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Re: Can Quix save Apple?



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you speak of installing system 7.5 in faq on future versions of =

executor. For which release n=B0 is this planned?
About future release 2, will it support extensions system?
When do you plan to release version 2 and what capabilities will it have?

Florent
----------
De: "Clifford T. Matthews"  <ctm@ardi.com>
A:  <executor@ardi.com>
Objet: Re: Can Quix save Apple?
Date: vendredi 26 janvier 1996 03:33

>>>>> "Kevin" =3D=3D Kevin Hayes <hayes@ug.cs.dal.ca> writes:
In article <1996Jan24.154317.45212@ac.dal.ca> hayes@ug.cs.dal.ca (Kevin =

Hayes) writes:

    >>  Personally, I think there are irreversible aspects of such a
    >> decision, because once the System 7 brought to Intel machines,
    >> the customer will no more rely on Apple's hardware, but on the
    >> other side, is not too much risky a move, becaus of the
    >> possibility to have the Copland running only on true Macs, or
    >> other similar arrangements.
    >>

    Kevin> MacOS is a stupid idea on Wintel machines - it'd be slower
    Kevin> and there would be mountains of work involved to getting it
    Kevin> to run on all Wintel systems - you're forgetting in the
    Kevin> Wintel world there's no such thing as standards.

MacOS on PC hardware could run very fast via dynamic recompilation*
and could run blazingly fast if compiler tools were available** to
allow CPU intensive routines to be compiled into 80x86 code by the
software author.

There are many standards in the PC world that would be very useful to
a port of MacOS to PCs, for instance the VESA 2 extensions.

We wrote Executor, a Macintosh emulator that allows PCs to run much
68k Macintosh software, and it does so faster on entry level Pentiums
than any 68k based Macintosh Apple ever released.

We did this all without any help from Apple and we do not use any of
Apple's ROMs or System file, nor have we disassembled any of Apple's
ROM or System file.  By doing it this way we have not been able to
support all of System 7, much less support post System 7 features like
QuickTime.  In addition, there are still enough compatbility problems
that many programs do not work.  *However*, if we could license System
7.5, we could fairly easily get a very large degree of compatibility,
since we'd be using Apple's code with all its quirks, rather than our
rewrite from incomplete and inaccurate documentation.

See http://www.ardi.com for more information about Executor.
There is also an Executor newsgroup:  comp.emulators.mac.executor.

We continue on a day to day basis assuming that Apple is not
interested in embracing our technology, and that is their decision,
but MacOS 7.5 could run very quickly indeed on PCs.

What we have done is *much* more difficult than what QUIX has done,
and infinitely more useful if Apple ever wants to reward their
software developers and potentially take on Microsoft on Intel based
PC hardware.

Intel is not the enemy.

--Cliff
ctm@ardi.com

__________________
*We've done this already.
**We will do this in '96