A look into the future....

I was recently discussing the topic of Intel Macs with my father (and yes, we both own and swear by our Macs).
One of his co-workers is seriously considering switching over, now that Apple has introduced the line of Intel Macs. We soon got onto the topic of Bootcamp and all of that stuff.
But I was wondering, is it even possible to run Windows and Mac programs simultaniously?
Obviously not with Windows or Mac OS X, but is it possible for some new OS to run both?
After some thought, I doubt that you could do that without the aid of Virtual PC, or one of those programs, but if you can virtually simulate a chip and run Windows on it, shouldn't you be able to run DOS on a virtual chip and Unix on a real chip, and have a sort of, super OS?
Any thoughts on this would be great, I dont know a whole lot about these kinds of things....

there's parallells

parallels will run windows inside osx. there are also rumors that os 10.5 will include virtualization software like parallels in addition to boot camp.

dohidied said:

parallels will run windows inside osx. there are also rumors that os 10.5 will include virtualization software like parallels in addition to boot camp.

Click to expand...

well worded.

i am hoping to be able to do a 'fast user switch' between os's when leopard comes out, will make life awesoem for mac users and create a large number of people to switch over because the machines would be one of the most versatile in the world
-chris

yeah, i would love integrated virtualization. i use boot camp for games, but i can think of a few windows-only programs that i would like to use without shutting down osx. i'm hoping that if apple brings virtualization in-house, it will use the same partition as boot camp. i don't want to have two installs of windows taking up space on my hard drive.

The thing that I don't like about parallels is that they run slow, or at least my Virtual PC does.
I maxed out the performance settings for it, which brings it to 512 MB of RAM and 16 MB of VRAM, but it runs rather sluggishly.
I am seriously thinking about just giving in, selling my iBook G4, and pitching in a little money so I can get a MacBook, or MacBook Pro.

And about Jaguar, it is for the Motorola chip Macs, not just the Intels, right?

canadian_eh said:

The thing that I don't like about parallels is that they run slow, or at least my Virtual PC does.
I maxed out the performance settings for it, which brings it to 512 MB of RAM and 16 MB of VRAM, but it runs rather sluggishly.
I am seriously thinking about just giving in, selling my iBook G4, and pitching in a little money so I can get a MacBook, or MacBook Pro.

Click to expand...

wait, you're using microsoft's virtual pc on an ibook? there's no comparison between vpc's performance and parallels' performance. parallels desktop is a new virtualization program for intel macs. since these macs already have x86 chips, it doesn't need to emulate the processor like virtual pc does. the result is much faster virtualization. if you want to run windows programs on a mac, then you need an intel machine.

http://www.parallels.com/

Oh, I didn't realize that parallels were only for Intels, I thought it was just something like Virtual PC. But I guess the parallels being quick would be another reason for me to "trade in".

EDIT: Yeah, after looking at some screenshots, etc. parallels seem much better than Virtual PC.

canadian_eh said:

I thought it was just something like Virtual PC.

Click to expand...

It is something just like Virtual PC. The only difference being that it harnesses the power of the x86 chip instead of emulating it, like VPC.

canadian_eh your sig is too long. Fix it or I will gladly fix it.