Short and sweet: Apple seems to have removed all references to Microsoft’s Virtual PC from its “Switch” webpages in recent days. Previously listed on some Apple pages were references to using Virtual PC to run Windows applications not available for the Macintosh.
The removal of Virtual PC mentions from Apple’s “Switch” webpages seem to coincide with the recent news that Microsoft confirms Virtual PC incompatible with Apple’s G5.
Apple’s “Switch” section is here.
(UPDATE 12:05pm ET: Apple does indeed have one reference left, on the Switch site. It is on this page. Thanks, Swedentom.)
Should Apple create Virtual Mac software for PC hardware? Most Windows users admit to liking Mac software but feel more secure buying a PC. Instead of having to create iTunes for Windows and perhaps others in the future Apple would only need one piece of software to increase its market share and perhaps convert many others to Mac hardware. Any thoughts?
If you really need a PC get a little Athlon box for $500 CDN (thats like $300 USD).
But the truth is you really don’t need one. The only thing a PC has that Mac does not are games, and VPC won’t help you there.
ATT’N, George Krueger. Yellow Box never had anything to do with Windows emulation. Please stop spreading ignorant misinformation. The Yellow Box technologies assisted in creating Windows applications. YB did not bring Windows APIs to the Mac/Next; it did the exact opposite.
Some of you still don’t get it do you? Connectix was 3rd party, if Apple made an emulator and bundled it with computers, what incentive is there for developers to create a native version of their app when the computer comes equipped to run an inferior OS? I use VPC when I have to, and for validating webpages, its just fine, but don’t turn your Mac into a full blown PC as many people here want. If you want dual operating systems (Mac OS and Windoze), Apple is not going to let it happen. Its more in their interest to kill their hardware division and release Marklar. Allowing the option to emulate Windoze through 3rd party sources or Microsoft themselves is a good thing. It leaves the options open. But integrating it is asking for Apple to die. From every standpoint its a bad thing, although the consumer standpoint, you have to look into the future and not be blinded by the original positive points that will last a few weeks.
Some people posting to this forum neglect to consider the predominance of Windows in the enterprise market. This is a market that Apple is courting, and so it becomes very relevant to establish a bridge to this frontier.
As a Mac advocate and senior analyst within such an organization, VPC — or some other Intel emulation software — becomes unfortunately essential if I wish to replace the PC on my desk with a Mac.
Should Apple develop such a package, it should be similar to VPC — a hardware emulation package, and not a Windows emulator. Nothing would be lost, and they could have another revenue source from its sales.
Unthoughtful posts like several of the ones in this forum are the reason many only refer to mac users as fanatics and zealots.
I think most people that are currently using VPC do so because they have a program that they need to use that doesn’t have a Mac equal. I don’t think any Mac user uses Windows unless they have no other choice. In my case I own a Network Wiring tester that needs a program to interface with the computer. I also use PC anywhere to access remote PC’s. Others use it to test web pages. It’s a pain to have to waste desk space for a PC.
If you need to run M$ crap go buy a e-machine, it costs about the same as VPC and is a hell of a lot faster and works better than VPC. VPC was a hunk of crap before Microsuck bought them and would only have gotten worse given Mr. Bill and his Gestapo’s track record. Good riddance, I’ll be glad when all of the whiners quite complaining. It’s sure not the end of the world.
I will miss VPC, not because I would use it for windows.
I had a drive for OPENSTEP, LINUX, as well as Windows. I still like and occasionally use OPENSTEP. I still like the editor and dev tools on OpenStep better than OS X. Also, there are some apps on OpenStep which do a better job than any app on other OS’s which have not been ported to OS X.
VPC was great. It allowed me to run software on different OS’s side by side.
(yes OS4.2 can be installed on VPC6. It was not easy, but it works. OS4.2 works better on VPC5)
We do NOT need x86 emulation software to play games. If you thought performance of ported games were subpar, emulated games would be significantly worse. At least with ported games, you’re support the Mac platform. And there are plenty of games that get ported to our platform. Sure, we miss a few here and there, but the PC gaming scene is a pretty good filter for the crap that’s out there. We typically get the good games ported.
Apple is promoting Microsoft-branded Virtual PC here:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/applications/virtualpc/
So the original poster seems to be a bit too conspiratorially-minded for my taste. Grow up.
Honestly – ‘insensitive posts?’
The truth is you will be better served with a cheap PC and a KVM switch than VPC. Its a dog – thats why. Up here, people sell 1GHz pcs with licensed OS for $200 CDN. VPC is more than this.
My G4 is slower than my P4. So why would I try to run the P4’s software on the G4?
Its not insensitivity dude, its LOGIC.
What we need is more developers like Blizzard, iD and maybe Bungie (the jury is still out). They enforce good code control and develop across platforms because it imposes a certain discipline on them. The incremental costs of cross platform development when done this way is much lower. Currently, we end up with a single game re-written several times (only the assets remian the same).
CG and rendermonkey might help that a bit, but there is still no standard audio coding language and Physics engines/middleware like Havok are PC only right now.
The best thing about this VPC fiasco is that it will (hopefully) spur interest and development of Bochs for OS X.
lewdvig is correct. We tried using VPC for a PC-only application. We ended up returning our copies for the 30 day money-back guarantee. Now, each of us has a Mac, a dirt cheap Celeron PC, and an Iogear USB KVM switch (we use Macally keyboards and Logitech mice). VPC is indeed a dog by comparison. With falling PC prices and smaller form factors, Connectix must have seen the writing on the wall. I don’t see much of a future for emulation software unless someone develops a break-through that eliminates the speed problems and sells it for $50/copy.
What Apple should do is provide the capability for developers to easily recompile their windows apps so that they run on the mac. basically copy/layer the windows API’s (that make sense) on top of the mac api’s.
The linux WINE project has functionality to re-compile windows apps (so they run under the X windows server) as well as run windows apps directly (on x86 linux platforms only ) . If Apple backed an effort that sought to port the direct x API’s to the mac so that it was a straight re-compile for windows developers, that would be a first step.
Apple (or an open source effort) should create a layer that roughly parallels the Carbon spec, but that targets the most popular API’s that windows developers use.
They should also resurrect the OpenStep libraries for Windows so that cocoa programs could be ported (or shipped as fat binaries) to run under windows (a la the NeXT era)
Who cares!
We are so sick of Microsoft and there ways. I am sure Apple can come up with an emulation product quickly and avoid yet another attack of reliance on the big bad Microsoft!
The new G5 is a better product and Apple is doing such great things these days that Bill Gates and crew must be watching very closely.
Windows folks are so jealous of iTunes thety must be howling, “why not us” why not now”?
Have a great labor day holiday and thank God for the Mac-tech at it’s best!!!!!
This topic has come up in other places and I agree… There needs to be a windows emulator for the Mac, by Apple or someone else doesn’t matter. I’ve read of a Yellow Box for Mac OS X, but have no idea what it does.
Note I say WINDOWS emulator, not X86 emulator.
What I mean is that instead of attempting to emulate the CPU, sound card, etc… you write converter APIs that re-direct all Windows system calls to equivilant Mac system calls. You also have a component that pre-compiles major functions in the applications to native PPC code.
There was a very successful (speed wise) version of this emulator done for the Alpha processor systems. The emulator was called !X86 I think. It didn’t emulate the CPU or sub systems, and it didn’t use a virtual machine.
Since so many posters posted horribly misinformed BS:
WINE = Wine Is Not an Emulator. It only ports WIN32 instructions to *nix calls, and only works on x86. To run WINE on OS X, you’d need x86 emulation.
Bochs supplies something similar to VPC without the nice duh-friendly interface.
Apple is not interested in having OS X turn into a way to run Windows software. They have developed x86 hardware to enable Macs to run DOS and Windows in the past. They don’t do this anymore. It failed then. Duh.
Apple IS interested in having the best Java implementation possible, and is working to provide X11 support. This is primarilly to bring *nix users to the OS X platform, not to bring X11 software to OS X.
Apple wants developers using Cocoa for OS X. Mac developers can use Carbon, Crossplatform developers can use Java. They don’t wan’t developers writing Windows apps and slopping them on top of OS X in some fashion. Which would suck.
VPC is to allow Mac users to buy a mac and still run a few legacy apps.
Also, note that YellowBox was the code name for what they now call Cocoa. At one point, OS X ran both on x86 hardware (I installed Rhapsody on a Dell) and as a layer atop Windows (I’ve also installed YellowBox on Windows, to run WebObjects developer tools). If Apple wanted to sell OS X to a larger market, they could — with some significant effort at this point — develop and market an OS X / Intel and/or Cocoa for Windows. It sounds like a good idea, but neither worked for NeXT, and Apple is CLEARLY NOT interested in doing this, even for vertical markets where they were selling WebOjects for $20,000 a copy. Certainly if they stopped doing that, they aren’t intersted in selling it at $99 a copy. Apple wants you to buy Macs. They are not interested in trying to displace Microsoft as the Provider of Software for Commodity PCs. Linux is trying to do that.
“Red Box” was the name suggested for the idea that Apple should include Windows emulation in OS X alongside Classic (the Blue Box). Classic is great for what is does, but it still sucks. It’s designed to allow Mac users to upgrade and still run their old Quark or whatever. Its best to upgrade everything and not use it.
Developing a Red Box (it never was Apple’s plan, just an idea thought up by conjecture loving rumor mongers) would be a huge development drain for what purpose? So IT departments could build VBasic crap and have Mac users run it rather than Java or web based stuff? Roll out Windows versions of apps as “corporate standards” since Macs with RB could run them? And why would anyone port games (or any apps) to the Mac if they could run pseudo-natively in a Red Box?
As long as there have been computers at home, there have been ideas that the best platform would be some glorious thing that could run anything: Apple II, DOS, CPM, Windows, whatever. But efforts to do this ALWAYS failed. The idea is stupid.
The best platform would be one where things work well, the user interface is consistant, and a full complement of professional/business/creative/technical NATIVE software was available and took advantage of the OS/hardware/user interface. This is what Apple is trying to do with OS X. Offering Windows compatibility would run counter to this goal.
What has not been mentioned here so far is how fast an x86 emulator would run on a dual G5 system. I am no expert in computer hardware but the G5 PowerMacs supposedly have the fastest front-side bus and a refined motherboard that is next-gen compared to all other desktop PCs. Had Virtual PC been able to run on the G5 PowerMacs it could have put a lot of Intel and AMD hardware to shame. Of course I am only making an educated guess here but it really would look bad for Microsoft & Co. if this was the case.
The sudden removal of references to Virtual PC on Apple’s part suggests to me that they were not happy by Microsoft’s recent statement that Virtual PC is unable to run on G5s and that an update will not be ready until sometime next year. Apple can now improve cross-compatibility between OS X and Windows, release its own x86 emulator or better yet, do both.
The Mac should be able to stand on its own without the need for PC emulation. Maybe then, Apple would market with inspiration instead of desparation.
I’ve never had the need to run Windows on my Mac.
I agree with the others about just buying a cheap PC if you need to run some form of business software that isn’t available on the Mac.
Contrary to what the FUD merchants would have you believe, there is but a handful of high profile apps that do not have a Mac version.
I have a small business that requires the use of QuickBooks working in conjunction with my bookeeper and my accountant. I have spent alot of money on Intuit products which includes the new “updated” QB5 for Mac.
It is a horrible piece of software that is no better than the last version Intuit did for the Mac. Payroll is done through Aatrix and does not allow coding projects, time or workmen to a specific task like it does in the PC version. This is a very big deal and renders the application useless.
I can’t stand Windows nor do I care for QuickBooks in any way. But, I am running a business that needs to send and receive information with other business’ that are rarely Mac based. Intuit has told me T.S. when I need tech support. Aatrix shrugs their shoulders when I need support.
By the way, MYOB is as bad as QB5 for the Mac.
…?
I also use Quickbooks for my business, and have to share with my accountant. I purchased QB for Mac, only to discover that the files DO NOT swap between Mac and PC. The QB for Windows and QB for Macs are two separate and non-compatible programs. So much for QB for Mac. I returned it.
So, we are stuck with VPC 5, Windows 2000, which runs like a dog on a G4 450. Hard to believe that the CEO of Intuit sat on Apple’s Board.
I would never ever even have considered installing VPC and Windows on my Mac, had there not been two reasons: Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury comic archive is available for Windows only. Duh.
And my children get learning software from their schools that’s Windows-only. Double-duh.