Windows on an Intel Mac
As we continue to see Apple inroads into the Windows PC market, people keep looking for solutions for running the applications that are Windows-only on a Mac. I have faced this need for years. On the old systems (PowerPC G3-G5) we had options like SoftWindows and VirtualPC. With my G5 and 1.5 GB of memory, I can actually run Windows 2000 at about 50% speed using VirtualPC.
Then came the Intel Mac before the populus. The Intel processor allowed designers to take advantage of the same core binary math operations used by PCs in emulating Windows. This reduced the translation overhead immensely, enabling the Intel Macs to run Windows and Windows software at native speeds. Nonetheless, though they be "able" to run at near-native speeds, much was left to do as far as integration and inter-operability is concerned. Let me comment on these issues.
The first issue is physical setup of the hardware. Some options can share one partition. Bootcamp and Parallels or Bootcamp and Fusion. My favorite solution thus far involves installing Bootcamp on its own partition and then installing Parallels in OS X, though I am excited to benchmark this against the Bootcamp/Fusion option. I can boot Parallels and boot my Bootcamp XP Pro environment then interact with it natively - including cut-paste and drag and drop with OS X. Version 3 of Parallels added seemless, transparent integration of Windows apps into the OS X interface through "coherence" technology that makes it operate like a fully featured Crossover! A second issue is data transitioning. I have upgraded an old Windows 2000 virtual drive from Virtual PC to Parallels. The upgrade was seemless and the virtual machine worked perfectly! I have had some trouble with Crossover reading data across file systems and types. I am guessing this will be improved in all options fairly soon and expect it to become a non-issue by the middle of 2008.
The Players
Four key options exist for running Windows apps on an Intel Mac at this point:
| Application | Emulation Description | Current Status |
|---|---|---|
| Parallels | Runs installed full Windows OS virtualized within the Mac OS. | Performance is great running Windows XP sp2. Reliability is good. I have seen no problems running any application I want including SPSS, a statistical package. Networking works fairly well but sometimes causes crashes. As of Feb. 27, 07 the new update to Parallels is out. It enables booting Windows apps directly within the Mac OS. Pretty cool. See this article. |
| VMWare | Runs installed full Windows OS virtualized within the Mac OS. | Performance is similar to Parallels. It seems to load a bit faster but have less integration. I tend to use Parallels more than Fusion. I have both installed on the same machine and prefer to use them running my Bootcamp partition rather than running a virtual disk. See Macworld article, Digg.com discussion on VMware versus Parallels or VMware's own announcement of its product. In early reports this product performs better than Parallels but lacks the Coherence integration. |
| Bootcamp | This one runs the Windows OS native to the Mac, independent of the Mac OS. | Bootcamp ran Windows XP sp2 at native speed with all functionality when I tested it on my MBPro 1.8Ghz 1.5 GB. The problem is integration. Sharing files was a problem. Future versions in Mac OSes starting with Leopard promise better file system mounting. There is no clipboard or drag and drop integration that exists in Parallels or VMware or older products like VirtualPC for that matter. As a result, Bootcamp is not so useful for me. I would rather live in the Mac OS and visit Windows than live in Windows on a Mac! As of version 1.2 Bootcamp supports Vista, but the resource demands appear hefty. |
| Crossover | Lightweight DLL mapping integration through "bottles" that translate core command operations. | Crossover is a reasonable package for lightweight needs. It handles Microsoft Visio well as far as drawing diagrams and printing - which makes it valuable enough to get for me. It provides full drag and drop, clipboard, networking, and printing integration. This is really nice, but advanced processes and DLLs are not supported. You can find a list of supported software packages and levels of support ratings on the Crossover Web site. |
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