thrunner Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 When Bill Gates rescued Apple and Steve Jobs in 1997, they had an exchange or cross licensing of technology. In return for dropping of Apple's lawsuit against MS, MS also licensed some technology to Apple, including the Win32 API. This allows WinXP apps to legally run natively under Mac OSX (something that OS/2 Warp was never able to do legally or technically). The license expired in 2002, but the rights persist with any products introduced up to that time, and that includes WinXP, introduced in Oct, 2001: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060420.html Now for the interesting part: I believe that Apple will offer Windows Vista as an option for those big customers who demand it, but 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. Huh? Wine is great, but it is also a moving target subject to Microsoft meddling. If Wine gets too good, Microsoft can "accidentally" break it at will. But Microsoft can't afford to do that with its own Windows API. The courts will no longer allow checking for a different underlying OS as Redmond did back in the days of DR-DOS. Besides, unless we are strictly talking about Microsoft apps, there isn't even much code involved here that Microsoft CAN meddle in. The wonder is, of course, that Apple could even dare to do such a thing? Oh they can dare. Not only that, this is one dare Apple can probably get away with. Remember Steve Jobs' first days back at Apple in 1997 as Interim-CEO-for-Life? Trying to save the company, Steve got Bill Gates to invest $150 million in Apple and promise to keep Mac Office going for a few more years in exchange for a five-year patent cross-licensing agreement? The idea in everyone's mind, of course, was that Microsoft would grab lots of Apple technology, which they probably did, and it quite specifically ended an Apple patent infringement suit against Microsoft. But I'm told that the exchange wasn't totally one-way, that Apple, in turn, got some legal right to the Windows API. That agreement ran for five years, from August, 1997 to August 2002. Even though it has since expired, the rights it conferred at the time still lie with the respective companies. Whatever Microsoft grabbed from Apple they can still use, they just aren't able to grab anything developed since August 2002. Same for Apple using Microsoft technology like that in Office X. But Windows XP shipped October 25, 2001: 10 months before the agreement expired. I'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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluedragon1971 Posted April 26, 2006 Share Posted April 26, 2006 How many threads about this same idiotic article do we need? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thrunner Posted April 27, 2006 Author Share Posted April 27, 2006 I guess Cringeley can get on your nerve after a while but I am not aware of any thread in this forum on OSX hosting Win32 API (yes, I did search). There was a discussion on Apple dropping Mach kernel, but that only referenced BSD API. OSX natively hosting Win32 API would be something quite useful, if true. It would also cut into sales of WinXP and perhaps that is a risk Apple and Jobs couldn't afford to do, considering they did owe MS something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluedragon1971 Posted April 27, 2006 Share Posted April 27, 2006 I guess Cringeley can get on your nerve after a while but I am not aware of any thread in this forum on OSX hosting Win32 API (yes, I did search). There was a discussion on Apple dropping Mach kernel, but that only referenced BSD API.OSX natively hosting Win32 API would be something quite useful, if true. It would also cut into sales of WinXP and perhaps that is a risk Apple and Jobs couldn't afford to do, considering they did owe MS something. http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?showtopic=15844 All I did was search on the name "cringley". Not that hard to find the other thread. However, I do owe you an apology, since the other thread was started a couple of hours after yours. Perhaps a moderator should merge the two. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts