Leopard Recognizes Windows Executable Format, Virtualization in the Works? - MacRumors
Skip to Content

Leopard Recognizes Windows Executable Format, Virtualization in the Works?

An interesting observation was noted on the Wine mailing list. As it turns out, new in Leopard is the ability to load and understand Windows Portable Executable (PE) files which is the common format for Windows applications and libaries. Understandably, the author raises a number of questions about the discovery:

So this leads to the question. Whats going on? Is this a hold over from EFI which is PE by default? Why would the OS need to load the EFI files? Maybe just for easy of development and testing? Or is something else going on? Is Apple going to be adding a win32 compatibility layer to OS X? Is having a loader of any use to us?

This, of course, leads some to the most dramatic conclusion: that Apple may be integrating Windows virtualization into Mac OS X itself. Of course, rumors of this possibility had been circulating for the months prior to Leopard's official release.

One developer we had contacted about this finding thought it was very unlikely and felt that this parsing of PE files may simply be the product of Apple's ongoing work with Safari and iTunes for Windows. He also noted that simply parsing PE files is a far step from being able to actually run Windows applications.

Popular Stories

apple back to school sans airpods 2

Apple's 2026 Back to School Offer is Coming Soon

Sunday July 12, 2026 7:29 am PDT by
Apple's stores will be rolling out Back to School marketing materials this week, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. This suggests that the offer will begin in the U.S. in the next few days. Last year, college students and educational staff could receive a free accessory like AirPods 4 or an Apple Pencil Pro with the purchase of a qualifying Mac or iPad model. The Back to School offer is in...
Waze logo

5 New Waze Features Rolling Out Now: Here Are All the Details

Monday July 13, 2026 3:42 am PDT by
Google today announced that Waze is getting a handful of new features, including some Gemini-powered personalization enhancements for Conversational Reporting. Conversational Reporting already uses Gemini when users report traffic incidents like slowdowns, but now you can use it to suggest map updates like road closures or outdated addresses. Saying something like "The road is closed here"...
Mac Pro Feature Teal

Apple's M7 Ultra Chip Designed to Match a 2019 Mac Pro Feat

Sunday July 12, 2026 8:53 am PDT by
Apple's M7 Ultra chip coming in 2028 is designed to support up to 1.5TB of unified memory, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. However, whether such a configuration is offered may depend on the state of the ongoing memory chip shortage. In 2019, Apple released an Intel-based Mac Pro with up to 1.5TB RAM....