Windows apps on Mac without Windows???

Robert Cringley, host of PBS’s Electric Money and former columnist for Infoworld, wrote today in his blog regarding the relationship between OS X and Windows.

One of the most attention-grabbing topics was the possibility of running Windows applications on Apple Macintoshes, without installing Windows XP, and without Windows virtualization:

“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…

‘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.

Think of the implications. A souped-up OS X kernel with native Windows API support and the prospect of mixing and matching Windows and Mac applications would be, for many users, the best of both worlds. There would be no copy of Windows XP to buy…”

Cringley begins by thinking through Apple’s strategy regarding Windows, given its latest moves. He comes to his speculation based upon Steve Jobs’ 1997 $150M deal with Microsoft, where Apple may have obtained some legal rights to the Windows API, which could enable Windows apps directly in OS X.

Granted, Cringley simply makes several speculations and offers these all up as possibilities to think about, but the legal issues and the impact on users as well as the future of Apple are far-reaching.

Read more here: Robert Cringley PBS blogarticle

This entry was posted on April 21, 2006 at 1:54 am and is filed under OS, Apps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.