“Quite simply, a monolithic kernel like the one used in Linux or most of the other Open Source Unix clones is inherently two to three times faster for integer calculations than the Mach microkernel presently used in OS X 10.4. That’s why the world hasn’t embraced xServes, for example, because for simple web or database service they are slower and serve fewer users. Apple has evidently reached the point where they need to trade claimed performance, — typically based on floating-point operations that aren’t a part of much web or database service — for real performance,” Robert X. Cringely writes for PBS.com. “I think it safe to say that whatever Apple’s overall strategy, we’re likely to see a new kernel in OS X 10.5, though the look and feel and underlying functionality shouldn’t change at all. Those who think the kernel change will have to wait for 10.6 forget that Apple has had parallel versions of OS X in development for years, so who’s to say they haven’t had a monolithic-kernel version running in the lab since 10.3?”
“Apple will most likely offer more than one way to satisfy Big Business’s desire to run Windows or at least Windows applications. I think Apple is sincere, for example, in their interest in allowing Apple hardware to boot straight into Vista,” Cringely writes. “Another option for Apple would be full OS virtualization like I championed last week. I’m sure it will be available, though maybe not from Apple, since there are plenty of third party applications ready to fight for that business. These applications, probably even more than running straight Vista on Apple hardware, could use the extra oomph of a faster kernel.”
“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,” Cringely writes. “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.”
“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,” Cringely writes. “Think of the implications. A souped-up OS X kernel with native Windows API support and the prospect of mixing and matching Windows and Mac applications would be, for many users, the best of both worlds. There would be no copy of Windows XP to buy, no large overhead of emulation or compatibility middleware, no chance for Microsoft to accidentally screw things up, substantially better security, and no need to even take a chance on Windows Vista.”
Much more in the full article, including how Apple can legally do such a thing, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Sketchtrain” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: No copy of Windows XP to buy and no need to even take a chance on Windows Vista means no money for Microsoft. As we have always said, even as many short-sightedly threw in the towel, the war is not over. And, yes, we shall prevail. For the naysayers we trot out our favorite example once again: In 1929, Ford held just over 61% of the U.S. market for automobiles. GM’s market share stood at just 12%. Ford was thought to be invincible, with GM regarded as a niche auto maker. But, in 1936, just seven years later, Ford held 22% of the market for new automobiles while General Motors held a 43% share. No company is invincible. Not even Microsoft.
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Related article:
Apple ready to take back market share; may debut Windows virtualization in Mac OS X Leopard – April 21, 2006
Dude, you got a Dell? What are you, stupid? Only Apple Macs run both Mac OS X and Windows! – April 05, 2006
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ ultimate goal: ‘to take back the computer business from Microsoft’ – June 16, 2005
hhmm, windows api with an off switch? lol
I love just love secret Apple lab revelations. I really do. I’m a sucker for mystery and intrigue, I guess. Anyway .. what fun.
I’m with DrDude. All those viruses and malware use the API too. And they make fewer interface calls than any windows app that people really choose to install. It looks like golden days ahead for data miners, spyware authors, virus, trojan and worm coders.
BTW Andrew, so far I’ve counted all of 2 exploits for OS X and both of those are behavioral. There are probably 2 new exploits discovered for WIN32 every 5 minutes. Would you be willing to post a link to the site where you are getting all this info? I’m sure it would make for good reading by all.
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And Apple will not be dependent on MS for a Mac version of Office.
That would change the rules of the game.
Couldn’t they put some kind of “permissions confirmation” in the API? Example: “New application malware.exe is attempting to execute, do you wish to continue? Y/N”
Running Windows apps directly in OS X would contaminate the Mac user experience/design principles. Virtualizatin will be enough for OS X to “consume” Windows.
Er, “virtualization”.
also Mad wrote: “MadMac is right – that would be the end of Mac developers. No more reason for anyone to buy a Mac at all.”
Exactly. Then it would be time for Jobs to kill OS X (as had been speculated hundrets of times before) and sell Wintel machines with some style. Welcome the new SONY!!
MacDaily News may be correct with the GM-Ford parable. The difference here lies in fact that Ford’s market lead didn’t add up to a monopoly. The near-total market saturation and the dependency users develop around OS and server technology gives Microsoft leverage (be it legal or illegal) that Ford never had. Bill Gates’ personal wealth is tied up mainly in his unsold shares of Microsoft. As Microsoft looses value, Bill Gates will loose billions of dollars of paper wealth. It’s not the money the turd cares about. He will always have more money than he can spend. Money is just a way of keeping score of the game. Whatever the game, Bill Gates wants to win it all and crush all who oppose him.
Remember when Microsoft jiggered with DOS to make it slap a fake “FATAL SYSTEM ERROR. REBOOT NOW” alert on the screen if it detected that GEMs was installed instead of Windows? The real question should be this: With someone like Bill Gates, who has demonstrated he will do ANYTHING to crush competitors, what B.S. stunt would he be willing to resort to once he’s loosing billions?
“It’s quite possible Mac’s with Mac OS X will continue on life support from iPod and new product sales without having to run Vista, but it’s also possible Steve might just decide to let it go.”
Apple would never just “let go” its multi-hundred-million-dollar crown jewel, the Mac OS. It would license it out before ditching it. At least then it would have an opportunity to earn some serious cash, and if Apple got to that point it would have nothing to lose.
Right now, Mac market share is going up, albeit slowly, so the Mac will be around for a while yet. Apple is quite happy servicing its core markets and leaving the bargain-basement boxes to the lowest-common-denominator PC makers.
Greg, not be a jerk, but it’s “losing” not “loosing”.
I feel confused just thinking about this. I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing or if its even possible. As a person of very strong opinions it feels strange not to have one.
MW=research
Oh. By the way. I’ve been reading Robert X. Cringely since the early 80’s when she wrote a full-page column on the last page of Infoworld. She’s had good instide track on things for a LONG time and I’d think twice before dismissing what she writes. And by the way, Robert isn’t a “he.” Notwithstanding the intriguing innuendo with “Pam”—his assistant in the Infoworld days—Robert X. Cringely is a woman working out of her house.
Vista taking over OS X on Intel Macs?
WinTrolls…….Dream on.
Apple justifying a sorry POS OS by making it the default OS on its hardware. Never gonna happen. Read some past quotes from SJ, particularly about Microsoft and its lack of taste or class.
You should erase MadMac’s bigotry:
“…jew MS out of $”
This is not “borderline” anything–it is blatant and unacceptable.
Kate
G Spank: You’re right about “loosing”. I remember someone once wrote a tirade in this very forum about how it’s “losing” and not “loosing”. Maybe that was you? It’s a bad habit to break because “loosing” is a real word which most commonly means “To untie or unbind; to free from any fastening; to remove the shackles or fastenings of; to set free; to relieve.” I’ve tried to force my dictionaries to forget the word but that didn’t work; they all still recognize “loosing” (which I never use) and don’t flag it. It’s a losing proposition;-)
Jeff-“There’s no way that Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard has an Intel-only kernel. Apple is to this very day selling G5 PowerMacs (as well as G4 iBooks and PowerBooks). They’re not going to announce at WWDC that customers who just spent over $3000 on a new computer can’t upgrade to 10.5.”
Yes, and anyway I think Jobs announced at wwdc that leopard will definitely be universal, as with all the mac apps in the coming years.
Cringely’s analyses were insightful for a long time, but lately he has started to sound like another member of the Dvorak/Enderle/Thurrott buffoon chorus. Running Vista in a virtual machine or dual-boot system is one thing — it allows people to buy a Mac without fear, but still keeps Windows identifiably Windows and allows Apple to disclaim responsibility for any Windows flaws.
Reimplementing the Windows API, on the other hand, means that the flaws in the design of the API become a major PR problem for Apple. Computer journalists can’t be trusted to reliably distinguish between the processor, the operating system, and the application, let alone the general public; even Apple can’t spin “it’s a flaw in the design of the API, we can’t implement it securely without breaking WIndows compatibility” in a way that Joe Sixpack will understand. (MDN word: “designed,” as in, the Windows API is designed with security flaws pre-included.)
And even beyond that, it’s ultimately fruitless because Microsoft controls the API. What’s to stop them from adding PointlessCallForApril06() to Win32 in a system update, and then issuing a service pack to Office so that Word crashes intermittently when PointlessCallForApril06() is not found? (Certainly not antitrust law, absent an administration willing to enforce it.) Beyond that, the WINE project, which isn’t a threat to Microsoft, hasn’t been able to do this successfully; Apple probably has the resources and skills to do it successfully, but if they even hint that they will, Microsoft will go on the defensive.
And Apple will not be dependent on MS for a Mac version of Office.
I’d be sad to see the MacBU’s version of Office go, as I like their versions of Word, Excel, and Entourage better than the ugly Windows alternatives. But since the screenshots of Office 2007 I’ve seen show it has a total OS X ripoff interface, maybe it won’t be so bad to run it on a Mac. Maybe this is why MS has been so silent about when a Universal version of Office:Mac is coming out…perhaps it never will.
Maybe he’s got some points, but he is utterly confused over some of the technical issues:
• He is arguing that the Mach kernel has integer performance issues, but the issues that has been pointed to by Ars Technica that may give slow webserver and database server access is due to overhead in all BSD systems for process creation compared to Linux, in addition to contention for locking resources specifically in the XMU kernel (improved in 10.4). The tests he draws his conclusions on where also not compiled with Apple’s version of gcc. Finally, Oracle has shown very impressive database performance on the XServe, while MySQL has not.
• He talks about a new kernel should improve Windows performance in dual boot mode. Well, booting Windows standalone does not even involve the Mac kernel. It is never loaded!
• He also says “Same for Apple using Microsoft technology like that in Office X”. Well, Apple does not write Office for Mac OS X — Microsoft does. I would certainly hope they use Microsoft technology in their own products.
Finally, Microsoft has an ongoing issue with the EU where Microsoft is unable (unwilling) to produce documentation on their APIs to a standard that one can sensibly write code that interfaces with it. If the state of affairs are as shoddy as Microsoft gives the impression of, even Apple cannot reliably re-implement the full Windows API without having documentation that shows how things are supposed to work.
Jeff,
remember rosetta?
It could be possible that it’s designed to go both ways.
I don’t think the kernel would be intel only that’s universal but the ability to run windows apps will fall in rosetta.
Besides why would developers abandon the Mac if they OSX could run Windows apps?
I think that it would work in a positive way that a developer could write a program in one code and anyone could run. It would be a positive for the software developer and consumer that the developers will be able to make the software run more efficiently because the R&D isn’t need to support Windows and OSX. I think that Apple feels that developers will use their tools because they are simply better than anything that Microsoft has and their coding with some small tweaks will work with Apple Xcode.
This programing has been in beta for a while with one release … iTunes!
It’s also takes the war into Microsoft to where the consumer can choose what operating system that they would want to run. Security flawed Microsoft or Security driven Mac OSX. What ever programs these people have will work on both systems.
The idea that one universal code will work for all does sound very Jobish,
I find it hard to fathom that Apple would drop OS X after they have spent so much time and money on it and after Steve Jobs said at the end of January’s MacWorld, “Because it’s not about the software, it’s not about the hardware, it’s about the operating system.” OS X is only going forward. I think we will see Winblows virtualization in Leopard (hopefully, not just for Intel Macs, but I think that’s the way it will be) and a Windoze version of XCode – just click a button and your app can be compiled for either Windoze or OS X.
And I think MadMac got his comeuppance. I can’t find his post anywhere on here.
Dear Zach
You write, “Hey Spark-Eat It”
Eat what? Please explain. Do you have a complaint? If so, state it more clearly. I can’t see how anything I wrote would have provoked your response.
The car analogy – Apple is like Mercedes and Windows like GM, which would you rather own – is a flawed analogy. Why? Because whether you drive a GM or a Mercedes you can still make it through the drive through restaurant, you can still drive on the same highways and roads, you still have to obey the same speed limits, etc. Doesn’t matter what kind of car you drive. But, on the Internet we Mac users will be confronted with more and more “this feature requires Windows” messages unless Apple gets the Mac market share up significantly. It is a necessary evil otherwise we’ll all find ourselves using Windows more and more until we may as well just permanently boot our Intel Macs into Windows and call it done.