Why walk on water when you can part the seas?
Now that Apple's switch to Intel processors is a fait accompli, we might as well leverage our new Macintosh hardware to greatest effect.
Mac users in a mixed plaform workplace inevitably run into one Windows app we can't get around, and we've always had to resort to Windows emulators -- memory hogging programs like VirtualPC or SoftWindows that painstakingly re-map Intel-targeted processor instructions to Motorola or PowerPC instructions. However well-intentioned, Windows emulation has been a slow and unpleasant experience.
Parallels Desktop ushers in a new era of Windows compatibility without opcode emulation and without rebooting. This is the first Mac product to create a Windows session that uses native instructions -- plus it lets you share clipboard data and documents between the MacOS and the Windows session without resorting to network drives.
I've got an evaluation copy on my desk now that I haven't installed yet, but I'm willing to predict this with fair certainty: I will be getting rid of that PC in my office very soon.
posted by StormDawg at 9:42 PM
7 Comments:
Where will this lead, one asks? Will Jobs and Gates web? Will they merge, will they continue to coexist or will someone else push them aside in the near future?
Apple will always have their niche as a hardware and software company beyond the MacOS, especially since they consistently innovate, they still have a phenomenal edge in the digital music biz, and they have a marketing juggernaut that hasn't misfired once since the birth of the iMac.
That said, I suspect that even Jobs has given up on the dream of overthrowing Microsoft's OS hegemony. Anymore when you hear whispers of the possibility it's not Apple or Linux that's mentioned, but Google...
Ok, educate me here. Google isn't an operating system, what Torvalds created and what Gates has megopolized are essential, even to running Google, are they not? Does Google have an operating system?
You hear constant speculation that Google is secretly developing an OS, though I think if anything substatial surfaced the trade press would go nuts on it, and that hasn't happened.
The fascinating idea is that by creating killer, simple-to-use tools that mimic desktop functionality and that are platform independent -- and this is something Google has systematically pursued with GMail, Google Chat, Picasa, etc. -- Google creates the precondition for toppling Windows as the dominant desktop OS, whether they do it with their own OS product or not.
Here's one of the more imaginative pieces of speculation: A Google OS by 2010?
But let's go back a bit. AOL, Yahoo, Netzero, and on and on, all gave us versions of free email, IM, etc... Netscape begat Explorer begat Mozilla begat.....So, I'm a consumer out there, going, yep, Google's cool, love the maps and the search engine, but Mamma or Dogpile ain't bad either. I'll stay here until somebody builds a better mousetrap -- which in the digital age, seems to be about every two or three years.
And another thing, what happens when Google starts building chips? Silicon don't lie, and there's always a better chip somewhere in somebody's garage.
More fresh musings on the subject at Slate...
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