First of all, the position against which the author argues is a \"straw man\". No-one is seriously proposing that Apple support the entire \"Windows API\" (whatever that is) but merely enough of it to allow popular applications to work.
Having done this, Mac OS will become a legitimate target platform for Windows developers; i.e. they can figure out what doesn't work on Mac OS X and then either lobby Apple to fix it, or work around the problem themselves -- much as they would for different versions of Windows. Chances are, there will be more potential Mac OS X customers than, say, Windows 98 customers. It's not as if even Microsoft has a version of Windows that is compatible with every piece of software ever written for Windows.
Next, the author claims that the reasoning behind this is akin to another myth (which he calls the \"copy and paste os\" myth). This is despite the fact that the kind of product under discussion has been developed as a portable Linux/UNIX application. It probably is very hard to rip Aqua off of Darwin and plant it on some random microkernel, but this is scarcely the same as taking a piece of software that currently works under a variety of flavors of UNIX and port it to another flavor of UNIX in userland.
Finally, most proponents of this idea are not proposing Apple do all this work itself, but simply leverage the work already done by others, which has concentrated on allowing popular office software and games to work.","$updatedAt":"2024-06-05T10:51:20.433+00:00",path:"the-red-box-myth-revisited",_created:"2024-07-09T20:34:12.531Z",id:"49",_modified:"2024-07-09T20:34:12.531Z","$id":"49",_path:"post/path=the-red-box-myth-revisited"}}