Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Pete and Leander at Wired’s Cult of Mac blog decided to test out Microsoft’s new Windows Vista on their Mac Pro using Bootcamp.  The results were shocking… Vista may have actually run faster on Apple’s own hardware than their own OS X.  Kind of embaressing.  Here’s an excerpt from their experience:

Vista really flies on this beast, and feels like it’s faster than OS X - it boots faster, folders burst open and apps launch instantly...I’m especially delighted with Vista’s “glass” Aero interface, which works in all its glory on this machine...The OS is dark and handsome. It’s really quite exciting...Vista’s icons are big and colorful, and frankly, a lot more logical and easy to read than some of OS X’s, like the intelligible iWeb icon.

They go on to talk about how although everything is more logical than XP, it’s all still a mess…

Of course, in many ways it’s the same old Windows. There are pop-up dialogs galore thanks to the new security features, and the Start menu, though slimmed down, is still a confusing mess. Maybe it’s just me.

Read [Cult of Mac] Via [Gizmodo]

Microsoft has made the announcement that they have stopped development of a universal version of VirtualPC for Mac.  According to News.com, a Microsoft spokesperson stated that they have “made the decision not to move forward with a Universal version of Virtual PC at this time.” The big switch that Apple made from PowerPC to Intel chips has meant that the popular virtualization software would essentially have to be rewritten from scratch, and clearly Microsoft isn’t down with that.  With other solutions out there like Parallels, and even Apple’s own BootCamp (dual boot, not virtualization), VirtualPC doesn’t provide enough value to consumers to survive.  Or maybe Microsoft just has it in for Apple after Steve Jobs outed Microsoft for ripping off MacOSX in Vista.

News.com: “The (Macintosh business unit) still recognizes that customers need access to Windows applications from their Intel-based Macs and feels confident that alternative solutions offered by Apple and other vendors, combined with a fully packaged retail copy of Windows will satisfy this need.”

Via [MacRumors]

Charles Gaba did a really nice comparison of all the feature differences (and similarities) between the Apple iBook G4 and its successor thenew Apple MacBook. Overall these two machines are hard to judge since they are very different. They have been released a few years apart with technology changing drastically over time as well as corporate partnerships (Apple and Intel who would have thought).

Some key differences that gave the MacBook one up are: a upgradeable hard drive, 13.3” widescreen display, Intel Core Duo processor, max 2 GB of RAM, iSight camera, and BootCamp capabilities. The iBook was most notably favored in the weight area (4.9-5.2 lbs.).

Check it out [System Shootouts]