Uncovered: Mac OS X could run Windows apps soon
In the above titled article ArsTechnica points out that there is an undocumented loader in Leopard for Portable Executables. Portable Executables is a type of file used in 32-bit and 64 bit versions of Windows.
David Chartier in this article talks about a discussion going on in the Wine mailing list. Wine is an open source project to allow Macs OS to run Windows based programs without actually having Windows running.
The discussion began with a mailing list message called Interesting Behavior of OS X, in which Steven Edwards described the discovery that Leopard apparently contains an undocumented loader for Portable Executables as mentioned above. However after poking around in Leopard, he found that Leopard's own loader tries to find Windows DLL files when attempting to load a Windows binary.
Of course, there is more in the article, but let the speculation begin. For example, do we really need Boot Camp? Or other virtual software? Or is it just something leftover from an OpenStep project?
See the article at arstechnica.com.
