Macintosh recently switched to Intel processors (mactel), bringing forth a brave new world of OS X / Windows togetherness. Do keep on mind this is currently bleeding edge technology, dual booting is not officially supported and the best virtualization solution is from a relatively new company, so either be prepared to support yourself or know someone who has blazed the path before you.

Windows via BootCamp or Parallels

Bootcamp Public Beta is a currently unsupported Apple utility that lets you dual boot XP on a mactel machine. it was released to the public in beta status after enthusiasts figured their own way around the dual boot problem. Parallels Desktop for Mac is a very snappy Virtual Machine that can run windows and many *nix Operating Systems. We’ll briefly run over some of the considerations of either environment.

Parallels
  • If you expect yourself to be spending the majority of your time in OS X, this will suit your needs.
  • It runs most applications at near native speeds – if you are going to mainly use MS Office, Internet Explorer, etc it’ll be more than fine. It cannot handle 3D rendering, though Photoshop is surprisingly quick (at least for low DPI web based work).
  • Since switching is painless, you are far more likely to do so than if you have to reboot, possibly increasing productivity and testing.
  • You can also install Linux, older versions of Windows, etc for either OS based or application generation based testing. Clipboard contents are shared between machines and shared folders make for easy file sharing (OS X can read NTFS and read/write FAT32).
  • Multiple Desktops can be easily managed through applications such as (freeware) Virtue Desktops.
Boot Camp
  • You won’t be switching OS’s that often, but you’ll get more of a bang for your buck in XP as well as in OS X (due to it having all of it’s RAM). If you see yourself spending most of your time in XP this would be your choice. Alternatively, if you want to spend your time in OS X and have a power application you don’t use too often in XP this would work out as well.
  • Necessary for non OS X 3D applications.
  • Slower testing due to rebooting as well as having your environments less integrated.
  • Mac OS X 10.5 will bring official support to Bootcamp.
  • Somewhat counter-intuitively this is a slightly buggier environment hardware wise (iSight camera brings a blue screen of death, headphone jack being occupied doesn’t mute speakers, etc) aside from lack of 3D acceleration and atrocious USB support (as of the time of this article.
  • For those inclined, it’s fun to try out new applications and OS constraints whether coming from a Windows or Mac background, this lends itself to staying more in one than the other.

While it is certainly possible to run both, that’s an extra environment to keep track of as well as more disk space used. While Apple doesn’t appear to have plans to support virtualization in OS X 10.5, Parallels is mentioned in commercials and recently appeared in Apple stores. The Parallels team has shown interest in being able to run a virtual machine off of the Boot Camp partition, which would greatly simplify setup options while maximizing functionality.

The Particularity of Universal Binaries

An application with an Universal Binary is designed to run equally well on both Intel and PowerPC processors. Core programs such as those by Adobe (including those formerly by Macromedia) are still coded solely for PowerPC architecture. Apple has a way around this, it’s ‘Rosetta’ application which can translate PowerPC applications so they can run in an Intel environment . Adobe will not have Universal Binary support until their CS3 line.

Rosetta translated applications however, are not quite ideal, despite claims that “there’s no emulation. No second-class status. [They] looks and feels just like [they] did before.” (1) They are noticably slower, and web designers will probably get better mileage installing them on a Parallels install of XP than running them translated through OS X. While many smaller applications have already switched over, the lag for some flagship applications makes BootCamp a more interesting choice.

There are alternative applications that do run on Universal Binaries, such as GiMP for graphics and skEdit, SubEthaEdit, BBEdit++, Topstyle, etc for coding/design.