Vista and Virtualisation on the Mac: Microsoft's decision making could only be understood by the likes of Thurrott/Enderle cooking up some spectacular explanation. It makes no sense to me at all.

Home > News and Views > Vista and Virtualisation on the Mac: Microsoft's decision making could only be understood by the likes of Thurrott/Enderle cooking up some spectacular explanation. It makes no sense to me at all.

Vista and Virtualisation on the Mac: Microsoft's decision making could only be understood by the likes of Thurrott/Enderle cooking up some spectacular explanation. It makes no sense to me at all.

Date Created: 01 Mar, 2007, 12:23 AM

By now, owners of Intel-powered Macs will be livid with Microsoft for the manner with which it's handling the Virtualization of Vista.

That is, those who have true need for Vista or any flavour of Windows on their Mac.

Some of these will be from the enterprise market, long the place where Macs are still seen as dinky "not serious men's business" PC emulators. CIOs can cite all sorts of interoperability issues - often related to some Microsoft program which oversees company email - for not allowing Macs on the premises.

Over at NetworkWorld, there is four page article on just such an issue and it makes for interesting reading. Entitled, "Mac OS being infused with the tools of the corporate IT trade, but can it catch on?" the article gives a solid overview of the slow acceptance of Macs in the enterprise setting.

Let me illustrate with a couple of quotes:

“Because of the switch to Intel, success of the Mac OS X, the stability and elegance of the platform, the Mac is a very viable alternative, but it would require a dramatic shift in the company’s resource allocation to go after the enterprise,” says Van Baker, an analyst with Gartner.

Also:

"“Intel Macs have really changed things. Beyond the obvious comparisons — that Macs are now speed-parity with Wintel machines — vendors have been able to develop more software for the platform, and where that is impossible, virtual machines are always an option,” says Scott Melendez, manager of enterprise messaging for the city and county of San Francisco, who brought Macs into governmental offices in 2003 and says they are there to stay alongside Windows machines.

“There will always be a stigma by some old-time network managers — that Macs are difficult to network — from the AppleTalk days, or that they are difficult to support because it’s not Windows. By the end of 2007, however, I think the landscape will have changed,” Melendez says."

Please go read the rest of the article to see that a change is occurring in this domain, principally pulled along by Apple's switch to Intel CPUs and the affordances given by either being able to boot into Windows via Bootcamp, or running Windows via Parallels and other virtualisation software...

That is, until the release of Vista, where Microsoft appears to have set new standards in lame thinking by limiting the viable flavours of Vista, via its EULA, to the most expensive editions.

Now you might also wish to call this an effort to gouge Mac users, but in effect it's a mother eating its young.

Because I would bet that those people who wish to use Windows Vista on Macs are not necessarily long time Mac users wishing to give Vista a whirl, but long time Windows users who've either had enough of Microsoft (philosophically or through being run ragged with the usual suspects: the troika of malware/spyware/virii) or who have become switchers or dumpers because they finally listened to their friends and at least gave Mac OS X a try (as encapsulated in a today's blog article by Thomas Hawk).

But they still need to use a Windows-only app. here or there, or perhaps they're having a bet each way. By having a Mac OS and Windows on the one piece of hardware, they can play with the Mac OS and work their way up what they expect (or have been propogandised to expect) to be a steep learning curve, while still getting work done (of a fashion) using their tried and true Windows Xp setup.

This is in contrast to using Vista, which is too new to claim a "tried and true" moniker, as well known Microsoft booster Chris Pirillo denotes in his blog entry today, where he laments having given Vista a good college try, but since he needs to get work done, he's reverting to Xp.

Now if someone like Chris were to ever stoop at the Mac OS X fountain and drink the Kool-Aid on offer, which Windows do you think he's likely to install on his shiny new Mac: Xp or Vista?

Microsoft makes it very clear it doesn't want him using Vista, but guess what? By forcing him to go back to Xp to avoid breaching the Vista EULA, it confirms that Xp is his best choice after all.

Whatever doubts Chris may have had, and indeed any doubts other potential Vista purchasers may have had, are now fully erased.

And does Microsoft really think users will buy and install a completely fresh copy of Xp? Of course not. They're going to dig into their desk drawer and pull out the same copy of Xp sitting on their desktop or notebook PC and install that instead. No $300 for you, Mr. Ballmer.

If this is how Microsoft expects to sell more copies of Vista, then it needs to hire a new marketing department. It seems to me that in its effort to hinder its own users from heading to the Mac (heaven forbid they actually play with OS X and see where Vista sprung forth), the restrictions Microsoft have placed upon virtualisation installations - allegedly in the name of better security (but see this law blog entry to see that argument decimated and how this lame restrictive decision may be in breach of Australian Trade Practices law) - may push potential switchers into the waiting arms of Steve Jobs and Co. at the most, or at the least, keep them using old copies of well-used and well-tweaked Windows Xp.

(The picture at the header was one I took from the website of The Age newspaper the day of Vista's release. Featuring a write-up of Vista, it contained a well-placed and well-timed ad. for an iMac running Office. I found it amusing....)