Microsoft Officially Kills Virtual PC

Go Parallels!

good, that was hard to use anyway...

Wasn't there a rumor going around a couple months back about M$ making VPC free? That would make sense now if they're going to discontinue it, and let us PPC users have it for free. Who wants to pay for a product that won't receive any updates?

Is that the best you got, Microsoft?

I guess there was no reason to continue. They were prob not making much of a profit on VPC anyhow and 3rd parties already had it covered.

Are they working on a universal MS Office?

So many remarks... so little time...

Steve Jobs probably hurt their feelings today
Maybe now they can finally get some work done on vista
Or quite possibly they thought it was dumb to run fake OSX in real OSX

yg17 said:

Wasn't there a rumor going around a couple months back about M$ making VPC free? That would make sense now if they're going to discontinue it, and let us PPC users have it for free. Who wants to pay for a product that won't receive any updates?

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No... that was a lot of people getting confused. MS was giving away VirtualPC 2004, which is a Windows product. They never were giving away any Mac products, nor were they intending to as far as we know.

Freyqq said:

Are they working on a universal MS Office?

Click to expand...

Yes, but we don't exactly know when that will come out. Look for it AFTER Vista (if that can happen)

I can't say I'm not surprised, but I'm glad we have other options (that run well) at this time. I just hope this doesn't carry over to Microsoft Office (which has a separate Mac team from Vista I understand)

All because of those Vista 2.0 cracks?

Tinfoil hat time...

Anyone else remember those old rumors about how MS was buying VPC just to kill it off? I thought that was silly back then, but I'm wondering now. Considering how they sat on the thing for ages and never really did anything with it and now have caved at the first sign of competition, you have to wonder. They clearly were not very committed to keeping it going.

Why would they? The Intel models will run Windows anyhow. I don't think there would be much of a market for this product since the move to Intel is complete.

MS seems to have lost out on a nice little market due to dragging their feet so long with VPC. That being said, I think it's great that we no loger have to rely on MS to keep Windows (and other os's) running on Macs.

just use Parallels or VMWare

This stuff has got to stop

Yes, Parallels and VMware are better products, but that is not the point. Has no one else noticed the number of products Microsoft is canceling for the Mac. I do not believe that Microsoft sees a market for the Macintosh. This of course is purely a business perspective.

I for one think Apple will be taught a lesson in respect. The only logical solution is to kill off Mac Office universal binary support. If they want to run on the Intel platform, they can run on emulation.

It would not be much of a loss if Microsoft decided to pull the plug. Don't think they haven't taught about it. A three percent market share or 19 million desktop users does not even come close to the numbers that still use Windows 2000, never mind Windows 98. I of course don't wish this to happen, but it is one logical outcome.

Abercrombieboy said:

Why would they? The Intel models will run Windows anyhow. I don't think there would be much of a market for this product since the move to Intel is complete.

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Tell that to the Parallels people. Bootcamp isn't the same thing.

I think think this may mean they are close to announcing a universal version of MS OFFICE. VPC was a part of the Office pro version, and they probably decided not to wait to complete the universal version of VPC.
Cheers,

So with WMP gone and now VPC gone, the only MAJOR software developed for Macs by Microsoft is Office?

Let's just hope they don't decide to kill office. Sure, I know there are lots of alternatives out there, but you try telling that to Mr. idiot joe-average boss.

Edit: Looks like I spoke too soon, fortunately:
http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/08/07/universal.office.coming/

Cameront9 said:

So with WMP gone and now VPC gone, the only MAJOR software developed for Macs by Microsoft is Office?

Let's just hope they don't decide to kill office. Sure, I know there are lots of alternatives out there, but you try telling that to Mr. idiot joe-average boss.

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Yeah, Office will stay. They said they are committed for at least 5 more years. Office is probably the only Mac software they develop and actually make a decent profit on.

Wonder how much they paid Connectix just to abandon it.

since they never created a 1.0 of Virtual PC (they just bought it), how do they know?

Flowbee said:

Tell that to the Parallels people. Bootcamp isn't the same thing.

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True to use Bootcamp you actually have to re-boot the computer. I see what you are saying.

Cameront9 said:

So with WMP gone and now VPC gone, the only MAJOR software developed for Macs by Microsoft is Office?

Let's just hope they don't decide to kill office. Sure, I know there are lots of alternatives out there, but you try telling that to Mr. idiot joe-average boss.

Edit: Looks like I spoke too soon, fortunately:
http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/08/07/universal.office.coming/

Click to expand...

Microsoft is not developing Visual Basic in the Univeral Mac Office suite, so some people are already claiming that cross-compatibility is officially dead. Unless someone comes up with a Rosetta-like translator between VB and AppleScript/Automator, I don't see how script-filled Office files will be able to leave a Mac-only or Windows-only environment.

Nice timing of the announcement. Trying to rain on the WWDC parade...

maxp1 said:

Wonder how much they paid Connectix just to abandon it.

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Next step: Microsoft announces they've acquired Parallels, Inc.