This is quite amazing. Boot Camp, Apple solution to enable booting into Windows XP on Intel-based Macs already has competition. On judging by what the New York Times’ Davig Pogue had to say about it, the competition is no joke:
Run Windows and Mac OS both at once | CNET News.com:
No wonder, then, that last week, the corridors of cyberspace echoed with the sounds of high-fiving when a superior solution came to light. A little company called Parallels has found a way to eliminate all of those drawbacks—and to run Windows XP and Mac OS X simultaneously.The software is called Parallels Workstation for Mac OS X, although a better name might be No Reboot Camp. It, too, is a free public beta, available for download from parallels.com. You can preorder the final version for $40, or pay $50 after its release (in a few weeks, says the company).
Parallels, like Boot Camp, requires that you supply your own copy of Windows. But here’s the cool part: with Parallels, unlike Boot Camp, it doesn’t have to be XP. It can be any version, all the way back to Windows 3.1—or even Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, OS/2 or MS-DOS. All of this is made possible by a feature of Intel’s Core Duo chips (called virtualization) that’s expressly designed for running multiple operating systems simultaneously.
I’m already liking it.
By the way today I tentatively ordered two Intel based 20 inch iMacs for the office. With Adobe coming out with Universal Binaries for its popular packages soon (in a year?), it’s time to switch! (maybe it’s not time to switch now).
UPDATE: Magnus from emiratesmac.com just commented on this post (thanks by the way) pointing out that Adobe products for Intel Mac may be farther away than ‘soon’. I stand corrected. I guess my Mac dealer friend who told me the Adobe products will be out soon is being over-optimistic/imsinformed (just for the record, he’s really an honest guy, with whom I worked for 8 years).
Despite this delay I might still buy the new iMacs. I will test the speed of Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and Indesign though. Another possibility, which arises with Boot Camp and Parallels is to use the Windows version until the Universal Binaries come out from Adobe!
Comments
3 responses to “Apple Boot Camp has competition!”
With Adobe coming out with Universal Binaries for its popular packages soon, it’s time to switch!
Do you know something the rest of us don’t? From what I’ve heard and read it may be as late as next year before their apps become UB or if we’re lucky at the end of this year.
Seems to be a lot of hype, but from my review, it seems like a competition to MAC’s Virtual PC product and not their new Macs w/intel processor.
now according to an interview that I just read about in MacWold site (Link it seems that Photoshop in Universal won’t come until early next year.. Anyhow, I had been using CS (not CS2) in my Macbook, and it had been performing well, although I am sure it would be much better if it was universal (Note I am not a heavy user for it’s features)..
I do not see the availability of universtal apps as a major holdback for buying Intel-based Apple machines.. but I think that the idea that “More and better to come” when it comes to CPU power in the next months would be, incase you are in no hurry.. Example the 17” Macbook is rumored to have 2.33Ghz Processor, while the just released 15” was 2 and 2.1 with a 300$ USD upgrade..