Red Box in Leopard?
OS X Leopard to be compatible with Windows Apps?
The article is from the summer last year, before any Mactel chips ever came out. Now that they have, has anything about the nature of this question changed?
What about Darwine? Or Apple and Microsoft "working together" on the next version of VirtualPC?
What I find most intriguing about this opinion piece is the reference to Rosetta, Xcode, and the failure of OS/2.
Perhaps this would work even better following a release of Xcode for Windows.
The article is from the summer last year, before any Mactel chips ever came out. Now that they have, has anything about the nature of this question changed?
What about Darwine? Or Apple and Microsoft "working together" on the next version of VirtualPC?
What I find most intriguing about this opinion piece is the reference to Rosetta, Xcode, and the failure of OS/2.
Quote:
This plan however, is not without its potential faults. In the early days of IBM's OS/2 operating system, part of the strategic benefits that Big Blue touted was that its OS had full compatibility with Windows. As a result, few developers wrote software specific to OS/2, but chose to write code specific for Microsoft's Windows API instead. This is often regarded as the primary reason for OS/2's downfall.
Because of this, allowing Windows compatibility, (and the potential ramifications that go along with it), is risk Apple would face in adopting this strategy. Had IBM had more time, lets say... a year or so, and managed to get the most important software developers to write code using its developer tools (rather than Microsoft's), IBM would have garnered the necessary momentum to build upon. This begs the question, "How can Apple learn from IBM's mistake?"
During Apple's most recent world wide developer's conference, the company stressed the importance of utilizing Apple's XCode development software and sold developers on the plan by reinforcing the fact that XCode would make the transition much easier and faster as compared to competing development packages. Apple is also giving developers a full year and a half to make the transition. Unlike IBM, Apple will have native apps coded for its OS allowing OS X-specific technologies to be utilized thus giving Apple the momentum to build upon. It's this momentum that IBM lacked when adopting the same strategy.
This plan however, is not without its potential faults. In the early days of IBM's OS/2 operating system, part of the strategic benefits that Big Blue touted was that its OS had full compatibility with Windows. As a result, few developers wrote software specific to OS/2, but chose to write code specific for Microsoft's Windows API instead. This is often regarded as the primary reason for OS/2's downfall.
Because of this, allowing Windows compatibility, (and the potential ramifications that go along with it), is risk Apple would face in adopting this strategy. Had IBM had more time, lets say... a year or so, and managed to get the most important software developers to write code using its developer tools (rather than Microsoft's), IBM would have garnered the necessary momentum to build upon. This begs the question, "How can Apple learn from IBM's mistake?"
During Apple's most recent world wide developer's conference, the company stressed the importance of utilizing Apple's XCode development software and sold developers on the plan by reinforcing the fact that XCode would make the transition much easier and faster as compared to competing development packages. Apple is also giving developers a full year and a half to make the transition. Unlike IBM, Apple will have native apps coded for its OS allowing OS X-specific technologies to be utilized thus giving Apple the momentum to build upon. It's this momentum that IBM lacked when adopting the same strategy.
Perhaps this would work even better following a release of Xcode for Windows.
Comments
Originally posted by wmf
I think this is still not a good idea. Once Darwine gets working people will get a taste of how clumsy it feels to run Windows apps on OS X. Might as well just run VMware.
Wine is now working. :P
http://www.osx86project.org/index.ph...d=112&Itemid=2
*shudder*
The point was in reference to converting your Carbon apps to Cocoa apps and those applications could be leveraged on Win32 via Yellow Box.
However, I do see the argument that by having an Apple lineup of major apps this is not as risky. On top of this, with the functionality that is being built into the system for Mac developers (Core Audio,Video,Data...) that Mac apps will have almost by default more elegant solutions than their windows counter parts. And the development time through Cocoa and these massive object classes makes for higher quality standard for all these apps. Whatever niche apps will still run though. And as the installed user base grows, the more likely someone will use the advanced development environment of OSX to start penetrating these niche markets.
But I agree with those that Apple will not move ahead with it. First off, if they do, they are going to have to support it, and companies are going to have to support their software, and they are not going to do that under this type of emulation.
If Apple wants to get Developers writing their software for OSX, then they are going to have to increase their market share - it's as simple as that. Personally, I see a better chance of Apple licensing OSX in some form before they offer Red Box.
Originally posted by Xool
I think the Yellow Box (Cocoa for Windows) would have a huge impact on the industry and would be far more beneficial to Apple than opening the Red Box for Macs. If we could truly write our apps once and have them run on either platform it would encourage Cocoa development and increase adoption of Mac OS.
Maybe, or maybe it would eliminate switchers to the more lucrative hardware market.
Originally posted by Xool
I think the Yellow Box (Cocoa for Windows) would have a huge impact on the industry and would be far more beneficial to Apple than opening the Red Box for Macs. If we could truly write our apps once and have them run on either platform it would encourage Cocoa development and increase adoption of Mac OS.
write once - run everywhere. sounds great, but i've heard it before: java, unix (many vendors, one os, or many ones, and incompatible to varying degrees), linux, high level languages (when that still meant C), JAVA (including AWT and SWING), html, javascript, name your scripting language, the list goes on and on.
besides, yellow box aint it, and as great as it is, it largely doesn't matter much in the grand scheme -- the vast majority of software innovation as it pertains to end users is occurring as web apps, most everything else that consumers want to do will be handled by 2 or 3 big software vendors.
ps. i know the exceptions, and niches... i'm talking about the market as a whole
Originally posted by grad student
write once - run everywhere. sounds great, but i've heard it before: java, unix (many vendors, one os, or many ones, and incompatible to varying degrees), linux, high level languages (when that still meant C), JAVA (including AWT and SWING), html, javascript, name your scripting language, the list goes on and on.
It worked for years as OpenSTEP.
Originally posted by grad student
besides, yellow box aint it, and as great as it is, it largely doesn't matter much in the grand scheme -- the vast majority of software innovation as it pertains to end users is occurring as web apps, most everything else that consumers want to do will be handled by 2 or 3 big software vendors.
This is a different issue. Without question, the Microsoft hegemony acts as a tremendous barrier to entry for competing developers. You cannot defeat the Redmond Monopoly if you play by its rules. The Yellow Box is a potential candidate for a paradigm shifter.
Originally posted by grad student
ps. i know the exceptions, and niches... i'm talking about the market as a whole
If you always do what you always did, then you always get what you always got.
Originally posted by Mr. Me
It worked for years as OpenSTEP.
worked, sort of... NeXT ported nextstep to hp, sparc, and intel architectures - so it was surely a platform agnostic OS (as we see today with the transition to intel, again). but this is no more of a feat than linux+(x11+gtk+qt) running on all those architectures.
openstep made it over to solaris where it had minimal impact, and over to windows. on windows, it was not write once run everywhere. with non-native custom drawn controls, event handling gotchas, need to write win32 code at times, etc...), major gaps in functionality...
so as for yellow box having some kind of disruptive effect - i dont see it. look at the mac - before os x we had the toolbox, which became carbon. to the major software vendors - yellow box has made almost no difference. the only big software vendor pumping out cocoa apps is apple. if it doesn't effect the mac market, what makes you think it'll blow away the windows crowd?
dont get me wrong - i love cocoa. but better technology doesn't equate to relevance in the software industry. why aren't big apps mainly using lisp, self, smalltalk, or ruby for application development?
and its moot anyway, because unless you are running an app doing media processing (iLife, pro apps), all your apps will end up as web apps, and cocoa isnt a framework for making web sites. the only big impact yellowbox on windows would have that i can see is: apple porting safari, ilife/pro apps to windows, and i dont see that happening either.
I'd wager that running a Universal Binary in yellow box would practically be the same as running it under Mac OS, aside from a few compatibility changes to support Windows under the hood (like naming it .exe). This is sorta like how the intel Mac OS builds were always there and working great behind the scenes and all Cocoa developers have to do is check a "Compile for Intel" checkbox in XCode.
People use Macs for the Mac experience, not for Cocoa. Yellow box doesn't change that. The switchers that would be lost are those who only switched so they could use some Mac-only Cocoa app, and how many of those people do you know? People do switch for iLife and the security, stability, simplicity, and elegance of the Mac OS, key parts of the Mac experience.
I don't think Apple would release iLife for Windows, although they could. Safari for windows is highly likely however and if Apple was smart they'd release it and iTunes for Linux as well.
I doubt Apple will release the Red Box with Classic-like compatibility for Windows apps. (I say Classic-like because the experience would be mostly seamless but you wouldn't run Windows in the background like you run Mac OS 9 for Classic.) They may have it in the lab but it would decimate the development of Mac applications. Its hard enough to convince naive developers to target Mac OS to begin with and if you suddenly didn't have to you never would.
The Yellow Box model hasn't really happened before as far as I know, but the Red Box model has been demonstrated with OS/2. It ran Windows apps natively and developers stopped making OS/2 apps.
Also, there's so many complications with the Windows libraries that I doubt all apps would run perfectly without resorting to some abstraction like that in virtual VPC. Imagine running a Windows Game which needs full access to the underlying hardware. It's almost easier to have an isolated version of Windows running that you can switch to and run rather than constantly playing catchup which is what WINE is doing.
Speaking of WINE, it is nifty but way complicated. Certain vendors release versions of WINE with preset compatibility for certain Windows apps. Its almost impossible to say that 100% of Windows apps will run perfectly since the libraries are so convoluted and complicated and apps do all sorts of odd things. So worst of all, if Red Box was released, Windows apps would be buggy and temperamental.
Originally posted by grad student
....
so as for yellow box having some kind of disruptive effect - i dont see it. look at the mac - before os x we had the toolbox, which became carbon. to the major software vendors - yellow box has made almost no difference. the only big software vendor pumping out cocoa apps is apple. if it doesn't effect the mac market, what makes you think it'll blow away the windows crowd?
....
Yellow Box on Windows would be transparent to the user. This is to say that a Yellow Box app should look just like any other Windows apps to a Windows user. It is not expected to be disruptive on the user's end. Where it can be disruptive is at the developer end. Yellow Box apps can be developed much faster in Xcode than Windows apps using standard Microsoft developer tools, give the Yellow Box developer a critical time-to-market advantage. The smart developer knows that he cannot unseat Office. But if he has a new idea, Yellow Box has the potential to get his idea in shrinkwrap faster and at lower cost than competing technologies.
The motivation for porting Openstep for Windows was because major clients like AT&T Wireless, Merill Lynch, etc were moving from Mach to NT and they had massive internal app suites written in NeXTSTEP. AT&T Wireless's Axys Call Suite for their entire Wireless network was very large and at the time the competition couldn't beat NeXT. Eventually, AT&T switched to an all Java solution.
Openstep for NT flopped. The UI was a windows kludge.
WOF for NT survived on life support and NeXT Professional Services went from a solid business to a disbandoned group three years after the merger. Areas were absorbed here and there but clearly the Enterprise Services Division failed miserably.
With OS X Server, Xsan, XRaid, Xserve they have some of the pieces in place. They need more. They need to invest in doing an Enterprise Division right.
When they do this we will see major headway for OS X across the Fortune 1000.
Red Box was the code name for Windows running inside of Rhapsody (now OS X).
That was in case MS Office and other key app relationships failed.
Red Box isn't vaporware. It ran. It's also not a strategically necessary business decision.
The entire Hardware/OS/Cocoa Apps solution with innovative design teams is what makes Apple able to adapt rapidly and continue to produce that "Mac Xperience" modern Mac users take for granted.
When OS X 10.5 is released and more Cocoa underpinnings in the User Experience people will start to grasp how married ObjC/CocoaFrameworks & Mach/XNU Kernel are and that Quartz and its siblings all work best when they aren't saddled with
extra baggage/toolkits that keep legacy developers limping along.
Now with Intel finally being a reality that always was a possibility people will have one less barrier to reference when not choosing OS X vs. Windows XP.
Yellow Box was a layer on top of Windows. It would never be a first class application inside Windows.
Unless I'm mistaken, C# and .NET will never play nicely with Cocoa. In other words, if that changes, it will have to come from Apple, not Microsoft.
Apple no longer has to play possum where MS is concerned. They can push their advanced tools directly agains MS and they will.