Looks cool but I’m curious as to how they get it going (desktopless Windows apps and even start menu, ala remote X apps in Unix land). The new stuff that lets you boot your BootCamp partition as a Parallels Coherence virtualization whenever you want is pretty awesome as is the Transporter which lets you make a VM install copy of an existing XP or Vista machine.
http://www.parallels.com/products/coherence/
Youtube after the jump.
Where’s the old thread on this when it was first released as beta?
Nice to finally see this leave beta. But still, I honestly can’t think of a Windows app that I’d need along side my Mac apps.
Hell, I only have one app total on the XP partition of my Macbook, and I use it once in a blue moon.
I could see uses if someone was an art or sound person using a Mac, but needed some custom or off the shelf windows-only app to do their time or project tracking with the rest of the company… or if you play WoW, there are some utilities that run only on Windows (such as UniUploader or Cosmos updater or WowAceUpdater or Rupture…)
Or if you use Adobe apps.
shakes fist
I use it all the time. Although lately I’ve gone back to non-coherence and just maximizing the app, removing the Parallels toolbar, and treating Windows and its running app like just any old app. Which is pretty much the same as Coherence if you’re only running one thing anyway (and a bit smoother).
There are plenty of times when someone might want a Mac but have to use a few Windows apps. One of my contracts has a bunch of Macs, but they use Exchange for e-mail/calendar, and Entourage sucks.
Then there’s the whole patient services app, which is Windows only. Coherence is a far more palatable solution than RDP.
I use it a lot too. My OSX laptop is now my work computer, and being a tech writer I damn near live in Visio some days. That and our ticketing system ONLY works on IE.
Oh I don’t doubt that there is plenty of good reasons to run it. I was just saying that in my case, I don’t have any. Most of what I do on computers outside of work is mainly just e-mail, web, IM, play games and mess with my cars ECU. For all those, only messing with my cars ECU really requires the specific Windows app (and games, but I’d rather boot fully into Windows for that if I even wanted to play them on my macbook).
I definitely agree that its a cool project.