"[The Windows API] is so deeply embedded in the source code of many Windows apps that there is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system instead.
ROFL
Like most things uttered by MS' forked tongue, it's a half-truth...
The point of an API is to provide a standard public interface wedge that an app can use to access the language, gui, and math run-time libraries (RTLs), as well as the operating system services. Swap out the wedge and its glue code and the app should run (+/- after recompile & relinking) quite well on another operating system. Note those two significant words: standard and public.
Digital used this swap-the-wedge concept quite well, back in the early 80s (pre-Mac OS) for their RSX-11 to VAX/VMS transition, then again in the 90s for their OpenVMS transition.
Metrowerks uses this concept in CodeWarrior. You use their API and they swap in the appropriate version of the PowerPlant RTL (they call it a framework) for the OS you're targetting.
Another example is Apple's CarbonLib extension for classic Mac OS apps and it's counterpart in Mac OS X.
So if a new wedge and glue can be written so easily, where is this lethergy coming from???? Simple: In the tradition of MS anti-trust, the APIs involved are neither standard nor public. There are secret APIs, with contractual pain of death and double-secret probation attached if you disclose them. So noone outside of MS can write a new wedge, and if you dare you'll feel the full weight of MS lawyers upon you...
- Dan.
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