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.'

Uhhh... hello.

[jonnythan]

Wow, Cringely obviously has a clue.

"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."

Wine *is* an implementation of the Windows API.

Cringeworthy is more like it

Re:Uhhh... hello.

[MustardMan]

Wine implements the API in an application which runs on top of the kernel. As far as I can tell, cringely is suggesting Apple will implement the support directly in the OS, and not in userland.

Read the &*^%$*&%$ Article

[dham340]

For all those who have not read the article and have thrown out issues with apple maintaining and/or duplicating the Windows API:

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. 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.

If true, then Apple has a *legal right* equivelent to that of an owner to use the Windows API. Yes, M$ can change it, but it would have to be prospectively.

Re:As usual....

[Anonymous Coward]

1) There is no way in hell Microsoft would document their API to the level necessary to allow Apple to duplicate it.

TFA notes a cross-licensing agreement was in place from '97 - 2002 so likely Apple had MS' own docs on the API. Also Cringeley says he has talked with with people who have seen XP apps running directly under OSX, and that this has been going on in the labs for some time.

2) It's blatantly obvious he doesn't understand precisely what Wine is. Remember: Wine Is Not an Emulator. It's a built-from-scratch implementation of the Windows API.

The way he put it was that running XP under OSX would not depend on 3rd-party middleware, but would run directly under OSX. He was not saying that WINE is not a Win API inplementation.

Mach microkernel advantage?

[kherr]

One of the advantages/curses of the Mach microkernel [wikipedia.org] that Mac OS X uses is the abstraction between the hardware drivers and the "kernel" that does stuff like manage IPC and disk activity etc., etc. The advantage is the isolation of hardware, the disadvantage is performance. While slower than a monolithic kernel, Mach can be a lot more stable. And with computing power at the level it's at these days I'm not sure how noticeable the difference is for everyday desktop use.

Cringley's idea would make a heck of a lot of sense in this kind of environment, because you'd just instantiate a Windows "kernel" (server in Mach parlance) that provides the runtime profile. This gives you a heck of a robust virtualization implementation, with the Windows and Mac OS X kernels running as peers with equal yet controlled access to the hardware. When us Mac users were running MkLinux [mklinux.org] it was not unheard of to run a development version of the linux kernel as a Mach server alongside the current linux kernel.

I've always felt Apple's Boot Camp was merely a reason for them to provide the driver glue needed for Windows, and that dual-booting most certainly is not Apple's final goal.

Win APIs not sufficiently documented....

[Been on TV]

Microsoft has an ongoing issue with the EU where Microsoft is unable (unwilling) to produce documentation on their APIs to a standard that anyone can sensibly write code that interfaces with it. If the state of affairs are as shoddy as Microsoft gives the impression of, even Steve Jobs's RDS cannot reliably help Apple engineers re-implement the full Windows API.

The EU is treathening to fine Microsoft $2,7 mill a day for the inability to produce said documentation.

Re:As usual....

[ziplux]

The way he put it was that running XP under OSX would not depend on 3rd-party middleware, but would run directly under OSX.

So Apple develops their fancy new software to run XP binaries "directly" on OSX. Presumably, it's an implementation of the Windows API. Presumably, it's not an emulation. How is that code which provides the API not "3rd party middleware?" Just because Apple wrote it and includes it in the base OSX distribution, suddenly its not middleware?

How is this thing that Apple might develop any different from Wine?

PPC killed OS/2, not Windows

[brokeninside]

Well, preloads (actuall, lack thereof) also had something to do with it. The OS/2 division within IBM couldn't get the PC division to offer OS/2 version 2 through 4 on stock hardware. When industry execs from other PC companies like Compaq were interviewed their response was, ``why would I load my competitor's operating system onto my PCs?''

But on top of this, between v.3 and v.4 of OS/2, IBM gambled almost their entire budget on OS/2 PPC and, well, lost that gamble when neither CHRP nor PREP took off, Microsoft ditched NT for the PPC and the only commodity computer running the PPC chip was the Macintosh. Guessing wrong not only cost IBM billions, but also lost quite a few turf battles for OS/2 proponents inside IBM.

It also didn't help that IBM kept insisting that certain key flaws (can you say synchronous input queue?) were actually features and would not be fixed.

But by comparisson, rather than having to fight internal battles to get OS X preloaded on Macs, every Mac ships with OS X. Tens, if not hundreds, of Hackers are trying to get OS X to run on stock PC hardware despite Apple saying that they'll not support stuff. CEOs of competing hardware makers, like Michael Dell, are saying that they'd love to be able to preload OS X onto their gear. The situation is clearly different.

But the biggest difference between now and 1995 when IBM's best chance at making OS/2 make it big is that thanks to Linux, most people understand that a choice in operating systems exists. In the nineties, you got either got a Windows machine or a Mac; most people had no clue that you get load other system software.

Re:CarbTime

[bsartist]

Back when QuickTime for Windows was first introduced, Apple found that it was less effort to port the subset of the Mac Toolbox that QT depends on, than it would be to port QT to the Win32 API. That "subset" was so large that they had to actively discourage developers from using it as a porting tool to get their non-QT apps running on Windows.

Fast-forward some years. When Apple needed an updated and portable version of the classic Toolbox, they started with the portable Toolbox subset that they'd already ported to Windows to support QT.

Integer Calculations

[pmonje]

"Speed. Quite simply, a monolithic kernel like the one used in Linux or most of the other Open Source Unix clones is inherently two to three times faster for integer calculations than the Mach microkernel"

Quite simply, Cringley is a tool, who doesn't know the difference between integer calculations and Interprocess Communications. After reading that how can anyone believe the rest of the article?

I don't doubt that he has sources inside Apple who've tried to describe things that Apple are working on for Leopard, but I think that his comprehension of the technology is so low that he can't understand them.

To him it's all just magical. Apple has stolen away some of the oompa-loompas that live inside of Windows and make Office run, covered them with chocolate and sprinkled them over OSX to make a miracle or two.

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

[mrchaotica]

That's called Darwine [opendarwin.org] (WINE and ReactOS share a codebase).

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

[dbrutus]

If I can run Outlook, Visio, & MS Project, I can switch out of Dell running Windows and into Mac OS X on Apple hardware. These are simply "must have" applications. Everything else is already native or has an accepted alternative.