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Why should I?

faster, cheaper (assuming you have a spare comp), and simpler. i have vmware, but how much *real* work do i do on it? i'd much rather do real work on a real machine, not a virtual machine. i'd much rather spend $49.99 on a nice KVM switch instead of software that will probably require updates, etc.

can you even drag and drop things from parallels env to mac os x desktop? people use virtualization to save on hardware costs, this is critical in an enterprise lab environment. this is not the same use case in the consumer market. consumers generally have several computers nowadays, albeit some are slower than others. why not distribute this workload across several computers.

now if you're testing things like internet explorer for your web development, this makes a nice solution, but i personally don't feel that that's real work. vmware, for example, is used in this manner for a lot of projects. emulation though, is never truly worth it imho, for real work i.e. development, unless you're talking about things like hp aries and itanium/x86 emulation where you've possibly lost source code or porting would take boatloads of resources.

i'm not totally against emulation for home users, it's neat, but not necessarily essential.

"i'd much rather spend $49.99 on a nice KVM switch instead of software that will probably require updates, etc."

Yeah, good luck trying to find a $49 KVM swicth with DVI $179 is cheapest I could find to hook up my Cinema display.

Ryan-

The most obvious reason would be that Apple's most successful product lines are its portables. Who's going to carry around a bunch of laptops just to keep their options open? And rebooting is expensive when you're on battery power.

I'd say there's no such thing as a nice KVM switch. They murder video quality and introduce communications problems, like the system suddenly having no idea what modes your monitor can support, and they're way behind the times with technology. Forget DVI; even any sort of sensible USB support is elusive. I've seen a lot of switches with PS/2 in and USB out. What's the point of that?

If I am developing a site, why should I bother opening up my windows computer and navigating to the site to test in it IE when I can simply open IE through parallels.

should use what works for them individually. Plain and simple.

Yeah, bring a couple of laptops the next time you visit your clients so you can run OS X, Ubuntu, *BSD and Windows. Why on Earth would I only want to carry a single laptop?

Jeeez, what works for YOU most certainly doesn't work for ME. Get over it and stop pushing YOUR world down OUR throats.

why on earth would you need several environments (ubuntu, bsd, windows, mac os x) at a client site? and give me an honest answer.

C++ Cross platform software
Web App development?
Server command line tools and scripts? (PHP, Pearl etc)
Any Java app.
...

yes, i realize that development of "C++ cross platform", "web app" stuff could require several platforms, but what's the use case? my point is that ubuntu, *bsd, windows, mac os x is an anomaly for big and even small shops and not a valid real life use case. taking "multiple laptops" to client sites is ridiculous, who does Q/A at a client site anyway. you do this in your basement or wherever these things take place, then you present on your laptop on whatever platform. don't give me this need for ubuntu, *bsd, windows, and mac os x.

use cases children, not fantastical situations.

How my god, where are you from? You're seriously not in the computer business and you're not a real programmer. Or you're just plain lucky.

Having to make some software works under diffrent kind of environement happens ALOT with many clients. Mostly WEB developement and C++ (or even .NET C# with Mono).

I would not want to carry around 3 laptops just for fun. VMWARE is my way of having only one laptop and as many diffrent OS that I need.

Mabe emulation is not the best for HOME users. But for everybody else, it's a shoulder/money/time saver.

fantastical solutions? What industry do you work in? I was just a junior at a company that was implementing a new world wide system and I saw that the development team were using proper UNIX, Solaris, Windows, Red Hat linux and several other OSes I didn't even recognise. The web app front end was written in .NET and the back end involved a lot of UNIX/Linux and Solaris Java WebObjects.

If you work only as a tech support for phone-support users then all you will ever see is Windows, because all Windows is good enough for in the large enterprise is for desktops to just run Citrix or some web app.

multi platform, kiosk software demo

one example from personal expirience...

"why on earth would you need several environments (ubuntu, bsd, windows, mac os x) at a client site? and give me an honest answer."

A good example is the company I work for develops simulations software. The software is cross platform, and the sales guys need to demonstrate that at a client site in order to get a sale. Huge benefit to be able to run multiple VM's, so the sales team only has to carry 1 laptop as they trudge through the airports, instead of spending money to ship several computers to a client site.

excellent use case, but do you honestly think that bloke is selling for any software company? lmfao i suspect he's a home user that just can't get enough of microsoft outlook.

my guess on parallels is that they won't go far. they can't survive on this business model (consumer market). vmware does well because it's built for the enterprise, and watch them come into the picture since mac os x is running on x86 now. but as more and more of the microsoft stuff becomes compatible on mac, there will be less need for windows os. gamers wouldn't touch parallels or emulation. windows developers probably would want native speeds. so who's the target user base for parallels? web page designers and people migrating off windows, mice nuts and a declining user base.

I think you're defining "client" overly narrowly. I worked at a place which was writing simulation software for a DARPA contract. Since our "product" was a research platform, we couldn't be sure who would end up ultimately using it, or on what OS. To cite another example, in our department at the University I attend, there are people who must maintain simulation software used by researchers (who are the "customers"). The researchers just happen to be on different kinds of machines (a bunch of older Solaris/SPARC boxes, some newer Linux/x86 boxes, and a Linux/Itanium cluster that's coming in). I'm sure a multi-platform laptop would come in real handy doing support for those guys.

Virtualization isn't the same thing as emulation.

Your not helping yourself by getting agrivated at people. Tends to make you lashout and be rude. And you kept saying emulation but the software in question uses virtualization.

Get off your high horse with this 'real' developers shit. Someone's informed choice over your clealy uninformed and naive choice does not make them less real because it's not what you think. I code cross-platform applications in C++ and it allows this to happen beautifully. At first I was using Boot Camp but I found the task to be a lot smoother under a VM environment as it also allows me to use various osx tools that I have grown accustomed to to support the process. Visual Studio 2005 works flawlessly under VM and compile times are similar to native.

You are clearly still learning your way around all this, with your incorrect use of terms such as emulation, so perhaps you might want to actually start to learn about this before you cast judgements on others.

Anyone know of any bags which carry three laptops?

Worst. Post. Ever.

Yeah, that's about it too. When you go out somewhere, yet you need to check or show your software work on multiple environments, i don't think my arm likes to hold 3 laptops from place to place.

And also, if you want to let one of an average computer user (be it your mom, grandmom or whoever) to give a try on Mac as their primary desktop, you don't tuck in 2 computers under their desk with some weird KVM cable going around and telling them how to switch the thing, but just give them a mac, tell them if they ever need Windows, it's there for them even without a reboot.

You're right. I do have more than two computers.

There is my first gen iMac (purple), my iMac lamp, and my G4 Powerbook. I'll have another computer in a few months. A new 'where did the computer go" G5 i(ntel)Mac.

It this someday happens, you can migrate your virtual machines as if you were migrating real machines.

Don't think this would ever happen due to something that VMware does. They are pretty committed to openness, they open the format for their virtual disk files. Thats really the only thing that you need to ensure inter-operability. Plus, I forsee VMware putting out their product for the intel Macs pretty soon. Since they support Linux, it should be a trivial move over to intel OSX.

so long as youre not doing video hardware intensive (in the virtual machine) and you have a decent amount of ram, it runs very well indeed, id say at about 85% or higher

> It's likely dog-ass slow.

Spoken like someone who has no idea about the app in question because you've never even tried it...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=z3WpWbW7AKo&search=mac%20boot%20...

Are you saying this from first-hand experience?
I don't have first-hand experience with Parallels, but I do know more or less how 'virtualization' works. I have first-hand experience with other virtualization software like VMWare and Mac-on-Linux.

try using any sort of CPU-intensive application in the Virtual mode, and you'll get absolutely CRAPPY performance. If you think otherwise, you're delusional.

This is simply not true. I'd say even more... you will probably get the best performance in CPU-intensive applications, in comparison with for example graphics intensive applications or I/O intensive applications.

You do realise that this is "virtualization" and not "cpu emulation"? In other words, regular 'user' code is executed at _native_ speed. System code is not and is thus more expensive to execute. I've read numbers of execution in a Parallels virtualized Windows is around 80% of native speed.

//This is simply not true. I'd say even more... you will probably get the best performance in CPU-intensive applications, in comparison with for example graphics intensive applications or I/O intensive applications. //

If you can post FPS benchmarks of Half-Life 2 running in a virtualized XP window that exceed FPS benchmarks of Half-Life 2 on a reasonably-equipped native XP box, then I'll believe you.

But ... that. won't. happen. Period.

What about "in comparison with for example graphics intensive applications" do you not understand? Is Half-Life graphics-intensive, or CPU intensive?

Of course Half-Life will run slower in virtualization, not the least of all because Parallels virtualizes the graphics card. However, actual CPU-bound applications (eg: Folding @Home) will run every bit as fast in virtualization as they do natively.

I said regular user code is executed at native speed, system code is not. For Half-Life 2 a lot of code will interface with the graphics card and will eventually run on the GPU. Only regular user code on the CPU runs at native speed. The Parallels virtual machine emulates most of the hardware. For the graphics card, it emulates a VESA 3.0 video card, which allows you to only run 2D applications. They do plan support for Direct3D in future versions. However, even then the Direct3D calls will need to be translated and this will be slower.

You won't believe me? Then don't. I thought you didn't really understand how virtualization solutions work, but it seems you don't want to understand.

In their current state, virtualization solutions are not suited to run computer games from another platform. That doesn't mean it can't/won't be a solution in the future.

Actually, CPU intensive apps should have absolutely no problem under virtualization. They'll run right on the bare metal. It's the apps that invoke traps (ie: do a lot of system calls) that the VM has to virtualize that'll take the hit.

> wow ... you got me! Totally conclusive proof

Thanks for the retarded reply. I've been using it for more than a month so between you and I one of us has a clue. Well, this guy must be wrong as well.

http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-6083956.html

"The performance in Parallels was within 1 to 2 percent of the other, he said. And both Mac-based options were faster than some recently acquired Dell machines the school had."

Yep, slow as molasses. Go troll elsewhere. Do it under emulation rather than virtualisation while you are at it as well.

Edited 2006-06-16 01:37