Battles in the Virtualization Space
I’ll spell it American… happy, blogosphere? Here’s a few interesting examples of how the battle is being waged in terms of virtualisation of software:
- I can’t run Windows Live Writer—simply the best blogging software on both the Mac and Windows—through Crossover, because it was built in .Net. And .Net apps don’t work in Crossover.
- You can use the free Virtualbox from Sun to run your virtual OSs (a great development environment!), but if you want to launch Windows apps from your Mac, you need to pay for either Parallels, Fusion, Crossover, or any other commercial variants for this purpose. Basically, a software like Parallels allows you to place a shortcut to a Windows app onto the Dock or the Desktop, which will launch Windows + the app, when you click it.
- The best Windows user-experience on the Mac is through Boot Camp. It would be a million times quicker to boot if you were able to hibernate on the Windows side and safe sleep on the Mac side. If you don’t want to risk losing your unsaved data however (why would it be unsaved?), you’re probably better off booting the traditional way (3-5 min. out the window right there). Well actually, it used to be an official feature, now it isn’t.
- Sharing your OS X documents with your Windows ones (in other words, using the same folder for both OSs) is very possible when you use Parallels. When you use boot camp however, it all of a sudden gives you a convenient error.
Georgia, in response to my post about the OS War being over, wrote that she thought that this whole discussion is about standards. I think that the edges are getting very blurry and I eventually see hardware, on the PC-side at least, becoming pretty irrelevant. In the meantime, however, you get these little annoyances, beyond stuff like Office for Mac being inferior to Office for Windows, which make me wonder if they are here by design or because they haven’t gotten around to fixing it yet. I’m betting on the first.
Standards, for now at least, are still causing wars.
Vincent
(Picture is of course of the game Virtua Tennis 3, and has absolutely zero to do with this post)
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Tags: crossover, parallels, patents, standards, sun, virtualisation, virtualization
.NET (C#), Apple, Consumer electronics, Design, Microsoft, Software, Windows, copyright, innovation
Just a quick clarification: you state that .Net applications don’t work under CrossOver. That’s not strictly true. CrossOver will run some .Net apps, so long as they were built with .Net 1.1 and 2.0 frameworks. .Net 3.0 and later is still problematic in Wine, although progress is being made on those apps as well. In time, this should become less of an issue.
Thanks for your mention of CrossOver–we appreciate it.
Best Wishes,
-jon parshall-
COO
http://www.codeweavers.com
“Your Mac Windows Solution”
you win,
to make stg from functional –> great you probably need the correct environment and conduct. imagine being a billionaire spending his days in a nursery school. it works to the extend the environment empowers you.
on the war of standards, you are right and we’ll have pretty much material on the months or years to come. can you tell how long did it take for net-neutrality to be established? I can’t. utopic…
my first experience with virtualization was pretty traumatic : trying to run virtual pc on my mac in 2005 to finish my university thesis,had to work on a pc based lab, in my first week in France, with absolutely no idea of Powershell to enforce my mac to collaborate.
that’s when I got that if you don’t manage it right you are pretty much…on vacation.
i am getting pretty bavard so I declare these last stuff and let you enjoy your tennis
I am ashamed for two reasons /
1. i used to spell it american as well
2. i only know the Microsoft equivalents of Parallels which is actually a free perk for the desktop and lets you virtualize the application or the OS that carries it on your OS.