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Windows apps without Windows

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It used to be that running Windows programs on a Mac was a slow, painful process. There was only one option: running Virtual PC emulation software.

But with Apple Computer's shift to Intel chips, the pool of options has expanded considerably. For one, Apple has its own Boot Camp software, which lets Intel-based Macs boot up with either Windows or Mac OS X. Meanwhile, start-up Parallels has released software that lets the Microsoft operating system run in a separate virtual machine with only a slight loss in performance.

Soon there will be yet another option, which, unlike the current choices, doesn't even require a copy of Windows. A company called CodeWeavers is using an open-source technology called Wine to allow some Windows programs to run under Mac OS X.

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I've used Wine under Linux for some time, and although technically it will work under Mac OS X if you build it yourself, Codeweavers have done a great job of making it 'Just Work'. Good news!
 
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Geowge said:
That's awesome. If games ever work, i'm getting Wine. :D

Thats good that you pointed out games, because if they ever work on macs well then many more people well be attracted to macs. :miner:
 
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here come the viruses... great, now we all have to go out and buy antivirus software...

anyway, that'd be helpful for gaming.
 
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BlindingLights said:
here come the viruses... great, now we all have to go out and buy antivirus software...

anyway, that'd be helpful for gaming.
I am not saying that Macs can't get viruses...but why would this make it any more prone to a virus than it is now??
 
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For those that don't know, Wine runs under it's own little virtual environment. Only programs running within wine get to access as it if were a Windows drive, and anything bad that happens to it can be easily wiped out by simply removing that directory.

I've actually used it, on occasion, to find out just what nasty files and registry entries a trojen creates by backup up my .wine directory, running the trojan in wine, then doing a recursive diff on the directory. To remove the trojan, I just delete the infected directory.
 
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D3v1L80Y said:
I am not saying that Macs can't get viruses...but why would this make it any more prone to a virus than it is now??

oh, didn't understand the whole directory thing... i thought it would allow all .exe files to run...
 
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Wouldn't macs be less prone to viruses even if we used this thing came out because macs are Unix based and i have heard that they are a lot safer than the windows platform base.
 

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