20/02/03 chris : >>Well, I just saw that Microsoft has bought up VirtualPC from Connectix > >And this just ticks me off to no end. > >There goes yet another fine product down the toilet. I guess VPC 7 will >be able to run only MS Windows, and by VPC 7.5 it will stop doing that >with any speed and stability. Meanwhile both releases will probably turn >the application size into something resembling a semi-truck, that >requires more RAM than Taiwan manufactured last year.
It might be even worse and faster. There is no doubt to me that they will kill VPC as fast as possible (maybe taking the path you describe to make it look right). I hope I'm wrong, but I'd be very surprised. Virtual Game Station stalled and disappeared right after Sony bought it, same thing for ShrinkWrap after Aladdin bought it (they probably realized early that disk images were better than archives: could be made read-only, compressed, be browsed without additional software and could even be used without prior decompression, no archive format could compete once the compression level reached that of stuffit, which Shrinkwrap allowed using the stuffit engine). But to widen our view of the issue, notice that VPC as we know it will die not (or not only) because of M$ fear of Apple, but because of M$ defending its existing monopoly on the PC platform: few people seem to know that Connectix released PC versions of VPC, allowing the use of multiple environments simultaneously on one PC (and fast too as there's no processor emultation). THAT is what M$ bought. The original mac VPC is not the point. They hope to use VPC's impressive abilities in Windows (having multiple virtual environments running concurrently on one computer has many advantages apart from running *alternative* OSes: you can also test or develop client-server network applications on a single machine, keep using old apps that require previous systems, maintain easy-to fix boot disk images since it's a lot easier to swap a crashing VPC boot image for a known good one than to actually reinstall Windows, not to mention VPC can even let the emulated OS act normally without actually writing the changes to the disk image so it can't break). This won't be as bad as just killing VPC, but it will make no difference for us mac users: even if M$ doesn't just dump VPC, resulting products might not only run Windows software exclusively, they may also run exclusively UNDER Windows (current versions exist for mac, Windows and OS/2). They claim to make the mac version a favor by handing it to the MacBU. Who believes that? Who makes slower updates and buggier mac apps than the MacBU? Well, Quark of course but you see the point. Now the bright side: there will be room for competition on the mac (other emulators disappeared because VPC was better, this won't stay so if VPC vanishes or reaches M$-level quality). ---- VRic ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
