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First Intel Macs on track for January - Page 10

post #361 of 452
11/24/05 at 4:54pm
Quote:
Originally posted by aegisdesign
I've not played with VMware, Xen, WINE or Crossover so perhaps someone could answer this.

The advantage I see with running VirtualPC over dual booting, apart from the obvious ability to run two OSs at the same time, is that you can drag and drop files between Explorer and Finder and cut and paste between the two OSs. That IME is worth the price of VirtualPC.

For me it's secondary advantage is I've got three VPC sessions, each with a different browser installed. It's the best way to test IE compatibility.

This is why I've been saying that the best solution will vary with each persons needs.

There is no best solution that will be the same for everyone.
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post #362 of 452
11/24/05 at 5:17pm
Quote:
Originally posted by melgross
This is why I've been saying that the best solution will vary with each persons needs.

There is no best solution that will be the same for everyone.

Yep. To me it actually doesn't matter what speed VirtualPC runs at either. Even if it ran at 1/3rd the speed of the PPC version (which I'm sure it won't) having it run in a window alongside my Mac OS toolset is much more important than any other consideration. All it has to do is run IE6.
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post #363 of 452
11/24/05 at 5:47pm
Quote:
Originally posted by aegisdesign
I've not played with VMware, Xen, WINE or Crossover so perhaps someone could answer this.

The advantage I see with running VirtualPC over dual booting, apart from the obvious ability to run two OSs at the same time, is that you can drag and drop files between Explorer and Finder and cut and paste between the two OSs. That IME is worth the price of VirtualPC.

For me it's secondary advantage is I've got three VPC sessions, each with a different browser installed. It's the best way to test IE compatibility.

hi aegis,

1.the promise of wine, crossover, darwine,is that the file system is seamless. a pc file say notepad.exe is right there, you can see it in the mac os finder, drag it anywhere you like, etc. so, better than virtual pc in the sense that there is only one primary file system (your mac hard disk) to worry about, unlike virtual pc where you have your different guest file systems for each guest virtual machine

2.yes, with that aspect VPC and also vmware (for linux and windows) offers a superior experience in that regard because that is a case where you *do* want to completely simulate various operating system environments -- the only hit is that you have to assign separate memory spaces to each guest OS. wow, we could be 5-10 years out from this, but imagine if virtualisation tech gets sophisticated enough that it would split memory spaces on the fly really intelligently

so anyway i think what melgross said a while back is relevant. there are a lot of good options opening up now for windows and mac osX86 harmony:

1. dual booting
eg. best for gaming

2. crossover/wine/darwine/etc
eg. best for running windows applications seamlessly alongside mac applications in os X environment

3. virtual pc for mac os x(86)
eg. best for testing and simulating guest windoze environments, also handy where darwine support for an app is incomplete

4. intel CPU virtualisation technology?????
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post #364 of 452
11/24/05 at 6:13pm
Quote:
Originally posted by sunilraman
hi aegis,

1.the promise of xen, wine, crossover, darwine,is that the file system is seamless. a pc file say notepad.exe is right there, you can see it in the mac os finder, drag it anywhere you like, etc. so, better than virtual pc in the sense that there is only one primary file system (your mac hard disk) to worry about, unlike virtual pc where you have your different guest file systems for each guest virtual machine

2.yes, with that aspect VPC and also vmware (for linux and windows) offers a superior experience in that regard because that is a case where you *do* want to completely simulate various operating system environments -- the only hit is that you have to assign separate memory spaces to each guest OS. wow, we could be 5-10 years out from this, but imagine if virtualisation tech gets sophisticated enough that it would split memory spaces on the fly really intelligently

so anyway i think what melgross said a while back is relevant. there are a lot of good options opening up now for windows and mac osX86 harmony:

1. dual booting
eg. best for gaming

2. crossover/wine/xen/darwine/etc
eg. best for running windows applications seamlessly alongside mac applications in os X environment

3. virtual pc for mac os x(86)
eg. best for testing and simulating guest windoze environments, also handy where darwine support for an app is incomplete

4. intel CPU virtualisation technology?????

Well said.

#4 is a real question, isn't it? The chip itself is supposed to be partitioned off in this scheme, just like disk partitions. Whatever happens in one should not affect the other. Still, there will be performance losses for each OS running. Just how much remains to be seen. It both are being used at the same time we will see that is just can't be helped.
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post #365 of 452
11/24/05 at 6:36pm
yeah, you know, something like this virtualisation deal is where intel needs someone like apple to really apply it well... i am wondering if this is something iSteve saw that he really liked 8)

edit: say this 5 times fast: apple applies applications absolutely applicably .. apple applies applications absolutely applicably .. apple applies applications absolutely applicably .. apple applies applications absolutely applicably .. apple applies applications absolutely applicably .. apple applies applications absolutely applicably ..
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post #366 of 452
11/24/05 at 8:06pm
Quote:
Originally posted by sunilraman
3. virtual pc for mac os x(86)
eg. best for testing and simulating guest windoze environments, also handy where darwine support for an app is incomplete

Wouldn't this work just as well as dual booting, now that we're on Intel?
My computer can beat up your computer.
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My computer can beat up your computer.
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post #367 of 452
11/24/05 at 9:25pm
Quote:
Originally posted by mynamehere
Wouldn't this work just as well as dual booting, now that we're on Intel?

Ha! Read back about fifteen twenty posts.

This discussion just goes round and round.
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post #368 of 452
11/24/05 at 10:20pm
Quote:
Originally posted by mynamehere
Wouldn't this work just as well as dual booting, now that we're on Intel?

No. VPC lets you drag and drop between OSs whilst both are running, share networking, hardware and it's much easier to create virtual partitions without having to mess about with actual real hard disk partitions.

For instance, I've a backup copy of a clean Win2000 install whoch I use whenever my current VPC win2000 install goes bad.

I think it's also quite sad that we're talking about Intel's new virtualization technology when IBM have been doing it for decades (at least since I used it back in 1986) and the POWER chips for quite some time too. Ah well.
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post #369 of 452
11/24/05 at 10:25pm
Quote:
Originally posted by aegisdesign
No. VPC lets you drag and drop between OSs whilst both are running, share networking, hardware and it's much easier to create virtual partitions without having to mess about with actual real hard disk partitions.

For instance, I've a backup copy of a clean Win2000 install whoch I use whenever my current VPC win2000 install goes bad.

I think it's also quite sad that we're talking about Intel's new virtualization technology when IBM have been doing it for decades (at least since I used it back in 1986) and the POWER chips for quite some time too. Ah well.

That's true, but IBM only had it for it's own OS's.

And now it's affordable.
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post #370 of 452
11/24/05 at 11:25pm
Quote:
Originally posted by sunilraman
1.the promise of xen, wine, crossover, darwine,is that the file system is seamless. a pc file say notepad.exe is right there, you can see it in the mac os finder, drag it anywhere you like, etc. so, better than virtual pc in the sense that there is only one primary file system (your mac hard disk) to worry about, unlike virtual pc where you have your different guest file systems for each guest virtual machine

This is true for WINE and its derivatives, but Xen really shouldn't be on that list.
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post #371 of 452
11/24/05 at 11:31pm
Quote:
Originally posted by melgross
That's true, but IBM only had it for it's own OS's.

Of course it only works for operating systems that actually run on their hardware, but that should include Linux as well.
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post #372 of 452
11/25/05 at 12:01am
Quote:
Originally posted by RazzFazz
Of course it only works for operating systems that actually run on their hardware, but that should include Linux as well.

Yes, with IBM being a big supplier of Linux these days.

Remember when it was hoped that they would be a big supplier of OS X as well?
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post #373 of 452
11/25/05 at 3:57am
Quote:
Originally posted by RazzFazz
This is true for WINE and its derivatives, but Xen really shouldn't be on that list.

fair enough mate. i'll edit tha post.
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post #374 of 452
11/25/05 at 4:03am
Originally posted by melgross
...Remember when it was hoped that they would be a big supplier of OS X as well?

actually, i think i missed that one for some reason.... well, looks like it hasn't worked out as hoped
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post #375 of 452
11/25/05 at 6:07am
Quote:
Originally posted by melgross
Remember when it was hoped that they would be a big supplier of OS X as well?

Hoped by whom?

Just ill-informed rumour-merchants, I'd suspect.
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post #376 of 452
11/25/05 at 8:59am
Quote:
Originally posted by krispie
Hoped by whom?

Just ill-informed rumour-merchants, I'd suspect.

Not ill informed at all.

It was thought by analysts and those in the industry that IBM might offer OS X on POWER or PPC servers.

IBM is OS neutral. That's why it was thought that they would be interested in reselling an OS from its longtime partner, as it offers them from it's longtime (first partner) rival MS.

Don't forget that Apple and IBM had combined to produce an OS before, and while that project didn't result in the planned OS, both companies have used technologies from that project.
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post #377 of 452
11/25/05 at 10:08am
Quote:
Originally posted by melgross
IBM is OS neutral.

Uh, ever heard of i5/OS, AIX or z/OS?
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post #378 of 452
11/25/05 at 10:24am
Quote:
Originally posted by RazzFazz
Uh, ever heard of i5/OS, AIX or z/OS?

Exactly IBM want to control the server market, and you can't do that if you don't control the OS, especially if you sell services.
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post #379 of 452
11/25/05 at 10:27am
Quote:
Originally posted by RazzFazz
Uh, ever heard of i5/OS, AIX or z/OS?

You know what I mean. I said that they have their own. They sell other OS;s other than their own as well. Novell, Windows, Linux. Others over the years as well.

IBM is a solutions company. They reccomend products to their customers even if it means that they resell another companies product other than their own.

They've sold Oracle's database to customers who were buying their machines rather than Db2 when the customer preferred that.
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post #380 of 452
11/25/05 at 10:49am
Quote:
Originally posted by melgross
You know what I mean. I said that they have their own. They sell other OS;s other than their own as well. Novell, Windows, Linux. Others over the years as well.

That only really applies to xSeries, for which there's no IBM proprietary OS anyway (well, none that still breathes, so OS/2 doesn't count). i-, p- and zSeries machines AFAIK are only offered with IBM proprietary operating systems or Linux (or both when using LPAR).
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post #381 of 452
11/25/05 at 11:03am
Quote:
Originally posted by RazzFazz
That only really applies to xSeries, for which there's no IBM proprietary OS anyway (well, none that still breathes, so OS/2 doesn't count). i-, p- and zSeries machines AFAIK are only offered with IBM proprietary operating systems or Linux (or both when using LPAR).

That's true, but IBM has other product lines, and is even expanding them. The longevity of the old 400 series surprised even them.
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post #382 of 452
11/25/05 at 11:27am
Quote:
Originally posted by melgross
That's true, but IBM has other product lines, and is even expanding them.

We were talking about PowerPC and POWER servers, and AFAIK IBM only offers POWER/PPC processors on i- and pSeries servers (with the possible exception of the JS20 -- not sure what that would be classified as).


Quote:
The longevity of the old 400 series surprised even them.

Yeah, in fact, it even outlived its own name:

When IBM marketing decided that "eBusiness" is a really cool word, they had all the server lines renamed to "eServer somethingSeries". Thus, the AS/400 product line became the "iSeries", S/3x0 became "zSeries", AIX-based POWER machines became "pSeries" and everything Intel-based became "xSeries".
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post #383 of 452
11/25/05 at 11:38am
Quote:
Originally posted by RazzFazz
[B]We were talking about PowerPC and POWER servers, and AFAIK IBM only offers POWER/PPC processors on i- and pSeries servers (with the possible exception of the JS20 -- not sure what that would be classified as).

It was thought that IBM would expand the series, but it didn't happen.



Quote:
Yeah, in fact, it even outlived its own name:

When IBM marketing decided that "eBusiness" is a really cool word, they had all the server lines renamed to "eServer somethingSeries". Thus, the AS/400 product line became the "iSeries", S/3x0 became "zSeries", AIX-based POWER machines became "pSeries" and everything Intel-based became "xSeries".

Yeah, IBM has been trying to discontinue the "iSeries" for years, but the users won't let them.
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post #384 of 452
11/25/05 at 8:20pm
Quote:
Originally posted by sunilraman
hi aegis,

1.the promise of wine, crossover, darwine,is that the file system is seamless. a pc file say notepad.exe is right there, you can see it in the mac os finder, drag it anywhere you like, etc. so, better than virtual pc in the sense that there is only one primary file system (your mac hard disk) to worry about, unlike virtual pc where you have your different guest file systems for each guest virtual machine

You can launch Windows apps in VPC wherever they are as well. VPC mounts the folder as a network volume and launches the exe.

Quote:

so anyway i think what melgross said a while back is relevant. there are a lot of good options opening up now for windows and mac osX86 harmony:

2. crossover/wine/darwine/etc
eg. best for running windows applications seamlessly alongside mac applications in os X environment

Actually VirtualPC is and will be far more seamless than Darwine for quite some time. VirtualPC supports copy+paste a lot better than WINE, and you can forget about any drag+drop. This is mostly due to that extra nasty/crufty layer of X11.

Please don't tout Darwine as "seamlessly" doing anything until you've used it first hand.

I would categorize Darwine as best for running games when you don't want to reboot, assuming you can get the controls to work well.

Also, why are you using "eg" like that? Eg. stands for "for example."
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post #385 of 452
11/25/05 at 8:43pm
Quote:
Originally posted by strobe
[B]You can launch Windows apps in VPC wherever they are as well. VPC mounts the folder as a network volume and launches the exe.

Actually VirtualPC is and will be far more seamless than Darwine for quite some time. VirtualPC supports copy+paste a lot better than WINE, and you can forget about any drag+drop. This is mostly due to that extra nasty/crufty layer of X11.

Please don't tout Darwine as "seamlessly" doing anything until you've used it first hand.

I would categorize Darwine as best for running games when you don't want to reboot, assuming you can get the controls to work well.

I suppose that "seamless" would depend on what you're doing with it. Drag and drop is often better with VPC. But as VPC is so much slower, and has problems with Firewire, USB, graphics, and other services, it's not exactly seamless either.
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post #386 of 452
11/25/05 at 8:48pm
Quote:
Originally posted by melgross
I suppose that "seamless" would depend on what you're doing with it. Drag and drop is often better with VPC. But as VPC is so much slower, and has problems with Firewire, USB, graphics, and other services, it's not exactly seamless either.

I wouldn't call VPC seamless either, but Darwine is a far cry from being able to support even these rudimentary features.
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post #387 of 452
11/25/05 at 8:56pm
Quote:
Originally posted by strobe
I wouldn't call VPC seamless either, but Darwine is a far cry from being able to support even these rudimentary features.

You got that right!

Darwine is far from supporting anything at all useful at this point in time.

We should hope that when the Mactels come out, there will be at least a working beta. Unless this January thing is true.

Crossover (based on WINE and Darwine) will be more important when it becomes available.
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post #388 of 452
11/25/05 at 10:33pm
how much $$ are these mactels going for?
aidanP
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aidanP
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post #389 of 452
11/25/05 at 10:49pm
Quote:
Originally posted by aidanp
how much $$ are these mactels going for?

There aren't any yet.

It's been rumored that an iBook or Mini might come out in January, or maybe not until May or June. Pricing is unknown, though some think that they may cost somewhat less than what the current units cost.
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post #390 of 452
11/26/05 at 7:06am
Quote:
Originally posted by sunilraman

there are a lot of good options opening up now for windows and mac osX86 harmony:

1. dual booting
eg. best for gaming

2. crossover/wine/darwine/etc
eg. best for running windows applications seamlessly alongside mac applications in os X environment

3. virtual pc for mac os x(86)
eg. best for testing and simulating guest windoze environments, also handy where darwine support for an app is incomplete

4. intel CPU virtualisation technology?????

In my earlier post, where I was saying that running Virtual PC on a G3/G4/G5 is very different from running a Windows VM on an Intel Mac, I was referring to your point #4 as the VM technology. That's why it's so different--it's partly hardware based (the CPU supports VMs, as opposed to Virtual PC where the G3/G4/G5 doesn't support VMs directlly) and there are no CPU instruction translations because both Windows and OS X/Intel run natively on Intel.

Here's an interesting take on how Apple might implement it:

http://www.architosh.com/news/2005-1...t-mactels.html

If that comes to pass, there'll be no need for Microsoft's Virtual PC product for the Mac anymore. So that crosses off #3 from your list. And IMHO, Crossover/Wine/Darwine won't go mainstream, so cross #2 off your list.

I think the only real options are #1 (dual boot) and #4 (VMs). Use dual boot for performance; use VMs for convenience. Hell, you could even do both!
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post #391 of 452
11/26/05 at 8:30am
Quote:
Originally posted by bikertwin
I think the only real options are #1 (dual boot) and #4 (VMs). Use dual boot for performance; use VMs for convenience. Hell, you could even do both! [/B]

Neither of which offer virtual drives, virtual networking, drag and drop support or cut and paste, features I use all the time in VPC. I'd rather use PPC VPC running under Rosetta on an Intel Mac than lose those features.

1 and 4 are only useful for gamers or people who do not want to use MacOS as their working environment.
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post #392 of 452
11/26/05 at 11:12am
Quote:
Originally posted by bikertwin
Here's an interesting take on how Apple might implement it:

http://www.architosh.com/news/2005-1...t-mactels.html

If that comes to pass, there'll be no need for Microsoft's Virtual PC product for the Mac anymore. So that crosses off #3 from your list. And IMHO, Crossover/Wine/Darwine won't go mainstream, so cross #2 off your list.

I think the only real options are #1 (dual boot) and #4 (VMs). Use dual boot for performance; use VMs for convenience. Hell, you could even do both! [/B]

The article says what I've been saying about that approach. But the individual partitions will not help the speed of the programs any. The only advantage to that approach is that what happens in one partition won't affect the other. If one OS goes down, the other will still be running. But with both running, you give up the full power of the machine for either partition.. These are virtual partitions, so there is no concept here of one cpu one OS, either. It's fine if you are browsing or doing something where machine power isn't important, but when it is, this is not the way to go.
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post #393 of 452
11/26/05 at 1:16pm
Quote:
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Neither of which offer virtual drives, virtual networking, drag and drop support or cut and paste, features I use all the time in VPC. I'd rather use PPC VPC running under Rosetta on an Intel Mac than lose those features.

1 and 4 are only useful for gamers or people who do not want to use MacOS as their working environment.

Yeah, I agree that #1 (dual boot) is pretty much a geek/gamer solution. Your average Joe or Mary won't really care for that at all. It's so inconvenient. It's like shutting down your stove so you can use your oven.

#4 (multiple independent VMs) is probably more useful than you think. I don't know the technical details of how Intel and Apple might implement it, but I'd guess you would be able to use the same networking and see the same hard drives (via networking). Yeah, cut & paste would be more difficult, but there might be a workaround (such as the VM silently writing temporary files to the hard drive so the other VM could use them in cut & paste). Who knows?

It would be very impressive if Apple created a seamless environment with Windows running under OS X á la Virtual PC for Mac. But as IBM's OS/2 showed, that just results in users feeling that they don't need to buy new apps for the main operating system (OS X). OS/2 ran Windows programs so seamlessly that there was no need for OS/2 programs. It turned out to be a big mistake for IBM.

A full-screen VM that a user has to switch to will probably be "good enough" to get Windows users to try a Mac. But I could be wrong.
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post #394 of 452
11/26/05 at 1:48pm
Quote:
Originally posted by bikertwin

#4 (multiple independent VMs) is probably more useful than you think. I don't know the technical details of how Intel and Apple might implement it, but I'd guess you would be able to use the same networking and see the same hard drives (via networking). Yeah, cut & paste would be more difficult, but there might be a workaround (such as the VM silently writing temporary files to the hard drive so the other VM could use them in cut & paste). Who knows?

VPC works by installing a 'Virtual Additons' driver and it's own virtual switch that makes Windows able to see the Mac as if it were another machine on the network. Without it, it doesn't see the Mac. It's also how the drag and drop from the Mac to the Windows session works. It's very neat.

Quote:
Originally posted by bikertwin

It would be very impressive if Apple created a seamless environment with Windows running under OS X á la Virtual PC for Mac. But as IBM's OS/2 showed, that just results in users feeling that they don't need to buy new apps for the main operating system (OS X). OS/2 ran Windows programs so seamlessly that there was no need for OS/2 programs. It turned out to be a big mistake for IBM.

Yup. And that's why Apple aren't going to do it and why Microsoft probably will. I'd also guess that since the CPU emulation (ie. the hard bit) is now not an issue, we'll see open source Virtual PC clones.

Quote:
Originally posted by bikertwin

A full-screen VM that a user has to switch to will probably be "good enough" to get Windows users to try a Mac. But I could be wrong.

It probably is "good enough" but it's not as good as VPC currently.
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post #395 of 452
11/26/05 at 4:06pm
Quote:
Originally posted by aegisdesign
[B]Neither of which offer virtual drives, virtual networking, drag and drop support or cut and paste, features I use all the time in VPC. I'd rather use PPC VPC running under Rosetta on an Intel Mac than lose those features.

So use PPC then.

Quote:
1 and 4 are only useful for gamers or people who do not want to use MacOS as their working environment.

1 and 4 are useful for people who have things they need to do within a certain amount of time. They don't have the time to lose waiting for VPC to render that 200MB file in AutoCad. You know?
'L'enfer, c'est les autres' - JPS
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'L'enfer, c'est les autres' - JPS
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post #396 of 452
11/26/05 at 4:59pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Gene Clean
1 and 4 are useful for people who have things they need to do within a certain amount of time. They don't have the time to lose waiting for VPC to render that 200MB file in AutoCad. You know?

If VPC is Intel native then it will make no difference.
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post #397 of 452
11/26/05 at 5:03pm
Quote:
Originally posted by aegisdesign
If VPC is Intel native then it will make no difference.

Try VPC for Windows. Then we can talk.
'L'enfer, c'est les autres' - JPS
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'L'enfer, c'est les autres' - JPS
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post #398 of 452
11/26/05 at 6:12pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Gene Clean
Try VPC for Windows. Then we can talk.

But I don't have a PC with Windows installed on it and if I did I wouldn't be using VPC on a Mac!
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post #399 of 452
11/26/05 at 7:08pm
Quote:
Originally posted by aegisdesign
But I don't have a PC with Windows installed on it and if I did I wouldn't be using VPC on a Mac!

Um, it was rhetorical. The point was that VPC for Windows is Intel native, and it still doesn't achieve native speeds (not by a long shot). Just because it runs in the same processor architecture doesn't mean it will have native speed.
'L'enfer, c'est les autres' - JPS
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'L'enfer, c'est les autres' - JPS
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post #400 of 452
11/26/05 at 8:05pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Gene Clean
Um, it was rhetorical. The point was that VPC for Windows is Intel native, and it still doesn't achieve native speeds (not by a long shot). Just because it runs in the same processor architecture doesn't mean it will have native speed.

I didn't imply it would. It'd be as good as running under VT and no better but have the advantages of integration with it's host OS.
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