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x86 porting

sunfast

sunfast

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Here's a question that's been bugging me for a bit.

Is it now easier to port windows applications for use on an intel mac? Because both are x86? Or is there no difference?

I wondered if there was one and if it would mean more apps being ported.

😕
 
sunfast said:
Here's a question that's been bugging me for a bit.

Is it now easier to port windows applications for use on an intel mac? Because both are x86? Or is there no difference?

I wondered if there was one and if it would mean more apps being ported.

😕
Click to expand...
The ease or lack thereof in developing applications lies in writing to the APIs of the respective OSes. The processor has little to do with it. What this means is that Windows apps are not any easier to port to MacOS X/Intel than they are to port to MacOS X/PPC.
 
sunfast said:
Here's a question that's been bugging me for a bit.

Is it now easier to port windows applications for use on an intel mac? Because both are x86? Or is there no difference?

I wondered if there was one and if it would mean more apps being ported.

😕
Click to expand...

It's about as easy porting Windows app to Mac OS on x86 as it is porting from Windows to Linux.

Software development has reached a point where OS dependent APIs (the software environment) matters more than the machine itself.
 
Generally, the above posters are right, the operating system matters more than the hardware. Sometimes, endian issues can make porting an application from one processor type to another difficult. However, in the vast majority of cases the endianness isn't signficant, so the processor type doesn't matter much.
 
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