Now That Vista Is the Past, Let's Look At The FutureNow That Vista Is the Past, Let's Look At The Future

One of the best things about the launch of Windows Vista -- finally -- is that it clears the decks. Now we can look past it to the really interesting operating systems coming in the future, like Apple's version of OS X that will natively run Windows XP applications. I swear I'm not making this up. But other people may be.People like Robert X. Cringely, for one. The host of PBS's NerdTV and online columnist earlier this year published a run of weekly columns on the subject of Apple's OS strategy post-Vista. Boot Camp had just been announced, so he couldn't take credit for predicting that one, and some of his forecasting is so far out there it sounds like science-fiction. But some of the other things he said in April have turned out to be pretty prescient. Like, Vista "will really be Windows XP SP4 with a new name" (there's room for argument, but I'd say the statement is covered by the Cringester's literary license), and "I predict that Apple will settle on 64-bit Intel processors ASAP" (a process that's well underway).

So what does Cringely prognosticate for the Mac crowd?

1. Vista on Macs (virtualized)
This is hardly big news -- except for the "virtualized" part. Apple has been working with Microsoft to make sure that Vista runs well on Mac hardware -- but only in a dual-boot scenario. Apple has consistently claimed it has no interest in virtualizing Microsoft OSes on Mac hardware -- most recently just this morning.

That's not fazed Cringely, who wrote in "Easy DOS It" that Vista "will have full OS virtualization so that both operating systems can run side-by-side and a user can cut and paste data from one to the other." That sounds a lot like Parallels' Desktop, and Cringley says something that is may have been a wild-eyed prediction in April but in December is beginning to sound like a draft press release: that maybe Apple should just buy Parallels, Inc..

There would be big advantages for users here, says Cringely: running Vista from a read-only partition on an OS X machine might be the safest, most stable way to use the OS, and could drive sales of Macs to corporations. If that sounds too strange, remember that Microsoft has already taken steps to profit from virtualization -- the Vista licenses allow only two versions of Vista, Business and Ultimate, to be run in a virtual machine -- and they retail for $299 and $399, respectively.

2. XP apps on Macs without XP
Cringely's speculations sound most like they've been herbally enhanced when he predicts that Leopard will run native Windows XP applications with no copy of XP installed on the machine at all -- no virtualization, no emulator software like Wine, but by implementing the Windows API directly in the OS.

Like Microsoft is going to let that happen, right? But Cringely says it might have to. Back in 1997, he says, Apple and Microsoft did a deal for a Mac version of Microsoft Office, that included a five-year patent cross-licensing agreement. XP was released in October 2001, before the agreement expired. "I'm told Apple has long had this running in the Cupertino lab -- Intel Macs running OS X while mixing Apple and XP applications," he writes. "This is not a guess or a rumor, this something that has been demonstrated and observed by people who have since reported to me."

XP doesn't have long to live. A year ago Microsoft was forced to extend mainstream support for XP Home and XP Pro because Vista was delayed. Now that Vista has shipped I'll bet Redmond would take back those extensions if it could. But for now XP is on mainstream support until 2008. But that's a long time in the software business. And when it comes to application compatibility Vista really is just XP SP4 with a new name. If there were millions of Macs running XP applications in 2008, I'm with Cringely -- the only application software that would suddenly stop supporting XP would be . . . Microsoft Office. And by 2008, that may not matter.

3. OS X on PCs
I like this one the best, because I've predicted it myself more than once, and I'm going to keep on predicting it until it comes true: Cringley says after Apple gets all its hardware to 64-bit Intel processors, it will "announce a product similar to Boot Camp to allow OS X to run on bog-standard 32-bit PC hardware, turning the Boot Camp relationship on its head and trying to sell $99 copies of OS X to 100 million or so Windows owners."

Would I like a version of OS X to install on my PC that will run all my Windows apps and free me from having to ever think about Vista again? Uh, let me think about it. OK, I've thought about it. Cash or credit card?