Microsoft has delayed until later this year the release of Virtual PC 7, the latest version of a program that allows Windows software to run on the Macintosh.
Microsoft delays Virtual PC 7 for Macs
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Eugenia Loli
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I wonder how much these delays have affected the adoption of G5 systems? Personally I’m pretty pissed off about this – I know there’s no big bad conspiracy at Microsoft over this. But to wait until SP2 is available? That’s just a slap in the face to G5 owners who really need the software to get work done. It also deepens my commitment to abandoning Windows based products if/when possible.
That is why Apple needs to fix ODBC, purchase a database offering like Sybase, and purchase REALbasic. They need to provide the tools to make it easier to make buisness applciations for OS X. The real solution is NOT to use an emulator, but to provide the tools to make THEM.
odbc is broken?
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/06/20/odbc.html
Its very simple to make business applications for the Mac. Heck, people can even use RealBasic to create business applications, Apple owned or not.
Cocoa and XCode works just fine for business app development, or you can use Java (which is extremely fast on the Apple Platform, some say even faster than Cocoa). There is also extensive scripting (applescript, perl, ruby). All that is needed now truely is interest. Unfortunately some (most?) software shops dont have the resources (aka money) to develop/support a Windows AND Mac version of things.
What apple needs is to make porting easier. It would’ve been in apple’s best interest to have bought Virtual PC themselves, created a CrossOver-like library system so all MS developers would need to do is include an apple exe with their software. Include that Crossover library into MacOS for free, or sell it to developers super cheap (or something in between). Software may have ran slower but it would give developers a chance to see if there was interest in their products without taking a big risk.
Maybe apple was worried about being sued by microsoft, or losing the little microsoft support they had…ah well
I was so looking for a faster implementation for running Win apps. VPC 6 is still slow on a 17-inch PB with 2GB of RAM.
Bachs is even worse though, so I guess there is no solution but to live with the slowness……
Ho Hum.
-Jason
> That’s just a slap in the face to G5 owners who really need the software to get work done
<troll>
It sounds to me that you should be using a PC and not an overpriced Mac.
</troll>
It sounds to me that you should be using a PC and not an overpriced Mac.
see the thing is, a mac is more efficient at getting work done than a PC so he is using the proper machine.
It sounds to me that you should be using a PC and not an overpriced Mac.
see the thing is, a mac is more efficient at getting work done than a PC so he is using the proper machine.
dont be a troll…
how is the mac more efficent at getting work done???? i agree windows has its problems (same as linux and mac does also) but my emac and my ‘doze box when both running at 100% with MYOB, Office, etc etc installed are no more efficient than the other
I cannot for the life of me imagine a serious Mac user delaying the upgrade to a G5 simply because Virtual PC 7 got delayed. So what? The correlation between buying a high-end G5 and using Virtual PC to “get work done” is exactly zero. The only time I use Virtual PC is to preview web pages on Windows browsers, which doesn’t exactly require an incredibly fast emulator.
Coincidentally, Virtual PC 6 fits this bill nicely, being as slow as hell, to the point where I can occasionally watch pasted text type itself one character at a time. One can only hope that the long delays are Microsoft actually attempting to optimize the code to run at a decent speed, rather than the increasingly poor performance of recent versions. Couple that with the unnecessary price hike and mandatory bundling with Office 2004, and Virtual PC has become very unattractive indeed. I might as well buy an entry-level PC for slightly more and run things natively.
so the virtual os is not needed in a mobile environment.
if tied to a desk, why not buy a real pc with windows installed.
virtual pc and a windows license alone cost nearly what you can get a base model pc for. and that el cheapo $349 pc will radically outperform an emulated os. plus you get all the benefits of having a real machine… a hard drive you can use for backup or storage, an additional cd burner you can use, a 3d card that will handle low end 3d games….
one negative is increased power use, added heat to a work area, and more space used on a desk. if none of those concern you, buy a real pc.
if on a laptop, i can see many scenarios where emulated oses come in handy.
virtual pc sucked when connectix owned it too. so dont count on some breakthrough now that ownership has changed hands.
on the pc side the only thing it has over vmware is it is cheaper and it can address more ram (4gb to 1gb). not many users have boxes stacked with that kind of memory though.
i recommend vmware to windows users wanting to emulate any other x86 os.
I’ve got a cheap PC sitting on my network and use Remote Desktop Connection, works a lot better than VPC. Not saying it’s the best option for everyone, but it works pretty well for me.
I was thinking of doing a similar thing (have a PC with Windows and RDP running, and then connect with Linux), but I wasn’t sure which versions of Windows supported that.
-Erwos
and an os x client is made available for free and can be dled at
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/otherproducts.aspx?pid=r…
I wonder how much these delays have affected the adoption of G5 systems?
Well, it didn’t stop me. I just recently received my Dual G5 which was delayed several weeks (supposedly because they were selling a ton of them, but who knows).
The thing is, if I wanted to use Windows apps I would have bought a Windows computer. My only requirement with regards to working with Windows is having the ability to exchage data and files with my office, and that has always worked fine.
As far as ODBC goes: I’ve recently discovered it is broken for Microsoft apps. The open source ODBC drivers don’t work with Excel because of incompatibilities with Mach-O vs. CFM libraries. Microsoft points to a commercial third party driver that does work, but I fault Microsoft for not following through in providing a working driver with Office. OBDC is basically a Microsoft developed technology for connecting to Microsoft applications. I will not pay extra for it.
Fortunately, I am able to use JDBC and Perl DBI instead.
emulation sucks, just buy a cheap $200 x86 pc, do your crappy development
on that and then do the rest on your trusty mac. Why does it seem that people go with one or the other but not both? I’m not rich, but over the years I’ve accumulated several machines, doesn’t everybody else?
VP6 was slow as crap, not even worth installing, i got rid of it right away.
I am a Mac user, and I have VPC (the one from ol’ Connectix). VPC is a PC emulator, not a windows emulator! When will people understand that? It runs Windows, Linux, BSD, anything! I can have any PC I want on my Mac. I can back up the disk image of a PC and create a fresh copy whenever I want. If an emulated PC causes trouble, I chuck it into the trash like a used kleenex and start over. Real hardware cannot meet my needs. Never.
That is why Apple needs to fix ODBC, purchase a database offering like Sybase, and purchase REALbasic. They need to provide the tools to make it easier to make buisness applciations for OS X. The real solution is NOT to use an emulator, but to provide the tools to make THEM.
Oh yeah, REALbasic, thats a good solution to providing programmers with the right tools for Mac OS X. What bullsh#t. REALbasic is the suxor.
see the thing is, a mac is more efficient at getting work done than a PC so he is using the proper machine.
Hardly. If you don’t have the right tools no computer makes work easier. From my experience whether you use a Mac or a PC it is the tools which are the most important. I can work just as quickly on either platform and do my job just as well. But there are tools exclusive to PCs and Macs which make it that much easier. It would be nice if everything worked on any platform but it doesn’t. So it goes.
So we’re shocked Microsoft has pushed back a product introduction? 😉
I’m disappointed VPC 7 isn’t ready yet, but would rather MS flog the bugs out before releasing to the public. Cut ’em some slack: the G5 is a very different animal from previous Macs. And we’d rather have Win XP SP2 with the rest of the world than not.
The rumour mill believes that Virtual PC 7 for Macintosh will include three key enhancements: support for G5 Macs, support for hardware-accelerated graphics, and improved peripheral support.
The first one in that set is to fulfil the commitment Microsoft made for the next major version of Virtual PC.
The second one should give a performance boost even discounting optimisations, now that the CPU no longer needs to do graphics calculations for the guest OS. Despite the fact that DirectGraphics will be able to use it, the bottom line still is if you’re an avid PC gamer, get an Intel-compatible PC and run Windows on it. Or support Mac game publishers with your wallet so that titles will continue to be ported.
The third one is about ensuring that new devices which must be used with Windows (or for which there is only software for Windows) will work.
All of this tells me that the customer base Connectix claimed existed for Virtual PC when it was their product, is essentially the same customer base that exists now: Customers that want to use Windows “part-time” to access Macintosh-incompatible business applications, and not have to own, maintain, and constantly switch back-and-forth between a second computer. I’m in that category quite squarely, and since where I live there is simply no “throwaway PC” market (i.e. PCs costing only a few hundred $), it’s the least expensive option by far.
a) For now, I do indeed Remote Desktop to a PC to do my work. But quite honestly, I don’t want to have to keep a PC around just to run a small handful of applications. Also, as someone mentioned, virtualization has additional benefits like backing up your VM or running multiple instances. I do this on my PC right now for testing and QA using VMware.
b) To those with the childish and overzealous recommendation that I abandon Windows, I refuse to get into a debate about why I need to use Windows so KMA. This site is called OSNews – not OSXNews – so KMA.
c) I don’t mind waiting, but for pete’s sake it’s been almost a year since the G5 was made available to the public and yet Microsoft has not got it’s act together. If it’s such a BFD, they could of course share the source code with us and let us finish the work on their behalf.
It’s obvious that Microsoft is intending to do a major overhaul of Virtual PC, and is working on huge improvements to it.
It would be great if they could issue a patch to the current version, to get it to run on G5s, even if the performance isn’t optimal.
It can’t be THAT much worse than VPC running on G4 hardware, and one would think the faster clock and subsystem speeds of the G5 would make up for some of that.
OpenOSX.org has been selling MacBochs as a solution for the G5, and I think that Blue Label Power Emulator will work on it as well..
(Not sure about BLPE)
But, a patch to get it to work, even slightly slower… Would take some of the heat off them.
Don’tcha think?
(I have NO idea of such a thing is even feasible, however.. Maybe a 60 – 90 day Pre-release version of 7?)
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