Stan's List

Ars Technica reports that Parallels Desktop has made its way into retail Apple stores. “In a phone conversation this morning, a company representative stated that Parallels’ desktop software has been made available in at least some Apple retail stores as early as this past Saturday, July 15th. The representative also noted that sales were going extremely well with the SoHo Apple store in NYC selling out of the boxed product on the same day it hit the shelves. More …

“Parallels Desktop enables Mac users to access Windows programs without giving up the functionality, power and usability of their Mac OS X desktops,” said Nick Dobrovolskiy, CEO of Parallels. “We’ve broken through the barrier that previously kept Mac and Windows from effectively working together side-by-side, simultaneously, on one computer.” More …

Special introductory price of $50—after 30 days it will be priced at $80

It seems as if Apple endorsing Windows on a Mac is like a snowball, rolling and rolling and rolling until it turns into something really big. Why do I say this? Because, when Apple made their latest “Get A Mac” ads, they also provided a link to a page about running Windows on a Mac, which talks about Parallels Desktop. Hmm, perhaps Apple may be thinking of purchasing Parallels so virtualization technology could be built into Leopard.

The Front Row Update delivers a variety of fixes for better reliability and compatibility when playing music, photos, and videos on your Macintosh.

Bugs fixed in 1.2.2 include:
- Addresses bugs that prevented song shuffling within playlists
- Front row no longer says the server was not found when its waiting for a large movie trailer or long shared video to load
- Corrects bugs that prevented authorized Audible Audiobooks from playing
- Fixes a variety of DVD compatibility issues
- Purchased movies located in the Movies folder are now correctly recognized
- Includes a variety of fixes for VoiceOver accessibility
- Fixes a bug that prevented Front Row from reconnecting to shared video libraries after wake from sleep

What’s New in this Version
- With Front Row, you can enjoy full-screen music, photos, videos, and DVDs on your Macintosh using a simple Apple remote control. This Front Row update provides a variety of fixes for better reliability.

“Apple’s Plan to Provide the Best Darned Windows Experience Anywhere — Even Better Than Microsoft” More …

How could a true Mac’er resist such a title?

A ComputerWorld article quotes Apple’s Mike Shebanek, product manager for Mac OS X product marketing, who apparently affirmed that Apple is ahead of schedule with the roll out of Intel CPU-based Macs and expects to complete the transition across its product line by the end of 2006. More…

AppleInsider reports, that it is likely “Apple Computer will re-brand its iBook consumer notebooks under the “MacBook” moniker when it releases new models based on Intel Corp.’s Core Duo processors later this month”. More …

While we have been successful in-house with all of the Apple sanctioned Windows XP Mac drivers, there are a few limitations that are currently inevitable as outlined in Knowledge Base article #303572

It has been well thought that Apple would move in this direction. The Intel move did not add up, unless Apple declared war.

Apple has officially released Boot Camp, a utility to let Intel Macs dual boot into either Mac or Windows. Apple’s support will only increase, as they will integrate Book Camp into Mac OS X 10.5.

For now, “once you’ve completed Boot Camp, simply hold down the option key at startup to choose between Mac OS X and Windows. (That’s the “alt” key for you longtime Windows users.) After starting up, your Mac runs Windows completely natively. Simply restart to come back to Mac.”

PC World’s Techlog has a short piece talking about the upcoming emergence of ‘Windows Vista Capable’ PCs:

“The Vista Capable designation doesn’t promise that a PC will provide a great Vista experience, or even that it’ll support all Vista features or features…just that it’ll be able to run Windows Vista Home Basic in some not-very-well-defined-but-apparently-adequate way. At the moment, there are still new PCs on store shelves that don’t meet the Vista Capable guidelines–for instance, low-end systems still sport 256MB of RAM in some cases.”

How does Mac fit into this?

ExtremeTech reports that BAPCo, the industry-standard Windows benchmarking consortium, announced that Apple Computer has joined up as a member. BAPCo is responsible for the SYSmark 2004SE and MobileMark benchmark suites used for testing PCs. BAPCo also produces the webserver test WEBmark.

This is viewed as evidence by MacWindows and Gearlog that Apple will support running Windoze on Intel Macs

Windows developers might be eyeing the potentialities of Mac-Intel with barely-concealed glee, but it’s not all wine and roses over in the land of the Mac developer, many of whom are facing their second major transition inside 5 years.

As eWeek notes, some Mac developers, particularly those who build Java apps, aren’t having much trouble, Java being more-or-less platform-agnostic.

One of the biggest issues, as IGM reported recently, is porting very large, complex applications to Mac-Intel, as some developers, such as Adobe, claim Apple’s X-Code simply isn’t up to the job with apps like Photoshop. Similarly, Microsoft’s Office runs to millions of lines of code, and it’s no trivial task to recompile that for Mac-Intel.