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Is Virtual PC Dead?
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The Wolf
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Jun 12, 2005, 11:56 AM
 
I mean not right this second, but *soon* with everyone talking about Intel, WINE, etc...

If so, it kinda makes you wonder what connectix knew that M$ didn't
     
f1000
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Jun 12, 2005, 12:28 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Wolf
If so, it kinda makes you wonder what connectix knew that M$ didn't


Virtual PC runs on PCs as well. People use it to run multiple operating systems on one box.
     
The Wolf  (op)
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Jun 12, 2005, 12:49 PM
 
I know there's a VPC for Windows which allows you to run different Mac OSes, but how many copies of this have they ever really sold? I mean, I personally have VPC b/c there's a particular PC app that I need that doesn't exist for Macs. Most PC users don't have this issue with regard to Mac apps. 99.9% of all other OSes can just run natively on a WinBox without the need for VPC, no?
     
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Jun 12, 2005, 12:54 PM
 
Forgive me if this is inaccurate (i am not a hardware guy), but they should't have to emulate an x86 processor anymore, which should lead to a much increased performance. Shouldn't this be great for Virtual PC?

VirtualPC in its present state would suck a lot less if they'd just give me a better video chip than an s3. Direct hardware support please.
     
Randman
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Jun 12, 2005, 12:59 PM
 
I doubt M$ is going to let VPC die easily. Not after buying Connetix.

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ZXspectrum
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Jun 12, 2005, 03:11 PM
 
have a feeling it will get better with this INTEL/APPLE deal.
     
Earth Mk. II
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Jun 12, 2005, 03:11 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Wolf
I know there's a VPC for Windows which allows you to run different Mac OSes, but how many copies of this have they ever really sold? I mean, I personally have VPC b/c there's a particular PC app that I need that doesn't exist for Macs. Most PC users don't have this issue with regard to Mac apps. 99.9% of all other OSes can just run natively on a WinBox without the need for VPC, no?
VirtualPC for Windows is a similar product to VMWare Workstation. It allows you to run a second OS within a virtual host, but does not actually perform any emulation.

For example, VPC for Windows will let you run another Windows OS, Linux x86, or any other OS that runs on x86 and supports standard BIOS booting. It's used primarily for development and system administration. It does NOT emulate a PPC chip.

I would imagine that any VPC versions released for OS X on Intel would be similar in function.
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Jun 12, 2005, 03:16 PM
 
Originally Posted by Randman
I doubt M$ is going to let VPC die easily. Not after buying Connetix.
MS bought it for the PC virtualization technology, not for the x86 emulator for PPC.
     
tooki
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Jun 12, 2005, 03:55 PM
 
It could become a virtual machine. We've had one of those in Mac OS X for a while: the Classic environment. When you start Classic, an application opens (TrueBlueEnvironment) that creates a virtual machine for Mac OS 9. Mac OS 9 doesn't even know it's not booting natively. (Well, it does, but only because Apple put in a mechanism to notify it of this fact.)

Virtual-machine VPC would do the same thing, and Windows wouldn't even know it's not running on a real PC. If it ends up being as well-optimized as Classic is, we could expect 95%-of-native Windows performance out of VPC.

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Millennium
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Jun 12, 2005, 05:39 PM
 
VPC/PPC will probably last another version or two before being killed off. I don't believe Microsoft will ever show us VPC/Intel, as this would mean writing a completely new program from scratch. You couldn't use VPC/PPC's code, because you're writing a virtualizer, not an emulator. But you couldn't use VPC/Windows' code either, because the low-level system calls involved in making a virtualizer for Mach (OSX's kernel) are completely different from those involved in making a virtualizer for Windows, plus the Mac version has some features which simply don't apply to the Windows version and those would need to be reimplemented.

Seriously. When it comes to porting between MacPPC and Mactel, VPC may be the absolute worst case possible, because it can't actually be "ported"; it must be completely redone. You might be able to reuse some of the .nib files from the MacPPC version, but that's just about the only thing from either version that could be reused. I think it's very unlikely that Microsoft would want to take this route. More likely they'll simply make Windows run natively on Mactels and offer a dual-boot solution, making it needlessly difficult to boot up in the Mac environment so you stay in Windows most of the time.

My guess is that if we see a Windows compatibility layer for Mactel, it will come out of the Darwine project. Their pipedream of running on PPC remains a technological impossibility, but the code they've already written would be extremely useful on a Mactel; all that would really remain there is a port of winelib and a loader for the PE format (not to be confused with PEF, which is the format used by OS9 apps).
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CharlesS
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Jun 12, 2005, 07:21 PM
 
Originally Posted by Millennium
My guess is that if we see a Windows compatibility layer for Mactel, it will come out of the Darwine project. Their pipedream of running on PPC remains a technological impossibility...
Is it really? Rosetta looks to be very much the same sort of thing that they are trying to do, and by all reports, it works...

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Millennium
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Jun 12, 2005, 07:47 PM
 
Originally Posted by CharlesS
Is it really? Rosetta looks to be very much the same sort of thing that they are trying to do, and by all reports, it works...
Not really. All Rosetta has to do is emulate the processor. It doesn't have to provide the APIs, load the binary format, and emulate the rest of the underlying hardware and architecture; these are either the same on both platforms or they are already abstracted away by the OS. This type of thing has been done before, and in fact Apple themselves did it during the 68K/PPC transition.

Darwine, on the other hand, does have to do all these things, and it has to do them transparently, and this is where the problems come in for the original plan. However, on a Mactel it would be freed of quite a few of these burdens -particularly when it comes to hardware emulation- and that brings it back into the realm of possibility.
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CharlesS
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Jun 14, 2005, 06:30 AM
 
Originally Posted by Millennium
Not really. All Rosetta has to do is emulate the processor. It doesn't have to provide the APIs,
Already provided by WINE.

load the binary format,
Am I misunderstanding what you mean here? Because quite obviously Rosetta will have to load PPC binaries.

and emulate the rest of the underlying hardware and architecture;
Is it a given that this will have to be done for Darwine? QEMU has a user mode, which is designed to run Linux binaries on another Linux platform without emulating the whole system, OS, etc. Of course, right now it's Linux-only, and they'd have to port it.

these are either the same on both platforms or they are already abstracted away by the OS. This type of thing has been done before, and in fact Apple themselves did it during the 68K/PPC transition.
I admit that I could be missing some important details, but it seems to me that Rosetta is doing pretty much what Darwine wants to do; i.e. translate a binary from another architecture to native, and use native API calls (Cocoa/Carbon) when possible, whereas Darwine wants to translate binaries from x86 to PPC (again, QEMU is supposed to be able to do this), using native calls to WINE when possible. Now, I'm sure it will not be an easy task, so you could argue about the probability of this coming to fruition given that their manpower is probably limited, especially with the fact that the Intel Macs might end up making this project pointless. But to flat-out state, definitively, that it is impossible seems quite presumptuous.

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Millennium
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Jun 14, 2005, 06:47 AM
 
Originally Posted by CharlesS
Am I misunderstanding what you mean here? Because quite obviously Rosetta will have to load PPC binaries.
Not the code, but the format in which the binary is stored: Mach-O for OSX, but PE (not to be confused with PEF/CFM; they're different formats) for Windows. This is probably one of the easiest parts still remaining.
Is it a given that this will have to be done for Darwine? QEMU has a user mode, which is designed to run Linux binaries on another Linux platform without emulating the whole system, OS, etc. Of course, right now it's Linux-only, and they'd have to port it.
That's pretty close to what Rosetta does, actually, but once again, note that it's Linux-to-Linux: the APIs and OS are still the same. Also, this solution requires a second OS running in the emulated environment to host Wine; it can't boot a system by itself.
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andreadeca
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Jun 14, 2005, 07:01 AM
 
Originally Posted by The Wolf
I know there's a VPC for Windows which allows you to run different Mac OSes, but how many copies of this have they ever really sold? I mean, I personally have VPC b/c there's a particular PC app that I need that doesn't exist for Macs. Most PC users don't have this issue with regard to Mac apps. 99.9% of all other OSes can just run natively on a WinBox without the need for VPC, no?
My two cents:

1) the fact that macOsX will run on intel does not, in ANY way, mean that PC application for Intel will run natively (automatically) on MacOX: many other OSs run in intel and do not run WinApps natively (linux, BDS, BeOS, Solaris).
To run windoz apps you will still need a software tier that will act as a interpreter or "translator" if you will: Virtual PC is one of these, but there are others (like WINE, WMWARE etc. etc.)

In fact, once MacOsX is on Intel, you will still need such a software tier ("rosetta") to run "old" powerPC applications.

MacOsX on intel is NOT the death of VirtualPC, quite the contrary: performance of VPC will probably greatly increase since it will use the hardware directly, so it will make more sense to use it to run applications written for windows.

2) VPC was not born to let you run windows applications on other operating systems, the fact that Mac owners use it to do that is a side effect: VPC was created to allow a single machine to run multiple OSs at the same time on "virtual" machines, thus acting as if it were more machines than just one. This is done tipically in professional IT environments, where 4/8/16 processor machines with 8Gb or RAM are common.
it is very common in IT to resort to virtual machines to emulate/test multiple systems: virtual machines are very easy to create/duplicate/restore and so on.
VPC allows you to do just that.

VPS will not die.

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Jacke
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Jun 14, 2005, 07:29 AM
 
Originally Posted by andreadeca
MacOsX on intel is NOT the death of VirtualPC, quite the contrary: performance of VPC will probably greatly increase since it will use the hardware directly, so it will make more sense to use it to run applications written for windows.
Originally Posted by Millenium
I don't believe Microsoft will ever show us VPC/Intel, as this would mean writing a completely new program from scratch. [...] More likely they'll simply make Windows run natively on Mactels and offer a dual-boot solution, making it needlessly difficult to boot up in the Mac environment so you stay in Windows most of the time.
Does anyone have that old BillG quote where he says something like if Windows would be ported to the Mac everybody would stop using Mac OS? (Though that might have been in the pre-OS X days.)
     
The Wolf  (op)
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Jun 14, 2005, 08:38 AM
 
Interesting article on CNET talking about porting apps to Mactels http://news.com.com/Developers+get+t...=st.rc.targ_mb

"...For those whose applications were developed prior to Mac OS X and then "carbonized" to run natively in OS X, the work is somewhat more involved. If developers have used Apple's Xcode tools, it is still only a matter of weeks, at most, Apple said. But, if developers used tools from Metrowerks, they must first bring their code over to Apple's tools and then begin the work of tweaking the software for Intel's chips.
Microsoft is among those in that last camp. Both Virtual PC and Office for Mac were developed in Carbon, using tools from Metrowerks. Microsoft said it doesn't know how much work it has ahead of itself."

It just seems like there should be a more simple way to run PC apps on OS X once the transition is done. For example, the way OS X runs Classic apps is a little more transparent than the way VPC runs say W2K. Or, maybe there can be something like Dashboard (which I think is useless in it's present state) where PC apps can just float around on a different layer. Hrmm, then I could finally take advantage of aaaaaaall of those extra appications available for Windoze.
     
CharlesS
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Jun 14, 2005, 07:46 PM
 
Originally Posted by Millennium
Not the code, but the format in which the binary is stored: Mach-O for OSX, but PE (not to be confused with PEF/CFM; they're different formats) for Windows. This is probably one of the easiest parts still remaining.
Okay, that doesn't sound impossible by any means.

That's pretty close to what Rosetta does, actually, but once again, note that it's Linux-to-Linux: the APIs and OS are still the same.
Right, and since WINE can run on Darwin thanks to the work the Darwine people have done, it's the same case with Darwine.

Rosetta: PPC apps originally using Carbon/Cocoa on PPC OS X translated to x86, and using native Carbon/Cocoa on x86 OS X when possible.

Darwine: x86 apps originally using WINE on x86 Darwin translated to PPC, and using native WINE on PPC Darwin when possible.

Also, this solution requires a second OS running in the emulated environment to host Wine; it can't boot a system by itself.
As I said before, QEMU provides a user mode, which is really very similar to what the Transitive technology does.

http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/about.html

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goMac
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Jun 15, 2005, 05:19 PM
 
Thats odd, I've run Darwine on my Mac and it ran PPC Windows binaries just fine. All it's missing is emulation.

Porting Virtual PC to Mac would probably just take a lot of commenting. If they did things properly, the Mac and PC version share the same code base, so they might also have to throw a few switches too.
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Jun 15, 2005, 05:32 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Wolf
I know there's a VPC for Windows which allows you to run different Mac OSes (snip)
Really? Get VPC for Windows, and then one can run Mac OSes on the box? What's all the hoopla with Macs and Intel about, then, if this has been possible before?!
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Jun 15, 2005, 06:14 PM
 
Originally Posted by workerbee
Really? Get VPC for Windows, and then one can run Mac OSes on the box? What's all the hoopla with Macs and Intel about, then, if this has been possible before?!
Uh, no.

Virtual PC for PC lets you run different instances of Windows (or Linux) only.

Like, you can run Windows 3.11 on XP if you wanted to. Or Linux. But not the Mac OS. You could probably get OpenStep to run on it.
     
The Wolf  (op)
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Jun 16, 2005, 09:02 PM
 
Originally Posted by Person Man
Uh, no.
wow, sorry 'bout that. I guess I got it confused with DataViz's MacOpener http://www.dataviz.com/products/maco..._overview.html

So, will it be less work to re-tool VPC than it will be to make an alternative program that's as easy to use as VPC?

It would also be cool to be able to have a dual boot and a way to switch between the two OSes with something like OS X's "fast user switching"!
     
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Jun 17, 2005, 09:21 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Wolf
It would also be cool to be able to have a dual boot and a way to switch between the two OSes with something like OS X's "fast user switching"!
That would surely kill Apple dead. Then why develop Mac versions of applications at all when a Mac user can just use the Windows version?
     
clarkgoble
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Jun 18, 2005, 03:21 PM
 
1. People wouldn't run many Windows apps on OSX/x86 for the same reason people don't run many Linux apps on OSX/PPC with X11 or many Classic apps on OSX/PPC. The interfaces are sufficiently different than its annoying. Most of the big Linux applications already run native under X11 yet you rarely see them. If you had a choice between Office OSX and Office Windows which would you run? No brainer. (For all the gripes, I think the Mac version of Office is vastly superior to the Windows version except for certain features that you'd want in the Enterprise and some smaller businesses)

2. Applications that depend upon hardware graphics acceleration or 3D libraries like OpenGL or DirectX will still run very slow under Virtual PC x86 or VMWare. So anyone thinking that this would let them run games with any satisfaction is delusional.

3. Unlike Classic or X11 you'd still have a separate window for your entire Windows box. Not interlacing Mac windows and PC windows. It would be more like running your Windows programs in RDC. I actually do that. RDC is great. In fact with RDC I can't imagine wanting Virtual PC x86 unless I had a portable. Even now I just switched my primary machine from Windows to Mac. Outside of Visual Studio I use the PC rarer and rarer each day. It's just not worth it. *If* someone ported Wine it might be different. But that would be a dramatic undertaking given the huge differences between Linux' X11 windowing and Apple's windowing as well as low level differences between Linux and Darwin.
     
Millennium
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Jun 18, 2005, 03:40 PM
 
Originally Posted by goMac
Thats odd, I've run Darwine on my Mac and it ran PPC Windows binaries just fine. All it's missing is emulation.
Not quite. Darwine as-is allows for source compatibility, but it still requires a recompile. To get binary compatibility (that is to say, no recompile necessary) you do need emulation, but that's the only thing you need. I've touched a little on the issue of executable formats, but there are other things. The point is that it's not as simple as plugging in an emulator; it would be great if that were true, but that's not how computers work.
Porting Virtual PC to Mac would probably just take a lot of commenting.
No, no it wouldn't. Read below.
If they did things properly, the Mac and PC version share the same code base, so they might also have to throw a few switches too.
The Mac and PC versions do not share the same code base, because despite having the same name they're not the same kind of program. Just as you can't share very much code between a media player and a spreadsheet, you can't share very much code between an emulator and a virtualizer.

An emulator doesn't have to talk directly to hardware very much, because for all intents and purposes it is the machine that runs the emulated code. It can do all the crunching of data itself, and then pass the crunched data through the standard OS APIs. By contrast, a virtualizer does have to talk to the real hardware, because it doesn't run any code itself. Although these two kinds of programs share the same purpose, they go about it in very different ways, and this means using two very different codebases.
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CharlesS
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Jun 18, 2005, 07:50 PM
 
Originally Posted by Millennium
Not quite. Darwine as-is allows for source compatibility, but it still requires a recompile. To get binary compatibility (that is to say, no recompile necessary) you do need emulation, but that's the only thing you need. I've touched a little on the issue of executable formats, but there are other things. The point is that it's not as simple as plugging in an emulator; it would be great if that were true, but that's not how computers work.
Straw man argument. No one said it would be simple. I'm simply saying that it's not impossible, which seems to be what you're claiming.

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Jun 18, 2005, 10:10 PM
 
Originally Posted by clarkgoble
1. People wouldn't run many Windows apps on OSX/x86 for the same reason people don't run many Linux apps on OSX/PPC with X11 or many Classic apps on OSX/PPC. The interfaces are sufficiently different than its annoying.
It's annoying not just because of different interfaces, but precisely because applications exist for Mac OS X that perform the same tasks as Linux and Classic apps. It's the threat of those applications disappearing that worries me, not simply the blurring of the line between Mac and Windows.

If you had a choice between Office OSX and Office Windows which would you run? No brainer. (For all the gripes, I think the Mac version of Office is vastly superior to the Windows version except for certain features that you'd want in the Enterprise and some smaller businesses)
It may not be up to us. Theoretically, if it becomes simple enough to switch between Mac and Windows on a Mactel box, Microsoft could just drop development of Office OS X altogether, and force us to run the Windows version. I think a large majority of Office users would be forced to do exactly that, because many people's workplace tasks require them to use Office. The death of big-name software suites means decreased incentive to use Mac OS in the first place which means the (possible) death of Apple, at least as we know it.
     
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Jun 19, 2005, 02:30 AM
 
Well, technically, it's a virtual x86 box. If it runs on x86 hardware and the OS to be run supports that hardware, chances are you can get it to run.

I know for a fact you can get BeOS and Solaris to install and run.

Of course, that means that for OS X, Apple would have to write it to support generic x86 hardware which, by current reports, will not be the case.

Originally Posted by Person Man
Uh, no.

Virtual PC for PC lets you run different instances of Windows (or Linux) only.

Like, you can run Windows 3.11 on XP if you wanted to. Or Linux. But not the Mac OS. You could probably get OpenStep to run on it.
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Jun 20, 2005, 12:08 AM
 
Originally Posted by Angus_D
MS bought it for the PC virtualization technology, not for the x86 emulator for PPC.
Actually, the xBox 360, which runs on 3 PPC970's, uses VPC/PPC to emulate the original xBox (Celeron).

Microsoft is definitely able to rewrite MacVPC+WinVPC into MactelVPC, and make it faster than ever. However, these projects should have a chance to become more popular than VPC: WINE for OSX, VMWare for OSX, iEmulator, Guest PC (previously Blue Label). The upper hand that Connectix had over other emulators will be no more: a faster x86 emulator core.
     
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Jun 20, 2005, 08:06 AM
 
... There's also Xen (is it any good?) - which doesn't yet work with OS X, anyway...

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Jun 20, 2005, 05:38 PM
 
If the question is for the MAC VPC, then I suspect it will go away eventually. If the question is VPC itself then no, it will not be going away. Virtual PC itself was purchased to give Microsoft a way to easily support multiple OSes for its Enterprise clients. That will not be going away based on the Apple changes. It is a vital piece for Msoft, and will remain important to it enterprise client base.
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jonsaw
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Jul 5, 2005, 01:35 AM
 
Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey
Theoretically, if it becomes simple enough to switch between Mac and Windows on a Mactel box, Microsoft could just drop development of Office OS X altogether, and force us to run the Windows version....The death of big-name software suites means decreased incentive to use Mac OS in the first place which means the (possible) death of Apple, at least as we know it.
But this supposes that significant numbers of Mac users will buy and install Windows on their Macintel boxes. I suspect that not enough people will do that (at least not for a few years), to make Microsoft decide to drop their Mac Business Unit. Remember that most Mac users are home users who don't want to go anywhere near Windows, at least at home.

The real deciding factor will be when Microsoft compares the amount of money it makes from Office X, with the amount of money it costs them to support it and to write new versions, and if it ever turns out that more Mac users have installed Windows, along with Office for Windows, than Office X, then that cost/benefit balance may shift, and they'd probably drop Office X after about a year.

I doubt if Microsoft will decide on its own that it believes enough people have or will buy Windows for their Macintels, to "justify" dropping Office X before the actual figures bear them out--right now, Microsoft makes a comfortable profit from Office X.

Now, if the emulators (or whatever you want to call them) that allow Windows apps to run on OS X, without installing Windows, become truly viable for the average user, then that's when we may start to see some Mac applications disappear. But just as likely, if not more so, we may see a sort of hybrid app begin to appear--one which uses much of the same code for both Windows and Macintel, but with a sort of "skin" layer that makes the app look and behave enough like a Mac or Windows app, depending on what OS it's running under, to keep users of both OSs happy. However, anything unique that OS X allows apps to do, that can't be done in Windows, and vice versa, might not be written into the app, so if this happens, we may indeed see an unfortunate dumbing-down of these apps. Not being a programmer, I don't know if an app talks more to the OS or to the processor, but I suspect it talks more to the OS, making such a "skin" approach not a simple thing to implement.
( Last edited by jonsaw; Jul 5, 2005 at 01:58 AM. )
     
   
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