Uh Oh. MS acquiring Connectix...

[symphonix]

That's right, Dixonbm. The development costs for the XBOX were over 4 billion US dollars. And I imagine Microsoft's legal, paralegal, customer support and PR departments would each require a moderate national defense budget just to operate.

Since I don't use VPC, it doesn't bother me, but it always has been a selling point for switchers who are nervous.

[MisterMe]

I honestly don't believe that Microsoft intends to kill Virtual PC for the Mac. However, I don't think that the product is long for this world. Several years ago, Microsoft licensed SoftWindows as the Intel-emulator in Windows NT. SoftWindows and its parent Insignia are long gone. Virtual PC was better, so the loss was not great. There are just too many competing interests within Microsoft to maintain Virtual PC with its current list of options. I expect the DOS option to die in short order. It will surprise no one if the emulator were integrated with a shipping version of a Microsoft OS.

Fortunately, there is an open source option. Bochs is not as good as Virtual PC. Its performance is horrid. However, its developers now have added incentive to increase development of the project.

[adambyte]

Hey, hey, remember when M$ bought Bungie, the Mac game developers who made the Marathon series? When that happened, M$ said "don't worry," as if nothing would change... but they ended up becomming the XBox team, and we were out one less game developer.

I don't trust M$... unlike other companies, who buy, but leave companies alone, (like AOL Time Warner with ICQ), Microsoft buys and twists things into something different once they're aquired.

We need our x86 emulators, just in case M$ goes nuts on Virtual PC. I think it is vital now that "Bochs" gets off the ground and gets serious development help. Sadly, though, I'm not a programmer.

[symphonix]

I remember when they bought Bungie, and I resent it because Halo - the top-selling game for XBox - was already in alpha-testing for Mac OS X and had been demonstrated at MacWorld; only to be canned by Micro$oft.

I'd expect the worst for VPC, in spite of what MS may say.

[macosXrumors]

I think there won't be any big dramma. Microsoft has big interest to sell Windows XP to some thousands of Mac users. But as I wrote in my article, don't expect them to sell it without XP.

Also something we can guess but that isn't in my article... well... you know... prices are maybe going to change .

[Jason]

if ms were smart they would take vpc and use it to develop an open ended emulation that works more like classic than vpc

but they wouldnt do that

[dracolich]

I'd expect the worst for VPC, in spite of what MS may say.

I would say I expect the worst FROM VPC...

I think they ARE smart, so I'm afraid we'll soon see Virtual Mac on PC: run Mac OS X and all those shiny Mac apps on your 3.0 Ghz Pentium 4 at the same speed you have now (with a dual processor G4) and save $$$$$$$...

THIS could kill Apple.

[Da_iMac_Daddy]

A program is only as stable as the OS it's running on. Therefore all the awesome stability of Mac OS X wouldn't be there. That's just a turn off for me.