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Re: The Mac is a Series of Tubes

connectionfailure — Wed, 23 May 2007 10:53:40 -0000

I agree with Jamie, it's misleading. Of course you can run a whole bunch of .NET never-will-be-made-for-mac-over-bill-gates'-dead-body Windows apps if you buy Parallels. I knew that already. The apps themselves are running in Windows, they have no idea that they are "virtualized". Slightly more interesting would be if you could use CrossOver because that wouldn't need a whole Windows licence.
Please web developers, stay in AJAX/Ruby/Java land and avoid .NET, because at least you are not stuck with using the "There Can Be Only One" Operating System. Instead, you have a choice.

Re: The Mac is a Series of Tubes

Pete Cashmore — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 22:09:27 -0000

Jamie,

Yeah, only worthwhile if you have Parallels already. And even then, it's not the best application ever.

Re: The Mac is a Series of Tubes

Jamie Flournoy — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 20:29:29 -0000

This is a rather misleading announcement.

The voice over on the video implies that it's free, which it's not. Parallels has a free 30-day trial, but Parallels doesn't run Windows applications. Parallels lets you run Windows, which obviously will run Windows applications. The announcer carefully avoids saying that it's all free, by failing to mention Windows altogether.

Parallels is $79 and Windows Vista Home Basic (the lowest priced version of Windows right now, as far as I know) is $85ish, so that's over $150. That's in addition to the hardware requirement: an Intel-based Mac with enough extra RAM and disk space for a second OS to be installed an run just to launch one "tiny desktop application".

(VMWare has a beta Mac virtualization product, a price for which has not yet been announced. I haven't tried it but the VMWare product page says it has drag and drop but says nothing about the Coherence mode that Parallels has.)

Yes, Parallels has a free trial, but even with that, it costs no less than $80 to run it the first time since you still have to buy Windows. The setup they are describing, if you actually use it for more than 30 days, costs no less than $150.