Windows

VMware co-founder resigns, stocks dive

Posted on Jul. 9, ’08, 6:36 AM PT by Derik DeLong

Category | Windows

Virtualization is hot, hot, hot. It’s even big in the consumer market when you’re talking about the Mac platform. VMware has been a player for a very long time in this market. Their Mac product, Fusion, is my virtualization product of choice.

Diane Greene, who helped found the company, has stepped down. Stock value stepped down with her. They’ve got some real competition in Microsoft on the other side of the fence. Their Mac product is going strong, but it too has competition in Parallels.

These are some tough times for the company. It’s be a shame if it continues because the competition has spurred some great pricing and features.

Reluctant Reminder: Get your XP now, if you really truly want to

Posted on Jun. 25, ’08, 7:56 PM PT by Dan Pourhadi

Category | Windows

Rob Griffiths at the Mothership offers a reminder to masochistic readers who intend on some day running Windows XP on their Macs: Your opportunity to get a copy is quickly coming to a close, as Microsoft plans to stop selling XP after June 30th.

“But,” you say, disregarding my groans that I have to talk to someone who wants to soil his Mac with the stench of Microsoft’s diseased operating system, “can’t I just run Windows Vista instead?”

Well sure you can, bub. But even masochists draw the line somewhere. And Griffiths gives three explanations as to why you might prefer XP over its questionably-bootable successor:

First, XP runs faster than Vista in both Fusion and Parallels. …

Second, XP offers the widest support for third-party hardware and software—there are still quite a few programs and/or pieces of hardware that either don’t work quite right, or don’t work at all, with Vista. …

Third, XP is a solid, stable OS that’s had any major issues addressed via service pack releases over the years.

He goes into much more detail in the article itself, which is worth reading if despite my strongest objections you really intend on committing this crime against elegant technology. And remember: June 30th. Get it done if you must.

But, as an alternative, may I suggest jabbing yourself in the eye with a pen, instead? You’ll still get the pain, but at least you can avoid the self-loathing that will inevitably come from installing Windows on your Mac. Just a thought.

(Note: I know I’m gonna get flak from people if I don’t clarify this: It’s all a joke; I know some of you have very good reasons to abandon virtue and make Steve Jobs cry. I totally understand.)

Windows Vista makes headlines again, and not of the good sort

Posted on Jun. 20, ’08, 9:50 AM PT by Aayush Arya

Category | Humor

Todd Bishop over at Seattle Post-Intelligencer posted a story a couple of days ago with the headline “Man gets Windows Vista to work with printer”. That, my dear friends, is the actual headline of a genuine news article from a non-satirical blog—we’re not talking about Fake Steve Jobs or The Onion here.

Apparently, the hero of this saga, Mr. Charles Walling, recently upgraded from Windows XP to Microsoft’s latest and greatest operating system, Windows Vista, probably anticipating a more fruitful and satisfying computing experience—it’s Microsoft Windows® Vista™ after all, what could possibly go wrong!

Unfortunately for Mr. Walling, however, the transition was anything but perfect. He had a Dell printer he’d been using with Windows XP, you see, and he made the all too simple and yet ultimately fateful mistake of assuming that Vista would be just as welcoming and friendly to it as XP used to be.

If you’ve been anywhere near Vista lately, you probably already know what followed—the printer refused to work using the drivers that it had shipped with and, after Charles was luckily cited as an example of disillusioned Vista users in an earlier Seattle P.I. story, Tom White, a member of Microsoft’s Windows Experience Group, went over to his house to lend him a helping hand.

After several such visits, White was finally able to resolve the issue and get the printer and, more importantly, Vista back on track and working in tandem. The Seattle P.I. story even has a picture of Mr. Walling printing “from his Windows Vista PC” for propriety’s sake, in case it’s too unbelievable that Vista did finally manage to get its act together.

I’m still just in love with the headline of the story—maybe Microsoft should use it in some promotional posters: “Man gets Windows Vista to work with printer. The Wow starts now!”

[Via Daring Fireball via Jacqui Cheng on Twitter]

CrossOver Mac 7.0 goes live; bonds with Microsoft Office 2007

Posted on Jun. 18, ’08, 12:30 PM PT by Aayush Arya

Category | Updates

CodeWeavers Inc. launched CrossOver 7.0 today, after giving it a beta run of just over a month, and the major new feature is support for Microsoft Office 2007, the latest Windows version of the fifty-pound-gorilla in the field of business productivity applications (why one wouldn’t just want to use Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 is beyond me, however).

Furthermore, as Peter Cohen at the mothership so aptly puts it, “Bug fixes have been made to improve online banking support for Quicken 2007 and 2008, improved Outlook behavior especially with Exchange servers, service pack support improvements for several versions of office, improved Internet Explorer support in Windows 2000 and Windows XP “bottles,” synchronization with the WINE 1.0 release and much more.”

Since CrossOver relies on emulation to fool applications into thinking that they’re being run in the familiar ol’ Windows environment, its general compatibility is far less than what products like Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion can boast of. However, if the one Windows application you want to run is compatible with it and works well, this is well worth the money.

Under CrossOver’s new licensing scheme you can either pay $39.95 for the standard version or shell out $69.95 and get both CrossOver and CrossOver Games as part of the Pro package. The latter has a bunch of other features as well such as multi-user support and “level 2” technical support (whatever that means). Grab a free, time limited trial from the company website.

Asus iMac knockoff revealed (sort of)

Posted on Jun. 5, ’08, 3:05 PM PT by Jason Snell

Category | Windows

PC World editor (and really good guy) Danny Allen reports from Taiwan:

Computex: Asus has offered the first look at what its upcoming all-in-one desktop may look like, and shown an Eee family roadmap featuring previously unannounced products alongside the Eee Box B202 mini PC and 42-inch LCD Eee TV. Here’s the all-telling slide that I snapped at the Asus TekTrend Seminar in Taipei’s Grand Hotel today:

As was the case earlier in the week, ASUS made no comment on the Eee Monitor’s price or configuration, but reports from earlier in the year suggest a 19 to 21-inch screen size, built-in TV tuner and a starting pricing of around $500. Apple’s iMac starts at $1,199. The Eee Monitor should be available sometime in September.

Visit PC World’s Computex Info Center for all the latest news and gadgets from Asia’s biggest tech showcase.

Winmail.dat files spoiling your day? TNEF’s Enough solves your woes.

Posted on May. 30, ’08, 8:10 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | Tips

Though Mac users we may all be, the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily share in our enlightenment. We still live in a Windows world, and that means dealing with certain Microsoftian annoyances. Take email attachments, for example. Ever gotten a forward from a friend asking you to check out a knee-slappingly hilarious attachment? Eagerly anticipating a single bright spark to your otherwise dull existence you scroll down and find…an impenetrable “winmail.dat” file.

Winmail.dat files come to us courtesy of Microsoft Outlook and Exchange users. Encoded as rich text, these files, which have a MIME type of application/ms-tnef, are pretty much useless to anybody who doesn’t run Outlook.

Boooo. Yes, you could reach out with the power of the Force and strangle your correspondent to death, but that might just be a wee bit overreactive. Instead, try Joshua Jacob’s TNEF’s Enough. This one-trick pony application lets you open up winmail.dat files and save the attachments secreted within. Works like a charm (just used it myself yesterday) and it’s freeware (donations welcome).

[via TwisterMC]

Ballmer: Apple is “fantastically successful”

Posted on May. 28, ’08, 9:03 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | Rivals

Derik already mentioned to you that Bill Gates and Stevie Ballmer pimped Windows 7, the successor to Vista, at last night’s D: All Things Digital conference. But the pair also made some comments about their relationship with Apple, prompted in part by the demo of Windows multi-touch features that are rather reminiscent of the iPhone.

Here’s John Markoff of the New York Times:

Fencing over the issue of whether Apple will get to market first with desktop multi-touch features, Mr. Ballmer implied that the two companies don’t compete directly.

“We’ll sell 290 million PCs, and Apple will sell 10 million PCs,” he said. “They’re fantastically successful and so are we and our partners. But it’s a different job. Steve can flip his hand and sell a few models and I don’t take a thing away from him.”

I kid you not; this may be the smartest thing Steve Ballmer has ever said—so smart, I don’t think he realizes it. Ballmer may be trying to put down Apple by tossing out the huge disparity in their sales numbers (never mind that Microsoft itself doesn’t directly sell those PCs), but put it in the context of how much profit they each manage to take home on the amount of computers they sell and it’s clear that both companies are pretty profitable. So, despite the fact that, yes, Apple and Microsoft both make operating systems, they aren’t really in direct competition any more.

Or, to put it another way, while Vista’s lackluster performance can certainly help Apple, Microsoft doesn’t have to lose in order for Apple to win. Remember that piece a couple of weeks ago about Apple’s share of over-$1,000 computers in retail?

Honestly, I think about the only place the two are really competing directly is in the music player market—and given the latest on the Zune, you can’t even really call that “competition,” can you?

In other news, Ballmer also demonstrated the patented “Swooping Eagle” Kung Fu move (above) that he has used before to great effect.

[Image by Asa Mathat]

Did you know you can run Windows on your Intel Mac?

Posted on May. 20, ’08, 10:59 AM PT by Dan Pourhadi

Category | Windows

If you answered “no” to that headline, there’s a good chance you’ve experienced some kind of head trauma and are currently suffering from retrograde amnesia. Because let’s be honest: At this point, years after the first Intel Macs were shipped to customers, everyone knows Macs can run Windows. It’s actually MacUser policy to remind people of that, like, every day. It’s also our policy to point you to every single article ever written that covers running Windows on your Mac—what to do, how to do it, and why to do it (still looking for a good answer on that one).

And today, we point you to Rob Griffith’s Best of Both Worlds series at the Mothership, where he dives deep into the never-exhausted issue of Windows-on-the-Mac.

But you may not know the answers to a bunch of other related questions: Why would you want to put Windows on your Mac in the first place? Which Windows programs are compelling and unique enough to justify the hassle of putting Windows on your Mac? Can you really incorporate those programs smoothly into your Mac workflow, or will they always feel clunky? In other words, while putting Windows on your Mac might sound great in theory, how does it all work out in reality?

It’s three pages long, and the first in a series of upcoming articles detailing how best to take advantage of the Two OS’s. One Computer. tech.

I was going to turn this post into one big spoof of “The Best of Both Worlds” episode from Star Trek: The Next Generation—the Mothership as the Enterprise, Windows as the Borg, and, of course, Rob Griffiths as an assimilated Captain Picard. But somehow I don’t think such a parody would’ve received the appreciation it so rightly would’ve deserved.

And I’m already writing for a Mac blog—there’s only so much nerdiness I can demonstrate before I start rolling my eyes at myself, you know?

(You have no idea how long it took to make that freakin’ graphic. Apparently Photoshop doesn’t have ‘shield’ or ‘tractor beam’ shape designs. Totally worth it, though.)

Parallels Desktop update makes it friendlier with latest Windows service packs

Posted on May. 12, ’08, 11:00 AM PT by Aayush Arya

Category | Updates

Parallels Desktop was updated to v3.0.5600 this past Friday, bringing (much needed) support for the latest and greatest service packs of Windows Vista (SP1) and XP (SP3) installed on a Boot Camp partition.

Apart from that, it also addresses several issues with SmartSelect and Shared Folders, and some specific problems with the MacBook Air, which have been reported to cause kernel panics (and severe trauma) in the past.

It’s an 88MB download and a free update for all registered users of v3.x. Have fun downloading!

[Via Macworld]

Windows XP SP3 is unleashed (for real this time)

Posted on May. 8, ’08, 7:06 AM PT by Derik DeLong

Category | Windows

You may not have heard (and I’m sure more than a couple of you don’t care) that Windows XP SP3 was set to be released last week. It was postponed as Microsoft scrambled to address the fact that it’s not compatible with one of their own products. Irony? A little bit. It’s more anticompetitive than anything. If a third-party product is broken by the service pack, you can bet anything Microsoft won’t be taking any action. The fact is that they delayed because it was their product.

At any rate, some of us use a virtualization product (like Parallels or Fusion) or may be using Boot Camp. For the latter group, I have a warning. Well, it’s more of a reminder. Boot Camp 2.1 was released a scant couple of weeks ago. Allow me to point out what Apple has to say (and no, it’s not “stability and performance improvements”).

Important: Installation of Boot Camp 2.1 is required before installing Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3)

That is important. Take it to heart and get that update installed before you attempt a service pack.