I am experimenting with Bottles for an article right now, as it happens -- but no, it does not seem to me that Bottles is at all comparable to WinApps.
WinApps runs the apps on real native Windows in a VM, but integrates their UI with the host OS.
WINE does this anyway, and it's an inherent property of WINE because there is no host OS. WINE does some fakery and indirection to make Unix filesystems appear on drive letters and things, but the app is still executing on the host OS, just via a translation layer.
Bottles runs the apps on top of WINE, but maintains separate WINE instances for each app and allows different onces to have different auxiliary tools, such as games-compatibility libraries, different versions of WINE, etc.
Sigh I knew that. I just posted this in the wider context of running Windows-applications under Linux, no matter which way and how, because at the end of the day that's all that counts. Yah, well. Maybe not, because that WiNE approach could be seen as less ressource intensive, while full-VM feels rather bloated, though more stable.
And because it bubbled up instantly, having read about it before, right here on HN, just ...uhhhmmm...hours ago.
FWIW, I tested Bottles on 2 machines here, one with Ubuntu 22.04 and one with Ubuntu 24.04.
I could not get any app to install in Bottles that wouldn't run under bare WINE. Apart from a friendly GUI -- although it looks awful on any other desktop, like most Gtk 4 apps -- I can't see any benefit to it, TBH.
WinApps runs the apps on real native Windows in a VM, but integrates their UI with the host OS.
WINE does this anyway, and it's an inherent property of WINE because there is no host OS. WINE does some fakery and indirection to make Unix filesystems appear on drive letters and things, but the app is still executing on the host OS, just via a translation layer.
Bottles runs the apps on top of WINE, but maintains separate WINE instances for each app and allows different onces to have different auxiliary tools, such as games-compatibility libraries, different versions of WINE, etc.