Enterprise Mac | Tom Yager | January 2007

MORE ENTRIES

January 2007

January 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Bill Gates given a grilling by NPR's Alex Chadwick about Vista and OS X

About People Bios Biophotos Achadwick 2006

Alex Chadwick, thank you for asking Bill Gates the questions that everyone else was too star-struck to ask.

NPR runs a show called Day to Day that does long-format pieces on topics of the day. One of the topics chosen for 1/30/07 was the official retail launch of Vista. Bill Gates included Day to Day on his Vista launch promotional tour, and he didn't get the glad-handing he expected.

What he got was a grilling from NPR veteran Alex Chadwick, who has always been on my short list of gifted interviewers. He is well tuned-in to the unspun realities of Vista and OS X. He disregarded the talking points that Microsoft hands out for interviews and used his own homework. I expected nothing less when I heard his name on this story.

I'm fond of Gates for his philanthropic work, and I take no pleasure in seeing or hearing him squirm. But I've gotten so tired of Microsoft deflecting criticism that Vista lacks imagination except for the decision to lift (usually poorly) features from Tiger. It was a pleasure to hear Chadwick carry that challenge all the way to the top. Microsoft was given no place to hide from the questions that those without Microsoft's ear have been asking with nothing but scripted responses coming from Microsoft.

You can listen to the audio archive here. I've cleared the comments cache, and I'd be grateful if you'd distribute the link to this page so that we can get a discussion going. I'll have commentary of my own when I get a couple of Apple announcements written up.

You can read a summary and listen to the complete interview here.

Posted by Tom Yager on January 30, 2007 01:28 PM

January 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Internet Explorer required

Last week, I moderated a Web cast using On24's service. It went well enough, but On24 dealt me a surprise coming into the conference: Its conference coordinator informed me that the participants would have to use Internet Explorer on Windows.

I told On24 that I live on a Mac and that I considered an IE/Windows-only policy not only impractical for me, but not a great idea for their business. The On24 coordinator replied, with no attitude about it, that if IE/Windows gave me a problem, I could skip using the Web client at all, dial into the voice conference and give verbal cues to have my slides advanced. Fly Windows or fly blind.

That's a bit dark ages, isn't it? Surely an outfit of On24's stature wouldn't take the low road with its browser-based client.

I want to establish that I'm not ragging on On24 (see the end of this post to understand why I let them off the hook). Rather, I'm using this to illustrate what I consider to be a serious issue: Users of browser-based applications and services cannot allow the reemergence of the proprietary, platform-bound approach to Web apps that caused the failure of prior efforts in that direction.

As you can imagine, On24's insistence on IE/Windows pushed so many of my buttons that I had to choose between going off and letting it go. I chose the latter course with my desire for continued employment being my primary motivator. For me, Windows is an occupational inevitability. Since Apple treats Windows the same way, I feel no sense of guilt about giving in.

Now we arrive at the twist in this plot: It turns out that On24's client interface does support OS X, and Linux, too. On24 should be bragging about that since such flexibility is lacking in most of its competitors' services. Finding no collateral expressing On24's system requirements, I located On24's compatibility test and I'll use that as the last word on the issue. When I ran the test on a Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro using OS X 10.4.8 and Apple's Safari browser, the test fails. I expected that; Safari is rarely a validation target for commercial browser front-ends. However, the OS portion of On24's test reported "Passed," and offered some helpful advice:

When I ran the same test using Firefox 2.0 on OS X, I got green lights across the board:

Instead of hand-validating against all the OS/browser/media player combinations I could imagine, I looked into the Javascript code that validates the user's environment. Here's On24's OS test:

if ( is_win2k || is_winxp || is_winvista || is_macosx3 || (is_linuxredhat9 && (paramObj["linux"]+""=="true"))) os_ok=true;

That's reasonable. Solaris is missing, but On24 lists Sun Microsystems among its VIP clients. If Sun's okay with that, I am. Later in the source, there's this:

if (is_ie5_5up || is_nav71up || is_fx) browser_ok=true;

If On24's HTML, DOM, XML and Javascript code targets the overlap among FireFix ("fx"), Mozilla/Navigator and IE 5--Microsoft's least ick-laden browser--then the major rules are respected.

if(is_fx) windowsplayer_ok=false; //for firefox, don't show windows media

Bonus points.

Most companies brag about doing the right thing. On24's conference coordinator told me that his employer doesn't. There are lots of possible explanations. Maybe InfoWorld used Windows Media content; it's canned before I see it. Perhaps the On24 coordinator just laid out IE/Windows as a requirement to avoid having to nursemaid the non-savvy through their connections.

Whatever the case, eschewing platform-specific implementations in favor of standards is a differentiator for services. If you've got it, flaunt it. If you marry your Web app to a browser or OS, your clock is ticking.

Posted by Tom Yager on January 29, 2007 02:24 PM

January 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)

iPhone and Apple TV for Enterprise Mac readers

This story has already been posted in InfoWorld's Tech Watch (News) section. A colleague from Apple told me that in this blog, the last thing I had to say about iPhone was the potential downsides of the device.

I didn't mean to let that stand. Here's the full text of the Macworld Expo roundup story I submitted to News, which was cut way back for publication. My apologies to Apple and others who missed it.

Apple's got the urge to converge

Tom Yager

Steve Jobs delivered this year’s Macworld Expo keynote to an over-capacity crowd. He boasted that the Mac’s PowerPC-to-Intel transition had been completed in seven months, grinned about having sold half of new Macs to newcomers to the platform, and then he said "let’s move on."

Brother, has Apple moved on. Apple has dropped "computer" from its corporate name and is taking the sharp turn toward services, mobile and consumer electronics that Jobs emotionally identified as his two and a half-year dream. It's evident from the packed exhibit floor that the Mac is still very much in ascension. But for Jobs, who thrives on the new as much as Apple observers do, Mac is, for now, a fait accompli. Now it's convergence time.

The first of Apple's two market-shaking new products is Apple TV, the first credible entry into set-top TV over broadband. Apple TV is a receiver, digital content store and wireless LAN broadcaster for Apple's iTunes. The tiny box is neither a Mac nor a digital video recorder. The USB port is reserved for "service and diagnostics," not human interface devices, and all of Apple TV’s audio and video ports are outputs. Apple TV syncs content only from Macs and PCs within Ethernet or wireless (802.11 a/b/g/n) shouting distance that are running iTunes desktop software, and it can also reach out directly to Apple’s iTunes service with a touch of its gumstick remote. Apple TV will stream content, live or recorded, to as many as five additional PCs and Macs, each of which can watch or listen to anything on Apple TV's 40 GB hard drive. In other words, Apple TV turns every PC and Mac in your home or office into a tunable wireless digital television, but every channel has iTunes on it. It is possible, if a bit fiddly, to encode personal digital media, and even DVDs, and import them into the proprietary iTunes Library. Even with its peculiarities, at $299, Apple TV will become a popular home theatre component, a playground for hackers and the enabler for a future Apple venture into live and pay per view television.

Apple’s new iPhone is the penultimate converged mobile device, bringing together a mobile phone, a widescreen iPod and an Internet communicator in a a sub-12mm thin handheld that places iPhone users at three times the normal risk of plowing into oncoming traffic. iPhone has no physical keyboard; one pops up on-screen when you need it. Likewise, there is no scrollwheel, escape button, call start/end button or any tactile buttons at all except one that returns you to the application launch menu.

iPhone's exterior design is similar to Sony's PSP and Nokia's n-Series, but iPhone's interface is operated solely by a combination of a finger-driven GUI—-no stylus or handwriting recognition—-environmental sensors and wired or Bluetooth headset controls.

Inside its classy black polycarbonate chassis, iPhone has absolutely everything but a hard drive. It has a speaker, a microphone, a headphone jack, 4 or 8 GB of flash memory, a 2 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless LAN, GSM/GPRS/EDGE mobile phone and data transceiver, an accelerometer that senses portrait/landscape orientation, and a proximity sensor that answers a call when you bring iPhone to your ear, and it's all managed by an embedded OS X operating system. Fantasize about what a company with unlimited time, money and imagination could do with all of that and you've got the iPhone.

iPhone's most stellar feature among its galaxy of features is its Multi-Touch UI. Sure, it lets you check checkboxes with a tap and fill in forms with an on-screen keyboard, but its intuitive innovation is exemplified in three gestures: Sweep, pinch and double-tap. The sweep gesture scrolls, and the device tries to be smart about how far and fast you wanted it to scroll. Scroll speed operates on a curveThe pinch (I'd call it pinch/spread) action is the "only Apple would think of this" of 2007. If you draw your thumb and forefinger together while they're touching the screen, whatever is on the screen will shrink, zoom out or otherwise get small. If you push your thumb and forefinger apart, whatever is on the screen will zoom in, grow or get big in an application-defined way. If you're looking at something that's just too small, double-tap it and it will enlarge to fill the display.

iPhone is a two-handed device, built for your fingertips rather than your thumbs. During the demo, Steve never rested his fingers on the display, and his one-fingered stabbing motion made the on-screen QUERTY keyboard look awkward and imprecise. I think it's better than he made it look. I see myself pecking around pretty quickly in an unlucky woodworker's touch typing style, and if iPhone doesn't already have a Bluetooth keyboard profile built in, it can't be far off.

Jobs’ explicit mention of iPhone’s OS X roots suggests that iPhone will be open to developers. If that’s so, then developers salivating over the prospect of a UNIX mobile device will account for a great many sales, and their apps will bring no small number of users to iPhone and Mac clients. As for iPhone’s target market beyond the super-savvy, Steve offered a one-sentence positioning statement: “iPhone is like a Blackberry without Exchange.” He wants 1 percent of the mobile market in 2007. That’s a tall order for a $500-$600 handset, especially given that the top-end mobile market is fairly well consolidated. But judging from the collective groan sent up by the Macworld Expo keynote crowd, Apple can count on at least 4,000 customers when iPhone ships in June.

Posted by Tom Yager on January 23, 2007 09:48 PM

January 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Macworld 2007 report: First, the dark side

Macworld Expo 2007 is rocking. The keynote, the exhibits, the whole package is red hot, and I'm running around with a spatula scraping attendees' chins off the carpet. But before I give this communal high the woo-hoo it deserves, I want to get some of my negative opinions out of the way so that my main analysis can stick to the facts and hew, appropriately, to the positive. I'll visit the briefest of rains on Apple's parade.

Absolutely everybody will remember 2007 for the introduction of iPhone, which is the ultimately converged mobile device. It enters with unlimited potential, but some notable caveats.

In an off-hand remark, Steve Jobs referred to iPhone as "like a Blackberry without Microsoft Exchange." Let me be the first to haunt him with those words. Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) supports Notes and Exchange, and it has robust support for customer-developed and third-party client/server applications. Wireless operators provide free, unlimited e-mail service for Blackberry users without a BES back-end. While iPhone will have "push IMAP" e-mail from Yahoo!, everything on Blackberry, including Web and client/server application traffic, is pushed to the handheld. Data is encrypted and guaranteed delivery, and connections (except manual Web browsing) survive through blackouts and sags in wireless connectivity. You can read Blackberry e-mail and browse attachments and Web pages while you're off-line. iPhone won't be a Blackberry killer, much as I'd like to see one.

Apple set up the first vendor partnership that leaves Apple dependent on a third party. And not just any third party: Apple knighted Cingular/AT&T as its exclusive US wireless carrier for iPhone in what the AT&T spokesman called a "multi-year deal." iPhone users won't have the chance to choose or switch wireless operators. That's a freedom that Apple should have supported. In Apple's defense, I know from working closely with Nokia that US wireless operators bend handset manufacturers over, deciding which of their products are permitted on their networks and when. T-Mobile is an exception; you can buy an unlocked GSM/GPRS/EDGE phone anywhere and get a T-Mobile SIM card for it on Amazon with no term commitment. That's why I prefer T-Mobile as a carrier, but any flavor of carrier lock-in gives me heartburn.

Younger users of iPhone will also want prepaid plans. If AT&T doesn't offer them for iPhones, subscribers are out of luck.

As for Apple TV, I have little negative to say about it. $299 is an extraordinary price, clearly subsidized by iTunes. It kicks the legs out from under Mac mini as an elite home theater component and makes Windows Media Center machines look way overpriced (which they always were). But there is the matter of publicly-available software development kits (SDKs). If developers are shut out of iPod, Apple and iPhone, it won't hurt Apple's sales, but it will hurt Apple's reputation and future. The genuine killer iPhone, Apple TV and iPod applications live in the imaginations of people who aren't on Apple's payroll. Stifling imagination is anathema to the Apple Computer way. I hope that remains true for the entity that now calls itself Apple Incorporated. Squeezing out "Computer" ought not mean squeezing out developers for Apple's high-volume platforms.

Posted by Tom Yager on January 9, 2007 03:12 PM

January 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

iPhone will kill

Giant touch-screen and nothing else. Multi-touch high-res finger pointing.

Runs OS X!

This will kill.

Posted by Tom Yager on January 9, 2007 09:45 AM

January 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

More iPhone

Cradle sync like iPod. 3.5-inch display, 11.6 mm thick.

2MP camera. Speaker, mic at bottom. Proximity sensor turns off display and input when you raise the phone to your face,

Posted by Tom Yager on January 9, 2007 09:45 AM

January 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Still more iPhone

Accelerometer switches between portrait and landscape. Finger gestures.

Double-tap to go to 16:9 wide screen. A/V outs.

"Killer app is making calls. Most people dial their phones."

Visual voicemail. Random-access voice mail. GSM+EDGE. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

"Merge calls" button for conferencing. Parties to an active call are listed by name, you can switch among them by touch.

SMS messaging becomes IM with multiple sessions, iChat style display. On-screen keyboard auto-corrects.

"Pinch" gesture with thumb and forefinger zooms/shrinks images.

Rich HTML mail from any IMAP or POP3.. Safari browser. Auto-switches Internet connection between Wi-Fi and GSM/GPRS.

Free Blackberry-style push IMAP E-mail from Yahoo! Touch embedded phone number in message to dial.

Desktop-class e-mail with split view, HTML rich text, embedded images.

Safari; displays full page (text too small, of course). Pinch to zoom or double-tap to fill screen.

Multiple sites at the same time, Scroll horizontally to go from site to site. Think tabs in desktop browser, but with no tabs.

Google Maps maps and satellite with shortcut interface, not browser, Widgets like Dashboard, but one widget fills screen.

Posted by Tom Yager on January 9, 2007 09:45 AM

January 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

iPhone final details: Price is $499 for 4 GB, 8 GB $599

Google and Yahoo: Partnerships w/Apple, straining to make clear that iPhone is only the first device of its kind and that Google and Yahoo will go after other partners.

Demo of things you can do doing phone call: E-mail photo to calling party. From within gallery.
Bluetooth and earbud headset accessories.

5 hours battery life for talk time or video playback.

iPhone ships in June 2007 in US, Cingular (AT&T) is exclusive partner. Sells through Apple Stores and Cingular.

Posted by Tom Yager on January 9, 2007 09:45 AM

January 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Apple changes name

Apple Computer has changed its name to Apple Incorporated.

Posted by Tom Yager on January 9, 2007 09:45 AM

January 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Macworld keynote real-time

The Macworld Expo keynote webcast is delayed this year, so I'll do my traditional messy Blackberry post from the event. It's 9:20 and every seat is taken for a keynote that starts qat 9:00. I've never seen this place so damn packed.

I'll follow the all-thumbs posts with a summary.

We're getting started. I'll be back.

Posted by Tom Yager on January 9, 2007 09:10 AM

January 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Steve's opening

Half of Macs selling to new users. Quote from MS's Jim Allchin: "I'd be using a Mac if I didn't work for Microsoft."

2 billion songs sold on iTunes 5M songs per day. Now outselling Amazon for music.

50M TV shows. 1.3 M movies sold so far, Paramount signed up, 250 movies available.

Posted by Tom Yager on January 9, 2007 09:10 AM

January 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Apple TV

Apple Wireless 802.11 b, g, n.. 720p video. 40 Stores 150 hours of video. Auto-sync wireless in background from Mac, Up to five Macs as streaming receivers. Arbitrary authenticated Macs as streaming servers.

Very nice 3-D photo galleries.

$299, ships in February.

Posted by Tom Yager on January 9, 2007 09:10 AM

January 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Steve's big bang

iPhone.

Wide-screen iPod that's also a MOBILE PHONE, Internet communicator.

Posted by Tom Yager on January 9, 2007 09:10 AM

January 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Macworld Expo preview

There have been more anticipated shows in terms of new products from Apple, but no Macworld Expo to date will rival the splendor of '07. This will be a party, a celebration of Apple's swift transition from PowerPC to Intel and its successful campaign to get platform buy-in from customers, developers and users of other x86 platforms. Apple's client systems will begin their voyage from boutique tech and business couture to a brick-and-mortar merchandising phenomenon and a share stealer. iPod's success is the model for Mac's crossover to the mainstream.

Apple is shamelessly evangelizing the daylights out of Intel Mac to third parties, reaching around the small and loyal base of Mac developers, resellers and peripheral makers to roll out the red carpet for bigger vendors from the PC side of the world. Apple's message to software and hardware players is that a vendor that manages to associate itself with the Mac brand and image scores automatic differentiation: "Good enough for Mac users." That triggers a reflexive cynicism even in me, but Mac buyers traditionally eschew the generic stuff that's merely accidentally Mac-compatible. Also, there's margin in the Mac. Every Mac and everything you plug into it has one price, the list price, and buyers are okay with that. I expect to see repackaging of PC peripherals in Mac silver, with minimal font panel controls and software front-ends that have the Mac GUI style.

I had declared as a certainty that Leopard, the next major release of OS X, will ship at the conference. I'm less sanguine about that now. I haven't been contacted for an executive briefing, which suggests to me that Apple new product announcements at the show will be of the non-bombshell variety. Or perhaps it's my cologne.

Macworld Expo exhibitors will have Vista idling in windows on their booth Macs just to attract attention. But if anyone showed up selling copies of Vista, nobody would buy. Vista on a Mac is like a bear on a unicycle: It's embarrassing, and yet you can't look away. Windows XP on a Mac is more rational, and for those who need it, there are now three ways to teach a Mac to do Windows: VMware Fusion, Parallels Desktop and Apple's own Boot Camp. There are latest, greatest versions of all three are in public beta.

To clear your palate of Windows, a prevailing theme in Steve Jobs' keynote and in the exhibition halls will be the clean sweep of Universal Binary (Intel and PowerPC-native) releases of commercial and open source software. Microsoft, one of the last hold-outs, will show up with its Universal port of Office for Mac, which draw applause when it's shown on stage.

My great hope is that Xserve RAID with support for SATA and serially-attached SCSI (SAS) will make its premiere. A 14-bay Xserve RAID would have a maximum capacity of 10.5 terabytes, and Steve loves to put big numbers in his keynote slides. Being able to move drive cartridges between Xserve and Xserve RAID is a capability that Mac server users haven't had since Xserve G4; it'll be nice to be able to buy one stack of drives and divvy them up amongst servers and arrays according to need.

Apple is going to amp up its .Mac service. Users willingly pay $99 per year for the kinds of capabilities that one gets for free with the Yahoo services bundled with AT&T DSL. Apple's secret sauce will be the hooking of .Mac services into rich (non-browser) applications.

I have a feeling that Apple is going to set up deals with broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox) and cable content providers (like ESPN and HBO) to stream quasi-HD on-air and pay per view programming in real-time. Broadcasters want broadband TV, but they're frustrated by the lack of progress on delivery standards and dead set against doing it themselves. Apple's copy protection is trusted, and every Windows PC and Mac in the universe is already equipped as a receiver.

In related news, the 30-inch Cinema Display is going to get a lot smaller. How big will the new Cinema Display be? As big as Apple thinks the market can stand. I don't see anything Mac-worthy hiding among the brandless big screen LCD TVs at Wal-Mart, but panel manufacturers have obviously gone big. I know that NEC is bringing hybrid consumer/desktop monitors to Macworld.

Not every Mac is ready for the big screen; the tiny Mac mini, which would otherwise be the perfect home theater and boardroom presentation component, has a fast dual-core CPU strapped to a two-legged dog of an Intel integrated graphics controller. That might call for a new compact media-savvy Mac.

We'll see a refresh of iLife and iWork, Apple's consumer and business productivity suites, respectively. Within the iWork suite, Apple's Keynote presentation software is tops, but its Pages word processing/page layout software hasn't drawn Keynote's accolades. However, Pages has the potential to rock out as an accessible, affordable WYSIWYG tool for creating business-grade Web content. It could also qualify as Word Lite with the addition of automatic spelling correction.

The image of a Bluetooth iPod is stuck in my head. It's hazy beyond that; will Apple sell wireless headphones? Will iPod sync automatically whenever you wander close to your Mac? Can you use an iPod as a Mac remote control? Who knows, but there's a Bluetooth transceiver in every Intel Mac, and its capabilities are overkill for a wireless keyboard and mouse.

One thing I know for certain is that Macworld Expo's exhibit halls are packed. The show is at San Francisco's sprawling Moscone Convention Center, not the compact Moscone West. My calendar is packed with briefings from third-party vendors, and they're still calling on the Friday before the show. As if on cue, there goes my phone again. We'll talk again.

Posted by Tom Yager on January 5, 2007 02:36 PM

January 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Parallels Desktop boots from, reads and writes NTFS and FAT32 partitions

I'm not much for Boot Camp, Apple's dual-boot method for running Windows on Intel Macs, so the value of a feature introduced in the latest beta of Parallels Desktop initially got past me. Parallels has taken a major step toward bridging the virtual/physical gap by wiring its Desktop virtualization software for Intel Macs to treat a Boot Camp (Windows) partition as a virtual disk. That feature is presently in beta, and Parallels warns that the beta can bite you, potentially causing a loss of data in your Boot Camp partition.

When made final, this feature will allow users to boot Windows natively for maximum performance and compatibility in games and other demanding applications, and use the very same partition to boot Windows as a virtual guest of OS X and run the two OSes simultaneously (as God intended). Parallels Desktop can also access a Boot Camp partition as a secondary drive with read and write access to FAT32 and NTFS file systems.

If this raises questions in your mind about the potential for Windows virtual machine access to NTFS or FAT32-formatted external media, know that they're in my mind, too. I'm checking it out, but the standard wizard interface in Desktop doesn't expose that capability.

Posted by Tom Yager on January 3, 2007 03:08 PM

January 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Parallels Desktop beta: Faster graphics, CD/DVD burn and the marvelous Coherence Mode

In part to answer VMware's announcement of its Fusion Mac virtualization software public beta, and in part to doll itself up for Macworld Expo, Parallels released a beta version (actually, two betas in rapid succession) of its Desktop client virtualization solution for Intel Macs. I've been keeping up with the betas, and on those features that matter most to me, Parallels has made an exceptional showing in its pre-release.

You know that I've been using Parallels not only to virtualize Windows XP under OS X Tiger, but also using it to run Windows 2003 Server as a guest os OS X Tiger Server. I had written an entire post on the toughest part of the process, namely, the migration to Parallels Desktop of an existing Windows system. My recommendation was to use a copy of Parallels Workstation for Windows to create the virtual drive image, then copy that image to the Mac. Parallels is working to take the pain out of the physical-to-virtual migration process with a new module called Transporter.

Transporter, which will be bundled with Parallels Desktop, installs a remote agent on the Windows machine being migrated. The agent pipes the Windows systems' contents and settings into Parallels, which constructs a matching virtual machine on-the-fly. It functions like any agent-based enterprise backup utility you've used. If you like, you can bypass the network pipe by directing Transporter to build your new VM on removable media. Parallels also merged its existing migration technology into Transporter, allowing users to create new Parallels Desktop VMs by importing proprietary virtual disk images directly from VMware or Microsoft Virtual PC running on Windows. And of course, a VM image that works with Parallels Workstation for Windows functions identically when copied to a Mac and launched with Parallels Desktop.

One of my prime complaints with client virtualization is display performance. With the exception of MacBook and Mac mini, Mac systems incorporate graphics technology that would be a pricey upgrade for mainstream clients, especially notebooks. With all this speed, it's nerve-racking to me that even the impotent Windows XP GUI draws and refreshes so slowly in virtualization that I find it unusable except when I absolutely need it. Parallels seems to feel my pain. Among its claims for its beta releases is "improved graphic performance--up to 50 percent faster!" I can't speak to the speed-up quantitatively, but I really feel the difference. My guess is that Parallels is handling some buffered screen refreshes without waiting for the monitor to start drawing from the top of a new page. For example, when you're copying a set of files in Windows, a progress dialog can appear with an animation of sheets of paper being blown from one file folder to another. While I was testing the Parallels Desktop beta, the load on my system caused guest OS screen refreshes to fall behind. Desktop caught up by blasting the animated frames it had missed in rapid fire, disregarding the programmed pace of the animation. When the display caught up, the animation returned to its normal timing. This will do nothing to improve game play, but I expect that many desktop apps, especially those with transitions and coordinated moving graphics, will benefit.

Parallels Desktop now passes the old-school acid test of display performance: You can grab the title bar of a large window and shake it violently around the screen (with "show window contents while dragging") without seeing any tears or lagging in the image.

Last, but far and away not least, is Parallels Desktop's Coherence Mode. Those familiar with the default behavior of Apple's X Window implementation will feel right at home: Parallels Desktop can now mix Windows application windows among those displayed by OS X, without the Windows Desktop sucking up a bunch of space on your display. It's a variety of resolution independence that I find tantalizing. Now, instead of having to flip Parallels Desktop between full screen and scrollable Windows desktop views to get at apps with complex GUIs, Coherence Mode uses only as much space as the app's window requires, and Mac window keyboard shortcuts, like Command-W to close the frontmost child window, work.

By default, Coherence Mode displays the Windows task bar, the start menu and tray icons, at the very bottom of the display (you can relocate it). That's where I hide my Dock, but the task bar and Dock don't interfere with each other. Sliding the pointer off the bottom of the screen reveals the Dock, which paints semi-transparently over the Windows task bar. That's what it should do; after all, when it's hosted by OS X, Windows is just another application.

The one drawback of Coherence Mode is GUI performance. It doesn't reap any of the benefits of the overall speed-up in Parallels Desktop's graphics performance. It's nifty-looking and, for most, an adequate match for the likes Word. For me, Coherence Mode shows how much Parallels has boosted display performance in standard desktop-in-a-window and full-screen modes.

There is plenty more; see the link above, and file a comment with any questions or comments you have.

Oh, and happy new year, everybody. You make it possible for me to make a living doing what I enjoy most, and I never take that, or any reader of my content, for granted.

Posted by Tom Yager on January 3, 2007 12:52 PM

January 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)

VMware and Parallels: The Mac virtualization slugfest is on

Parallels Desktop had almost a year of exclusive ownership of the Intel Mac software virtualization space. VMware is bringing an end to Parallels' clear field advantage, and current and prospective Intel Mac users get to reap the rewards of competition.

Just before Christmas, VMware released the free public beta of Fusion, the company's first virtualization solution for Intel Macs. VMware has demonstrated Fusion, although not yet with that name, at previous venues including the 2006 Worldwide Developer Conference. I've gotten two supervised walk-throughs of alpha releases of the software and, with allowances for the shortcomings inherent in the alpha release of anything, I wasn't impressed with either the demos or the potential described to me by VMware's staff. My viewpoint was skewed by the performance and stability of the better-established Parallels Desktop, which is VMware Fusion's head-on competitor. The one thing I found compelling about VMware's Mac virtualization software was OpenGL pass-through. I saw in this the potential for much-improved 3D graphics performance in apps where OpenGL is leveraged directly.

On paper, Fusion enters the Mac market with two substantial advantages over Parallels Desktop. Fusion is able to run 64-bit guest OSes, a feature that, if done right, could remove one of the two major roadblocks to replacing Boot Camp's dual-booting approach to Windows/Linux with far easier virtualization (the other roadblock is video performance). Fusion is also able to run multi-processor virtual machines, meaning that a Fusion guest OS instance will see a multi-processor PC at install time.

VMware Fusion also laid down two new features that Parallels quickly matched in a beta release of its own. Both products provide direct access to USB 2.0 devices, an especially cool feature given that OS X has such a tiny selection of drivers for add-on USB 2.0 devices. Now you'll be able to plug in some high-speed external peripherals. "Some" isn't a quantity I can define yet; I'm working on that as I type. Parallels gets points for stating that it lacks isochronous USB device support, meaning that streaming devices like web cams, video capture and microphones will have to wait. What virtual USB 2.0 support does give us is access to devices that are covered by drivers for Windows, Linux, BSD, or whatever your guest OS happens to be. This doesn't create a magical bridge through which OS X will be able to talk to an unsupported USB device through another OS's driver, or those created for Windows (et al) by third parties. But if the performance is anywhere near native as Parallels claims it is, USB 2.0 support in a Parallels or VMware virtual guest OS is a major win.

VMware and Parallels betas also bring out drag-and-drop support, allowing users to move files between OS X and guest OSes by dragging them from one GUI to the other. This eliminates the need to set up a Windows virtual share just to relocate a few files from, say, NTFS to HFS+. I don't yet know how extensive it is, specifically, whether I'll be able to drag a file from Windows Explorer and drop it in an arbitrary Mac app as an automatically-typed pasteboard object.

Parallels didn't just cut and paste the feature list from VMware Fusion to beef up its beta. See the next post.

Posted by Tom Yager on January 3, 2007 11:44 AM

Technology White Papers

InfoWorld Technology Marketplace

» Technology White Papers Library

Technology White Papers by Topic

Technology White Papers E-mail Alert