OS Neutrality: Windows on the Mac

It would seem to be a simple principle: More choices good, fewer choices bad. But when it comes to the Internet, and the desire of some people to control everything they can get their hands on, the concept of “net neutrality” starts getting needlessly complicated. That’s what politics brings to the party, unfortunately.

Google – a company some anti-technologists accuse of trying to take over not just the World Wide Web, but the Whole Wide World – has a short, simple page on their site that spells out the basic idea of net neutrality. “Network neutrality,” it reads, “is the principle that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet.”

I will leave politics to politicians, and concentrate solely on providing you with solutions to the myriad challenges of a competitive marketplace and a turbulent economy. However, I do believe that computer users should be in control of their computers, and recent advances in Apple’s OS X operating system has brought a measure of “operating system neutrality” to its powerful, supremely well designed product line.

“We do Windows”

The old joke about maids “not doing windows” led to the early generations of Macintosh users making the same declaration, often as a signal of rebellion or resistance to a grim, grey, Microsoft-dominated business world that Apple portrayed in its advertising. But after the release of OS X almost a decade ago, savvy users knew that the Unix-based OS could be run on processors other than the IBM/Motorola PowerPC line. The handwriting was on the wall.

That handwriting turned into a million-watt billboard with the announcement at Macworld 2006 of the first Intel-based Macs. By April of that year, Apple had announced the public beta version of Boot Camp, allowing users to install and run Windows XP. Users could choose at boot time the OS that they wanted to run, which marked the beginning of the “OS neutrality” era, although the freedom required the purchase of the new Apple hardware and did not allow OS X and Windows to run simultaneously.

Vendors to the rescue

Over the last several years, a number of excellent “virtualization” programs from such vendors as Parallels Computing and VMware have brought a new dimension of OS neutrality to the Apple platform. One can now run both OS X and Windows at once, switching between the two smoothly and even sharing peripherals, clipboards and broadband/wireless connections.

With the release of OS X 10.5, known as “Leopard” according to Apple’s feline naming convention, the implementation of both Boot Camp and third-party virtualization programs has achieved a level of dependability that corporations can rely on for mission-critical work. Ongoing research and development by Apple ensures the continuing refinement of “OS neutral computing.”

Microsoft plays catch-up

The maturity of the XP operating system resulted in it running smoothly and predictably in the Mac virtualization environments powered by the latest Core 2 Duo processors. Because it takes advantage of the faster hardware, rather than being simulated entirely in software as VirtualPC is, XP on the Mac is a serious, swift and stable performer. Many Fortune 500 firms continue to rely on it, and top tech consultants recommend that their customers do so, as well.

The release of Vista, as most technophiles know, has been plagued by a seemingly unending series of problems. Many users, perhaps even most, report a positive experience with Vista installation and use. However, because of the ongoing issues with Vista, most pundits are continuing to recommend XP for use on the new Macs if you are running Boot Camp, VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop.

Advantages, obvious and otherwise

The advantages to corporate users are clear, the most obvious being that they no longer need to have two computers if they use both platforms. Most art departments, for example, settled on the Mac a long time ago, despite most productivity applications being cross-platform. These corporate Mac users can now avail themselves not only of the greater number of specialty Windows applications, but their company’s Windows-based network environment, as well.

Of course, networking between and among different operating systems was manageable even before Windows ran on Macs, but it is very much easier now. Other convoluted and confusing solutions to the sharing of printers, network attached storage (NAS) and even Inter- and intra-net connections are now on the scrapheap of computing history.

Frankly, it is all thanks to the concept of OS neutrality.