Windows apps cross over to the Mac

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Owners of Intel-based Macintosh computers are still waiting for versions of many of their favorite applications that are built for the new hardware. Although Apple's code translation technology is a marvel, it's no substitute for software that runs natively on the x86 platform. But Mac owners will soon have a new source of professional-grade, commercial software for their beloved machines. The catch is that the software was meant to run on Windows. Forget Boot Camp. Booting Windows on Apple hardware is an interesting sleight of hand, but this is different. What CodeWeavers is offering is the ability to actually run Windows applications from within Mac OS X. CodeWeavers' commercial product, CrossOver Office, is based on the open source Wine project, technology that has made it possible to run many Windows applications on Linux systems for almost 10 years. By early August, it will do the same for Mac OS X with CrossOver Mac. Earlier Macs could run Windows software only with the help of Virtual PC, a Microsoft product that completely emulates the x86 platform environment on Apple's PowerPC hardware.