Windows Applications On Mac, Without Windows

[-Jeff]

To get ONE program running 100% in WINE is not a small task. By the time you get it working (or it may never work), a new version of that program will have been released with a whole set of new problems.

In a perfect world, when an application runs in Windows and doesn't run in WINE, they would make the appropriate changes to WINE instead of the application. That way, different apps that make the same offending API call would run unmodified.

 

[sonnys]

Doesn't anyone see a trend with all of this? First Apple moves to Intel, then it released Boot Camp, now another party is making it possible to run Windows apps natively on the Mac... Mac OS and Windows appear to be converging, who thinks that in 5 years they will be a single, indistinguishable product?

There is something terribly sexy about being able to run Windows apps natively on my Mac as well as superior Mac OS applications side-by-side. Although I'm afraid Mac developers would jump ship, I love the idea of having the "superior" computer that can run everything at native speed. That would definitely give Apple a great "supercomputer" ad campaign!

 

[fawlty]

Something like this will NEVER become part of the standard OS from Apple, and here's why: no incentive to develop Mac apps.

Application development is, first and foremost, a business. It makes no business sense to develop for two platforms when you can develop for one platform and know it will run on all platforms. Love of Mac has nothing to do with this -- it's economics. There will be die-hard Mac fans that will continue writing for the Mac platform, but the big guys will be quick to abandon it for sound business reasons.

I hope this never becomes a part of OS X, or the Mac will be dead as a viable alternative to Windows.

But, but... if something like this were part of the OS, then as a Windows developer, I could deliberately build my product to play well with WINE, and
suddenly it's a cross-platform product. And can be marketed as such.

Which brings no disadvantage to the Mac OS. Indeed it makes the Mac an option for my clients, which currently it is not.

 

[Peace]

The ultimate solution would be to STOP using MS programs.Period..

Get over the Windows addiction..


I did it 4 years ago and am a happy camper now.

I know..I know..But what about all those CAD programs??

Oh well!!

 

[milatchi]

Yawn, tell me when full compatibility comes along.

 

[garfield2002]

In a perfect world, when an application runs in Windows and doesn't run in WINE, they would make the appropriate changes to WINE instead of the application. That way, different apps that make the same offending API call would run unmodified.

Ah, you are quite correct. However in the Linux world you could theoretically make that change to WINE yourself. Should Apple choose this approach to crossplatform compatibility its implementation would be closed source. In essence this means that Apple takes upon itself the task of debugging WINE. With constantly changing PC programs (even without the changes in Vista) its akin to patching a leaking ship.

 

[balamw]

Yawn, tell me when full compatibility comes along.

There ain't no such thing as 100% compatibility, even when you run the code provided by Microsoft. The main problem is that there are so many variations of Windows out there, that even on PCs you can't guarantee compatibility with anything but the exact version of Windows with the same drivers that was used to develop the app in question in the first place.

Is XPSP1 supported? Media Center? Pro vs. Home? How about Win2K? ME? 98SE? 98? Each has their own compatibility quirks.

B

 

[kodiak]

odd way to go...

what does crossover add over wine/darwine? is it easier to install/configure?

seems a surprise to me, that developers are still bothering with wine...

issues i see:

as windows moves on, wine has to be constantly updated, std problem with reverse engineering:

- isnt Vista and the M$ move to new apis (WPF, WCF, WF) going to make this irrelevant?
M$ have stated though the win32 api is going to continue at present the new apis are the future (so theorectically these are now the ones to emulate)

- does wine have as many developers as M$, M$ will constantly introduce new features/api .. and if wine doesnt have, then its not compatible.

 

[oldMac]

A few thoughts...
(Forgive me for repeating what others may have said already.)

1) The Windows APIs (there are several) have grown into a really big legacy mess. And Vista appears to be making this worse rather than better. The only glimmer of hope here is that maybe the win32 api will stop changing so much, which offers a better chance that WINE could become stable for legacy apps.

2) WINE has been around for a very long time and it's never produced a reliable way to run Windows apps on Linux. It seems hard to believe that this will suddenly change.

3) Some level of isolation for the Windows environment is probably desirable given the number of viruses out there.

4) Perhaps it would be possible to run windows on the Mac (via virtualization), but hide the Windows desktop and start menu so that Windows apps "appear" to be running side-by-side with Mac apps.
- Perhaps MS could include some remote APIs that the Mac OS could interact with to make this a more seamless integration while still providing that layer of protection
- However, with the hardware requirements of Vista, this is going to require some beefy machines

5) Our best hope here is for Apple and MS to work together to make this happen
- Benefits MS because they could sell more copies of Office/Windows
- Benefits Apple because they could sell more hardware

 

[guzhogi]

A Little Trivia

Here's a little trivia for you: back in system 7, Apple had a project to port the Mac OS to Intel. This project was called "Star Trek." Later, when Apple released Mac OS X, before the switch to Intel, they tried porting Mac OS X to Intel. This project was called "Star Trek: The NeXT Generation."

To be honest, I miss the days of OS 7, specifically the simplicity. All you needed to boot the Mac up to the desktop was a folder in the root directory of your hard drive and have the system folder and finder in the folder. Also, think how fast system 7 would be on the newest Macs, if it were ported. That would scream!

 

[charlien]

Will CrossOver Mac run on PowerPC Macs?

No. It will only run on Intel OS X Macs. Our underlying technology -- Wine (www.winehq.org) -- requires an x86 architecture chip.


bummer

 

[balamw]

Will CrossOver Mac run on PowerPC Macs?

No. It will only run on Intel OS X Macs. Our underlying technology -- Wine (www.winehq.org) -- requires an x86 architecture chip.


bummer

This is a bit misleading, though probably true for Crossover Office. The free/OSS version of DarWine does come in a PPC version, but IIRC it basically usues QEMU to provide the X86 emulation on PPC. (i.e. it's slower than snot on PPC).

B

 

[FF_productions]

To be honest, I miss the days of OS 7, specifically the simplicity. All you needed to boot the Mac up to the desktop was a folder in the root directory of your hard drive and have the system folder and finder in the folder. Also, think how fast system 7 would be on the newest Macs, if it were ported. That would scream!

I loved OS 7, surfing the internet was ridiculous though. I remember when 56k modems came out and I kept yelling at my dad to get one because we still had 28k. It would take 45 minutes to load a single website, I used to download 1.4 mb games, it would take about 4 hours to download that. I still loved the simplicity of OS 7, it's still very simple here on OS X, but not as simple as OS 7 was.

 

[wmmk]

This is a bit misleading, though probably true for Crossover Office. The free/OSS version of DarWine does come in a PPC version, but IIRC it basically usues QEMU to provide the X86 emulation on PPC. (i.e. it's slower than snot on PPC).

B

AFAIK, ther PPC Darwine version using QEMU hasn't come out yet. I'm pretty sure that the current version can only run Windows apps that have been pre- compiled for PPC, even though they use the Win32 API.

 

[QPlot]

why anyone will vote negtive on this one

it's wine on mac, seriously, one thing could be better than this is duel boot which is not very convienent some times.

 

[wmmk]

it's wine on mac, seriously, one thing could be better than this is duel boot which is not very convienent some times.

people may vote negative because this may open os x up to viruses, hurt the development of native mac apps, and also because this is wine on mac (aka darwine, which is opensource) but proprietary and not free in terms of money.

 

[aussie_geek]

bleh...

many of the supported apps are available on Mac anyway...

This gets a negative vote from me.


aussie_geek

 

[akac]

But, but... if something like this were part of the OS, then as a Windows developer, I could deliberately build my product to play well with WINE, and
suddenly it's a cross-platform product. And can be marketed as such.

Which brings no disadvantage to the Mac OS. Indeed it makes the Mac an option for my clients, which currently it is not.

Exactly right. I have a desktop app on Windows I'd love to have running natively on OS X with OS X look and feel. I've considered DarWine once they move to Aqua instead of X. But frankly, I'd be happy just for myself to get it on OS X.

 

[hayesk]

But, but... if something like this were part of the OS, then as a Windows developer, I could deliberately build my product to play well with WINE, and
suddenly it's a cross-platform product. And can be marketed as such.

Which brings no disadvantage to the Mac OS. Indeed it makes the Mac an option for my clients, which currently it is not.

No disadvantage?!? You would be running Windows apps. How is that not a disadvantage. Making WINE or whatever part of the OS will not make developers make their apps more consistent, well thought out, or use any of the nice MacOS X features such as Apple Events, Sheets, better drag and drop, address book integration, etc.

Instead, we'll be stuck with windows apps that barely work because the developer will slap a MacOS sticker on the box with little or no testing.

Instead Apple should release Cocoa for Windows. Let Mac developers use Apple's libraries to make Mac and Windows apps that act like Mac apps. Windows is already a hodgepodge of inconsistency, Cocoa apps would probably improve the situation. It would probably also entice some Windows developers to use Cocoa.

 

[hayesk]

To be honest, I miss the days of OS 7, specifically the simplicity. All you needed to boot the Mac up to the desktop was a folder in the root directory of your hard drive and have the system folder and finder in the folder. Also, think how fast system 7 would be on the newest Macs, if it were ported. That would scream!

Actually the System Folder could have been anywhere on the disk. All you needed to do was "bless" it so the ROM knew which one to use. With System 6 you could even switch from one system folder to another by option-double clicking the system file - without restarting!

I wonder what would happen if they made System 7 with a pre-emptively multitasked, memory-protected kernel back then when they made the switch from System 6. Add multi-user to the mix too.

The only thing I can think of that would have held them back at the time was that RAM was really expensive. At the time Macs were shipping with 2MB RAM at the low end, and the most RAM you could have was 8MB. You probably would have needed 4MB minimum.

 

[fawlty]

No disadvantage?!? You would be running Windows apps.

Touché!

 

[Digitalclips]

I only need one

You're right on the money. After looking at the Codeweavers Web site and looking through the list of apps supported by this and its Linux counterpart, it quickly becomes clear that this is great for Linux -- for which Microsoft Office and such are unlikely to occur in the next few years, if ever -- but is only marginally useful for OS X.

Still think the Parallels approach is the way to go. Now, it's a question of whether something like that is built into Leopard or Apple decides not to step on the developer. Perhaps we'll know by early afternoon on August 7.

This is the Holy Grail for Realtors. Only one app needed here, <Internet Explorer 6> so we can access those sites that are written to exclude Macs (for whatever reason). Real Estate MLS sites ...from a Mac... Oh Bliss

I will have three PCs for sale soon really cheap ... any takers? On second thoughts, where is the nearest cliff?

 

[adking17]

Windows on a Mac?

I am curious about the vulnerability associated with such a venture. Won't this software leave Mac users open to all the same viruses and other issues as Windows users?

 

[zephead]

No, because the virus would probably look for things like "C:\WINDOWS\system32\whatever.file", which of course isn't on a Mac, so there's no effect.

 

[CommodityFetish]

Apple would be crazy to build this into OS X - first the support nightmare it would be, and also they need some hurdle people have to jump for windows apps in order to promote native apps. Having to buy windows is a pretty good hurdle, paying $70 for this is much less, but then you get less than full app support...

I wonder if this will help with the intel transition since Adobe products and office could be used this way, bypassing rosetta slowdown...?

The apps list will surely grow, and reflect more mac-needed rather than Linux-needed apps... (games?)