Leopard Recognizes Windows Executable Format, Virtualization in the Works?

[ezekielrage_99]

I think this could be another positive step for Apple like moving to Intel and Bootcamp, the more Apple can support the higher the change over from non-Apple people.

IMHO anything that can make Apple more competitive on the market is a good thing for all consumers.

 

[ajbrehm]

Who says it's about Win32?

The Win32 API is huge and closed. The Wine team have tried to re-implement it from scratch and had remarkable results. But it wasn't enough.

To run Windows applications you need the Win32 API and the complete surroundings, the interface, the expected behaviour of the rest of the OS, and the GUI that fits the applications. Win32 programs are not designed to run on anything but Windows and emulating Windows doesn't solve that problem.

If you want to run Windows programs, run Windows; that's what it's for. Choose between the Ferari and the Maserati, don't ask the mechanic to combine the two.

I am sure that is not what the PE support is for.

But the Portable Executable format is not only used for Win32 programs.

<irrelevant details>
PE was used by BeOS 3.x for Intel BeOS programs. It is also used by Interix for UNIX-based programs running on Windows.
</irrelevant details>

It is also used as the native format for .NET applications.

Now, in contrast to Win32 the .NET API is standardized, well-documented, and several implementations exist. In fact Novell's implementation works really well on Mac OS except for the fact that X11 is needed (for all .NET programs that don't use Cocoa or the console) and the fact that .exe files cannot be easily started on Mac OS X.

.NET programs are also meant to be cross-platform and not supposed to depend on Windows peculiarities.

Portable Executable .exe files do not run on Linux either, unless one compiles a kernel that has support for .exe files.

Mac OS X appears to be implementing a feature of Linux: support for the PE executable format. That's it.

So perhaps Apple (and maybe Novell) are working on a Cocoa-native implementation of Mono (Novell's .NET implementation). I know Novell were working on a Carbon implementation.

 

[JFreak]

Apple won't directly support Windows apps in OS X.

Sounds familiar. Oh, wait... I was thinking of "Apple won't ever switch to Intel"

 

[goosnarrggh]

I'm sorry, but that's just hilarious.



There is a big difference - EFI and BIOS. Two completely different beasts. The only reason that both can run Windows is because the nice chaps at Apple were kind enough to let out an EFI update which includes emulation of the Basic Input/Output System.

Without this, Macs could not boot Windows. (See previous to the BC Beta, when the only way to get Windows on Macs was to hack open your XP installer disc, and insert an unsupported EFI loader).

Even now, the only actual release of Windows that actually supports EFI out of the box is 2003 Server (Vista's planned suport was dropped sometime in 2006).

They may share components, even major ones such as the processors, but they are not the same. Not by a long shot.

You're just blowing smoke. In terms of hardware manufacturers, Apple is certainly not alone in offering machines with EFI. Apple machines and modern beige-box PCs machines are, for the most part, on equal footing in this respect.

Several PC logic board manufacturers, such as ASUS, have given up on waiting for Windows to get past its BIOS dependency. They are selling natively EFI-based machines today.

They use an optional portion of the EFI specification which allows for a BIOS compatibility layer to be placed on top from which Windows is able to boot. This is the same technique that Apple has released to allow Windows to boot on its EFI-based machines.

By the time Windows is up and running, it has replaced all of the legacy BIOS code with hardware specific device drivers anyway (...much like OSX does hehe...), so in terms of any practical measurement, there is no performance hit for the end-user as a consequence of that portion of Microsoft's current design decision.

So perhaps Apple (and maybe Novell) are working on a Cocoa-native implementation of Mono (Novell's .NET implementation). I know Novell were working on a Carbon implementation.

I speculated about that possibility here a couple of days ago. We'll see...

 

[avoskorm]

Why would MicroSOFT even care? They make software, not hardware. If more computers could run their software (apple or not) wouldn't that benefit them?

 

[fluidedge]

*golf clap*

2 year old thread. good one.

 

[dukebound85]

*golf clap*

2 year old thread. good one.

i was all excited.....again

 

[Sehnsucht]

Why would MicroSOFT even care? They make software, not hardware. If more computers could run their software (apple or not) wouldn't that benefit them?

 

[jive turkey]

Ugh, I've really got to start checking dates before starting to read threads. At least this time it only took me 5 or 6 posts to figure it out, unlike the two pages I normally wade through before realizing how old it is.