Windows API Built Into Leopard?

[crees!]

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060420.html

Quite an interesting article from Cringely. Obviously most of you will scoof at the idea but I think it's pretty interesting, that's all. I mean let your imagination run wild but this is Apple we're talking about. You never know.

This line gives me chills (good or bad, I don't know):

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.

 

[Abulia]

Wow. Just, wow.

The ability to run Windows apps -- non-virtualized -- real-time within OS X could have a serious impact. That directly puts OS X up as a competitor -- not an non-compatible alternative -- to Windows.

Makes Boot Camp seem like sloppy seconds.

 

[7on]

Probably really easy to do on Apple's part since they'd just need to take the open source of WINE and port it in a day. Probably done by some eployees for fun. I doubt they'd do this until after MS fails big time. Perhaps let's say if after a year of being on the market Vista adoption is the lowest in history between OS transitions.

Anyway, I'm sure 3rd parties will get this working way before Apple releases their own (sorta like the hack to get windows on an intel)

 

[crees!]

Nope, Not WINE

But if you read the article it mentioned an agreement between Apple and MS back in the day where they had a cross-licensing agreement.

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.

 

[plinden]

Probably really easy to do on Apple's part since they'd just need to take the open source of WINE and port it in a day.

The article specifically says it's not WINE, rather the Windows APIs.

 

[MisterMe]

The article specifically says it's ... the Windows APIs.

My bet is that the column, not article, is specifically wrong. Apple cannot use Windows APIs without paying Microsoft for the privilege. There is nothing to indicate how they know that what they saw is not WINE. I have no idea what Cringely's sources saw in Cupertino. There is no indication that they did anything more than just see.

There are a lot of errors of fact in the column. However, I am sorely tempted to believe that Cringely's sources saw something important. But, I have a very different take on things. This goes back to a couple of months prior to Jobs's announcement of the switch to Intel. It was reported that several Wintel OEMs met with Jobs and urged him to port MacOS X to Wintel. IIRC, Dell was one of them.

I have been convinced since the moment the Intel transition went public that Apple intends to fully embrace the challenge. We all know that fighting the hackers who port MacOS X to beige boxes is a fool's game. Jobs is no fool.

Seen in this light, running Windows apps on MacOS X makes sense. Few buyers are going to buy a Dell or HP/Compaq with MacOS X preinstalled it can't run their legacy applications. This will also eliminate any non-economic arguments against buying Macs.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but believe that Jobs has decided to wage all out war against Microsoft. With its legal troubles and its troubles getting out Windows Vista, Microsoft has never been more vulnerable.

The scenario outlined above is fraught with peril. If this is Apple's thinking, I wish it well.

 

[balamw]

The article specifically says it's not WINE, rather the Windows APIs.

I thought WINE was the Windows APIs, or at least one implementation of them. Do you think they mean that it uses the actual Windows System DLLs?

EDIT: OK I read the article, it still sounds like WINE, just with a better/finished implementation of quartzdrv. Why use X11 as a middleman, when you can go straight to quartz?

B

 

[FocusAndEarnIt]

Wouldn't this be bad?

Wouldn't developers for the Mac then stop writing for the Mac then if they can just use the XP apps natively?

 

[balamw]

Wouldn't developers for the Mac then stop writing for the Mac then if they can just use the XP apps natively?

Well that was what happened to OS/2, but what do you expect for half an OS?

B

 

[MisterMe]

Well that was what happened to OS/2, but what do you expect for half an OS?

B

There is a major difference between MacOS X and OS/2. Specifically, MacOS X has a large inventory of established applications. OS/2 did not.