CodeWeavers' CrossOver environment for the Mac: Windows apps without Windows' gaps
For those of you not familiar with CodeWeavers, CodeWeavers produces products based upon the open-source WINE environment (WINE standing for WINE Is Not an Emulator) that puts a Windows environment on Linux or now the Mac without ever loading a copy of Windows. How does it do this? It translates every Windows application interface, both documented and undocumented, into Linux or MacOS system calls. And if you just heard a sound, that was the sound of millions of programmers screaming, "Ouch! That's insanely hard!"
Blackfriars had the opportunity to sit down with Jeremy White, CEO and President of CodeWeavers to talk about their new product, CrossOver for the Mac. Jeremy noted, "We’ve made a living selling CrossOver to the Linux world and we love those customers. But having the Intel Mac market adds three times the potential customers for our products. What is great about it is that 90% of the work that we do works for both platforms, so everyone benefits, both Mac and Linux users."
We then moved on to talk about the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 release, Leopard. Jeremy said, "We're pretty excited about Leopard -- kind of. See, [Mac OS X 10.4] Tiger has a really nasty bug that keeps us from doing some low level stuff in a fast way. Leopard fixes that. The only problem: Leopard introduces another nasty bug that we have to work around a different way. Oh well."
Regarding the Mac platform overall, Jeremy added, "We’re very excited because if we can get extra support in the Mac market, we can get more and more compatibility on all platforms. We still run those old Windows 95 binaries. We may eventually reach the point where we run more apps than Vista does. And that would be interesting. And I’m excited that there are so many notebooks that are Macs. I’m a geek, and I like lots of choices."
I did ask one technical question that I thought might be of interest to readers: does CrossOver introduce any security vulnerabilities because of its Windows environment? In other words, can Windows compatibility be too much of a good thing? Jeremy countered, "Only the application vulnerabilities are of interest, since we don't have a Windows kernel, so we don't have Windows kernel vulnerabilities. But the application vulnerabilities are there, so we do provide mechanisms within CrossOver to allow you to run antivirus programs. And you don’t want to run Internet Explorer on Crossover because of all the application vulnerabilities there. It’s a bad idea. Word, for example, has a zero day exploit that hasn’t been fixed by Microsoft, but we have exactly zero reports of viral infections. And if there were an infection, it would only affect that environment and application, so it would be easy to clean."
And finally, what about competing products like Parallels and VMWare? Jeremy noted, "Look, if you really want to run Windows in its native form, those are great products. But at some point, you have to decide: would you rather send your money to Redmond for Windows licenses or to us? Obviously, we'd rather you sent it to us, but more importantly, you actually have a choice. I like lots of choices."
Blackfriars had the opportunity to sit down with Jeremy White, CEO and President of CodeWeavers to talk about their new product, CrossOver for the Mac. Jeremy noted, "We’ve made a living selling CrossOver to the Linux world and we love those customers. But having the Intel Mac market adds three times the potential customers for our products. What is great about it is that 90% of the work that we do works for both platforms, so everyone benefits, both Mac and Linux users."
We then moved on to talk about the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 release, Leopard. Jeremy said, "We're pretty excited about Leopard -- kind of. See, [Mac OS X 10.4] Tiger has a really nasty bug that keeps us from doing some low level stuff in a fast way. Leopard fixes that. The only problem: Leopard introduces another nasty bug that we have to work around a different way. Oh well."
Regarding the Mac platform overall, Jeremy added, "We’re very excited because if we can get extra support in the Mac market, we can get more and more compatibility on all platforms. We still run those old Windows 95 binaries. We may eventually reach the point where we run more apps than Vista does. And that would be interesting. And I’m excited that there are so many notebooks that are Macs. I’m a geek, and I like lots of choices."
I did ask one technical question that I thought might be of interest to readers: does CrossOver introduce any security vulnerabilities because of its Windows environment? In other words, can Windows compatibility be too much of a good thing? Jeremy countered, "Only the application vulnerabilities are of interest, since we don't have a Windows kernel, so we don't have Windows kernel vulnerabilities. But the application vulnerabilities are there, so we do provide mechanisms within CrossOver to allow you to run antivirus programs. And you don’t want to run Internet Explorer on Crossover because of all the application vulnerabilities there. It’s a bad idea. Word, for example, has a zero day exploit that hasn’t been fixed by Microsoft, but we have exactly zero reports of viral infections. And if there were an infection, it would only affect that environment and application, so it would be easy to clean."
And finally, what about competing products like Parallels and VMWare? Jeremy noted, "Look, if you really want to run Windows in its native form, those are great products. But at some point, you have to decide: would you rather send your money to Redmond for Windows licenses or to us? Obviously, we'd rather you sent it to us, but more importantly, you actually have a choice. I like lots of choices."
Technorati Tags: Apple, CodeWeavers, CrossOver, Jeremy White, Macintosh, Parallels, VMWare, Windows, WINE
posted by Carl Howe at
12:09 PM
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