Bill Marriott wrote:
I recommend using BootCamp not because I want to reboot all the time, but
because Parallels (and VMWare Fusion) can use the BootCamp partition for
it's (not-so) virtual disk, and this way you have only one Windows
configuration to worry about.
Sounds good, unless you need to support both Vista and XP, and here we
also support Win2K. That's three, and with Rev 2.9 we're now running
Linux regularly too, bringing it to four. That would be a lot of
partitions to maintain, but with Parallels they're just files. And I
can back 'em up and replace them without ever needing to reformat the
drive.
For cross-platform development I would consider it essential to have
regular access to both Vista and XP at a minimum. Most computers are
running XP, but Vista will eclipse it sooner or later.
And while the market for commercial proprietary apps on Linux may still
be considered somewhat mixed, it's worth getting into it now and
establishing a presence in that community for the inevitable day when it
becomes the dominant OS. Sure, that'll be several years, but why wait
for the gold rush until after all the hills have been claimed? And in
the meantime it's the fastest-growing OS market around, so getting in
early can only be a good thing (many thanks to the Rev team for v2.9!).
When you wanna access Windows from within Mac OS X, you just fire up
Parallels. When you need to run in native Windows mode, you reboot into
BootCamp. And there are indeed some instances where booting into Windows
natively is required.
Depends on what native means.
There are various levels of virtualization, and each has its own
compromises: API, OS, BIOS, idiosyncrasies about the motherboard design.
The older virtualization schemes like VirtualPC had to emulate all of
them. While slow for most tasks, it's worth noting that once Rev was
loaded and running most non-display tasks (such as string processing)
ran measurably faster under emulation than they did in the native Mac
version on the same machine.
Parallels on Intel Macs lets the hosted OS and its applications make
direct use of the Intel processor, so performance is often on par with a
native machine, and hardware compatibility issues with the processor
should be no problem. The virtualized elements are mostly interfaces
with the hardware, such as the display, disk controllers, etc., and
integration extras like Clipboard sharing (which wouldn't be possible
with BootCamp since there is no OS X running to have a Clipboard to share).
BootCamp takes this a step further toward native, but still lacks a
BIOS and other motherboard components specific to Windows-spec machines.
After all, if it wasn't virtualizing at least some things it wouldn't
be needed.
While BootCamp is less virtual than Parallels, for myself if I need a
truly native experience I just use a PC. They're dirt cheap to buy
($200-$400 if you don't need games-level performance), cheaper for me
than the time required to set up multiple partitions on my Mac every
time I add a new OS to our support mix. But most critically for my
workflow, with a physical PC I don't have to shut down my Mac work just
to work on Windows. It also mean that if your Mac needs repairs or is
tied up doing something, you still have another computer to fall back on
- load Firefox, Thunderbird, and Rev, and you're good to go.
--
Richard Gaskin
Managing Editor, revJournal
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