Run Windows Applications Natively in OS X?

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.'

Comments

tap, tap, tap, .. there's no place like OS X...

[yagu]

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...

[Ohreally_factor]

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.)

It's a nice idea...

[AKAImBatman]

...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.

Classic but for Windows.

[anlprb]

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.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS

[non0score]

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....

What's the incentive to write a program for OS X

[tourvil]

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.

Re:What's the incentive to write a program for OS

[The Snowman]

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.

did you forgot darwine??

[evandrofisico]

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

That would actually be the major reason not to

[Sycraft-fu]

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

[Sycraft-fu]

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:WINE is an OS component

[Qzukk]

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?

How this would work

[joshv]

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:What's the incentive to write a program for OS

[bsartist]

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.