Windows Virtualization on Intel Macs

[DTphonehome]

No way. I think these recent developments are some of the greatest things to happen to the Mac platform since the Mac was born. Look, the main goal right now is to get PC users in the door. Given a real, hands-on experience using both Windows and OS X, how many will favor Windows? Not many, I'll bet. So now you have them. Then they bring their families and friends. Suddenly, Mac market share isn't 4%, it's 20%. And do you think all those folks are going to want to run everything in Windows, now that they know how much more enjoyable OS X is? Of course not. Demand for OS X development will ultimately increase, not decrease.

I see Windows capability on Intel Macs as a teaser, not an OS X-killer. It's the ultimate bait and switch. Tempt them with games and Windows compatibility, then let OS X goodness hammer them with its brilliance.

I think Mac gaming may suffer in the short term, as people fire up their new Macs in Windows to play games. But people will tire of that, and as more Mac users join the fold, the demand for native Mac gaming will increase. The switch to Intel should only help make game porting faster/easier/cheaper. So one day you'll grab any popular game off the shelf and it will be a hybrid disc, just like Blizzard has been doing for years.

Game makers develop for XBox, Playstation, and GameCube, no? I see no reason they won't develop for both Windows and Mac as Mac market share grows. Which it will.

Ultimately, things can only go up. Have patience.

Very well-thought out analysis. I agree with you completely. Very good point about the console game systems...if Macs are a significant presence in the marketplace, there's no reason the developers would ignore it.

Boy, I can just IMAGINE the meetings and hand-wringing going on across Silicon Valley this week

EDIT: And Redmond, and Austin

 

[blakespot]

Actually you can...

Use the checkbox to disable and re-enable the CD option. Then select the CD radio button. In the text box, specify "/dev/rdisk1" (no quotes).

Is that the right device? I'm installing an OS where OS X does not recognize the CD, but it's as PC-bootable CD. I enter /dev/rdisk1 and Parallels Workstation (PW) accepts the device but the PC text screen says no CD found...but it doesn't even spin up the CD-ROM drive.

I put a "good" CD in the drive and did a 'df' and OS X mounted it at: /dev/disk1s1s2 - but when I try this with this other CD, before I get to the text screen in PW, a OS X alert window pops up, telling me that that device is not found.

Any other tips?




blakespot

 

[blakespot]

You sneer, but what if this is just the prelude to ol' Stevie release OS X to PC users and taking on Microsoft on its own ground? And if any of you Mac-Faithful remember...that was the end of NeXT!!! As soon as they licensed it to the average Joe, everyone stopped buying NeXT boxes...

But NeXT boxes cost $6000 and NeXT wasn't selling any of them. The did not release for PC while still selling NeXT boxes either, they went whole-hogg to the PC. NeXT was dead either way.

(Don't assume I criticize the technology - I loved NEXTSTEP and ran it ony a 486 in 1994 and have a NeXTStation Turbo Color currently.)


blakespot

 

[kiwi_the_iwik]

Please tell me that it is impossible to use os x on a windows pc. If not, good night apple.

One word:

Marklar.


Sorry, matey. If Steve sends that puppy out, it'll be a free-for-all.

 

[JAT]

No way. I think these recent developments are some of the greatest things to happen to the Mac platform since the Mac was born. Look, the main goal right now is to get PC users in the door. Given a real, hands-on experience using both Windows and OS X, how many will favor Windows? Not many, I'll bet. So now you have them. Then they bring their families and friends. Suddenly, Mac market share isn't 4%, it's 20%. And do you think all those folks are going to want to run everything in Windows, now that they know how much more enjoyable OS X is? Of course not. Demand for OS X development will ultimately increase, not decrease.

And the developers would see OSX market share of 20%, regardless of which OS they were actually using. Hypothetical, obviously. But a reason to hope.

 

[DavidRB]

someone is trying to tell me something

Firstly I cant install the Boot camp xp drivers, as they crash the system, I suspect its because Im using my mini on via hdmi.

And then, when I try to get a trial key for the parallels beta, their servers are broken. (sending 'null' trial keys).

Someone, somewhere, is telling me I shouldnt try to run xp on my new mac mini.

And quite frankly, I agree with them

 

[Tupring]

Now , I only have to buy 1 computer.... and its a Mac.!!!!

So, nothing has changed since 1984 then.

 

[manu chao]

Please tell me that it is impossible to use os x on a windows pc. If not, good night apple.

One word: PearPC

 

[Flowex]

why cant apple just hold back up their hard ware until they have the full line up? I bought a PowerMac G5 and 2 months later Intel macs come around. I could live with it, i thought, but now I see what can be done (bootcamp-virtualization)... if i sell my 2.0Ghz powermac to buy the iMac would it be a downgrade? anyway my point is apple should offer product trade ins.
I should be able to take in my powerpc and exachange it for a intel power mac g5(when available) for an affordable fee insted of spending 2200 dollars again .
Its just a point of view. Apple is the BEST by far but i just think they take advantage of the costumers by realeasing new products every couple of months (iPods).

 

[gnasher729]

I need to be able to do this from OS X:
1. Access a web server running on the Windows system
2. Access a shared folder in the Windows system

I need to be able to do this from Windows:
3. Access a web server running on OS X
4. Access a shared folder in OS X

For the file sharing, you might try out what happens if you plug in a USB memory stick into the Mac. Maybe both MacOS X and Windows can see it at the same time.

 

[gnasher729]

Then what I would do as mentioned in another post is to tell that company, "Great product. I really like it, but until a Mac version is available I won't purchase it." Meanwhile you can sneakily use it under Windows and grab the Mac copy if/when it comes out. The more people who test a Windows-only program and request a Mac version the more it could be a possibility.

That is something that all marketing people should get hammered into their heads. Unlike many PC users, Mac users are generally quite open to the idea that you actually have to pay for the software that you are using, but I can see them extremely unwilling to pay for Windows software. Telling Macintosh owners to use the Windows version will be a sure way to increase the number of users, but not the number of the customers.

 

[ninethirty]

Right now I have a Mac Mini connected to my TV and I use an Apple wireless mouse and keyboard from my couch. Will my mouse and keyboard work after installing windows with this Parallel thing?

 

[gnasher729]

Anyways in regards to this development. There are really only two reasons to run Windows in a dual boot situation. For (guess) 70% its going to be games pure and simple. For the rest its going to be GPU/CPU intensive apps like CADware. OK maybe 2% who don't want to run OS X at all....but really.

There will be a lot of new switchers because the risk involved is now much less. You can buy an iMac, which is a very fine machine, and you know that if you don't like MacOS X, you can turn that iMac into a very fine PC. Your monetary risk of trying out MacOS X is now just the cost of Windows XP, instead of the cost of the iMac. There will be many people who will buy a Macintosh because it _can_ run Windows, but they will never actually use it that way.

 

[BillyShears]

For the file sharing, you might try out what happens if you plug in a USB memory stick into the Mac. Maybe both MacOS X and Windows can see it at the same time.

That's a pretty clever way of doing it... I hadn't thought of that. Unfortunately I need the file sharing for running the web servers, and I don't have an Intel Mac to test on.

 

[Maxiseller]

why cant apple just hold back up their hard ware until they have the full line up? I bought a PowerMac G5 and 2 months later Intel macs come around. I could live with it, i thought, but now I see what can be done (bootcamp-virtualization)... if i sell my 2.0Ghz powermac to buy the iMac would it be a downgrade? anyway my point is apple should offer product trade ins.
I should be able to take in my powerpc and exachange it for a intel power mac g5(when available) for an affordable fee insted of spending 2200 dollars again .
Its just a point of view. Apple is the BEST by far but i just think they take advantage of the costumers by realeasing new products every couple of months (iPods).

Whilst I can (somewhat) appreciate what you're saying, you're claiming that Apple is annoying you with constant upgrades every 2 months or so. Well, firstly two months is an extremely short product clycle for an apple computer (and usually closer to 6 months+) but more importantly, Apple is one of the few computer manufacturers who stick to their guns and sell a product for a decent amount of time.

Buy a Dell computer; if you pop back to the website a week later something about the spec of your machine you just purchased is changed. It's the way it is. Maybe apple will too adopt more of this approach now hardware is more abundant, but I doubt it!

You should be happy with your Powermac (and please don't trade it in for an iMac!!) - you brought it to do a job, and it still does the job your purchased it for. Computing is a fickle industry, and they have to develop in order to keep people like you and me spending money on shiny new apple boxes! Keep the faith!

 

[gweedo]

Er...

You sneer, but what if this is just the prelude to ol' Stevie release OS X to PC users and taking on Microsoft on its own ground? And if any of you Mac-Faithful remember...that was the end of NeXT!!! As soon as they licensed it to the average Joe, everyone stopped buying NeXT boxes...

Actually, as I remember it... the sales of NeXT hardware was already sliding pretty fast. NeXT soon opened things up to intel, sparc, alpha and eventually switched from hardware to software company to reduce costs and to try and save things... and it was of course too late at that point really. Personally I think the NeXT slide was more due to marketing (or lack thereof) than anything. At Apple, Steve seems to have the marketing stuff working pretty well.

I have confidence in Apple getting this right, they aren't up against the wall like NeXT was, they have some existing nice products (iPod anyone?), etc... not to mention MS Vista blows.

 

[bense27]

has anybody tried this yet and have any screenshots?

 

[plinden]

I have nothing against 17-year-old computer geeks out there. It's just that all these newbies are coming out of the woodwork saying how great this solution is. I simply want some confirmation, and a more detailed report, from someone who's been posting here a bit longer.

I actually have a lot riding on virtualization as I need to run a few windows apps (autocad & rhino) for my work. Dual boot is too inefficient for my use pattern.

I haven't done it myself, but I will later, and our IT support guy (who surprisingly enough is a Mac user even though we are a Windows shop) demoed both Boot camp and Parallel's code on his MBP today.

On Boot Camp, windows flies - it scored 15400 on 3DMark, (I think that's what he used - I hope that sounds reasonable) and Quake 3 topped 500 fps.

Virtualization wasn't nearly as good,. For non-3d apps, it was still pretty fast and usable. But there was a noticeable delay in mouse movement (a fraction of a second, but still noticeable).

 

[wmmk]

Wow - seems we are experiencing a virtual tsunami of windows on mac these days... Gawd damn I'm curious to see some benchmarks soon. If this will open up for all the lovely 3d and other design apps (Ooh Rhino, app of my dreams) that has never been made for a mac I'm a happy guy... but it does demand that it works, more or less, at native speed as promised.




It is impossible to use os x on a windows pc.

A

haha, ever heard of emulation, now evolving into virtualization. osx on pcs is illegal, so i dont do it. still, i know people who emulate G4's on their P4's and G5's on xeons. i also know a dude who is running a copy of osx86 that came with his MBP in VMware on his dell xps. sure, its illegal. sure its not a real mac. sure i dont recommend it, but you can run osx on a pc with VMware or a pearpc G4 altivec nightly build on http://www.richardgoodwin.com/wp/cvsbuilds.php which happen to be blazing fast. if you actually buy mac os x (retail) (preferably panther) you're not really doing anything super bad, but i believe the EULA says onlyt to be installed on apple branded machines, but whatever.

 

[vamp07]

Sorry, I don't really understand this completely. So in OS X you can't access a shared folder on the hosted Windows system?

Using bridged Ethernet I cannot ping myself from the same machine. Does that answer your question? It probably can be made to work but doing a quick test that is what I get.

 

[daveschroeder]

has anybody tried this yet and have any screenshots?

Yes, a ton of us have tried it, and are happily using it. It's extremely fast, and except for graphics, the claims of "near native" performance are accurate. As for screenshots, picture exactly what your x86 OS of choice looks like, and picture it inside of a window on Mac OS X. ;-)

 

[andysmith]

Anybody else waiting for the trial key for hours?!?

Already registered with 2 different addresses and nothing.

Can't I just somebody else's?! I mean this is a public beta.

Yes, I'm a newbie, so what? Throw me a freakin bone.

I haven't got my key either

 

[bense27]

Yes, a ton of us have tried it, and are happily using it. It's extremely fast, and except for graphics, the claims of "near native" performance are accurate. As for screenshots, picture exactly what your x86 OS of choice looks like, and picture it inside of a window on Mac OS X. ;-)

do you need a windows installation disc to do this?

 

[daveschroeder]

do you need a windows installation disc to do this?

If you want to use Windows, of course. Or, you could try it with free OSes like Fedora Core, various other Linux distributions, etc.

 

[iSee]

why cant apple just hold back up their hard ware until they have the full line up? I bought a PowerMac G5 and 2 months later Intel macs come around. I could live with it, i thought, but now I see what can be done (bootcamp-virtualization)... if i sell my 2.0Ghz powermac to buy the iMac would it be a downgrade? anyway my point is apple should offer product trade ins.
I should be able to take in my powerpc and exachange it for a intel power mac g5(when available) for an affordable fee insted of spending 2200 dollars again .
Its just a point of view. Apple is the BEST by far but i just think they take advantage of the costumers by realeasing new products every couple of months (iPods).

LOL, this is the funniest post I read all day. You ought to thow a few 's in, though, because some people won't get the joke

...

Um... You are joking, right? Right???


Anyway, Macs have great resale value, so go to eBay, if you want. Also, the iMac is a downgrade. I have both on my desk at work and the dual 2.0GHz G5 smokes the iMac, even on UB apps (obviously, there's no comparison for PPC only apps.) The only thing the Intel iMac can run faster than your G5 is Windows--and really, is that where your priorities are? Didn't think so, or else why'd you buy a Mac in the first place?