Parallels Desktop for Mac OS
Posted by Jeff Chenkus on June 18, 2006
Filed Under Misc. Gadgets | Stumble This
Apple has had their BootCamp Beta out for a while that lets users boot either the Mac OS or Windows. One drawback has been that only one OS is running at any given time, so to run apps from the other OS you need to reboot.
A new startup called Parallels says that their Parallels Desktop software to allow Windows apps to run alongside Mac apps under the Mac OS is now ready to go. The obvious advantage being that you can boot into the Mac OS and run apps for either operating system. They do it through running the Windows OS in a virtual machine. They claim that since Intel processors are now used, they can run almost as fast as if they were running natively. Duff-McCracken ran some test and found the apps to be running within 1-2% of native speed.
In the end I gues it comes down to what work you do on your Apple and how you like to handle it. While there may be some advantage to running the Windows OS natively on the Mac using BootCamp, this solution seems to offer a much better way. While I am sure there are some gamers or Microsoft purists out there who only would want an Apple if it ran the Microsoft OS natively, I think most would be happy to run the Mac OS with the ability to pull up the MS apps when the need arises. With an almost negligible performace hit, it would offer the best of both worlds. In the end, Apple’s choice to go with Intel chips seems to be a winner for them, regardless of exactly how their machines are used.
Posted by Jeff
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