On Fri, 03 Oct 2008 19:47:26 -0700, Jules Winfield
<Ju************@newsgroup.nospamwrote:
I occasionally get questions from customers asking me if my .NET (WPF)
app
will run on a Mac. I know zero about Macs so I'm not really able to give
an
intelligent reply. A .NET app clearly can't run natively on a Mac, but
isn't
there a way to emulate Windows on a Mac? Is there something equivalent to
VMWare in the Mac world that would allow a Mac user to load up a virtual
Windows desktop and run my WPF app?
You have several options:
-- Virtualization. Parallels and VMWare both make virtualization
software that will run Windows (or other operating systems) on Mac OS X.
-- Silverlight. As far as I know, Silverlight only runs within the
browser, and it's probably limited in feature-set compared to .NET
proper. But it's an option.
-- Mono. An open-source, third-party implementation of .NET. It is
well behind in terms of features as compare to the latest .NET, but my
understanding is that it works well for the things that are implemented.
I use Parallels Desktop on a regular basis. I would prefer to switch to
the VMWare products, because of the essentially non-existent customer
support from Parallels. But after evaluating their latest version of
Fusion (2.0), I've come to the conclusion that on the whole, Parallels
still does a better job. And that's comparing Fusion 2.0 to Parallels
Desktop 2.0, when Parallels Desktop 3.0 came out a year ago.
Basically, VMWare is relatively new to the virtualization-on-Mac game, in
spite of their extensive experience elsewhere. I have no doubt that they
will eventually equal or even surpass Parallels, but for now I don't think
they've quite gotten there.
That said, at least some of my issues are related to the fact that I run
on a laptop and battery life is an issue, which affects how I use the
virtualization software. On a desktop computer, one's priorities might be
different and Fusion might in fact wind up preferable.
Fortunately, both Parallels and Fusion offer a free 30-day full-feature
trial download so you can try each out for yourself and see which, if
either, suits your needs best.
Pete
