Microsoft Acquires Connectix Virtual PC
I have been a long time fan and user of Apple technology. Before 1990 I was a user of DOS and Intel based PCs since the demise of CP/m when the IBM PC came out. Ever since switching I have occasionally had the need to use PC based applications on the Mac and there have always been a couple solutions for emulating the Intel processor on the Mac platform. For years I used SoftPC/SoftWindows and then Connectix came up with Virtual PC. VPC was much faster than SoftWindows and had the added benefit of being able to run multiple operating systems including Linux. I have used every version they have released over the years and am currently running VPC 6 under Mac OS X. It is great technology and generally well behaved.

Today I got an email from Connectix announcing that Microsoft has acquired the Virtual PC and Virtual Server business of Connectix.

This could be good and it could be bad. Microsoft is touting this as their further and continuing support of the Mac platform, but I wonder if they really just want to kill the technology and roll the technology into their core operating systems. In many ways Windows runs better on the Mac then it does on a real pc. One feature I particularly like is the save PC state feature, where you can preserve on your hard drive and exact print of memory at the time. You can launch Windows in under .5 min using this feature. Of course this technology is available with Virtual PC for Windows, which allows you to run multiple instances and versions of OSs under Windows (you can do the same on the Mac as well).

I saw what happened to Citrix when Microsoft bought them; I hope the same does not happen with VPC. Hopefully MS can improve and soup up the applications and make them more integrated with the OS for more speed and functionality.

It will be interesting to see what comes of this new development.

Over the years I have learned that you can emulate almost any computing platform on the Mac (more emulators are available for the Mac than on any other platform). You can read about all the emulation possibilities on the Mac at emulation.net.
11:14:53 AM     comment []