Intel inside new Macs will offer consumers comfort of the familiar
Jim Jamieson
Province
Atimi Software’s Kevin Desjardine is looking forward to using Windows-on-the-Mac software on Apple computers. Photograph by : Ric Ernst, The Province
Though he believes most people don’t really need it, Vancouver software-development company president Steven Gully expects there will soon be a solution to allow users to load Microsoft’s Windows operating system on Apple Computer’s newest machines now that the latter features processors by Intel Corp.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs stunned the computer hardware and software community last June when he announced the fundamental switch from the PowerPC processor supplied by IBM and Motorola to the Intel chip.
Then he introduced retail products — a desktop and a laptop — six months ahead of schedule at last month’s Macworld trade show. There’s been heated debate online and elsewhere about whether “Windows on the Mac” is currently possible.
In fact, Texan Colin Nederkoorn has already raised nearly $10,000 US on his website as prize money for any developer who can devise a scheme to make Windows XP boot on an Intel Mac.
But Gully, president of Vancouver’s Atimi Software, says he thinks such a capability may be overrated for consumers, although a company like his, which does contract programming and development mainly in the Macintosh environment, could certainly use it.
“There’s going to be a big market for this,” said Gully, whose company also works in the Windows world.
“In the commercial space, there are a lot of times where we need to run a Windows machine, and something like this would really come in handy.”
Microsoft offers a software emulator for Windows on the Macintosh platform called Virtual PC, but it runs slower than a hardware-based version.
Gully says there are advantages for consumers being able to run Windows programs on a Mac, such as being able to have more access to video-game content.
“I would expect that a lot of users want that comfort before they switch from a Windows machine to a Mac,” he said.
“Although talking to friends who have switched, they don’t end up using the Windows applications they thought they would need,” Gully added.
“But there are some holes in the Macintosh [software] space.”
Some Macintosh aficionados have been pondering whether to postpone an upgrade to wait until the major software companies finish upgrading to “universal binaries” within their products so they will function with either PowerPC or Intel-based Macs — work in which Atimi is involved.
In the meantime, Apple is supplying software it calls “Rosetta” that will allow PowerPC-based Mac programs to run on Intel-based Macs.
Gully said he sees no reason to wait, except for those using processor-hungry programs such as Adobe Photoshop.
“For using everyday applications there will be a decrease in performance through Rosetta, but most users won’t notice it.”
© The Vancouver Province 2006