Using Virtual PC with Intel MacBook

S

Shookster

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Ok... need some advice.

I need to use DV Rack and Ultra in the field for a project I'm doing. I need a fast machine with a long battery life that's ultra-quiet. Naturally, I thought of a Powerbook. The only problem is that DV Rack and Ultra only work on Windows.

I really don't want to buy a Windows machine. I've just finished reading about the new Intel MacBooks that are coming out in February. Now that Macs have Intel hardware, there's no need to emulate the hardware any more so presumably Windows XP running on Virtual PC (once updated) will run at pretty much the same speed as on a Windows machine, right?

Another thing: I'll need everything by the beginning of March. Apple said that the MacBooks will come out in February but I'm not sure if MS will be able to release a Universal Binary version of Virtual PC before then. As the MacBook is 4x faster (supposedly) than the 1.67 GHz PB G4, what would the performance be like running on Rosetta (wouldn't it be emulating it twice?)?
 
Shookster said:
I really don't want to buy a Windows machine. I've just finished reading about the new Intel MacBooks that are coming out in February. Now that Macs have Intel hardware, there's no need to emulate the hardware any more so presumably Windows XP running on Virtual PC (once updated) will run at pretty much the same speed as on a Windows machine, right?

Another thing: I'll need everything by the beginning of March. Apple said that the MacBooks will come out in February but I'm not sure if MS will be able to release a Universal Binary version of Virtual PC before then. As the MacBook is 4x faster (supposedly) than the 1.67 GHz PB G4, what would the performance be like running on Rosetta (wouldn't it be emulating it twice?)?
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VirtualPC on an Intel-based Macintosh computer, as you suspected, would be slower than running VirtualPC on a PowerPC-based computer because you'd have two layers of emulation, not just one.

VirtualPC is a PowerPC-only application, so it would be running through Rosetta on the Intel-based Mac OS X builds. You'd be unnecessarily doubling the amount of emulation.

As far as speculation is concerned, people seem to think that Microsoft Windows will run natively on the Intel-based Macintosh computers. If that's so, scrap VirtualPC and run your programs natively.

It's impossible to say with 100% certainty what the situation with Intel-based Macintosh computers are, since no one will have one until February. We may get lucky here and an Apple employee may stop by and say for sure, but anyone short of that would simply be speculating.
 
Ok, thanks.

I knew it would be slower but as the machine itself is 4x faster, it might be acceptable.

It's impossible to say with 100% certainty what the situation with Intel-based Macintosh computers are, since no one will have one until February. We may get lucky here and an Apple employee may stop by and say for sure, but anyone short of that would simply be speculating.
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The MacBooks ship in February but the new iMacs are shipping today so we'll probably know about that shortly (someone's bound to try).
 
Went to my local Apple store today (well, it's not really local but it's the nearest one :p) because a friend wanted to buy a PowerMac. I was hoping that they'd have some demo Intel iMacs there as well but the guy said that they won't get them for about a week or so. He said that the MacBooks are expected at the end of February, which is a little late.

I didn't ask about being able to boot into Windows with them as he clearly had only heard about them today, the same as we did, but I found an article on the internet that said that the Intel Macs' BIOSes were configured to only boot into Mac OS.

Looks like I'll be getting a Windows laptop.
 
When they announced the switch Apple clearly said they would limit Mac OS X from booting on non-Mac hardware. They said nothing about limiting other OSes from booting on Mac hardware, in fact one high level spokesman was quoted as saying booting Windows would be possible.

You would probably need to partition the hard-drive (one for Mac OS X, one Windows [ntfs]) and install some kind of boot-loader, but it should work.

I'd wager we might see a version of WINE ported to Mac OS X (Intel only), since the only thing holding it back before was the chip architecture difference. Microsoft might also replace VPC with an app that acts similar to WINE.

Easy way to tell...make a DOS or Windows boot CD (or grab a bootable Windows CD you may have lying around, or a Linux Live CD [Knoppix, Ubantu] for x86) and bring it to the Apple Store when they get an Intel-based Mac in. If you can boot off the CD (to a DOS prompt/windows setup/Linux desktop), then it'll work. I'd be willing to bet it will work fine, as long as there aren't any driver issues.
 
It looks like VirtualPC won't run at all on the new Intel-based Macintosh computers:

A statement from Microsoft indicates that the current Virtual PC 7 release will not run on the new Intel Core Duo based Macs.

Roz Ho, the general manager for Microsoft's MacBU, tells MacFixIt:

"Virtual PC 7 remains the top emulation software for Mac PowerPC users. However, applications like Virtual PC that are highly dependent on the OS will not run under Rosetta. These types of products require a dedicated team and a lot of work to rebuild them for an entirely new architecture. That said, we know that using Windows-based applications on Macs is important to our customers, and we're working with Apple to figure out the best way to bring this technology to Intel-based Macs. We'll have a better idea once we have the new machines and can accurately evaluate just what is required to transition the product."
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From: http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20060110120028762
 
Ah, thanks.

"We'll have a better idea once we have the new machines and can accurately evaluate just what is required to transition the product."
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I thought developers could obtain preview models before release.
 
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