- The interface is that of the X-Window system, not the Macintosh. Hence even dialog boxes and file navigation options will appear and function differently.
- Each application must be ported seperately. Right now only Microsoft Word and Excel are available.
- No Macintosh services such as networking, Quicktime, sound and others are available for the application. Hence, don't look for a multimedia development package to be ported to Equal anytime soon.
- Since there is no Finder, CPU or operating system emulation, programs that use direct calls to any of these may not work. Obviously programs that make calls directly to the hardware will not work at all and will probably never be ported to Equal.
"Mac apps to find a new home on UNIX turd," Macweek, May 17, 1993
"Mac apps find home on UNIX," Macweek, January 1, 1993
"Mac also rises on Sun Workstations," Macweek, January 1, 1993
Macintosh Emulation on Unix Workstations
Marc Thacker CWIS Coordinator (thacker@unt.edu)
As Apple Computer makes moves
into the PowerPC
arena, one hears more talk about the future
of the Macintosh environment being available on more than one hardware
platform. Of course, Apple will ship PowerPC Macintosh computers,
running a version of Apple's System 7
operating system soon. However,
there is one other major market that Apple wants a share of: the UNIX
workstation market. To this end, Apple and other companies have made
moves and products to allow people with UNIX workstations to run
Macintosh applications on their machines. By allowing UNIX based
products to run Mac applications, Apple and other vendors hope to ensure
that the Macintosh marketplace will grow - and that it wouldn't depend
so much on hardware from one vendor, Mac.
This article covers three different methods of allowing Macintosh
applications to run on UNIX based machines. Technically there is a
fourth, Apple's own UNIX implementation called A/UX. This software
actually runs UNIX on top of existing Apple hardware with the regular
Macintosh System 7 running as a background process within it. However,
I wanted to focus on non-Apple hardware Unix-based machines. So, the
real question is "How can I get the Mac version of <fill in your
favorite application here> to run on my <name of some major
UNIX-based workstation?>" There are two current solutions and one
potential solution that are covered in this article.
Quorum Equal & Latitude
The approach taken by Quorum
has been to not worry about emulation a Macintosh, the Macintosh
operating system or even the Motorola
680X0 chip in the Mac; rather,
their software modifies existing off-the-shelf applications to run with
an X-Window user
interface. Their package,
Equal, is available for SPARC and Silicon
Graphics machines and allows particular Macintosh
applications to run in the UNIX operating system while using the host
machine's user interface via an X-Window. Hence, if you are running
Motif or Openlook on your
UNIX system, you would get
Mac Microsoft Word running with a Motif or OpenLook interface.
This program spawns most likely from their work on a companion
product known as Latitude. This is a developer's tool that allows
MAcintosh applications to be compiled to run on UNIX systems and use the
X-Window user interface. Because the program is not running under any
sort of Macintosh emulation mode, there are four things that limit
Equal's success:
Equal and
Latitude will be interesting to watch, but I doubt that they will
capture any of the real market that Apple is shooting for with the Mac
on UNIX goals. For now, if you really need to run the Mac version of
Microsoft Word and Excel, then you could consider Equal. But, with
other alternatives available, you may not want to.
Andataco Liken
Liken is a program written to be a more general Macintosh emulation
package. It does have ots own drawbacks however. Liken emulates a
System 6.0.7 system, monochrome Macintosh with sparse networking or
floppy disk capability. It is available for Sun SPARC and HP RISC
machines and requires at least 16 Meg of RAM (normally not a problem on
UNIX machines). It does offer the advantage that the Macintosh
look-and-feel is preserved within an X-Window on the UNIX host.
The program runs the Macintosh operating system (one that is
basically over two years out-of-date) withing an X-Window on the UNIX
host. This means that the entire Mac look-and-feel is preserved because
programs think they are running on a Macintosh. As a result,
applications do not need recompilation to run in Liken. It is worth
noting that there is no emulation of any particular Motorola CPU in
Liken, just emulation of the operation system. Hence, programs making
calls to specific chips on the Mac motherboard, or those violating
Apple's programming rules (even some of Apple's do this) will probably
not work under Liken.
So far, it doesn't sound to bad, or does it? There are several key
items to consider before rushing out and purchasing Liken. Since Apple
did strange things to get the once-common 800K format Liken doesn't
solve this problem either, allowing support only for whatever the host
UNIX machine has a floppy drive; generally this is a 1.44 Meg floppy.
This means that all of the software you get from manufacturers that
ships on 800K floppies will be unusable in Liken.
Also, Liken only supports text cut-and-paste and a monochrome Mac
screen. So, you can have millions of colors available to you on your
UNIX machine and only have a black-and-white Macintosh screen, and you
will only be able to cut-and-paste test strings between your other
X-Window sessions and the Liken session.
Since only the single-appliction mode of System 6.0.7 is supported,
you can not run more than one Mac program at once, unless you fire up
another copy of Liken in the background on your UNIX host (basicallythen
emulating two or more Macintosh systems).
The "virtual Mac" can access any file system that the UNIX system
can, but Appletalk support is limited to only a bare handful of
applications on the Macintosh side (mainly E-mail programs at this
point. So, don't count on being able to access other Appleshare/Netware
file servers with Liken. Speaking of networking, there is also no
support for serial ports, so your Mac applications can not access a
modem or other device normally available.
Oh yeah, speed. Liken does a reasonable job of executing, but even
on a fairly wekk equipped UNIX host, it is very likely that a mid-range
Macintosh will outperform Liken. Given the amount of emulation that
Liken is doing, this is still fairly respectable.
The most interesting part of Liken is that it is closest to the way
that Apple wants to do emulation of the Macintosh on Unix. It is also
the closest in concept to a product from Insignia called SoftPC or
SoftWindows, in
which an MS-DOS compatible is completely emulated on a
UNIX (or Macintosh) machine. Insignia went one step further than just
emulating the operating system as their software emulates the actual
hardware as well and has proven to be very bulletproof as a result.
Andataco has promised a System 7 version of Liken, but no official word
has been given concerning color or specific Motorola CPU emulation.
Apple Services for Open Systems
Vaporware. Yep, all products are as perfect as vaporware. This
suite of product however, does indeed promise to do something not really
done before - allow Macintosh applications to run at near native speeds
on UNIX hosts without recompilation. They also promise one other thing:
an officially supported Apple method of moving to open systems
standards with the Macintosh environment.
Apple has been working to allow the Finder and other off-the-shelf
applications to run under IBM's AIX
UNIX operating system since they
announced the joint IBM-Apple-Motorola PowerPC project in October 1991.
From this, it is believed, that Apple has rewritten major portions of
the Macintosh operating system and Toolbox (the "look-and-feel" portion
of the Mac) into a portable form allowing it to be compiled onto a
variety of UNIX host machines. Since the OS and Toolbox would actually
be UNIX applications, native UNIX systems to handle input/output and
graphics drawing would be used when a Mac application calls for them.
So, the speed of software running in this environment should be fast as
well
Officially, Apple has announced that it will ship native versions of
the Macintosh Toolbox and A.P.I. (Applications Programmer Interface) for
IBM's AIX, Sun's Solaris, Hewlett Packard's
HPUX and Univell's
UNIXware
(UNIX on
Apple's first real test of this idea is with PowerOpen, the joint
UNIX operating environment from Apple and IBM. Here, Apple is
integrating its own UNIX implementation, A/UX with IBM's AIX UNIX onto
the PowerPC (and other) CPU. PowerOpen will offer the ability to run
"personalities" of different systems, including the Macintosh.
Originlly, Apple said that the Mac personality would include a Motorola
68040 emulator, and emulated versions of the Mcintosh Toolbox and ROMs.
This was to be accomplished using a binary translator package known as
FlashPort, which translates a Macintosh program directly to a UNIX
executable program. Since the initial announcement, Apple has since
backed away from this method and has gone with the more reliable
alternative of actually recompiling the Toolbox and Finder to run as
UNIX applications.
So, when can we see something? Remember that word "vaporware"?
Apple originally said they would have something for the Sun SPARCstation
machines by the end of 1993. Well, I haven't seen anything, have you?
Rumor has it that first quarter 1994 is the new deadline for having
something available. Isn't it curious that this would happen to
coincide with the introduction of the PowerPC Macintoshes? I would not
be too surprised to see the PowerOpen portion of the project on schedule
with something released by then as well. PowerOpen promises to do a
variety of things as well, including running multiple "personalities" on
multiple hardware platforms.
Does a Solution Exist?
If you need to run a variety of Macintosh applications today on your
UNIX workstation and you don't mind putting up with some limitations,
Liken is probably your best choice. If you have a Mac on your desk and
you just need to run UNIX, this article was not the one that you should
have been reading! There are at least two good solutions to that
problem as well (for later articles of course!) The wise buyer will
adopt a wait-and-see attitude for this particular subject. Apple is
making major noise about wanting to be an open company. An official
Apple solution to the problem of the Mac on UNIX will come, but who
really knows what form it will take?
References
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