“You might buy a Mac to get away from Microsoft, but it can be hard to avoid Windows,” Rob Pegoraro reports for The Washington Post.
MacDailyNews Take: For those that can’t avoid Windows: you have our deepest sympathies. It’s criminal that you drive your car to work only to be forced to pull a rickshaw all day long.
Pegoraro continues, “Until two years ago, buying a computer meant picking Mac or Windows. If you bought a Mac and later needed a program only available on Windows, you were pretty much stuck having to buy a PC.”
MacDailyNews Take: Not really true. We know many who used Virtual PC circa 1999 and before (when it was from Connectix) to run the odd Windows program. By the end of PowerPC Macs, VirtualPC actually worked rather well for non-graphics intensive applications. For example, here’s a MacDailyNews article from April 02, 2003 describing real-world use of VirtualPC with A Powerbook in a Windows/AutoCAD Architecture Firm. Of course, there’s no comparison to Boot Camp or even Parallels Desktop for Mac and VMWare Fusion speeds; our point is that running Windows apps on Macs was a viable option for many people long before two years ago.
Pegoraro continues, “For somebody who needs to run only one or two Windows programs, CrossOver can be a cheap, simple solution. Otherwise, Parallels easily justifies its higher cost and system requirements.”
Pegoraro reports, “Many new Mac users, however, may discover they don’t need to run Windows programs after all — for just about any task imaginable, a good Mac program can be found. The greatest feature of software like Parallels and CrossOver may be their existence alone. They constitute a cheap, easily exercised insurance policy that frees people to buy the computer they want without worry.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s good to see the word getting out to the readers of The Washington Post.
Apple Macs run the world’s largest software library. Larger than any other PC offered.
Apple Macs don’t have a software problem. Apple Macs have a software advantage. It’s all of the other OS-limited PCs from the likes of HP, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo, Gateway, etc. that have the problem:
Related articles:
Computerworld: Apple Macs are the most flexible, compatible computers on the planet – February 20, 2007
Apple Macs can run more software than Windows PCs – October 30, 2006
>Apple Mac’s 2007 market share climb will dumbfound almost everyone, create mayhem in PC market – September 08, 2006
$399 for Windows Vista Ultimate?! (Hint: Get a Mac) – August 29, 2006
Dude, you got a Dell? What are you, stupid? Only Apple Macs run both Mac OS X and Windows! – April 05, 2006
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ ultimate goal: ‘to take back the computer business from Microsoft’ – June 16, 2005
Why buy a Dell when Apple’s Intel-based computers will run both Mac OS X and Windows? – June 08, 2005
Intel-based Macs running both Mac OS X and Windows will be good for Apple – June 10, 2005
Windows users who try Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger might not want to go back – June 07, 2005
Microsoft and Dell must have a lot of bricks lying around today – June 07, 2005
I bought parallels for the odd application I occasionally need for work as well as when I have to use IE due to stupid restrictions from webmasters. The only non-work related windows app I run is digiguide which is a comprehensive UK tv listings app. It looks like crap but with a little skinning you can tame that and it’s a powerful tool.
Gee, sometimes the rest of the world’s a bit behind on the news, isn’t it?! =:-0
Are people finally seeing the light?
@ M.X.N.T.4.1
Have you tried to enable the Debug menu in Safari? I have to visit some sites that are IE only and literally kick you out if you don’t have IE. So I trick the site into thinking Safari is really IE by changing the User Agent in the Debug menu to “Windows Internet Explorer 6.0”.
Then the site lets me in just fine.
Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your point of view) changing the User Agent to IE 6 doesn’t cripple Safari to the level of IE so this is not a sufficient way to test your web page for IE compatability if you’re into web design.
When I finally get a Macintel I’ll be installing Windows just because I can, but I expect I’ll rarely use it.
Connor MacBook,
Windows really does Solitaire well.
Yeah, I always rolled my eyes when some poor dweeb would pull the “there’s more software for Windows” argument.
My reply was, “yeah, if you consider a end-aisle, pallet-sized, ‘All Software $3.99’ cageful of crap with titles like ‘TaxCut ’97,’ “1,000,000 Art Clips!,” and some bug-ridden Blackjack game to be ‘more software.'”
While Apple is cited by Gartner and IDC as selling around 5% of all the computers in the US, it isn’t obvious that Apple’s 5% share is the cream of the market; it’s actually worth more than the same or larger percentage shares held by rivals.
Since Macs have a longer usable life span, every new Mac sold means a smaller future demand for cheap replacement PCs running Windows.
More Macs sold to consumers also means less demand for Microsoft-only solutions in general, such as websites that only work correctly in the Internet Explorer web browser.
Banks, retailers, and other businesses with IE-only web sites not only lose access to 5% of their users, but 5% of their best customers.
Jim,
how do you get to the Debug menu in Safari?
Give him some encouragement: robp@washpost.com
Toby,
Safari Enhancer is free:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/17776
Or just type the following command in Terminal (while Safari is not running):
% defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
Windows is being reduced to “just another application” that soon will be completely unnecessary.
I’m a die-hard two-screen user (side by side Apple Cinema Displays). Great solution to anyone who is really tied to WinDoze platform for whatever reason.
MDN Word; audience, as in, Thanks Washington Post, do we have an audience now?
Jim wrote: “…changing the User Agent in the Debug menu to “Windows Internet Explorer 6.0″.”
Please don’t leave it like that permanently though. This will perpetually make web developers believe that there is a higher percentage of IE users than there really is and will encourage them not to develop web pages that are compatible with other browsers.
It’s nice to see a major newspaper reporting the facts on this. I still hear idiots all of the time that claim you can run Microsoft Office on a Mac, or if they know about the Mac version, they’ll say you still can’t run Outlook or Access, etc. People need to know that you can run absolutely ANYTHING available today on a Mac, whether it’s software for Windows, Linux or OS X.
Even with the my ID set to IE 6 there are web sites that just don’t work right in Safari. I use Firefox for those. Since Firefox under OS X works and Safari doesn’t…this means that Apple shares some of the blame for the problem. Regardless of how much of the existing web code favors IE. It is the de facto landscape that any browser must work in.
This is just like when Parallels sends me an upgrade that does not allow me to use my existing VM’s (yes transporter fails to recognize or convert them). I wrote them yesterday to please not send anymore upgrades until they make one that actually works, in it’s entirety. I do not need to occupy x number of hours redoing my machine just because some yahoo decides that in an interim upgrade they are going to change the system and offer no effective way to keep your work……….That kind of crap is exactly why I dumped Windoze.
Just my $0.02
I am new to Apple and I am very happy running Mac OS X Tiger and using the Apple hardware. I use my iBook most of the time now and I look at my other computers: (Windows based lap-top and desktop) as a frustrating and slow piece of hardware. I hope that Apple will authorise a version of Boot-Camp that can be used to install OS X on Windows based PC’s. Give us a choice so we can elavate perfectly good Windows PC hardware to the Mac OS X standard. After tasting the Apple, there is no turning back.
I feel that when shopping for a computer, that the consumer should have a choice of the operating system. I own both an Apple and a PC. I bought the PC new last year and a few months ago I purchased a used 2002 Apple. That Apple runs “circles” around my newer PC. I have spent long hours configuring my PC and it still does not perform as well as the older Apple and the PC is more powerful. When using the Apple I can boot up and be online twice as fast as my PC. The Mac OS-X user interface is also superior, streamlined and easier to use than Windows. I have the option of adding Windows and running Windows programs on my Apple but there is no option to add Mac OS-X to my PC. I hope we will eventually have a choice so we can “Turbo-Charge our PCs with the Mac OS-X.
“Give us a choice so we can elavate perfectly good Windows PC hardware to the Mac OS X standard.”
“Turbo-Charge our PCs with the Mac OS-X.” — Freedom of Choice
If you could get those two statements down to 2 words, they would both be oxymorons. What you don’t realize you are unwittingly asking for is for Apple to bring Mac OS X down to it’s knees by means of PC hardware chaos.
Mac OS X doesn’t bring up the standard of the confused conglomeration of conflicting PC hardware components. OS X runs better because Apple makes sure the innards of a Macintosh consists of 100% compatible hardware. This, is why, by the way, the benchmark performance of Windows on a Mac is usually so much better than on a beige box.
Recommend you stay away from Parallels until you find out whether company is still in business. Web site doesn’t allow downloads (only takes your money). Emails to company just bounce back. You can wait forever on hold for customer service on phone, no one pick up.
Previous Parallels works OK for Windows XP but USB ports only work intermittently so can’t use your thumb drives.