The Apple-Connectix conspiracy
Apple is paying off Connectix to not make a better VirtualPC.
Huh?
Connectix has been at the forefront of Windows emulation for years now.
A while back they had managed to create VPC advanced enough that it was basically APIs that would run any win32 application without needing to actually 'startup windows' itself. So, basically, you would start a windows app and you would be able to control it though a normal Mac interface. It was modified in such a way that you would be able to take advantage of the 'best of' of MacOS and Windows functionality. Besides a few aesthetic qwirks, you could seamlessly run any windows app on Mac.
This app was buried and the VPC we know of today is the result of Apple paying off Connectix to not release that VPC.
Why?
Its a bit like Red Box for Rhapsody. It would have let windows apps run on the Intel version of OS X. Both of these, red box and OS X for Intel, you will know were scrapped (although rumors still persist that a Classic-less X86 version of OS X is developed parallel to the current PPC version as insurance to a PowerPC fall-out).
Why was that bad? Well, as a developer, would you have invested time and resources to make a windows verision AND a Mac version while your windows (red box in former case) would have run anyway? No. Would you then have still chosen Apple hardware to run apps that run the same way (except maybe prettier) on Wintel? No.
So basically, Connectix was going to release software that was going to repeat what Red Box was about to do and therefore undermine the whole purpose of developing for Apple/MacOS. Instead, so that Apple can still mean something in the world, it has been scuttled.
There was a project to port WINE (Windows emulation on Linux) to Darwin seeing that the are more alike than not, but that has been given up on (it seems).
Huh?
Connectix has been at the forefront of Windows emulation for years now.
A while back they had managed to create VPC advanced enough that it was basically APIs that would run any win32 application without needing to actually 'startup windows' itself. So, basically, you would start a windows app and you would be able to control it though a normal Mac interface. It was modified in such a way that you would be able to take advantage of the 'best of' of MacOS and Windows functionality. Besides a few aesthetic qwirks, you could seamlessly run any windows app on Mac.
This app was buried and the VPC we know of today is the result of Apple paying off Connectix to not release that VPC.
Why?
Its a bit like Red Box for Rhapsody. It would have let windows apps run on the Intel version of OS X. Both of these, red box and OS X for Intel, you will know were scrapped (although rumors still persist that a Classic-less X86 version of OS X is developed parallel to the current PPC version as insurance to a PowerPC fall-out).
Why was that bad? Well, as a developer, would you have invested time and resources to make a windows verision AND a Mac version while your windows (red box in former case) would have run anyway? No. Would you then have still chosen Apple hardware to run apps that run the same way (except maybe prettier) on Wintel? No.
So basically, Connectix was going to release software that was going to repeat what Red Box was about to do and therefore undermine the whole purpose of developing for Apple/MacOS. Instead, so that Apple can still mean something in the world, it has been scuttled.
There was a project to port WINE (Windows emulation on Linux) to Darwin seeing that the are more alike than not, but that has been given up on (it seems).
Comments
J :cool:
I think this is very plausible, ZO.
WINE
Is
Not
Emulation
It requires an x86 based processor to work, and cannot run on PPC.
I'm not quite getting what you are saying though. Do you mean that Connectix had written a Virtual PC that would run on Mac OS X so well that it would mean that developers wouldn't have to write software natively for the Mac?
i guess I don't understand, but what would be the problem with that? That means Apple paid off Connectix to release the lousy version of Virtual PC now. Imagine how much it would have cost NOT to release the good version of VPC because they would have made a fortune! Now imagine how much it would have cost Apple to actually buy VPC out from Connectix. Do you see where I'm going here? They could have integrated it into the OS and nearly all software in the world would instantly work like its supposed to on one machine.
Why on earth would Apple NOT do this if it was possible? If that version of VPC was really Mac like, then what was the problem?
I guess I don't understand what you're saying if that's the case, because I'm still not convinced that losing developers is that bad when you gain every developer.
[ 11-19-2001: Message edited by: Fran441 ]</p>
That's not something Apple wants to encourage.
<strong>you didn't read it very well, did you?
I think this is very plausible, ZO.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Oops I didn't. Sorry ZO. My mind was on lunch when I read this. After reading it again I do believe you could be right.
J
<strong>Isn't this basically the same thing as what happened to OS/2?</strong><hr></blockquote>
OS/2 ran Win32 apps because they had a licence from Microsoft, forgot the details, but it was no good for Win95 and above.
#1 The WIN32 API for WIN95 is not impossible to emulate, but Win2k and WinXP are based heavily on COM and .NET, two technologies that require an a**load of work to emulate. Connectix is not a large company and I doubt they can do what few others have even tried.
#2 The full WIN32 API is such a moving target. PC architecture is not nearly as instable. A few guys can keep up with hardware changes, but it would take an army to keep an API up-to-date enough to run the latest software.
#3 The speed advantage would presumably be gained by preforming WIN32 calls with PPC code, rather than emulating X86 calls. The downside is that you still need to marshal between X86 emulated code, and WIN32 calls. You spend some serious cycles switching contexts. This approach works for Virtual Game Station because each call takes some time to execute. In WIN32, there are many more calls and each of them takes less time. The marshalling code would eat up more time, reducing the speed benefit in the first place. Also, you still have to emulate code not in an API call, like the bulk of any photoshop filter for example. WINE doesn't have to do that.
#4 You'd have a hard time making windows programs look like mac software. Look at running Java on the mac. Aqua needs to be thought out. You can't plaster it onto some other interface. Might as well run windows in a window like they do now.
So I like what they're doing now. I can run any version of windows, linux, bsd, unix, etc. What they should do is continue to work on mac integration and speed.
<strong>
I'm not quite getting what you are saying though. Do you mean that Connectix had written a Virtual PC that would run on Mac OS X so well that it would mean that developers wouldn't have to write software natively for the Mac?
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Basically, yes. You wouldn't even SEE the whole startup of windows as we know it. This VPC just started some services and blammo, any .exe file would run
<strong> [quote]
Why on earth would Apple NOT do this if it was possible? If that version of VPC was really Mac like, then what was the problem?
I guess I don't understand what you're saying if that's the case, because I'm still not convinced that losing developers is that bad when you gain every developer.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
As we all know Apple is a hardware company. They make a huge bult of their money selling hardware systems (something like >85-90% of all revenue). If you could make an app, lets say Photoshop, and spend 500k$ to develop it instead of 1million$ and have it run on all major systems... wouldn't you?
As a consumer or even a studio, business, etc... would you buy a fancy looking computer with a different OS for (sometimes) double the price... or buy an HP, Compaq, Dell, generic PC that can do the same thing and run the same apps?
Maybe you would. But if you think 5% marketshare is small now... it would shrink to less than 1%. Apple would basically become "just another PC hardware maker" and not something special as it is today.
Apple is making good road with the FreeBSD core (Darwin) which allows almost all old UNIX apps to be ported easily. In a few years Unix and OS X will be synonyms and regarded as one market (basically) with Linux as a close ally.