“In deciding to release a public beta of Boot Camp, a dual-booting software manager, Apple was saying to the world, ‘We realize some of you need to run Windows programs occasionally, and here’s a way to do it on your Mac,'” Jim Rossman reports for The Dallas Morning News. “The Boot Camp installation process actually creates a separate hard drive partition to hold the Windows operating system. The fact that the partition is created without wiping the user’s hard drive (on-the-fly repartitioning) is a first for Apple. But just because Apple is allowing users to run Windows on their Macs, don’t expect any additional help.’Apple has no desire or plan to sell or support Windows, but many customers have expressed their interest to run Windows on Apple’s superior hardware now that we use Intel processors,’ said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing.”
“The Mac faithful had hardly caught their breath from the Boot Camp announcement when it was followed by another, equally startling software introduction called Parallels Desktop for Mac. Many years ago, a company called Connectix introduced a way to emulate a Windows PC inside a program on the Macintosh. Virtual PC was really slow, but it let users run most Windows programs on the Mac. Of course, it got better and faster with each release and with the introduction of faster Macs. In fact, Virtual PC became good enough that it caught the attention of Microsoft, which bought it,” Rossman reports. “Microsoft kept Virtual PC around for a while and actually did improve it, but stopped production when Apple introduced Macs running on Intel processors.
According to Microsoft’s Virtual PC Web site, ‘We are working with Apple to determine the feasibility of developing Virtual PC for Mac for Intel-based Macs. Virtual PC for Mac is highly dependent on the operating system and hardware, and will require additional development to run on Intel-based Macs.’ Parallels Desktop for Mac is almost identical to Virtual PC. It allows the user to run other operating systems virtually. This means the system can be running Windows XP, Linux and even Sun’s Solaris in separate windows.”
Rossman asks, “So in the course of a few days, users had two choices for running Windows on their Intel Macs. Which is the better choice?”
Full article here.
More info about Apple’s Boot Camp: http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/
More info about Parallels Desktop for Mac: http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/
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Related articles:
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Apple’s Boot Camp vs. Parallels Workstation for running Windows on Intel-based Macs – April 14, 2006
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I’m using Parallels. Works great. And I’m not limited to just Windows XP. I’m actually running a copy of Win 2K for one application. I’m also planning on adding a VM for the next release of Ubuntu Linux.
author never does express an opinion on which is better
Parallels only virtualizes one core of your dual-core Intel Mac, so if you’re running Windows software that is significantly SMP-supportive (such as Adobe Photoshop or AfterEffects), you’ll get far better performance out of Boot Camp.
I use both. For quick things I use Parallels. For real heavy work, I use Boot Camp. Parallel’s graphics are slow, so designing with web apps like Swish or Flash can be a little irritating. Having said that, Parallel is light years ahead of VPC. It really is near-native, speed-wise. Once they tweak the video support, it’ll be fantastic.
Boot Camp if freaking flawless. Perfect. Of course, you have to reboot your machine to start a different OS, but the new Intel iMacs start up so quick it’s not a huge issue. The only feature I’d like to see addded to Boot Camp is running two operating systems at once, like Parallels, but natively. (C’mon Leopard!)
Now I’m debating whether I should go ahead and purchase Parallels or wait for Leopard. Any suggestions?
Useless article. We know all this bullshit. To the moron author: write something of value to us, or go flip hamburgers, dumbass.
I work in IT as a Lotus Notes admin and developer. While there is a Lotus Notes version for Mac OS X, I also require a Designer and Admin client that only runs in MS WinCrap. So, I got a MacBook (2GHz) and install 2GB of RAM. I am now running Parallels with WinXP and my two required apps. It is seamless and fast. I am very impressed and very happy that I don’t have to carry a Dell (turned it back in today to my IT manager) just to run 2 applications when I travel. Parallels is awesome!
article…In a few weeks or months when the beta is over, you’ll need to cough up $50 ($40 if you order before the beta expires).
is that a fact or is this guy making it up?
doesnt seem to make alot of sense, leopard will be out soon enough and it will come with bootcamp or whatever flavoured solution apple has deep in the heart of cupertino.
Point of article was for newbies, a starting point only, be easy on the author.
I’m waiting for August before I make any purchases, hopefully the show in August will resolve the dual run issue and a few more, M$ is propbably waiting for that too.
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I’ve always wanted a virus on my Mac. Now I have my choice of 2 different ways to get one. Awesome :-p
http://www.imacazine.com/index.html#unique-entry-id-17
We asked people to vote on Boot Camp vs Parallels last week with most votes going for Parallels. We’ll reopen the vote for another few days at the link above.
“Microsoft kept Virtual PC around for a while and actually did improve it, but stopped production when Apple introduced Macs running on Intel processors”
Another smart Microsoft investment. Hope the Connectix boys got to retire rich.
L – Change “article” to “post” and you’re right on the money.
Yes, I will take fries with that burger.
Correction:
The non-M$ Virtual PC supported many other OS’s other than Windoze just like the author claims Parallel does. I had OS X on one screen and XP on another on my dual screen Quicksilver 4 years ago. But the author is correct VPC was/is dead slow. I have not fired it up in over a year ( and I think it was by mistake).
THEY’RE BOTH IMPORTANT. Parallels for most things, Boot Camp for games and other apps that won’t run (or run too slowly) under virtualization
I use boot camp and parallels, rarely use the other os.
When either of these is available for PPC then I will be interested.
Some of us do not have the funding, at this time, to get the latest and greatest. (I hate my technolust)
STOP INSTALLING WINDOWS – PERIOD. STOP INSTALLING WINDOWS ON WINDOWS MACHINES – STOP INSTALLING WINDOWS ON MACS.
Love,
Mr. Peabody
“Microsoft kept Virtual PC around for a while and actually did improve it…”
Pure BS from my personal experience.
The last version shipped by Connectix (6.0) was reasonable for what I needed (running U.S. Gov and ITU software with regard to filings for satellite systems). Then Microsoft got their hands on it and came out with version 6.1. As far as I could tell the only “improvements” were to have a Microsoft splash screen and the speed of the applications I was running cut in half (i.e, run time on various number crunching took twice as long). Yes, things were running half as fast under 6.1 as they were under 6.0. I never figured out what Microsoft did to make it *so* much slower. It made using VPC a real pain!
Then Microsoft came out with their “great improvement” version: 7.0. This was, according to their literature, up to 50% faster than the previous version. So 50% faster than 50% speed of 6.0. That means 75% of the speed of 6.0. My experience running the software I use supports this — almost. The apps I run seem to be about 60-70% of the speed of 6.0.
In my personal experience I’ve never seen any real improvement in anything with VPC since the last Connectix version. When the Intel based Mac desktop comes out I’ll be one of the first in line for fairly obvious reasons.
The reality is Microsoft did not by VirtualPC for the Mac community. They bought it for the rights to the virtualization technology — the ability to run more than one image of an OS concurrently. This is something that is supposed to be a core piece of Vista. If my experience with their “improvements” to VPC is any indication I don’t expect virtualization to work worth a damn in Vista.
Is there any way, with either BootCamp or Parallel to run Windows from an external hard drive?
M$ VPC only emulates a PII running at 600Mhz. It does not matter what processor you are using, even a 2+ Ghz G5, it’s still a PII at 600
Am I the only one who finds Parallels Desktop buggy, unstable and user-unfriendly?
The installation process is clumsy and confusing, as is starting up XP.
The accompanying manual is confused and set out in an illogical order. There doesn’t seem to be any documentation about how to access your Mac’s Documents folder – I had to look deep within a forum on Parallel’s website to find out how to do this.
The transition options to expand the window to full-screen mode are shaky and just plain silly.
Am I missing something?
mudflapper, et. al.,
What would be best would be if Parallels Desktop could use the XP which is installed on the Boot Camp partition. It really sucks IMO having to install XP twice on my MacBook. Sometimes I really want to boot into XP, though mostly I’m happy with Parallels concurrent interface.
Magnitude-I found the information on accessing my Mac’s home folder in the documentation that came with Parallels. I have not had anything but great experiences with it thus far. Running it on a MacBook 2GHz with 2GB RAM (originally ran a direct x -non 3d game on windows 98 in parallels while this macbook had only 512mb of ram).
Parallels is great if you need to go between OSX and Windows or another operating system. Boot camp is great when you absoulutely have to run a windows program for whatever reason. Since Parallel is only $50.00 and if you already have a copy of Windows of some form it’s no big deal to have both Parallel and boot camp. If I have the need I would use both eventually. Not at the same time either of course.
John –
“The big deal” of having both boot camp and Parallels Desktop is you must install Windows twice. On a MacBook Pro that seriously eats up precious HD space.