implementation of the Win32 API, ported to OS X by Apple (which means it theoretically *should* have a very high level of compatibility with applications released using the version of the Win32 API that Apple based it on). Although, I would think porting Microsofts implementation of the Win32 API wouuld actually mean that apple ported the Windows NT kernel + libraries (MFC, DirectX, ODBC, COM, OLE, etc, etc, etc) + Internet Explorer (because quite a few Windows apps embed or script IE, so would not run without IE) to run atop OS X somehow. Which basically means that Windows was running on top of OS X, sans it's own desktop interface (explorer).

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by Mike+Savior · 2006-04-21 07:32 · Score: 0, Offtopic

I dunno if it's a joke or something, but your html in your sig is horribly butchered.

--
space is pretty cool.

A better solution by jblsys · 2006-04-21 07:33 · Score: 1

A better solution would be to create a virtual machine for Windows (or any other os). That way you can sandbox the other os to limit damage from viruses and other malware yet still be able to do things like copy and paste.

http://www.parallels.com/ looks like just the ticket although I have not tried it yet.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by ImTheDarkcyde · 2006-04-21 07:36 · Score: 1

i don't know, i'd put this more as a "hey gamers, you can play UT2004 on our stuff too!" as on a user to user basis there are not that many programs that i'd want to reboot just to use. Heck, that's why i hate GRUB so much, if i leave my computer unattended during a startup i have to restart it just to get into windows!

My favourite parts by Sentry21 · 2006-04-21 07:38 · Score: 2, Interesting

Quite simply, a monolithic kernel like the one used in Linux or most of the other Open Source Unix clones is inherently two to three times faster for integer calculations than the Mach microkernel presently used in OS X 10.4. ... Apple has evidently reached the point where they need to trade claimed performance, -- typically based on floating-point operations that aren't a part of much web or database service -- for real performance.

In this amusing quote, Cringely is asserting that the mostly-microkernel architecture of Xnu is responsible for poor integer performance, which wrecks web/db performance, but does fine with floating-point operations. Makes sense to me!

Speeding-up performance is great, but normally a system vendor won't want to do that for older hardware, which might encourage some users to keep their old box and just add a new OS. But in this case, Apple HAS NO installed base of Intel Macs to worry about having to compete with, so speeding up the OS becomes a no-brainer, especially if it simultaneously encourages PowerPC owners to upgrade so they can share in the fun.

Apple already does make their OS releases faster from one to another - I don't know about other Apple policies, but the WebKit team, for example has a strict 'no performance regressions' policy which is enforced pretty well. It wouldn't surprise me to find the same is true of the rest of the OS and components. Asserting that Apple is so intent on selling new hardware that they would intentionally ignore potential performance improvements is ludicrous to say the least.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by zymano · 2006-04-21 07:38 · Score: 1

Combine OSX with REACT OS would be a good idea.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by leenoble_uk · 2006-04-21 07:38 · Score: 1

You missed out "They're" from your sig. Although that may be because of the character limit, I don't know, I didn't count.

No. We're not nazis.

Re:You're right, but Cringely is still confused. . by MustardMan · 2006-04-21 07:38 · Score: 1

Oh I agree that cringely is still a dumbass. I have only read the parts of the article that are copy and pasted here on slashdot - cringely is and always has been a cheap troll looking for advertisement dollars, and I'm not going to feed him, so I only grudgingly admit that he might have a sliver of a somewhat possible idea. That doesn't imply he would recognize a clue if you wrapped it in barbed wire and smacked him in the genitals with it.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by avonhungen · 2006-04-21 07:43 · Score: 1

RTFA

the speculation is that it wouldn't be a VM but rather a native api, obviating your speed argument

you might wanna keep your DUHs to yourself

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by Mike+Savior · 2006-04-21 07:43 · Score: 1

Actually, it is because of the character limit :)

--
space is pretty cool.

Incentives by gidds · 2006-04-21 07:44 · Score: 1

Exactly.

I think Apple have to walk a very fine line here. Run Windows programs too badly, and Windows users won't switch. But run them too well, and no-one will write any new Mac programs; the OS/2 story*.

I expect they'll do what they've done for X11 apps: they run well enough to use if you have to, but nowhere near as well as Cocoa/Carbon ones. They look ugly, they don't fit in with the OS X look, system facilities like printing don't work well, etc.

* Actually, let's play this one out. Just suppose OS X runs Windows applications better than Windows does. What happens? Windows developers carry on writing for Windows; many Mac developers have too much invested to switch, but some do, and newer ones go for Windows too. (As a Mac user myself, I'd hate that, but let's consider it anyway.) What then? OS X still has all its current advantages: hardware integration, Expose, Spotlight, ease of use, etc. If they've let Windows apps run that well, then those will still be able to share in that. So there's still an incentive to buy a Mac, even if there's no longer an incentive to write for it (specifically).

As someone else pointed out, OS/2 didn't fail because it could run Windows applications; it failed because there weren't any compelling reasons to use it over Windows. The Windows compatibility simply made it easier to switch away. Maybe that doesn't apply to OS X?

--

Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.

Mountain from a mole hill by Enrique1218 · 2006-04-21 07:45 · Score: 2, Insightful

Wow, he got all that from Apple release of Boot Camp. His article me of another contemporary article of a man who traded up to apartment from a red paper-clip. I just thought the release was becasue Apple wanted to sell more Macs and sales are down due to the transition. Whether via virtualization or Apple directly using Windows API, Windows program will run on top of Mac OSX in the future. The question with virtualization is speed and direct access to hardware. Alternatively, using Windows API raises the question of appearance and consistency of interface. Apple's interface is not exactly like Windows. Menus are different and located in different places. Borders are also very different. In addition, keyboard combinations will be different. For example, the difference between using alt-f4 versus Command-Q. So, Windows programs are just going to bring in inconsistency to Mac OSX that Apple goes through great pains to avoid. It will screw up people who have become accustomed to certain way thing work in Mac OS X and mess up their work flows. One other problem is it will discourage developer from Mac OSX native programs. I am sure Apple doesn't wants that.

--
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one

Sure, and I have a bridge... by the_humeister · 2006-04-21 07:47 · Score: 1

The last operating system to do that was OS/2, and now it's practically gone. But, I don't think they're going to put the Windows API into OS X.

Wrong way by Beuno · 2006-04-21 07:48 · Score: 1

Why the hell would they port a very unstable and buggy software unto a pretty reliable one???????????
I mean, it's much healthier to just put in money into Linux apps and make them go that extra mile they need.
They are already kinda running on unix...

The new SLOW development by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 07:50 · Score: 0

If Apple runs Windows apps under OS X or as part of OS X, they will slowy - but irreversibly - move a whole lot of people towards OS X.

Like Classic didn't force us to upgrade our applications right away. Moving to OS X and running Classic apps gave you - sometimes - better performance than under OS 9. Yet, most applications, in due time and some just one or two years later, got ported to OS X. The current Photoshop drama - the code base is still for OS 9 - is nothing but a out of sync upgrade to OS X anyway.

Within 5 years - a reasonable estimate -, 40 to 80 percent of the people can switch to OS X. So, 3-6 years from now, we'll see 50-90 percent of Windows apps being recompiled for OS X - particularly, if there's a good reason on the OS side.

Running Windows apps right inside OS X, in my view, is one of the best ways, ever, to sell OS X and Macs. All they need to do is come up with the snazzy hardware.

If true...... by o517375 · 2006-04-21 07:53 · Score: 1

IBM will buy Apple to stop it. This upsets the apple cart -- so to speak -- a bit too much for the entrenched players.

Re:Bonzai Buddy!!! Yea! by C0rinthian · 2006-04-21 07:57 · Score: 2

CometCursor will accentuate my OSX desktop nicely! I can't wait!

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by trichard · 2006-04-21 07:59 · Score: 2, Insightful

What's wrong with crud anyway?

Isn't that what Ruby on Rails is for?

http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/CRUD

trichard

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by spongebill · 2006-04-21 08:00 · Score: 1

sorry that duh was a bit too agressive i admit. and i applogize. but there is a speed difference. take rosetta for example. same thing. nothing is as fast as a native app. or maybe i'm just a picky dork. :) lol

re-writing the Windows API, eh? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 08:00 · Score: 1, Interesting

Apple reimplementing Windows API? That is too much work and very unlikely!

Here's what I think will happen:

Step 1: Develop a way to run Windows on a Mac in its own partition. Done. (via Bootcamp)

Step 2: Develop a way for OS X to "talk" to Windows machines (or virtual machines) efficiently. Done. (Apple just released Bonjour for Windows a few days ago)

Step 3: Virtualize and run Windows inside OS X with full drag and drop capabilities (via Bonjour), running at native (since Apple has all the tech specs on the hardware) speeds in its own partition (Bootcamp).

My fearless forecast? WWDC, Steve will announce this.

Re:re-writing the Windows API, eh? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 08:18 · Score: 0

you know what, this might actually work.

Close - but actually - Apple will implement .NET by lawman508 · 2006-04-21 08:01 · Score: 2, Insightful

It would be much easier for Apple to move in that direction by implementing their own version of the Microsoft .NET CLR. This is a 'public' set of interfaces that is now being implemented in Rotor 2.0. None of the ISVs I work with today are developing anything but .NET code for the Microsoft platform. Sure - there is a great deal of interop remaining for COM+ and Win32 - but most companies have realized the ROI of moving to a managed environment like Java or .NET, and don't want to go back to the bad ole days of C coding. Having .NET on the Apple could actually go a long way to bringing MACs into corporate environments, as companies would demand 'portable' .NET code.

I think I see some logic in boot camp now! by eheldreth · 2006-04-21 08:03 · Score: 1

Ok so lets say you develop the latest greatest OSX to run XP programs, well next M$ comes out with vista and a new API you don't have rights to whats a company to do. You allow the users to install a leagly licensed version of Vista in a dual boot fasion and then make it possible to run Vista programs by accessing the licensed Vista API they installed.

--
The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum. - O'Toole's Corollary

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by bsartist · 2006-04-21 08:05 · Score: 1

You guys have inspired me to change my own .sig... ;-)

--
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by bsartist · 2006-04-21 08:15 · Score: 3, Interesting

More importantly, if they could carry over their non-UI logic with just a recompile via some sort of Carbon-style XCode project mechanism (that would import, say, VC and VC++ projects) and then redo the UI via the Interface Builder (but be able to access NIB data via Win32 widget calls) then the barrier to porting to OS X would pretty much go away.

You can do most of that right now, if your model classes (assuming MVC design) are in C++. Just use controllers written in Objective-C++ to talk to your C++ models and Objective-C views. The only thing missing from what you're describing is importing VC projects, but that's just an inconvenience, not a show-stopper - it's not exactly rocket surgery to create a new project and add your model files to it.

--
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!

I want to know by Ice+Wewe · 2006-04-21 08:15 · Score: 1

I'd like to know what he's smoking. Apple will never do that for several reasons...

1) It would require LOTS of modification to Mac OS X, more than they're willing to do.

2) Windows XP will become obsolete (sorry... MORE obsolete) once Vista is out, so why bother?

3) They'd get their guts sued out by Microsoft over some patent infringement B.S.

4) It would open the flood gates for viruses to run on Mac OS X. If Mac OS X can run .exe's, it can run viruses.

5) It's a stupid idea... this is coming from the guy who said Apple should make OS X open source. He's nuts! If Apple did that, they wouldn't be able to make any money off OS X sales! I had 10.1 on my iBook, and I paid for 10.2, and 10.3. That's approx. $260 Apple got off of me for OS upgrades. Then I got a PowerBook, and gave the iBook what it deserved, a 20ft drop onto solid concrete!

And that's all I came up with.

Anybody remember System 9 compatibiltity? by Danathar · 2006-04-21 08:15 · Score: 1

With the Windows API in hand (if the cross licensing thingy Cringley says is true) I see no problem with Apple creating a compatibilty "box" environment like we had in early versionf of OS X that ran old OS 9 apps.

This really all depends if the licensing thing is true.....is there ANY evidence of this or is Cringley just making it up?

This article shows a very poor understanding ... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 08:16 · Score: 0

Ok, there is a small piece of insight here.
Apple could implement the an nt kernel on Mach.
or maybe it could modify the Mach it uses to run the
nt kernel side-by-side with OS X. Maybe.

While this is a possibility, I am not sure the
performance would be all that different than
a VT/Pacifica based solution, but it would be
a lot harder.

His understanding of Wine is seriously flawed. If
Apple were to do this, they would either use something
like reactos, or build an nt os kernel in house from
scratch.

Now, at this point they would have a kernel and need
the other 99% of windows. They have two choices,
make user buy a copy of windows or use wine derived
code. So while Apple could do this "without" wine,
really only by buying a copy of windows for each user.

Now, if they bought a copy of windows for each user, they
would likely end up in court as well. Would they win?
I really hope so. I think WABI did way back when, but not
in time to save the buisness. Of course EULAs have real
power they didn't then. Would "first sale doctrine" work
today?

OH .. And this 3x interger performace thing has me baffled.
I don't believe it. A Mach implementation would be slower on
IO load, syncronization heavy code, IPC, ect, but integer code
should be dependent pretty much entirely on the CPU/compiler.
The main vairable should be scheduling granularity, and it should
_not_ have that much impact.

If this were true, Big Mac (the PPC super computer) would have run
BSD or Linux immediately and ditched OS X in a week.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by prell · 2006-04-21 08:16 · Score: 1

Well, with each platform you get what that platform offers. With OS X, you get Cocoa, and Interface Builder, and Xcode and whatnot, and for Windows, you get Win32 (which is no fun to program with), and if you want Microsoft's development environment, you have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars. And if you want to do WYSIWYG GUI editing with the official Microsoft product, I believe you have to build a .NET project, though maybe you can do it in MFC, though I get the impression that's not fun to do.

It seems like it would be really hard to re-implement the entire Win32 API. Not only would you have to replicate the sometimes-quirky behavior of each function call, you'd also have to implement all the backwards-compatible hacks that are built into Windows. How could Apple do that without Microsoft's help? It seems very hard. I mean, Apple would essentially be making their own WINE, and WINE isn't perfect. I'll repeat the bit about WINE for clarification's sake: there is no distinction between what WINE is, and what is suggested here. Both would be approaching the same problem in the same manner.

It seems like Apple would be better off doing some sort of "transparent virtualization" which would provide all of the Microsoft code running on a virtual machine. The code should all work, since it thinks it's running on a bare PC, with nothing between it and the hardware. This would actually provide for a stable Windows: Apple could make the hardware look identical, even when it isn't. That'd be a good tool to use to provide stability, when optimizing for performance isn't reliable.

Or, Apple could simply port (or rebuild!) Cocoa and its toolkits, for Windows :-) And who knows how much of it is already ported, now that iTunes runs on Windows? Pull out the BSD kernel, and what is OS X?

Codeweavers will be out soon by Danathar · 2006-04-21 08:19 · Score: 2, Interesting

I had an apple rep show me a beta of Codeweavers Crossover Office working with OS X in a demo 3 weeks ago (Alpha version).

It does not need to run 100% of apps to REALLY be a hit. If the majority of vanilla apps run with little or no issues then I know of MANY People who would dump windows.

What if Apple bought codeweavers? With the Windows API in hand they could probably take their modified codebase and get it running even better than it is now.

Re:Codeweavers will be out soon by booch · 2006-04-21 10:29 · Score: 1

I suspect that what Cringely is talking about is CodeWeavers CrossOver. Obviously CodeWeavers and Apple have been working together to get their product to run on Intel Macs. If Apple were to include such functionality in their OS, I would not be at all surprised if they simply licensed the CodeWeaver code. It makes sense for both companies. Perhaps Cringely is not aware that CodeWeaver is based on WINE. Maybe he's not even aware of CrossOver Office. But this seems like the best route for Apple to take if they wanted to do this.

I'd also note that Apple has been perfectly fine with taking and adapting Open Source code. Even the low-level operating system is based on Mach and FreeBSD. And don't forget that Safari (WebKit) is based on KDE's Konqueror. And WINE is not all that bad. If nothing else, it makes a good base for such a project, implementing a large portion of the Win32 APIs relatively well.

--
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.

Windows by mattwarden · 2006-04-21 08:21 · Score: 1

Cringley also suggests that Apple will purchase Microsoft and get rid of OS X in favor of Windows.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by IntlHarvester · 2006-04-21 08:21 · Score: 1

Interesting idea, but I don't think Apple has ever put much effort into making Carbon nicer for Win32 programmers.

Random piece of info: At one point, Microsoft ported MFC to Macs and had a Mac cross-compiler. Perhaps Apple could pick this up and do something with it.

--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.

PPC killed OS/2, not Windows by brokeninside · 2006-04-21 08:23 · Score: 2, Informative

Well, preloads (actuall, lack thereof) also had something to do with it. The OS/2 division within IBM couldn't get the PC division to offer OS/2 version 2 through 4 on stock hardware. When industry execs from other PC companies like Compaq were interviewed their response was, ``why would I load my competitor's operating system onto my PCs?''

But on top of this, between v.3 and v.4 of OS/2, IBM gambled almost their entire budget on OS/2 PPC and, well, lost that gamble when neither CHRP nor PREP took off, Microsoft ditched NT for the PPC and the only commodity computer running the PPC chip was the Macintosh. Guessing wrong not only cost IBM billions, but also lost quite a few turf battles for OS/2 proponents inside IBM.

It also didn't help that IBM kept insisting that certain key flaws (can you say synchronous input queue?) were actually features and would not be fixed.

But by comparisson, rather than having to fight internal battles to get OS X preloaded on Macs, every Mac ships with OS X. Tens, if not hundreds, of Hackers are trying to get OS X to run on stock PC hardware despite Apple saying that they'll not support stuff. CEOs of competing hardware makers, like Michael Dell, are saying that they'd love to be able to preload OS X onto their gear. The situation is clearly different.

But the biggest difference between now and 1995 when IBM's best chance at making OS/2 make it big is that thanks to Linux, most people understand that a choice in operating systems exists. In the nineties, you got either got a Windows machine or a Mac; most people had no clue that you get load other system software.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by eonlabs · 2006-04-21 08:26 · Score: 1

What's the incentive to run Windows,
if all your apps run on OS X?

--
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.

Mod parent +1 Funny by TheDefenistrator · 2006-04-21 08:31 · Score: 0

Although I am a mac user, and happen to be heterosexual (or zero-sexual, as this is slashdot), the parent gets the award for funniest responce of the day.

The situation is not even close by brokeninside · 2006-04-21 08:31 · Score: 1

First, you already point out a huge difference, Apple presently treats it's developers a heck of a lot better than IBM did during the OS/2 days. Every Mac ships with Apple's Developer Tools. Can you imagine if IBM had done that with Visual Age for OS/2 what Apple is doing with XCode?

Second, IBM never gained as many third party developers because the market was just never there. Apple has an installed base of OS X users that dwarfs anything IBM ever had.

Third, see here

Re:The situation is not even close by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-24 01:58 · Score: 0

You mean Apple's current marketshare 2% is better than IBM's peak of 20%?

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by the+argonaut · 2006-04-21 08:33 · Score: 1

More likely is that Windows apps will continue to suck relative to Cocoa-native applications, lacking integration with OS X-specific features like the Keychain and Services, and generally designed with a Windows-centric philosophy and aesthetic.

So they'll all look like the Mac version of Firefox?

--
fuck you.

beta tagging by kermitthefrog917 · 2006-04-21 08:35 · Score: 1

"[+] stupid, cringely, unlikely, osx, apple (tagging beta)"

Did anyone else see this and laugh?

Sounds more like someone was messing around withGoogle Sets

--
I may be wrong but you're downright ugly!

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by SCHecklerX · 2006-04-21 08:37 · Score: 1

You just hit on one of the many reasons for OS/2's demise. If you can run the other OS's software 'good enough' on your own, there is no incentive for developers to write native, or even better, portable code for your platform.

I'm a Doctor, not a Doctor! by argent · 2006-04-21 08:39 · Score: 1

Providing a Windows API in Mac OS X involved the same operations whether you call it "native", "compatibility middleware", or "wakalixes": you're still emulating Win32 on top of UNIX. Everything in OS X, Cocoa, Carbon, Quartz, Aqua, Rosetta, Classic, is running on top of a 4.4BSD Single Server under Mach 3. It's not making any significant use of the Mach 3 enhancements, though, and isn't all that different from the 4.3BSD/Mach 2.5 design in NeXTstep. The key point is that it's a single-server design, all traditional OS services are provided by the monolithic 4BSD kernel inside the Mach "microkernel".

Windows under this OS would be no more native than Classic applications under OS X on the Power PC are.

Re: Let's assume that is true by brokeninside · 2006-04-21 08:40 · Score: 1

Does that not mean that MS has a legal right to all of OS X as of 2002, including the version that was running on Intel in the basement?

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by fuzzix · 2006-04-21 08:42 · Score: 1

You guys have inspired me to change my own .sig... ;-)

Oh, get a room ;)

Cringely cringeworthy by benedict · 2006-04-21 08:43 · Score: 1

This guy knows not what he talks about. In his own words:

1. "[A] monolithic kernel [...] is inherently two to three times faster for integer calculations than the Mach microkernel presently used in OS X 10.4."

2. "[W]hatever Apple's overall strategy, we're likely to see a new kernel in OS X 10.5[....] Apple will most likely offer more than one way to satisfy Big Business's desire to run Windows or at least Windows applications. I think Apple is sincere, for example, in their interest in allowing Apple hardware to boot straight into Vista. Not even Steve Jobs would go for months pretending to be a Vista OEM then give that up the night before. (Now watch him prove me wrong.) So for those who absolutely must have Windows, then let them have Windows, with which the new kernel ought to make performance quite snappy.

The kernel is involved in "integer calculations"? A new OS X kernel is gonna make Windows run faster when booted natively?! Cringely, what do you think a kernel *does*? I'll trade you an operating systems textbook for your pundit license!

--
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by Dis*abstraction · 2006-04-21 08:44 · Score: 1

Yup, and that's why even now, we go for the Mac ports instead.

--
Bonsai Kitten: TNG

Porting Windows API not that easy by suv4x4 · 2006-04-21 08:55 · Score: 2, Insightful

You may recognize that porting Win32 is far from enough to have modern and future Windows apps running on OSX. They'll have to port DirectX, .NET, Avalon, Indigo, in the near future WinFS and more like those.

Porting Win32 is hard enough, but I can tell you Apple has neither time nor resources to port the entire WinFX framework.

And this, besides making it easy for devs to make Vista apps, is the whole reason WinFX exists in first place, to lock apps further into Windows with a sophisticated, very flexible and capable, yet simple to use framework.

Re:Porting Windows API not that easy by WhiteWolf666 · 2006-04-21 09:17 · Score: 2, Interesting

Yeah, but ....

Wine already works with many XP apps. Mono is can do some interesting things, as well, in terms of usage in combination with Wine.

Wine + Apple's pockets? And maybe IBM's pockets?

Booyah. Not to mention that the Wine project is getting pretty dang close to Win32. DirectX included.

MS can't make Win32 too much of a moving target, or they'll have to EOL XP. And they can't really make the API's too sophisticated, because then they'll turn off developers. The biggest problem the Wine project really has is lack of man hours, not lack of knowledge. $$ can buy man hours, and corporations with programmers familiar with Win32's internals can provide man hours in bulk.

--
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Re:Porting Windows API not that easy by suv4x4 · 2006-04-21 09:25 · Score: 1

Wine already works with many XP apps.

Depends on the meaning you put behind "many", but either way expect "many" to morph to "barely any" as WinFX apps start popping with Vista's adoption in the next 4-5 years.

Not to mention that the Wine project is getting pretty dang close to Win32. DirectX included.

Great, you probably realize it's pretty funny they are only now "getting pretty close to Win32" as Microsoft is phasing it out. It's an already lost war.
Re:Porting Windows API not that easy by Lonewolf666 · 2006-04-21 09:36 · Score: 1

Depends on how successful Vista will be. In other news, people claim that Vista is "the biggest disappontment ever", and it remains to be seen if the bulk of users really switches to Vista.

--
C - the footgun of programming languages
Re:Porting Windows API not that easy by suv4x4 · 2006-04-21 09:41 · Score: 1

"In other news, people claim that Vista is "the biggest disappontment ever", and it remains to be seen if the bulk of users really switches to Vista."

Paul Thurott is not "people", he's just a guy with a very popular site about MS software who got used to bitching about stuff he wants his way as if Bill Gates is his subordinate.

In his 2003 review of upcoming's Vista features he was shocked by the flexibility of Avalon, nothing from Avalon was dropped and all that flexibility is implemented in Vista and as a free XP upgrade as well, but now it's suddenly "nothing cool to see here, move along". Some consistency and logic would help critical visitors of taking him more seriously.

Also don't forget that what drives adoption of Windows is not upgrades as much as the PC vendors preinstalling it in the machines they sell. It'll take some time, say 4-6 years, before we see serious Vista adoption, but it's inevitable.
Re:Porting Windows API not that easy by WhiteWolf666 · 2006-04-21 10:19 · Score: 1

Not to mention that in the 4-5 years it takes for Vista to become the standard Wine can progress quickly.

--
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Re:Porting Windows API not that easy by bill_mcgonigle · 2006-04-23 07:55 · Score: 1

MS can't make Win32 too much of a moving target, or they'll have to EOL XP.

Thanks - that's probably the most salient point anybody's made on this article.

--
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by squiggleslash · 2006-04-21 08:55 · Score: 3, Insightful

Well, this kind of argument goes on forever, usually with silly references to OS/2, and I think it's worth giving some examples of operating systems that have had substantial subsystems designed to give compatability with other operating systems that, nonetheless, achieved great success, and for which the bulk of apps written were "native". Note, in the below, while often the "other" operating system has a similar name, it generally has an entirely different API, look, feel, and smell (well, ok, I don't know about the last one.)

Windows 3.0 - compatible with MSDOS (earlier versions had some compatability too but it wasn't as solid
Windows 95 - compatible with Windows 3.x and DOS
Windows XP - compatible with Windows 95, 3.x, and DOS
Mac OS X - compatible with Mac OS 9. Also able to run many X11/Unix apps with just a recompile

Other people can probably come up with other examples of operating systems that, in their time, were successful, and had substantial back-compatibility with platforms that you generally wanted to obsolete, not support.

Anyone thinking "Hey, Windows is Windows right?" should note that Windows 3.x and Windows 95 couldn't have had more different looks and feels, and their APIs were only superficially similar. Win32, 95's base API, was 32-bit, worked with flat, 32 bit, addressing, and provided access to something resembling a sane file system. "Win16", the pseudonym of the Windows 1/2/3.x APIs, by comparison required programs be written to use segmented memory. Filenames were UPPERCASE and had eight characters, a period, and three more after that. The GUIs were marginally similar in terms of widget layout, indeed a Win16 application was grating when you saw it up against native 32 bit applications.

The real question is: Is Apple prepared to get this operating system out to the mass market, should they consider including Red Box in Leopard? If they don't, then with a 3-5% marketshare, there's a serious risk that programmers will rely upon Red Box to get their critical, we're-the-only-people-who-do-this, applications to OS X users, and not care too much about complaints from Mac OS X users about the ugliness of the GUIs. Native Mac programs will still exist, especially if Apple re-releases an updated version of their OpenStep/WebObjects for Windows development tools, incorporating the software into Xcode. But they'll remain the minority, and the divide between Mac apps and Windows apps will, if anything intensify.

--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.

best thing to happen to Linux by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 09:01 · Score: 0

Let 'em do that, it will make the split better. The linux devs will start to cooperate more and maybe we will see about 95% of the redundant distros go away and get some solid linux standards and whatnot implemented and adopted more. the fragmentation is wiping it out right now. It has hit a peak of adoption and is stagnating from the fragmentation.

Not just any source of fiber... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 09:08 · Score: 0

You'll need COLONBLOW
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/89/89ecolonblow.phtml

Re:Microsoft's MBU: The Mac's Fifth Column by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 09:09 · Score: 0

Maybe there should be a -1 copypasta mod option?:

http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=183668&c id=15170435

Apple will do what is right for Apple by gone.fishing · 2006-04-21 09:11 · Score: 2, Interesting

I am not an Apple fan, I have never used an Apple computer but I have come to admire Apple for it's business savy. How many times has it been down for the count only to come back better, stronger, and smarter? I've lost count.

I don't know what Apple will do. I do not know any insiders and unlike Cringly, I do not have some sort of mystic ability to look into a crystal ball and predict the future.

What I do know is that Apple is currently operating from a position of financial strength, they are making quality products that have captured the public's imagination and, they have a great deal of real marketing talent on their side. At various times in their history, you could have said that Apple lacked focus but I don't think we can say that today -- I think they have a plan and are following it. I do not know what it is but I suspect that it is the right one for Apple.

Is Boot Camp a sign of something to come? I don't know and neither does anyone outside of the inside circle at Apple. Maybe it is a flag they are waving at Microsoft, telling them "Yea, we can run your O/S too" or maybe they just thought that they had to float it out there before hobbiests did something that Apple would find harder to control? Maybe by showing the public that they can run Windows, they can manipulate Microsoft into giving them a very attractive license agreement?

In the end, Apple will do what they know is the right thing for their product(s) and their plans for the future. That is what has always worked for them before. They know what they are doing. They are bright and savy technobusinessmen (hey, did I just invent a word?).

Re:Apple will do what is right for Apple by Mr+Bubble · 2006-04-21 17:38 · Score: 1

Hey, your comment is very enjoyable and emblematic of a fine mind. You would make a fine Mac user. Come on in.

--
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"

Re:Get a room. by hackwrench · 2006-04-21 09:13 · Score: 1

Don't tell them to do something you aren't prepared to help them do. If you want them to get a room, offer them a room, don't just expect them to be too terribly motivated by your missive.

Noooo! by porneL · 2006-04-21 09:19 · Score: 3, Insightful

That would suck. Apple has pretty good interface guidlines. "Preferences" is 3rd option in App menu. It's not Tools->Prefs, View->Options, File->Properties, View->Customize, Edit->Configuration, etc.

DarWINE is fine, but I don't want Windows app and their (un)usability officialy made "native" for OS X.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by Queer+Boy · 2006-04-21 09:24 · Score: 1

Except that ActiveX is dead. Didn't you read the story about Eolas?

--
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by krakelohm · 2006-04-21 09:24 · Score: 1

Yes people want native apps for sure, but that does not mean that companies will spend big bucks to make them happy if their current application will work "good enough".

--
You are all a bunch of idots.

Yeah, but what does Dvorak think? by Infonaut · 2006-04-21 09:26 · Score: 1

*ducks*

Sorry, I couldn't resist. It's been a long week, and I've seen one too many speculative articles about Wintelintosh.

--
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ

And on that day. . . . . by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 09:31 · Score: 0

. . . . . Steve Jobs will dance into work wearing a "Ballmers Bitch" tee-shirt.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 09:50 · Score: 0

It's not *rocket surgery*. It's *brain science*.

Um, no... by tomcres · 2006-04-21 09:55 · Score: 1

OS2 failed because of lack of consumer appeal (eye-candy), not because of lack of compatibility.

This is not true. OS/2 failed because Windows 95 made the Win32 API the new standard and OS/2 did not have a Win32 runtime.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by JulesLt · 2006-04-21 09:59 · Score: 1

What's the incentive now, when the market share is so low? A. Some developers like working with OS X, some users prefer OS X apps. Being a big fish in a small pond.

--
'Capitalists of the world, unite! Oh ... you have' (League Against Tedium)

why??? by sysconp1 · 2006-04-21 10:00 · Score: 1

Why would Apple consider opening up OSX to the problems inherrant in Windows? Wouldn't the more logical path be for Apple to release OSX or XI to all x86 platforms and go head to head with Microsoft? I am sure the heads at Apple must be considering this, as they are now the best placed they have ever been to finally make the move into general mainstream. Plus with Vista being put off for OEM release until Q107 this must now open the way for Apple to take the Xmas market and gain mass market appeal.

Why bother? by bogie · 2006-04-21 10:10 · Score: 3, Insightful

The big thing about Crossover office is....Office. Apple already has office for OS X. Look at the supported apps page http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxoffice/suppo rted_apps/ 50 whole apps are supported. Many of them only work partially. You know what? Most of those already have versions for OS X that work 100%. Photoshop. itunes, Quicken, Notes, etc the list goes on. Maybe there is some special win32 only app that would really help if it was ported to OS X, but going by that list I just don't see it.

Here is the deal, codeweavers have been working their asses off to get win32 apps to run on linux. Thus far they have barely scratched the surface and can only run like .005% of Windows apps. In fact they are falling behind. How does that possibly help Apple? It doesn't.

The only thing Codeweavers brings to the table for Apple is possibly the ability to help devs port apps to OS X X86. My guess is that if most vendors are not making their apps available on OS X it sure as hell isn't due to difficulty in porting but rather has more to do with the limited ROI of making apps for OS X in the firstplace.

--
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch

Re:Why bother? by Danathar · 2006-04-21 11:00 · Score: 1

"Here is the deal, codeweavers have been working their asses off to get win32 apps to run on linux. Thus far they have barely scratched the surface and can only run like .005% of Windows apps. In fact they are falling behind. How does that possibly help Apple? It doesn't."

Percentages don't matter, what matters are the apps that people run. If they can run the apps that they want, it will be enough.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 10:13 · Score: 0

For starters, Windows apps one and all suck hardcore. I'd rather use X11.

Re:Bonzai Buddy!!! Yea! by spectre_240sx · 2006-04-21 10:22 · Score: 1

Well, I guess if this happens it will finally answer the question of whether OS X is actually more secure or less targeted.

Back to the Future? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 10:27 · Score: 0

http://lowendmac.com/quadra/q610dos.shtml http://flickr.com/photos/jotefa/123832903/

your comments are insightful, but... by Phil+Urich · 2006-04-21 10:31 · Score: 1

Furthermore, the worst is probably already over for Windows malware issues. Vista will improve things. It's not a permenant advantage for non-Windows OSes.

I hate to have to play devil's advocate, but it's not like XP wasn't touted as being of much the same nature; on paper it looked like a vast improvement, like the reign of malware would be over. Naturally Microsoft is going to be trying to eliminate malware on Vista, and naturally it's going to look good on paper. Microsoft would be crazy not to be playing things that way. However, I wouldn't want to speak too much this early about Vista's imperviousness.

Alot of the problems with Windows are inherent in the design philosophy, not just in the specific implementations of certain technologies. Not that I mean that Windows exclusively sucks for it; personally I'm typing this on my Windows install right now, I like Windows for alot of things even though I would otherwise probably count as a Linux zealot and ideologically I agree with much of what RMS says. It's the same abstract design decisions that lead to things like malware that attracts me to Windows, and my own system, without even a firewall and with yearly-at-best runs of spyware search tools, is unhindered by malicious software.

The simple fact is that the very nature of Windows, which attracts so much of the market and encourages such widespread adoption (apart from heavy-handed techniques and near-gunpoint sales deals on the part of Microsoft, I mean) is predicated on such easy and arbitrary software installation. It's this having to account for nearly any method of code running in Windows that ends up fucking up so many peoples' computers yet leaving me with a stable but far-from-fresh-install OS.

I know I'm being rather abstract here, but this is in fact an abstract issue. One more point is Microsoft software; almost everything is always an exploit in IE or Outlook or WMP or MSN or etc etc. Microsoft may claim "things will be better in Vista, just you watch" but these exploits were never exacly planned. Changing things so that the same kinds of exploits won't work this time will likely just result in rather different exploits popping up; the exploits come from little bugs and from unintended consequences. (Well, okay, most of the time. Some things were just unforgivable in design, but many of these changed with later iterations and patches of XP without much improvement of the malware situation). Tight integration of Microsoft products into the OS is unlikely to change too much; superficially to avoid monopoly charges and lawsuits, perhaps, but for all intents and purposes I'd probably have a heart attack if Microsoft overturned their most winning business practice. (A practice I hate, yes, but I'm sure that most of slashdot will agree that the practice is both very evil and very successful).

That being said, Parent, everything else you wrote was spot-on, and I suppose my own view on this is more skeptical than anything else; you might still be proven right in the end. Of course, with Vista delayed time and again, it'll be awhile 'till we see for sure, eh? ;)

--
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!

Re:your comments are insightful, but... by IntlHarvester · 2006-04-21 11:46 · Score: 1

Except we know that Vista will have numerous security improvements that aren't just market baloney -- LUA security, neutered IE, built-in anti-spyware, etc. Probably won't eliminate malware, but you have to admit that it looks a million times better "on paper" than XP did. XP didn't even have a software firewall at first.

--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.

Hybrid approach - win32 as a Cocoa API by Rob+Y. · 2006-04-21 10:32 · Score: 2, Insightful

If Apple were to make it possible to port a WIN32 app to OS/X using winelib or something else, but providing hooks to allow the resulting app to have a native look and feel (if the developer were willing to exploit those hooks), then it could be a win-win.

Apple would get the Windows apps, and Windows devs who would really like to build native OS/X apps would have a way to feasibly do that. Some 'porting' work required, but far short of a total rewrite.

That would be really great.

And if they were to release the resulting technology back to the WINE folks so the same thing could be done to get a 'native' Linux port, well that would be fabulous.

And once the market shares of OS/X and Linux are there, then we can worry about migration paths to truly portable apps (via QT, etc). Or not, if they do a good enough job of making WIN32 'native'.

--
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...

a flash from the past by philospher · 2006-04-21 10:53 · Score: 1

Reminds me of when OS-2 was advertised as "A better DOS than DOS, a better Windows than Windows"

Impossible by segedunum · 2006-04-21 10:53 · Score: 1

Apple can't implement the whole Win32 API. Cringely comes up with some crap sometimes.

"Switch" campaign taken to its logical conclusion by java_dev · 2006-04-21 10:54 · Score: 1

This seems pretty obvious to me.

Thanks to the iPod, Apple has more brand image than at any time in their history and a bazillion iPod users who value the brand and love Apple's design. This group is the company's biggest asset and they need to ram as much product down this huge channel as they can and expand the breadth of products most people consider buying from them beyond iPods. They're already doing this with the iPod HiFi. The goal, however, has got to be to sell a Mac (or two) to every iPod owner in the universe.

Consider Apple's Switch campaign. It was all about trying to get people to switch to a Mac and proposed a variety of worthwhile reasons to switch. But despite wanting a cool-looking Mac, people are not switching in droves. Why? Because as much as Apple's designs incite passion in us, most people are not about to spend a couple of grand on something that doesn't run Windows.

So I think Cringly has it basically right (who really cares if it is Wine vs Apple implementing the Windows API?). If people can run OS X and Windows apps side-by-side several things will happen:

1. The lone barrier to an emotion-driven purchase of a Mac (and who honestly hasn't *lusted* after a Mac at one time or another?) will be gone and Apple will sell a crapload of them. Even more so if they can make iPods work "better" with a Mac than with a PC running XP.

2. People will experience OS X apps for the first time and, if they have half a brain, will decide that the usability that OS X is known for has real value. Once people use apps like iPhoto will they ever want to give them up? Will they continue to be satisfied with what Windows gives them? Maybe, maybe not.

3. OS X developers will see the available market for their apps increase significantly, potentially driving the development and innovation of OS X apps.

4. Finally, if this Borg-style assimilation approach to the original Switch campaign doesn't work and people continue to cling to Windows, then Apple can jettison OS X at some future point because lot's of people will have been buying Macs to run Windows and Apple's Mac revenue stream will not be at risk. Apple would continue to cash in on what they do better than anyone: innovative design.

I don't see the downside to this strategy.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by spectre_240sx · 2006-04-21 10:55 · Score: 1

Hmm, that's a very good point. Leaving out the problem of patent infringement, etc. I think it would be much smarter for Apple to implement the DirectX API than the Win32 API. Most applications are either available for or have suitable (sometimes better) replacements on the Mac platform. Gaming is where it really falls behind right now. If Apple could get the gamers moving over to OS X (maybe find a way to optimize their implimentation so games ran faster?) then that would be a huge win.

apple is lying by bokel · 2006-04-21 10:58 · Score: 0

I tried an imac. It broke and repairing it was more expensive than a new one. So much for reliability of hardware. I tried a pro book running xp - maybe this works for people who just look at xp, but if you actually try to work with it, forget about it. Apple simply lies. Very successful marvelously.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by gig · 2006-04-21 11:02 · Score: 1

> Apple could simply port (or rebuild!) Cocoa and its toolkits, for Windows
> Pull out the BSD kernel, and what is OS X?

It is so much more than any one thing, which is why it's a great system.

For example, compare the way that Apple introduced the UNIX security model to their application platform (in 2001) to the way that Microsoft intends to do it (in 2007). Mac users hardly noticed the transition, while here is what Paul Thurrott says about User Account Protection (UAP) in Microsoft Vista:

> UAP is a sad, sad joke. It's the most annoying feature that Microsoft has ever added to
> any software product, and yes, that includes that ridiculous Clippy character from older
> Office versions. The problem with UAP is that it throws up an unbelievable number of
> warning dialogs for even the simplest of tasks. That these dialogs pop up repeatedly for
> the same action would be comical if it weren't so amazingly frustrating. It would be
> hilarious if it weren't going to affect hundreds of millions of people in a few short
> months. It is, in fact, almost criminal in its insidiousness.

That is just one example of a problem with Windows that can't be fixed by hiding it somewhere on a Mac. And the above is about Vista, which isn't even out yet, and already people are disappointed by it. Building more stuff on Windows is not the answer.

Won't happen without MS's permission by I'm+Don+Giovanni · 2006-04-21 11:05 · Score: 1

Even if Apple does have access to the source, that doesn't necessarily mean that they have the right to distribute binaries based on that code. Cringely (a moron, BTW) suggests that Apple has the right to simply take the Windows code, compile it into the Windows dlls, and distribute those dlls. (Apple would merely add some tweaks so that their built dlls interact well with OSX). Would that not be essentially equivalent to distributing Windows itself (since Apple's dlls would be built from the actual Windows source code (or, at least code derived from the actual Windows code))? I don't see this happening against Microsoft wishes.

The other problem is that the version of Windows api that Apple distributed will be outdated very quickly (Apple's implementation will be out of date with both Vista and XP, when those certain Vista features slated to be backported to XP are released for XP) so what's the point?

Now, if Apple and Microsoft are together on this, with Apple paying a licensing fee to MS for the right to actually distribute binaries based on the Windows code that Cringely claims Apple has access to, as well as the right to use the code in future versions of Windows in the same way so that Apple can keep its Windows api up to date, then this could work. (But in order to be fair to the regular windows OEMs, such a license fee would be comparable to the price of OEM Windows.)

--
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000

Re:Won't happen without MS's permission by jimicus · 2006-04-21 23:06 · Score: 1

Though I can't see the fact that Apple would be distributing old code being a particularly big problem (Hell, Office XP runs on Windows '98), I think we're both losing sight of the main issue:

"What's in it for Apple?"

Seriously. What business benefit does this bring Apple? Potentially more people switching? Yes, but if they only plan on running Windows apps, why would they spend the extra money for an Apple computer? The group of people who are likely to switch probably don't have many apps they need which run only on Windows, and would therefore be quite happy with dual-booting or virtualisation.

Cringely's idea is remarkably similar to Dvorak's earlier postulation that the next version of MacOS would be Windows-based. In both cases, the assertion is based on one possible rumour citing a "reliable source" being taken to extreme. In both cases, the net result has been a massive number of people reading their columns - which is always good for advertising revenue.

Are Cringely and Dvorak the same person? I think we should be told.
Re:Won't happen without MS's permission by jedrek · 2006-04-23 18:05 · Score: 1

why would they spend the extra money for an Apple computer?

This might be because Apple computers are SO MUCH SEXIER than 99.9% of the PCs out there, and the same way people will pay $400-500 premiums for a cuter cell phone, they'll pay at least that much for a cuter laptop.

Integer Calculations by pmonje · 2006-04-21 11:05 · Score: 2, Informative

"Speed. Quite simply, a monolithic kernel like the one used in Linux or most of the other Open Source Unix clones is inherently two to three times faster for integer calculations than the Mach microkernel"

Quite simply, Cringley is a tool, who doesn't know the difference between integer calculations and Interprocess Communications. After reading that how can anyone believe the rest of the article?

I don't doubt that he has sources inside Apple who've tried to describe things that Apple are working on for Leopard, but I think that his comprehension of the technology is so low that he can't understand them.

To him it's all just magical. Apple has stolen away some of the oompa-loompas that live inside of Windows and make Office run, covered them with chocolate and sprinkled them over OSX to make a miracle or two.

Re:Integer Calculations by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 22:22 · Score: 0

I agree. I laughed until I cried on reading the "integer theory". This idiot should not be writing about technology.

Won't do any good by Sycraft-fu · 2006-04-21 11:12 · Score: 1

First, they could get sued since a Mac program can ALSO be/have a virus. That there aren't many Mac viruses isn't relivant, there COULD be. However the real issue is people ignore hoops they have to jump through. If that happens all the time, they'll just click it to dismiss it, same as the do on Windows. If you download an executable form the web, Windows warns you when you first run it that it could be evil, and let's you know who, if anyone, signed it. Nobody ever reads that, though, they just click right by it.

This would be the same, people would just dismiss it because who cares? It happens every time. Then they'd blame Apple for not protecting them.

Also you can't have your complete little sandbox, not without total system emulation. Windows apps expect access to various things. Some of them want to install services, some want to install drivers, etc. I suppose you could not implement all that, but like I said, a limited subset would be worse than no compatibility at all. So the apps would have to be allowed to write to the disk, to make changes as needed, etc.

Re:Won't do any good by dbrutus · 2006-04-21 15:37 · Score: 1

It would be quite easy to have a "security report" on "ported OS vulnerabilities" You could get one when you run X11 or Win32 and update the data with Software Update. "Warning, 67.4% of known vulnerabilities are on this API according to security research frim X, do you want to continue to launch it?" would be unlikely to draw a lawsuit.

That would be very clever... by forrie · 2006-04-21 11:13 · Score: 1

That would indeed be very clever.

Microsoft would shit an iron brick.

I wonder of any copyright issues associated with this.

Yet, we have the product by Codeweavers that allows certain Windows-based products to run on UNIX/Linux and, as far as I know, they've not been sued.

Would this all be protected under "Fair Use"?

Mod parent up by einhverfr · 2006-04-21 11:24 · Score: 1

When I worked at Microsoft, I did a fair bit of work with the testing teams. If a new version broke an old application, it was fairly common to write a shim for it.

Often these shims were not as application specific as the parent suggests, but rather a collection of bundled shims that could allow people to apply them to other malfunctioning software.

There were notable exceptions for example, when Server 2003 broke the environment variables handling such that Websphere 5 would not install and because everyone said "not my fault-- both versions of windows conform to their respective readings of the documentation" all that happened was that the problem was documented.

For what it's worth, the problem with Websphere 5 was that the installer would check for a previously defined JAVA_HOME environment variable. It would do this by copying the environment variable into a temporary location, then when it got done, would copy the location back. If the environment variable was undefined, it would copy an empty, null terminated string to the variable and when Windows 2000 would see it in the same way as if a NULL had been sent and erase the environment variable. In Windows 2003 it would set the environment variable to a null terminated string. When you would go to read the value, it would convert it from Unicode to ANSI and crash. Because each step seemed on the surface to follow the MSDN documentation for each OS, nobody would accept that this was a bug. I don't even think that MSDN documents it today.

--

LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP

not trolltech's QT by mechsoph · 2006-04-21 11:30 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Hmm, watch your acronyms...

Didn't trolltech release QT for win32, and why would apple be using QT in the first place?

Oh, QuickTime...

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by RobertCorsaro · 2006-04-21 12:17 · Score: 1

Stick to Open Source and you will never have this problem. Then again, most open source will compile natively. I guess this would be useful for that custom app that you paid a lot of money to have written.

An Interesting Column by Cyphermage · 2006-04-21 12:35 · Score: 1

Of course, the battlefield is strewn with the corpses of those who have tried to provide support for one OS under another.

While OS/2 is the example most people cite, I recall DOS emulation in QNX, which lasted well into DOS 3, when feature creep forced people running DOS programs under QNX to switch to DOS. If you can't even keep up with DOS, your chances of keeping up with Windows is slim.

The central problem here is that Microsoft will enhance the API. People writing apps will employ the new calls and the OS X Win support will constantly be playing catch-up. So you basically force Apple to replicate Microsoft's development cycle, in order to maintain compatibility.

Historically, this has always been a losing game, which occurs even in the hardware realm. Amdahl hardcoded IBM's instruction set in his compatible machines. IBM hardware was microcoded, and they added new instructions and used them in the OS. Amdahl was out of business.

Committing to support the WIN32 API in OS X would make it pretty easy for Microsoft to bankrupt Apple by continuously creating new hoops for them to jump through.

It's interesting speculation, but API emulation, even in the kernel, is never exactly like the real thing.

Two Words: Yellow Box. Two More: Quicktime, Wine by weston · 2006-04-21 12:44 · Score: 1

1) There is no way in hell Microsoft would document their API to the level necessary to allow Apple to duplicate it.

If Wine doesn't need MS's blessing, why would Apple? Heck, Apple could probably port Wine, possibly with speed and style, seeing as how they're not at all amateurs when it comes to working with the Win32 API. They've got over a decade of experience not only working with Windows on their cross-platform Quicktime libraries -- which could almost be something you could build an application layer in themselves -- but also with targeting Cocoa (NextStep) applications to Windows using their dev tools (YellowBox).

Obviously these are different things than duplicating the Windows API. But they're the kind of thing that would bring you into intimate familiarity with how it works, and put you in a strong position to write some kind of replacement.

I still think Cringley's wrong. Not because Apple couldn't do it, but because virtualization is quite likely an easier route, and much less brittle. Or, for bonus points, they could release some funky desktop/window/shell dlls for Windows and add a few tweaks to the same for OS X which would allow people to run Windows virtualized, but with each app/window appearing to operate within OS X's windowing spaces/styles, sortof like how Apple's X11 server works now.

At any rate, someone will release a virtualization solution. People will be able to run Windows and the Mac OS simultaneously, likely better than they ever have before with the emulation solutions.

And if Cringley is basing his crazy spoutings on some rumors he's heard, I'd guess the Yellow Box resurrection rumor is more likely the underlying truth, and the full Windows API duplication is what's come out through a game of telephone. Resurrecting Yellow Box would be a good counterpunch to developers thinking of going Win-only when it comes to deployment on the Mac.

That could, of course, just be crazy speculation too. :) But at any rate, it's an interesting time. Whether or not Apple does any of these things, the reason they're subject to these wild rumors is because.... they could pull off this stuff. And given that they're recently known for a bunch of successes and some risky but interesting gambles (like the Intel switch), it's fun to think about it.

--
Tweet, tweet.

QT != Qt by tepples · 2006-04-21 12:47 · Score: 1

Trolltech released Qt (capital Q, lowercase t). Apple was using QuickTime, abbreviated QT (capital Q, capital T). There's a difference. Apple did port much of Mac OS Classic's userland to Windows to get QuickTime working.

Mistaken about what Wine does by juergen · 2006-04-21 12:50 · Score: 1

Wine is great, but it is also a moving target subject to Microsoft meddling. If Wine gets too good, Microsoft can "accidentally" break it at will. But Microsoft can't afford to do that with its own Windows API.

The author clearly has no clue how Wine is working. Wine exactly does what he claims Apple should do, implementing MS APIs. Now MS does break their own APIs sometimes. Never mind they can *extend* it any time, rely on the new parts in their own applications and development tools, and thus break any old foreign API implementation.

In short Apple would be in the same troubles as Wine, only a few years behind in work. They might be smarter, or not, so YMMV.

the reality is by petermgreen · 2006-04-21 12:52 · Score: 1

the windows api docs SUCK

they are written more like tutorials than hard specs in many cases and much crucial information (such as how unicode and non-unicode apis interact) is simply missing.

so what happens is that people find out how the api really works by trial and error and then use that behaviour in thier applications.

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note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register

About a 1000 times more compelling... by rhesuspieces00 · 2006-04-21 12:54 · Score: 1

...would be Apple releasing an Cocoa implementation that could be installed on Windoze so universal binaries would run on a PeeCee.

Re:About a 1000 times more compelling... by sarcasticfrench · 2006-04-21 13:44 · Score: 1

...would be Apple releasing an Cocoa implementation that could be installed on Windoze so universal binaries would run on a PeeCee.

Why would that be so great? So what, then we could run mac programs on our pee cee's. But almost every program available for mac is also available for windows, usually about 3 months earlier and 10 bucks cheaper.

--
This is not a sig. This is a llama-duck. Quack.
Re:About a 1000 times more compelling... by rhesuspieces00 · 2006-04-21 15:34 · Score: 1

...almost every program available for mac is also available for windows, usually about 3 months earlier and 10 bucks cheaper. that was true 10 years ago, maybe even 5 years ago. Just of the programs I use regularly, I can think of a dozen or so that are not avaible for the PC. In some cases there may be a similar but inferior program for windows (e.g. TeXShop, Adium X, iLife, Transmit, Keynote, Pith Helmet, Bits on Wheels), or in some cases, none at all (Delicious Library, Quicksilver). The point, though, is that it would give developers a motivation to develop OS X native apps using Cocoa/Xcode, since the resulting software would run on both platforms without any additional development.

Obsessed? by 4D6963 · 2006-04-21 13:14 · Score: 1

Is it me or has Cringely gone totally obsessed with BootCamp?

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You just got troll'd!

GUI differences by 5plicer · 2006-04-21 13:39 · Score: 1

Apple's Human Interface Guidelines differ entirely from Microsoft's. For this reason, supporting Windows apps natively under Mac OS X would be a bad idea... unless Microsoft artwork were to be used instead of an "Aqua skin"

--
The bits on the bus go on and off... on and off... on and off...

Re:Bonzai Buddy!!! Yea! by mrchaotica · 2006-04-21 13:40 · Score: 1

Isn't that the same thing he said?

--

"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by mrchaotica · 2006-04-21 13:48 · Score: 2, Informative

That's called Darwine (WINE and ReactOS share a codebase).

--

"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

I sum up: by DexterF · 2006-04-21 14:10 · Score: 1

"Some Dude(TM) blah.. believes.. blah.. believes, too, blah... and *believes* Blah. BLAH."

On second thoughts - brilliant by theolein · 2006-04-21 14:18 · Score: 1

After reading TFA I realised that Crindely has stated this ability in OSX as a reported FACT, not as speculation. His commentary on WINE being some kind of middleware as opposed to an integrated part of the OS is what threw many off. I think now, after having thought about this, that this is sheer brilliance on Apple's part, and a number of people are going to worry about this instead of sleeping, and one person just won't care, but I'll get to that later.

This move, running Win32 apps native in OSX will be to Apple's Intel Macs what Classic was to PPC Macs, and it most likely will work exactly the same. You will have in OSX 10.5, on Intel Macs, the ability to run any Win32 app with bog standard Windows GUI elements as we know and love them. I am pretty sure that Apple's implementation of Win32 will be better than WINE's and will give all those who want to run Windows apps, and there are legions of us who do. Of course this is aimed mainly at enterprise users and those home users who want to run MS Office or some such stuff. I doubt DirectX will work which means no games, unless Apple allows one to add dll's and registry features, but it might well be possible too.

Whatever the case, it removes any barrier that might have existed for Apple in the enterprise or the home (either dual boot or run native - Apple allows it all). Plus it wedges the door wide fucking open for OSX adoption.

The catch would have been the OS/2 story, but Apple has thought about this. Win32 apps will look just like bog standard Win32 apps under OSX. They will certainly not implement Cocoa GUI elements, which means they'll be about as piss ugly as the already implemented X11 and Mac Classic integration. Apple will be relying on its SILENT SALESMEN(TM), i.e. all the Mac freaks, to do what they did with Mac Classic: bombard the software companies for OSX native versions of the software. Never underestimate Apple's word of mouth salesmen. It's how Apple recovered in recent years and how the iPod became so popular.

While I doubt Michael Dell or HP are going to lose any sleep over this - 90% of humanity will still not know the difference between Apples and Oranges and will still only shop on price - Microsoft will see this as a worrying trend, because people don't need a Windows license to use this. IN fact, I think this is almost certainly one of the reasons behind the Vista rewrite that started a couple of years ago. Microsoft has copied just about every OSX feature they can, right down to changing the freaking sidebar into a Dashboard copy. They must really be worried about OSX user uptake enough to do that, or else they certainly wouldn't bother. Nonetheless, it certainly shows that Microsoft, despite the large amounts of talent there, are creatively bankrupt. Copying is not innovation.

The one person I mentioned earlier who won't care anyway, because he's too dumb to, is Dvorak. His one single claim to fame - That Apple was moving to x86 - was pure and utter shit. He imagined Apple making "standard" beige boxes (The guy still refers to the huge mix of x86 based crap as "standard", and hasn't really realised that Apple's x86 machines are "standard" in all but the BIOS). He recently claimed Apple would move to Windows. He will almost certainly claim that Win32 apps running natively under OSX is some "marketing test campaign", just like he claimed Boot Camp is one. He'll still be claiming that when OSX and Apple machines go over th 10% marketshare border. He's simply too dumb to see reality. Dvorak will still be trolling about Apple releasing OSX for Dells and HPs and Acers in 10 years, long after the rest of the market has forgotten him.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by INeededALogin · 2006-04-21 14:28 · Score: 1

UT2004 was a native port... Try Half-Life:-)

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by fingusernames · 2006-04-21 14:41 · Score: 1

Set it up the way you want, and when ActiveX rips a hole in Windows...

He isn't talking about running Windows. He is talking about implementing the Windows Win32 API natively in OS X. There would be no Windows code. There would be no Windows desktop, no Windows FAT/NTFS filesystem, no Windows drivers, no Windows anything. Nothing to rip a hole in.

Larry

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 14:51 · Score: 0

People credit Apple for how apps are consistently Mac-like

You mean like the QuickTime player, which uses almost no native anything? You Mac freaks spew more bullshit than Microsoft.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by dbrutus · 2006-04-21 15:01 · Score: 2, Informative

If I can run Outlook, Visio, & MS Project, I can switch out of Dell running Windows and into Mac OS X on Apple hardware. These are simply "must have" applications. Everything else is already native or has an accepted alternative.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by artgeeq · 2006-04-21 15:16 · Score: 1

Here is a different question. If a Mac provided a stable platform for running the few Windows applications that I must have, then what incentive would I have for buying Windows?

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by strikethree · 2006-04-21 15:18 · Score: 1

Because Mac users will treat any Windows apps running on OS X like second class citizens. They'll stomach it, but not for long.

People credit Apple for how apps are consistently Mac-like and interoperate with each other, but the users are the ultimate enforcers. Any developer who steps out of line is crucified.

I bought a Powerbook around this time last year. While I do appreciate consistency, I have not noticed any consistecy above and beyond anything in the win32 world. Sure, there are some REALLY bad win32 apps out there (Nero!), but for the most part, they are consistent.

I may not be your typical Mac user, but I am not likely to reject useful win32 apps just because they do not look like MacOSX apps.

I just bought another laptop this year... but it wasn't a Mac. (It might have been a Mac had they released bootcamp a month earlier though!). The reason? I wanted useful apps and fun games on "powerful" hardware. Maybe I will buy a Mac (64 bit cpu please) next year since bootcamp is available. I will definitely buy one if there is native win32 support regardless of how "artsy" the apps look.

strike

--
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen

huh? by sentientbrendan · 2006-04-21 15:24 · Score: 1

>Speed. Quite simply, a monolithic kernel like the one used in Linux or most of the other Open Source
>Unix clones is inherently two to three times faster for integer calculations than the Mach microkernel
>presently used in OS X 10.4. That's why the world hasn't embraced xServes, for example, because for
>simple web or database service they are slower and serve fewer users.

What do monolithic kernels have to do with integer calculations? Sounds like Cringely doesn't know what a microkernel is... This sounds like a "new intel processors will make your internet faster" kind of argument.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by arminw · 2006-04-21 15:31 · Score: 1

....where a VM windows app will run NOTICEABLY SLOWER! DUH!....

This would not be true for many apps. What difference does it make if a program takes .1 sec or .2 sec to do an equivalent operation? For may common uses, virtualization is perfectly fine, while for other uses it sucks. Even on the PPC VPC emulation, there are many programs that run acceptably fine on today's powerful hardware. I use Virtual PC for a few such apps on my PowermacG5 without problems. Apple wants to give Windows users the chance to try their superior OSX running on well made hardware without them having to go cold turkey and throwing away their investment and comfort in Windows. Bootcamp and virtualiztion are the bait.

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All theory is gray

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by spongebill · 2006-04-21 16:28 · Score: 1

i agree with you that apple wants people to use OSX. why not, it's the best! but i hope they don't go that route. i think this is a bad thing and i hope it can be turned off cause I would die if I saw viruses and spyware on X.

APPLE WILL SWITCH TO NT KERNEL!! by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-21 16:50 · Score: 0

Read Cringley's last article about how the Mach kernel sucks and Apple will have no choice but to incorporate the NT kernel into OSX. Sure every Apple fanboy on this site is denying this, just like they foolishly denied that Apple will switch to Intel, but wound up eating crow crap. Not only will they be eating more crow droppings when this happens, they'll mindlessly continue to use Wintel machines just because they have the Apple brandname on them. Is there anyone dumber than an Apple fanboy?

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by Mr+Bubble · 2006-04-21 17:16 · Score: 1

Well, that is the big concern, and it may be justified. However, many of the big-money programs like the video and design apps would be rejected by the mac faithful if they didn't take full advantage of the platform. Hence, those developers have an incentive to use Apple's APIs. Also, this presupposes that the situation will always be that Windows has such an overwhelming lock on the OS market. If Apple were to do this, it would be a gamble, but perhaps people would be buying so many Macs that the thinking might switch to, "why bother to write a program for Windows?".

I mean, there are plenty of developers for the Mac right now with a 3% worldwide market share. I should think a 10% market would be plenty of incentive for a developer to make sure their software takes advantage of all the strengths of a particular platform.

Finally, what if the integration was seamless? What if the app, written for Windows, ran at full speed, totally adopted the look and feel of the Mac, and somehow even took advantage of system-wide calls like spell check and other services. Sound farfetched? Maybe. But you have to look at NeXT and think Apple may be up to the task. But then, I'm an admitted fanboy.

--
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by ledelato · 2006-04-21 17:31 · Score: 1

Does every X11 program use control instead of command? Matlab for OS X uses all the familiar command keys just fine, whereas the same program on linux uses ridiculous short cuts like alt + w for copy (or something).

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by schotty · 2006-04-21 19:02 · Score: 1

I do know that that all is replicated on linux. IIRC, there is an app that will build the OSS software from the BSD ports on OS X. Hence, that would mean you are already covered.

Evolution == Outlook
Kivio or Dia == Visio (used Dia extensively at school for our mandatory Visio layouts.)
GanttPV == Mr Project (assuming that this is a project scehduling app as that is what I am reccomending).

The only one I still use at all is Dia, since my PDA and Blackberry are better suited for email and contact management. I no longer care about project management since that is now someone elses' problem :D

Dia rocks. I love it and it does the job better (for me at least) than Visio did (at least visio XP, since that is what the school issued us).

--
Sigs are nice guns ...

Implementing the windows api. by rew · 2006-04-21 19:17 · Score: 1

If you want to implement the windows API, you start with the important functions. The docs state pretty clearly what they are supposed to do. However, there simply is SO MUCH API that it takes a lot of time to implement. Moreover, Microsoft isn't perfect. So there are bugs. Some of them don't cause a crash, but just cause the API to do something unexpected for someone who only read the specs and/or has worked with the function. Among the large set of applications for windows, there is bound to be a couple where a programmer found: Hey, this is useful, I can use this. So, you have to implement the bugs as well.

Then, microsoft doesn't like to throw away old APIs. So, you have to implement 30 years of APIs....

All in all this project is much more complex than for instance building a good wordprocessor from scratch.

cringely is an idiot by mutant_of_borg · 2006-04-21 19:55 · Score: 1

Cringely is an idiot predicting all sorts of nonsense all the time. He doesn't know a thing about Apple.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by Fred_A · 2006-04-21 21:05 · Score: 2, Insightful

I'm not a typical Mac user either (got an iBook as a Unixy laptop) but since I started looking at the Mac groups I was surprised at the amount of bitching there was against applications like (for example) Firefox which seemingly don't look right.

A lot of them prefer to use Safari apparently just because it looks better. I still haven't figured what was the big deal with Firefox (other than it taking longer to load).

As a longtime Unix user, having used desktops with a mix of Athena, Motif, Tk, and whatever else was used at the time and now a mix of KDe and Gnome apps, something really has to really look weird for me to notice it. But those Mac users have a piercing eyeseight.

"There's at least 4 pixels missing in the shadow of the third icon of the toolbar, no way this crap is running on my screen !"

--

May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by mashx · 2006-04-21 23:05 · Score: 1

Replication and compatability are very different things though. There are equivalent applications on the Mac of course, but these applications must not only be able to convert from Visio or Project format, but save in that format as well, because in most companies work is collaborative. Whilst there are no open formats, this is critical. If the equivalent software cannot work on documents produced by their coworkers using Visio or Project, and importantly vice versa, it's not a viable option. Corporate policy doesn't allow this to happen, regardless of whether someone is willing to expend all the extra time of dual-booting or virtualisation: (in general) corporate IT departments are not going to want to support it.

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Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by Lucractius · 2006-04-21 23:19 · Score: 1

KDe ?

I assume you mean KDE

The K Desktop Enviroment

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XML - A clever joke would be here if /. didn't mangle tag brackets.

what will happen in leopard 10.5 by vaporland · 2006-04-22 01:03 · Score: 1

(1) you will install (your own) XP/Vista using Boot Camp then . . .

(2) DON'T bother authenticating the XP/Vista install, (just to piss off m$, because . . .)

(3) OS X 10.5 looks at DLLs, etc loaded by the install in the NTFS partition that are needed to execute Win32s, runs them in an application window, under OS X 10.5 in 'protected' mode but ignores M$ DRM/authentication, then . . .

(4) Apple will release OS X 10.5 for ALL (non-Apple) Intel hardware so that developers will continue to develop for the (now much larger) OS X app market and finally . . .

(5) Apple will allow OS X 10.5 to run BOOT CAMP & XP/Vista Win32s on ALL (non-Apple) Intel hardware WITHOUT authenticating installation of XP/Vista, followed by. . .

(6) world domination

--
Ask Me About... The 80's!

Re:Get a room. by fuzzix · 2006-04-22 01:28 · Score: 1

Don't tell them to do something you aren't prepared to help them do. If you want them to get a room, offer them a room, don't just expect them to be too terribly motivated by your missive.

Would you like a room?

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by otis+wildflower · 2006-04-22 02:29 · Score: 1

Naah, the idea is that a Win32 programmer would only have to recompile their VC/VC++ project after importing it into XCode, and out would come a universal binary, and/or optionally a Win32 executable + associated objects. A Windows person wouldn't have to know a lick of Carbon or Cocoa to get the majority of their code to work, perhaps a bit of Interface Builder (which would preferably be expanded to include interfaces to standard Windows widgets like file selectors).

Rosetta extension? by kylearin · 2006-04-22 02:44 · Score: 1

I see a lot of comments about how Apple might roll WINE into the OS, and how hard it is to implement the Microsoft API's.

What if Apple's plan is to have anyone interested in Windows compatibility install Windows with BootCamp, then extend Rosetta's functionality to call the Windows libraries that it can now access? Sure, it will cost you the price of a Windows license, but the programs can be run from inside OS X, so you don't lose your Spotlight, Dashboard, and Front Row (etc.) functionality? This would be like the Classic environment, where there was enough of MacOS 9 running to support the app through OS X. This type of thing has already been done with Windows' NTFS drivers in Linux.

I'm just guessing like the rest of you, but it's a tantalizing possibility...

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by charlie_vernacular · 2006-04-22 05:27 · Score: 1

If you like Visio, you might want to take a look at Omnigraffle (http://www.omnigroup.com/ which is for Mac OS X. My apologies if you already know of it (and I'm just a satisfied customer - no connections to the company).

Best regards

Charlie

Re:Get a room. by hackwrench · 2006-04-22 12:52 · Score: 1

Where is it, how long will I have it, who will I share it with, and is it free?

Inside or Outside of Redmond? by bill_mcgonigle · 2006-04-23 07:59 · Score: 1

Microsoft has an ongoing issue with the EU where Microsoft is unable (unwilling) to produce documentation on their APIs to a standard that anyone can sensibly write code that interfaces with it. If the state of affairs are as shoddy as Microsoft gives the impression of, even Steve Jobs's RDS cannot reliably help Apple engineers re-implement the full Windows API.

Do we think this is the case for internal Microsoft programmers as well - that they have no good Win32 API documentation? Because Cringely's point is that Apple had access to that internal stuff as part of the 5-year 1997 agreement where they gave up on QuickTime.

--
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by Cybrex · 2006-04-24 00:32 · Score: 1

As a former OS/2 user, I think that the comparisons being drawn are completely valid. As a current Mac user, this frightens me.

The important factor to consider in the examples that you listed is that in each case the backwards compatibility was with an OS that was then discontinued. 95 didn't have to compete with 3.11 for developer attention because the developers all knew that the older version wasn't going to be around much longer and wouldn't be included in new computers. Likewise with all of the other examples you cited.

Competing with an active, supported OS in its home turf is a very different beast. After much effort IBM was able to do it with WIN16 apps due to having access to the source code, but as soon as Microsoft discontinued it in favor of WIN32 then IBM was left back at square one. That certainly wasn't the reason why MS switched APIs, but I'm sure that there were more than a few chuckles in Redmond over it.

Yes, Mac users are as a whole much less forgiving of UI inconsistencies, but that's not going to be enough incentive for developers to start (or continue) to port apps to OS X when a Windows version will work "good enough".

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Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!

I predicted this on MacIDOL a year ago by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-24 01:08 · Score: 0

On Wed Jun 29, 2005 10:06 am, I posted this... http://www.macidol.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3470 In a nutshell, Cringely stole my idea. As well as a ranting troll, he's become a plagarist, apparently. ;-) kilroydegeek

Heh by celerityfm · 2006-04-24 01:34 · Score: 1

I wrote about this months ago - http://celerityfm.newsvine.com/_news/2006/01/14/59 193-intel-based-macs-herald-the-end-of-the-microso ft-windows-era.

I'm hoping this happens. If Intel based Macs happened then anythings possible.

--
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by dbrutus · 2006-04-25 18:35 · Score: 1

I know omnigraffle. The problem is that it doesn't solve my requirements which are to receive and send visio documents to customers who expect those file formats. Unless omnigraffle has acquired that ability since I last looked at it, the program doesn't fit the spec.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS by charlie_vernacular · 2006-04-26 01:39 · Score: 1

I know that the Professional Version can import and export Visio documents, although I don't know how well it works. That said (and even if it works well) constantly importing and exporting in and out of OG would probably end in tears sooner or later, especially if it's a constant back and forth! Probably it's easier to stick with Visio and Windows, which you know to work.

Regards

Charlie

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Run Windows Applications Natively in OS X?

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