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Alas poor Parallels, I knew it well? August 7, 2006

Posted by James Webster in : apple, virtualization , add a comment

Small software vendors have a history of getting shafted at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference; remember the kerfuffle over Konfabulator when Apple announced Dashboard in Tiger? In the end I guess it worked out okay for those guys as they flipped to Yahoo. On the eve of WWDC 2006 it looks like the 600lb gorilla of virtualization is releasing a beta of VMware Workstation for Mac. Which perhaps puts Parallels Desktop Mac in a somewhat precarious position if a version of the free VMware Player for Mac is shortly behind. I sincerely hope not, as Parallels’ product is damn impressive; I have been using it for a few weeks since getting a MacBook and would be pretty lost without it at this point. Parallels does have the advantage of being priced more aggressively: $79USD to the $189USD that VMware’s Mac product would be priced at if Windows and Linux pricing is any guide. The feature set of VMware Workstation is definitely more higher-end but it will be interesting to watch how pricing of both of these products on both PC and Mac platforms may change over the coming months. About the only thing that I wish Parallels supported was the ability to open VMware virtual machine images, simply because there are just so many of them out there.

Incidentally Codeweaver’s Crossover Office for Mac is also scheduled to go into beta this month, possibly an announcement to coincide with the WWDC will be made in the next few days. I would be impressed to see them add the betas of Office 2007 to their list of supported applications but I am probably dreaming.

Virtualization and dual-screen development May 21, 2006

Posted by James Webster in : virtualization, development , 1 comment so far

Seth Livingston blogs about the value of
virutalization in development (via VMTN Blog). As Seth points out, it is possible to build up a development VM with all the common tools that have been agreed upon and develop solely within that environment. This is a great idea; especially when you also consider that some tools aren’t the greatest in sharing key bindings, template shortcuts, etc. The most recent version of IntelliJ in particular has this problem; there is no easy way to share Live Templates and additional key bindings via source control without further complications. I would love to be able to develop in a VM for this reason alone. But can my virtual development box also support dual monitors? Unfortunately dual-monitor support for guest OS’s appears to be missing from the VMware Workstation data-sheet.

Windows XP virtualization for OS X coming from Parallels April 5, 2006

Posted by James Webster in : apple, virtualization , 4 comments

UPDATE: As per the rumour, Parallels have made a beta download of Parallels Workstation for Intel OS X. Now where’s my credit card…

Via virtualization.info; Techworld is reporting that Parallels, a competitor to VMware (albeit on the desktop end of the virtualization spectrum), will be announcing the details of a product that will support virtualization of Windows XP, Linux and presumably other x86 operating systems under Intel Mac OS X. W00t! Time to put in an order for a revision D MacBook Pro methinks?

The question remains; will this spur on VMware to produce a similar product for OS X? The more I think about it, I consider it less likely to happen. Although VMware are still making big money out of Workstation they are focusing on the enterprise space and sales of ESX Server. Intel-based Xserve’s and OS X Server have yet to be announced by Apple. The general view is that Apple (read: Steve Jobs) is increasingly uninterested in the enterprise market and focusing purely on the consumer.

So no free VMware Player for OS X then? Well, there is still Q, which may add true virtualization soon, and the rumours that Leopard will include virtualization support.