Filed under: Apple Corporate, Software
Microsoft: "Still discussing" Virtual PC for Intel Macs
Windows is a
necessary evil for many people in the corporate world, but those of us lucky enough to be able to use Macs at work have
been able to get away with running Virtual PC (VPC), which runs
the Windows OS in emulation. But will Microsoft continue to develop VPC for the new Intel Macs? According to MacMinute, the jury is still out. In a statement
issued earlier today, Microsoft said,"The Mac BU recognizes the need for the product and believes it is the best virtualization solution for PowerPC users, so it is committed to providing Virtual PC to new and existing PowerPC customers. However, Microsoft is still discussing with Apple the feasibility of bringing Virtual PC for Mac to Intel-based Macs in the future and has not made any announcements about if/how the product might work on the new machines."
Keep your fingers crossed (I think, right?). You wouldn't want to give up your Mac at work.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
tyler said 9:43PM on 1-18-2006
VPC is junk, on an 1ghz ibook with 512 ram, it works so slowly, its not feasible. Anyone else agree?
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zadig said 9:51PM on 1-18-2006
tyler, you're missing the point, I think. VPC running on Intel Macs would, in theory, be screamingly fast. VPC running on G5 chips has to *emulate* Intel chips, which is very slow. VPC running on Intel wouldn't have to emulate Intel... it could run it all natively. Very fast. Very, very fast.
Other products (Bochs, Qemu) may be transferred to Intel, with similar results, but VPC has always been the most polished solution out there. It would be a shame, but not a tragedy, if they didn't port VPC.
Running Windows software on a native processor on Macs would mean that, at the office, you could run a Mac and still run that one or two vital Windows-based apps you can't live without. I hope it happens soon.
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Ralph Daily said 10:00PM on 1-18-2006
I have a couple of Windows apps I have to run occaisionally and VPC is a slow but adequate and fairly elegant solution on a faster G4 or a G5. I very much hope Apple and the MBU can work out a solution for the Intel world that allows seamless printing, internet access, and dragging between OSX and Windows on the same machine.
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nosidam said 10:01PM on 1-18-2006
I'm not sure it makes sense business wise for MS to make it for Intel. Vista will be able to be installed and dual-booted on the Intel Macs (I don't think anyone has gotten XP to run due to incompatible BIOS). A user would have to buy the license for Vista and pay the cost of VPC when they could just buy Vista by itself and dual-boot. MS has to think about whether people will pay for the convenience of launching a virtual machine inside of OS X when it will almost certainly run better when natively run.
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apainter said 10:03PM on 1-18-2006
VPC for the PC is fast and very usable. I can have several virtual machines running at the same time without issue or major slowdown. Virtualized Windows on the Intel Mac would be so slick compared to the cluggy way it runs on PPC machines.
Microsoft would be very smart (or very stupid) to develop a new VPC, it would get sales (or kill windows machine sales once very one learned out great it worked and stopped buying PC machines).
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James Webster said 10:05PM on 1-18-2006
Frankly, I think people should forget about Microsoft Virtual PC and start hoping that VMware have something in the works. Considering that their product is already available for both Windows and Linux its safe to say that it is already somewhat portable. Its just up to Vmware to realise there is a market for their product on OS X! A version of the free VMware player for Mac would truly rock and satisfy most people's desire for Windows apps (games excepted).
Everyone wanting to dual-boot Vista, XP or whatever on an Intel Mac should really get their brain examined...
virtualization is where the action is at!
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Michael said 10:06PM on 1-18-2006
VPC is unsuable on PPC, but the whole point of this article is that on Intel it will be a different story. You will be able to run Windows in a window almost as fast as it would run if you actually booted it off the hard drive. It will be VERY useable.
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Guillermo said 10:06PM on 1-18-2006
I had to use Visual Studio and SQL Server for some university projects and I did it using VPC and Win 2000. It was slow, but usable. I have a 1.5GHz Powerbook with 1.25GB RAM.
I hope they release an Intel version. After reading Ars Technica's review of the iMac, I think it's gonna be easier to run Windows using VPC than dual-booting OSX and Windows.
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drebes said 10:06PM on 1-18-2006
Altough every copy of Intel VirtualPC sold would be a copy of Windows sold, every user of such system would also be running MacOS, and in doing so being able to compare MacOS to Windows, which could help the switch. New users would use Intel VirtualPC as a buffer to using Mac as its new platform. The user would be able to run Windows in (almost) full speed (minor performance penalty from hardware virtualization) using it as a safe device, but would probably be greatly satisfied with its Mac and MacOS. In the future, in his next computer, he would feel much more comfortable in chosing a Mac again, and if enough of its applications are available in native MacOS versions, he would dump VirtualPC. One new Mac only user, one less Windows only user.
VirtualPC makes sense with the performance penalty due to emulation ("you see, this Mac computers are sloooow"), but are too much a risk when can give you decent performance.
The good perspective is that creating a virtualization only software (as opposed to an emulation package) may be much simpler (for one thing, Core Duos have some nice hardware virtualization features previously found only on server CPUs), and many more companies may see this as a potential market. Anyone has doubt that VMWare is probably developing a MacOS X virtualization software as I write this?
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Jeff said 10:06PM on 1-18-2006
I use VPC because my university requires the use of some Windows-only video CD's. It is slow and clunky, but it is usable and gets the job done. I hate using Windows with a passion but I do hope that Microsoft continues to develop VPC for those of us that are in this sort of a situation. If they don't, you can be sure that someone else will.
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Michael Hyatt said 10:15PM on 1-18-2006
I bought Virtual PC, thinking I would need it in my conversion to the Mac platform. I think I have used it twice. I work in a mostly Microsoft corpoarte environment. Office for the Mac works so seamlessly with Office for the PC that I just have not needed it. Perhaps if I had a custom application written for a vertical market I would use it. However, in my situation, it doesn't make sense. If it goes away, it is no big deal for me.
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Michael Kalus said 10:52PM on 1-18-2006
Even if Microsoft is abandoning it, I am sure that VMWare would step in and fill the gap. I know quite a few people who would just love having VMWare on their Macs, but so far there's nothing on the VMWare site.
I have used VPC only once, and it didn't really impress me all that much. VMWare though I have used in lab envrionments and always found it pretty good. I wonder if VMWare stayed away from the Mac because of the PPC CPU or if it was something else (market share?), but emulating an Intel CPU (minus extensions) on a PPC Chip is actually rather easy as the PPC Design is way more "open" to some extends (e.g. registers).
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Bill said 10:56PM on 1-18-2006
I went to MWSF and spoke with a Microsoft Rep. I guess he didnt know what he was talking about but he specifically said that it would work on the new intel based computers, specifically I asked about the Macbook pro. He even had a pretty good response for me when I asked why I should purchase and use Virtual PC for the intel based macs when i could setup a machiene to dual boot into both the mac OS and Windows Xp.
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alex said 10:58PM on 1-18-2006
Why not just support wine? http://winehq.com
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JClark said 11:07PM on 1-18-2006
Virtual PC is certainly not unusable on a PPC Mac. I had it on my old Powerbook (867mhz G4) and it was slow but usable. I even used AutoCAD on it once (I had no other choice), and it was maddening, but I got done what I needed to get done (took about twice as long, but I kept my job).
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Corey said 11:21PM on 1-18-2006
Here's an idea -- Microsoft could spin off the group that works on Virtual PC, maybe name it, oh i dunno, Connectix. I'm sure they'd get the job done for us.
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Alex Serriere said 11:31PM on 1-18-2006
Rather than dealing with the nonsense of running some sort of virtualization within the Mac OS, why not just spend the money to ensure that Windows (XP or Vista) run on the intel Macs.
Maybe include a Microsoft boot loader or something that seemlessly allows switching betweeen Mac OS and Windows. Unlike Apple, Microsoft is only worried about selling Windows. If people buy a Dell or an Apple to run it on, Microsoft doesn't care.
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Jack Beckman said 11:47PM on 1-18-2006
What a lame message from MS. What, they couldn't pop for a Developer's system? They don't have a grand lying around? Hell, Billy G. sneezes into c-notes.
They pulled the same crap when Tiger came out - "oh, we need to wait until we get a copy". Baloney. I reported the problem (along with many other folks) early in the beta testing. MS couldn't pop $500 for a Developer membership, apparently.
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LD said 11:58PM on 1-18-2006
I agree with alex, support WINE. No sense running an entire OS when all you really need is an application or two. WINE should run quite well on the new Intel Macs I would think given the Unix ancestry of OS X.
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Tom Clark said 12:09AM on 1-19-2006
It would be ten times easier if Apple, Microsoft, Sun, and a few Linux developers got together and created a standardized application format. A true "Universal" Binary, so to speak. If applications can be run on any platform, they'll sell to more customers. If any operating system can run any software, eventually the best platforms will balance out the market. This way Microsoft sells more software, Apple sells more hardware and operating systems, and consumers get everything they want. Not going to happen, though. Greedy idiots.
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