NZMac.com - Supporting the New Zealand Mac community

Interesting read....
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/11/30/uncovered-evidence-that-mac-os-x-could-run- windows-apps-soon

Phil

Would be good to see, even though it might mean some software houses choose not to release Mac versions of their software which would be a shame.

It might seem that way but technically it could be a good thing.

Supporting multiple platforms isn't that good of a thing but if the Mac could run Windows apps and do so better than Windows can imagine the huge selling point that would become.

Think about it, the developers make one app and because they're not tying up resources they could make it work flawlessly. We simply buy that one app and run it with no problems.

Win win for everyone. We get good apps and the developers get huge selling points. Apple gets major sales because now there's no reason NOT to by a Mac. The only losers in the game is Microsoft but considering no one really cares about them then I guess it's boo hoo for them.

It could prove to be more hassle, or risk, for Apple than it's worth though couldn't it.

I mean, they would have to be able to let any application run, but stop malware from running. That's a very big ask. I mean, it's something Microsoft haven't been able to do!

Also, I would much rather dual boot or use virtualisation than sacrifice performance of OS X, which I fear this could do. Loosing performance from the Windows applications would be far better in my opinion. After all, that would be another reason to write a native Mac version.

Malware is a problem on both Mac and PC. Viruses are technically the bigger issue only not.

Running a Windows app on Mac isn't really going to open the Mac up to a whole heap of viruses. Mac OS X is designed differently to Windows. It's technically impossible for a Windows virus to infect a Mac even if you are running natively. For a start ActiveX isn't installed then you have to factor in permissions to areas where even a System Admin doesn't have access to. Wine has been around for years and as far as I'm aware there has been no problems with viruses on Linux machines running Windows apps under Wine. The worst we could expect would be Word and Excel viruses.

As for performance hits I don't understand where you'd get this idea. Wine doesn't have a performance hit and in some cases can actually run Windows apps better than Windows. The reason for this has to do with the APIs in Wine being better coded while still maintaining compatibility. Essentially Windows is no where to be found. It's a set of APIs that mimick Windows APIs but redirects everything to system APIs so technically if the APIs are made by Apple then a Windows app would have more of a Mac feel. You would sacrifice more performance using virtualisation than you ever would with Wine or whatever Apple might be using and you would open yourself up to more viruses by dual-booting (although these could never affect the Mac side.

lowededwookie wrote:
Malware is a problem on both Mac and PC. Viruses are technically the bigger issue only not.

Firstly, what does "Viruses are technically the bigger issue only not" mean exactly?

Bigger issue than what? Malware? They are malware.

I don't agree that "Malware is a problem on both Mac and PC". Whilst there is malware for both platforms, I certainly wouldn't consider it a 'problem' on Mac. The only malware on Mac are Trojans, which rely on dumb users. No Worms or Viruses, like there are for PC.

lowededwookie wrote:
Running a Windows app on Mac isn't really going to open the Mac up to a whole heap of viruses.

Why not exactly? A virus is, after-all, simply a Windows application.

lowededwookie wrote:
Mac OS X is designed differently to Windows. It's technically impossible for a Windows virus to infect a Mac even if you are running natively.

Yeah of course it is. At the moment, because it's impossible for any Windows application to run without additional software. Let Windows applications run, and you've got to think about how you are going to stop the malware from running.

lowededwookie wrote:
For a start ActiveX isn't installed then you have to factor in permissions to areas where even a System Admin doesn't have access to.

Again, of course it isn't (at the moment). Let a user install/run windows programs, and you can be certain that some will want Internet Explorer (I know I would run it), and it's inherent security issues.

As for permissions, that shouldn't be an issue. What areas where you thinking of? The only areas malware would really be concerned with are the registry, the user directory and the system directory. All of which the Windows applications would have to be given access to (they just wouldn't run without it!).

lowededwookie wrote:
Wine has been around for years and as far as I'm aware there has been no problems with viruses on Linux machines running Windows apps under Wine. The worst we could expect would be Word and Excel viruses.

Erm ... no. Some (at the moment very few) viruses run on Wine. As Wine gets better, more Windows malware will be able to run.
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2116150/linux-experts-wine-virus

lowededwookie wrote:
As for performance hits I don't understand where you'd get this idea. Wine doesn't have a performance hit and in some cases can actually run Windows apps better than Windows. The reason for this has to do with the APIs in Wine being better coded while still maintaining compatibility. Essentially Windows is no where to be found. It's a set of APIs that mimick Windows APIs but redirects everything to system APIs so technically if the APIs are made by Apple then a Windows app would have more of a Mac feel. You would sacrifice more performance using virtualisation than you ever would with Wine or whatever Apple might be using and you would open yourself up to more viruses by dual-booting (although these could never affect the Mac side.

If you read my post I was talking about OS X, not the Windows apps in question.

There is no doubt that having an additional "compatability layer" running on a machine will use system resources, the question is how much. As I stated in my post, I would rather sacrifice the performance of the Windows programs than to have a big, clunky, memory hogging, CPU hogging monster of a service (or ten! ) running.

There's a few things wrong with your post. Firstly you confuse malware with viruses. These are actually two DIFFERENT things. A virus is an application that has been specifically designed to perform a function. Malware is a malformed file that allows a system to be exploited but using flaws in other applications, for example the iPhone hack is a malformed TIFF file.

Secondly I didn't say a virus can't be run but that even by running Windows apps you're not OPEN to viruses. Using that article that you supplied I'll prove this:

However, it has been noted that because of the way Wine is constructed, Sir Cam is unable to create the relevant registry entries to make itself relaunch at boot. And for users of Wine without a Windows mail client installed, the virus is unable to mail itself out to names in the address book.

One Wine user commented: "The effect was that Sir Cam was exposed but not functional, and I was able to explore its code without fear. There were no registries to infect, no exchange list to exploit, and the 'hidden' Trojans were easily seen and removed. Sir Cam is totally harmless on Linux under Wine."
Bold mine

As you can see, the virus can be run but it is harmless. Even with Active-X installed you cannot infect your Mac with a virus.

Nick Jennings wrote:
If you read my post I was talking about OS X, not the Windows apps in question.
So was I. There is no performance hit on Mac OS X from running Windows apps if the APIs are developed properly. Wine does not emulate Windows it mimics the Windows APIs fooling the app to think it is running on Windows but is in fact running through the system's native APIs. Where currently Mac OS X takes a slight hit is the fact that Wine uses GTK which is not part of Mac OS X so there is a need for X11 to be installed which is slow. This is still faster than running Windows apps in Parallels or VMWare.

lowededwookie wrote:
There's a few things wrong with your post. Firstly you confuse malware with viruses. These are actually two DIFFERENT things.
No they aren't. Malware is a general term meaning "malicious software". A virus is one class of malware. Others include trojan horses, worms and spyware.

Malware is a superset of viruses, i.e. all viruses are malware, but not all malware is a virus.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malware for a reasonable definition of malware.

A virus is an application that has been specifically designed to perform a function.
A virus is malware which is designed to infect other software or data files and to reproduce, spreading itself to other computers. It may spread through networks or by physically copying infected files to other computers.

A worm is similar, but is a self-contained application rather than infecting other applications. It is typically spread through networks.

A trojan horse is malware which does something bad (deliberately) while pretending to serve some useful function. It usually relies on tricking a human into running it.

Some malware combines aspects of all of the above.

Malware is a malformed file that allows a system to be exploited but using flaws in other applications, for example the iPhone hack is a malformed TIFF file.
If you had a document which exploited a security hole in an existing application or system component, that would probably be classed as a trojan horse, if it does something bad without the knowledge of the person opening the document.

The iPhone hack isn't malware at all (except from Apple's point of view) - the user deliberately chose to display a malformed TIFF file so they could jailbreak their iPhone and install other software on it. I'm not sure what you'd call that other than a hack or exploit.

lowededwookie wrote:
you confuse malware with viruses. These are actually two DIFFERENT things. A virus is an application that has been specifically designed to perform a function. Malware is a malformed file that allows a system to be exploited but using flaws in other applications, for example the iPhone hack is a malformed TIFF file.

No, that's wrong.

Wikipedia, Webopedia, and countless definitions on Google seem to agree that a virus is malware.

lowededwookie wrote:
Secondly I didn't say a virus can't be run but that even by running Windows apps you're not OPEN to viruses. Using that article that you supplied I'll prove this:

However, it has been noted that because of the way Wine is constructed, Sir Cam is unable to create the relevant registry entries to make itself relaunch at boot. And for users of Wine without a Windows mail client installed, the virus is unable to mail itself out to names in the address book.

One Wine user commented: "The effect was that Sir Cam was exposed but not functional, and I was able to explore its code without fear. There were no registries to infect, no exchange list to exploit, and the 'hidden' Trojans were easily seen and removed. Sir Cam is totally harmless on Linux under Wine."
Bold mine

As you can see, the virus can be run but itf is harmless. Even with Active-X installed you cannot infect your Mac with a virus.

Yeah, as Wine stands you can't. That's because Wine isn't a perfect product. There are plenty of applications that don't run on Wine, and a whole load that do run, don't run as well as they could (much like the malware above).

As Wine is improved, compatibility will be improved, and the Windows applications we know and love will work better, but alas, so will the malware.

I guess we're both wrong:
http://www.malwarehelp.org/know-about-malware.html
What is Malware, Malware -short for MALicious softWARE- is a term used to broadly classify a form of software which is installed in a computer system mostly without the owners permission with malicious intentions. It includes Trojans, viruses, key loggers, malicious active content, rogue programs and dialers among others.
Malware is not a virus but a virus is malware. Semantics eh?

I'm not sure you fully understand how Wine works because it doesn't matter if Wine becomes so awesome it's the equivalent to Windows because Wine is not an OS. Wine uses the OS's APIs to emulate the Windows ones.

For example, the Windows menus (File Edit View...) are parsed to say Mac OS X's menus so they would appear on the Menubar as opposed to in the window.

Because Mac OS X and GTK don't have the inherent security problems of the Windows APIs then the system cannot be open to viruses and spyware. Yes they can be run but without things like ActiveX you can't install a virus just by opening an e-mail or viewing a webpage. It's possible to redirect ActiveX calls to say AppleScript or whatever scripting language Linux uses but these are so secure that anything untoward cannot be achieved.

And this is the point. Yes a virus can be executed but NO a system is not open to viruses. The OS that Wine or whatever is running on simply will not permit the virus to do anything but run.

You are at more risk running Windows natively or via Parallels or VMWare than you are running Wine/Crossover or whatever Apple has up its sleeve.