Parallels breathes sigh of relief after Jobs' talk

SAN FRANCISCO--While most of the crowd at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address was eager to hear about all of Leopard's new features, Benjamin Rudolph was only interested in one.

Rudolph, who is the head of corporate communications for Parallels, was tuning in to what Steve Jobs would say about the new Leopard operating system's Windows-on-Mac abilities. When the Apple chief finally got around to discussing Boot Camp--the sixth of 10 features he demonstrated--Rudolph was hanging on every word.

In the end, Jobs announced little new on that front, saying that the final version of Boot Camp would work just as Apple has been testing it--that is, allowing users to boot into either Windows or the Mac OS, but not support running both operating systems simultaneously. For that, Jobs touted software like Parallels, which uses virtualization technology to allow Windows and Mac software run side by side.

"We love these other things and we're helping them as much as we can," Jobs said.

Rudolph, sitting in an overflow room for the keynote, breathed a huge sigh of relief.

roundup
Apple kicks off WWDC with Jobs speech

Developers have two big things on their minds: the iPhone and the Leopard OS.

"We had it on pretty good authority that there wasn't going to be virtualization in Leopard, but it is Apple, so you never know," Rudolph said, grabbing a soda at the Metreon after Monday's keynote. "There was a little bit of me that was terrified."

Last week, Parallels introduced an updated version of its Parallels Desktop software. The Renton, Wash.-based company has sold about half a million copies of its product since the first edition went on sale last June. Version 3 adds a variety of new features, most designed to improve compatibility and make Windows programs running on a Mac look more like native Apple programs.

Although Parallels doesn't face direct competition from Apple, it is getting a well-heeled rival. Virtualization specialist VMware has been testing its product for months and plans a final version for later this summer. On stage, VMware got nearly equal billing from Jobs, though Parallels did get mentioned first.

VMware said late Monday that it plans to sell the final version of Fusion for $79 and that it should be ready in August. The company said that it is taking pre-orders for the software for roughly half price, $39.

[rcrusoe]

As a long time VMWare user

it's my opinion that Parallels has set a very high mark for them to shoot for.

I'm extremely happy with Parallels now, and v3 looks even better.

[ferricoxide]

Not Really

Until Parallels can do something like VMotion, Parallels is still a toy.

[Thought Police OMalley]

Parallels cannot do direct access

and some of the multimedia and game software fails to run on
Parallels because it does not allow the software to directly
access the hardware devices for better performance. If some
software provides an option to use software acceloration, you
have to choose it in order to work, but it works slower.

Not only that but if you have a 512M Powerbook, it only leaves
256M for XP, Vista to run, and 256 for OSX to run and it slows
down both of them. You'll need at least 2 Gig of RAM and give
1G to Parallels to get Vista to work properly and get XP to work
fast enough to be useful. $80 for Parallels and whatever for
extra RAM will cost you quite a bit of money.

[chassoto--2008]

Your comments are generic...

to all virtualisation solutions, not just Parallels. VMware Fusion use
brings the same considerations. In my experience, the
performance is roughly comparable between products.

[libertyforall1776]

VM should be integral from Apple!

MS is doing it too, and who best to integrate it than Apple, maybe
working with partners, but this should be a core Leopard feature!

[rfelgueiras]

I disagree

...not everyone needs it, and for those that do there is a solution
(or two) that meet that need. I would rather Apple focus on apple
products, leave the rest alone. Most importantly, apple should be
more supportive of it's Third party Developers, lest they truly do
want to be like Microsoft...

[Hardrada]

not easy

MS just bought virtual pc from connectix. VMware is a 9 year old virtualization giant. parallels is a good company concentrating on mac virtualization.

Now.... why would we want a inferior product from Apple ? Other than that they will need enormous amount of resources to be in par with VMware. Not a likely move Apple will take just to give a free product in MacOs.

[chassoto--2008]

Parallels is not new, and not Mac-only

They've had virtualisation products for Windows and Linux for
years. They were just the first to really target the Intel Mac
platform (and thank goodness for that!).

Here's a good read on Parallels Workstation vs. VMware
Workstation (both for Linux):

http://www.samag.com/documents/s=10132/sam0715c/
0715c.htm

Charles

[demonjoe]

Virtual Space

12 years ago when I saw what Taligent was doing in the micro-kerneled operating system space I was head over heals. I saw Mac, PC and Amiga software all running on the same system; it was heaven. Now, significant time has passed and we really have seen no true break-throughs. Yes, the Parallels product has been good to use and version 3 looks very promising, but, to anyone who thinks Apple should put this into the OS - $250M and no success in 1995 should tell us that task won't get accomplished.