I came across a beta signup for VMWare for Mac OS X today. This is an excellent move by VMWare. Mac users were missing out on the benefits of a mature virtualization platform. I thought it would only be a matter of time before VMWare announced this product after Macs switched (pun intended) to an Intel platform. I have not tried Parallels Desktop for Mac yet, but the performance of Windows under Virtual PC for Mac is less than desirable. If the performance of VMWare for Mac is as good as its Windows and Linux counterparts then it will steal this market. VMWare has product maturity and a community of pre-configured virtual appliances behind it.
VMWare could provide the flexibility that Macs have desperately needed in order to compete in a corporate environment. It looks like beauty could meet productivity after all.
Technorati Tags: VMWare, OS X, Virtualization
Are you a mac user as well? Just curious … I switched about three years ago after using an Apple Cube and OS X. I agree, Virtual PC was a horrendous application that never seemed to emulate anything faster than a 300Mhz PII processor. I always found that kind of sad considering how fast the G4/G5 chips could be. On the flip side, did you ever toy with PearPC which created a virtual G4 environment so that you could run OS X inside of Windows?
Matt,
I am not a Mac user, but my wife is. I do recognize the merits that Apple brings to the home user. OS X is both elegant and easy to use, yet powerful if one wants to dig deep into it. I have not played with PearPC. However, I have heard that emulation of PPC on the i396 platform was really slow with PearPC. Anyhow, thanks for the comment.
I am long time PC user and have always admired Apple Macintosh for it’s simplicity especially when it came to Music sound production. I’ve recently upgraded my studio from ProTools LE to the ProTools HD2 and have decided to go with the PCIe version which meant getting a Mac Pro. So far, I’ve been really impressed! The Mac Pro serves as a turnkey solution that my PC had some difficulty doing. Although I am still a PC user, I’m happy with my Mac Pro.