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Run Windows Applications Natively in OS X?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the predictiontastic dept.

mcho writes "Unlike other speculators, who get no spam, Robert X. Cringely offers an intriguing reason behind Apple's recent strategy of Boot Camp. From the article: 'I believe that Apple will offer Windows Vista as an option for those big customers who demand it, but 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.'

5 of 521 comments (clear)

  1. Uhhh... hello. by jonnythan · · 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

  2. Read the &*^%$*&%$ Article by dham340 · · 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.
  3. Re:As usual.... by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

  4. Win APIs not sufficiently documented.... by Been+on+TV · · 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
  5. Re:CarbTime by bsartist · · 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.

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