On Thursday, February 20, 2003, at 09:32 AM, Shay Telfer wrote: >> I guess we're safe as long as the MacBU continues to function. I'd >> just >> hate to see VirtualPC suffer the same fate as SoftWindows and then >> RealPC. > > Except that VirtualPC was essentially what killed off SoftWindows and > RealPC! >
Only to a certain extent. What killed SoftWindows and RealPC was lack of development. SoftWindows was already a well-evolved product when VPC was a newcomer on the market. Connectix continued to develop and market VPC aggressively, while Insignia dropped the ball, eventually selling SoftWindows and RealPC to FWB a couple of years ago, who immediately dropped SW altogether, and cancelled RealPC last year without having spent a penny on any further development. It's a great shame, since to this day RealPC running Windows 98 under Classic is significantly faster than VirtualPC doing the same thing. Of course, that's not really a fair comparison since VPC doesn't support Classic; it must be run either in MacOS 8-9 or MacOS X. Either way, RealPC is measurably faster. The point is that FWB purchased the products from Insignia promising all sorts of things for their future development, and instead just killed them. I think the chances of M$ doing precisely the same thing with VPC down the track are pretty high. Even if they don't kill it, there's a good chance they might turn it into something pretty useless. The cynic in me thinks it would be a great way for M$ to reduce Mac users' options for running Windows-based software in time to come. They now have the rights to the rule book. I'd love to proved wrong, and I sincerely hope I am. -- Peter Hinchliffe Apwin Computer Services FileMaker Pro Solutions Developer Perth, :::::::::::::::::::::::: Western Australia Phone (618) 9332 6482 Fax (618) 9332 0913 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Mac because I prefer it -- Windows because I have to. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
