Notable curmudgeon John Dvorak raised hackles last month when he suggested that an Intel-powered Apple would dump OS X and switch to Windows. Turns out he may have been right — sort of. Word is out now that Apple has joined BAPco, an industry group that does one thing and one thing only: create benchmarks for testing the performance of Windows-based PCs. The move comes on top of rumors that Apple will include VMWare-style virtualization capabilities in the next version of OS X, which could enable the Mac OS to run Windows apps without requiring a third-party emulator or a reboot. While those rumors have yet to be confirmed, it does seem possible that Apple is indeed working on a way for OS X users to run Windows apps…
Few points to make:
The Macs run windows XP and SOME APPS faster is simply because they aren’t bogged down with device drivers, bloated registry, and apps installed scattered across the hard drive.
Every time I install a fresh copy of Windows it always boots up fast, launches apps quickly, and shuts down with out a hiccup.. UNTIL I start installing drivers and everything.
By the way. Since these Macs are now PC/Intel hardware, why can’t one just download chipset drivers from Intel and use that on the Windows Mac?
Now back to the original topic…
Since OS X is UNIX/Linux/BSD based, can’t OS X “ALREADY” run windows apps using WINE?
Since OS X is UNIX/Linux/BSD based, can’t OS X “ALREADY” run windows apps using WINE?
I think so. “Darwine”… WINE for Darwin & MacOS X
http://sourceforge.net/projects/darwine/
I’ve made the move to Mac myself, and for less than $3000 I’m running a top-of-the-line MacBook Pro with Office and all of the other software I need. While I should wait a few more months to write this in stone, after one month of use I am more productive at the office and at home with this computer.
I grant you that a platform shift isn’t cheap, but over time the costs of moving are the same as the costs of keeping up to date on your existing platform.
As for the ability to run Windows applications, it will be a good for getting people over to the platform, but it doesn’t hold much of a draw for me… unless I could run multiple OSes VMware style at the same time.
Dvorak, I gotta say, you are taking way too much heat for this. Whether it is true or not, it kinda makes sense, so whats the problem?
Dvorak, you’re a genius. Windows in the MACBOOK Pro will rock. I hope that you will play back clips of your detractors from previous TWIT episodes.
BootCamp still doesn’t mean Apple is switching to Windows. That will never happen as long as Steve is the CEO of Apple.
Does the fact that Avie Tevanian (chief developer of the Mach kernel/OS and Apple’s Chief Software Architect) has left Apple support the theory that Apple may be switching to the Windows OS?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=19&entry_id=3821
Regards,
Sal.
My bet has always been that Apple will make their OS work on all PC machines. Sure they make a nice portion of revenue from ‘hardware’ but selling the Apple OSX to the broad PC market would mushroom the revenues for Apple. Selling a disk for $179- lot of profit in there. What’s stopping this? What is Gates position with Apple these days? I remember he slipped Apple $150m for stock back in ’97. Not that many people “Switch” computers but they’d switch out discs for less than $200 to obtain a stable operating system.