Microsoft axes Virtual PC for Mac

I am seeing a lot of complaining about MS software here. If you wanted to run MS software you should have bought a Win PC. You made you Apple bed, now lay down in it and keep quite. "Power PC", and "real computer". If you truly believe that then stick around for awhile, soon your "MAC" will have no resemblance to and Apple at all. They are already running Pentium, soon AMD processors. RDRAM is soon to go. Some of the few great things about the Apple PC are dead or dieing. Soon you will all just be the lovers of a different OS, and we will all be using the same hardware.

MAC - RIP.

How much did it cost MS to buy it?

Well I see the old my mac is better than your PC has flared up again. I happen to use both platforms and can say while windows does have many faults, PC's have their place in the world. Apple to increase market share should make themselves a little more affordable. I work in a big box electronics retailer and see first hand people would love to buy Apple products but once they see the price they head over to the PC's. I personally believe Apple is superior but their pricing leaves alot to be desired.

Hand up all who are suprised by this news, as soon as microsoft bought vpc you knew it was dead.

Bob,
MS bought Connectix mainly because they needed a virtualization solution for Windows Server.

Good! Microsoft's products for the Mac are horrible anyway. Personally, I wish they'd just stop producting ALL of their Mac products.

Microsoft is just pulling everything they can (ex. IE, WMP, and now Virtual Desktop) because they are finally scared of the real computer, the mac.

You do realise MS only bought VPC to help out their guys that were / are trying to emulate xbox games (intel chip) on the xbox 360 (PPC chip)?

Either way, they did a crap job!

I suppose they already sell you a windows license along with Virtual PC, so that might not the reason why they decided to stop maintaining it.

I'd rather hypothetize that they are trying to shut the gates (no pun intended) before "standard" windows users have a chance to switch.

Those users don't know anything about VMWare or Parallels (I know first hand lots of PC Windows developers who have never heard of VMWare) and Microsoft might (rightfully) assume they might be rebutted by dual boot solutions such as BootCamp.
So by removing the most obvious and safe (because it's Microsoft's) way to run Windows on a Mac, MS might be hoping that a big percentage of their user base won't be tempted to switch too fast.

Remember that Vista will be out in Fall 2007, MS is certainly hoping they will buy a new Vista license, preferably on a real PC.
If these users have an obvious and safe way to run Windows on their new Leopard Mac without dual booting and without buying Vista, that would be quite a blow to MS.
MS clearly does not want this to happen, and shutting Virtual PC might be one way to avoid it.

The much bigger issue is dropping VB scripting support for mac, which was in the same press release. So much for compatibility. The VPC loss is not a big deal other than pricing, Microsoft bundled Windows at a reduced price in VPC. ralph