I’ve talked a lot recently about running Windows on Apple’s new Intel-based Macs. I’ve mentioned Apple’s Boot Camp “dual booting” option, and Parallels’ “Windows in a window” technique. Let’s take it a step further.

Since Microsoft’s Windows is used on over 80% of all computers, it follows that the vast majority of software is written almost exclusively for Windows.

We Mac users have it pretty good, however, as a lot of the software written for Windows is also written to run on Macs. Microsoft is the second largest developer of software for the Mac (after Apple, of course) due in large part to Microsoft Office. Depending on where the Office for Mac and Office for Windows development cycles are in relation to each other, the Mac version sometimes “leapfrogs” the Windows version in terms of new features. Other major software applications that are co-developed for the Mac and Windows include Adobe’s Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.), Quicken and QuickBooks, browsers like Firefox, RealPlayer, Apple’s iTunes, and some (but certainly not all) high-end computer games.

Such is not the case with Linux, an operating system with a small but loyal and fervent following (that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?). Microsoft, for example, doesn’t make MS Office for Linux, in part because Linux competes more directly in the enterprise marketplace than the Mac platform does.

Although there is some terrific software written for Linux (like GIMP, a Photoshop-like image editing application), most mainstream software developers shy away from spending the time and money on Linux versions of their wares. To provide Linux users with access to mainstream software, a group of software engineers developed Wine.

Wine (which actually stands for “Wine Is Not an Emulator”) is a free, open source implementation of the Windows API that runs on top of UNIX-based operating systems like Linux running on Intel and AMD x86 processors. Basically, Wine lets Linux users run Windows applications like Office, Quicken, Photoshop, Windows Media Player, etc. without having Windows installed at all.

So what does this have to do with the Mac? Remember that Mac OS X is built on top of UNIX, and that Macs now run on Intel processors? You’re catching on, I can tell.

Very soon, Wine for Mac OS X will be released. No required Windows installation (with all the nasty stuff that entails), just Windows programs running alongside Mac programs.

Things are starting to get interesting, don’t you think?

© 2006 Peter F. Zimowski