I can't believe that people think it would be smart for Apple to include WINE and officially support it.
Firstly, API emulation is fragile. Meaning, any new APIs or slight changes to the behavior of existing APIs and things break. It also takes a _lot_ of work to determine the behavior of existing APIs in every possible usage scenario when you don't have access to the original source and/or detailed behavioral documentation.
Secondly, when things do break (and they will at some point), is Apple going to provide tech support for all the apps which break with them? Or when a user complains that some obscure Windows app doesn't work with WINE? It'd be a tech support (ie. financial) nightmare!
Don't get me wrong, I like the WINE project and have followed it's progress since the early days of it's development on Linux. But I personally don't think it's feasible for any company to sell it as a general-purpose emulation environment and then try to provide tech support for it. It definitely makes sense to bundle it with a single application that you're developing in-house, but not to sell/bundle it as a general-purpose solution.
Agreed. Apple's solution is and should remain dual-boot, end of story. I want Apple to focus it's energy on OSX, leave the Windows emulation/virtualization to third parties.
"No virtualization in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, ?our solution is dual boot?"
You can't actually believe this. How many times has Apple said no to something and then turned around 6 months later and made it reality?
Thats actually a much smarter stance to take, let other companies worry about tech support and trouble shooting virtualization programs. Also intergrating it into the OS might give OSX more flaws to viruses and whatever.
Apple doesn't need the trouble there are more than enough fair options on the way.
Fourthly, the legal issue of running Windows apps without Windows. Does Apple actually have the legal right to use WIndows kernel (edit: API?)
I don't think copying the API is a legal issue. Consider, for instance, Wine, which allows you to run many Windows programs under Linux. As far as I know, the Wine folk have never gotten any flack over emulating the Windows API, and, in fact, even in the world of ridiculously stupid software patents we're seeing these days I haven't yet heard of any you-copied-my-API law suits (not saying there haven't been, just none I'm aware of). My impression is that APIs have long been considered "fair game" for anyone to try to copy and emulate.
At any rate, I'm inclined to take Phil Schiller at his word on this one and believe Apple isn't putting virtualization into Leopard. Not only would it discourage development of native OS X software, it would be a customer support nightmare since any Wine-like solution is going to be far from perfect.
What would be really nice would be the ability to switch between OS X and Windows under Boot Camp without a complete shut down/reboot cycle. If you could simply hibernate one OS and then wake the other one that would make switching OSes a whole lot more convenient and less disruptive. I'm still not sure, however, that Apple would be wild about making it so easy to switch to Windows because of the possible deterrent affect on OS X software development.
Since I'm happy using Parallels, I doubt I'll even mess around with Boot Camp myself. Since Parallels and Boot Camp currently can't share the same Windows image, I'd have to devote more drive space on my MBP's 120 GB drive than I'd care to for the purpose of maintaining two separate Windows environments.
Comments
Originally posted by auxio
I can't believe that people think it would be smart for Apple to include WINE and officially support it.
Firstly, API emulation is fragile. Meaning, any new APIs or slight changes to the behavior of existing APIs and things break. It also takes a _lot_ of work to determine the behavior of existing APIs in every possible usage scenario when you don't have access to the original source and/or detailed behavioral documentation.
Secondly, when things do break (and they will at some point), is Apple going to provide tech support for all the apps which break with them? Or when a user complains that some obscure Windows app doesn't work with WINE? It'd be a tech support (ie. financial) nightmare!
Don't get me wrong, I like the WINE project and have followed it's progress since the early days of it's development on Linux. But I personally don't think it's feasible for any company to sell it as a general-purpose emulation environment and then try to provide tech support for it. It definitely makes sense to bundle it with a single application that you're developing in-house, but not to sell/bundle it as a general-purpose solution.
Agreed. Apple's solution is and should remain dual-boot, end of story. I want Apple to focus it's energy on OSX, leave the Windows emulation/virtualization to third parties.
Originally posted by bdkennedy1
"No virtualization in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, ?our solution is dual boot?"
You can't actually believe this. How many times has Apple said no to something and then turned around 6 months later and made it reality?
Thats actually a much smarter stance to take, let other companies worry about tech support and trouble shooting virtualization programs. Also intergrating it into the OS might give OSX more flaws to viruses and whatever.
Apple doesn't need the trouble there are more than enough fair options on the way.
Originally posted by solsun
Fourthly, the legal issue of running Windows apps without Windows. Does Apple actually have the legal right to use WIndows kernel (edit: API?)
I don't think copying the API is a legal issue. Consider, for instance, Wine, which allows you to run many Windows programs under Linux. As far as I know, the Wine folk have never gotten any flack over emulating the Windows API, and, in fact, even in the world of ridiculously stupid software patents we're seeing these days I haven't yet heard of any you-copied-my-API law suits (not saying there haven't been, just none I'm aware of). My impression is that APIs have long been considered "fair game" for anyone to try to copy and emulate.
At any rate, I'm inclined to take Phil Schiller at his word on this one and believe Apple isn't putting virtualization into Leopard. Not only would it discourage development of native OS X software, it would be a customer support nightmare since any Wine-like solution is going to be far from perfect.
What would be really nice would be the ability to switch between OS X and Windows under Boot Camp without a complete shut down/reboot cycle. If you could simply hibernate one OS and then wake the other one that would make switching OSes a whole lot more convenient and less disruptive. I'm still not sure, however, that Apple would be wild about making it so easy to switch to Windows because of the possible deterrent affect on OS X software development.
Since I'm happy using Parallels, I doubt I'll even mess around with Boot Camp myself. Since Parallels and Boot Camp currently can't share the same Windows image, I'd have to devote more drive space on my MBP's 120 GB drive than I'd care to for the purpose of maintaining two separate Windows environments.