Rosetta Translating Windows?

[Craigy]

Please excuse me if this has been asked before..

If Rosetta can translate PPC to Intel effectively, why can't it, in the (near!) future be upgraded to translate / install windows aps the same way, negating the need to wait a possibly very long time for Microsoft to bring out VPC 8 or to create a dual boot system that would possibly make it difficult to share data across the partitions?

 

[Eidorian]

The largest issue is the Windows API's. If you're running "VPC 8" then Microsoft gives you a copy of Windows and someway to run a Windows shell over Mac OS X or even booting ability.

Rosetta doesn't really matter here. It's just how Microsoft decides to integrate it into OS X.

 

[Craigy]

The largest issue is the Windows API's. If you're running "VPC 8" then Microsoft gives you a copy of Windows and someway to run a Windows shell over Mac OS X or even booting ability.

Rosetta doesn't really matter here. It's just how Microsoft decides to integrate it into OS X.

Is was wondering if Rosetta could 'sit under' windows and 'translate' BIOS / DOS etc to allow windows to run as 'an application'. I'm not very knowledgeable about the windows infracstructre, but it just seemed an outside possibility.

Oh well, the wait for VPC 8 begins... could be a long wait what do you think?

 

[yippy]

We are talking differnt technologies here. Rossetta is to translate PPC binaries to x86, it has nothing to do with operating systems. The hurtle to running Windows apps is that the libraries and APIs (code that the software borrows from the OS so it doesn't have to be included with it) isn't there in Mac OS X. Just like running windows apps on Linux. You don't need to translate anything, you just need the missing code more or less.

BTW this is in the works. A program called WINE exists for linux to run Windows apps and WINE is being ported to Mac OS X right now.