Some economic analysis of Apple's move to x86

[Mike Hearn]

On Thu, 09 Jun 2005 11:59:59 -0700, Scott Ritchie wrote:
> In short, Apple's move is nothing short of a tremendous potential boon.

The alternative analysis is that it's bad, as it'll mean people porting
their apps from Win32 to the Mac APIs using Wine, and not Linux. Porting
proprietary apps from one proprietary platform to another is sorta not the
point in my view. Wine isn't an end, in other words - it's a means.

By the way, this already happens. I've worked with one small game
publisher who porting their Windows app to Linux first, but never released
it, and then onto the Mac which was released. This is entirely without
Wines intervention but it does reveal a problem we have in the community.
We don't want this to get any worse than it already is.

Anyway. All this is being/has been discussed inside Codeweavers. I am
resigned to being basically the only one who doesn't care and/or thinks
it's bad. We'll see where this goes.

thanks -mike