seacue
23rd Feb 2007, 15:05
Adapted from a news story
Microsoft is making it hard for Mac owners and other potentially influential customers to adopt Vista. Microsoft says the blockade is necessary for security reasons.
The situation involves a technology known as virtualization. Essentially, it lets one computer mimic multiple machines, even ones with different operating systems. It does this by running multiple applications at the same time, but in separate realms of the computer. Now that Macintosh computers from Apple Inc. use Intel Corp. chips, just like Windows-based PCs, virtualization programs let Mac users easily switch back and forth between Apple's Mac OS X operating system and Windows.
Unlike Apple's free Boot Camp program that lets Windows run on a Mac, Parallels' virtualization product for Macs does not limit users to just one operating system running at a time. Parallels runs Windows in a window on the Mac desktop. Parallels also sells a version for Windows PCs _ which would let people run both Vista and its predecessor, Windows XP, simultaneously so they can keep programs that aren't yet Vista-compatible.
The price of the virtualization software does not include a copy of Windows. And to get that copy, buyers have to agree to Vista's licensing rules _ a legally binding document. Lurking in that 14-page agreement is a ban on using the least expensive versions of Vista _ the $199 Home Basic edition and the $239 Home Premium edition _ in virtualization engines. Instead, people wanting to put Vista in a virtualized program have to buy the $299 Business version or the $399 Ultimate package.
Microsoft is making it hard for Mac owners and other potentially influential customers to adopt Vista. Microsoft says the blockade is necessary for security reasons.
The situation involves a technology known as virtualization. Essentially, it lets one computer mimic multiple machines, even ones with different operating systems. It does this by running multiple applications at the same time, but in separate realms of the computer. Now that Macintosh computers from Apple Inc. use Intel Corp. chips, just like Windows-based PCs, virtualization programs let Mac users easily switch back and forth between Apple's Mac OS X operating system and Windows.
Unlike Apple's free Boot Camp program that lets Windows run on a Mac, Parallels' virtualization product for Macs does not limit users to just one operating system running at a time. Parallels runs Windows in a window on the Mac desktop. Parallels also sells a version for Windows PCs _ which would let people run both Vista and its predecessor, Windows XP, simultaneously so they can keep programs that aren't yet Vista-compatible.
The price of the virtualization software does not include a copy of Windows. And to get that copy, buyers have to agree to Vista's licensing rules _ a legally binding document. Lurking in that 14-page agreement is a ban on using the least expensive versions of Vista _ the $199 Home Basic edition and the $239 Home Premium edition _ in virtualization engines. Instead, people wanting to put Vista in a virtualized program have to buy the $299 Business version or the $399 Ultimate package.