Software Made Simple

Update: I’ve written an updated post on Parallels 3.0 Build 5160, released on 9/11/07.

Things are heating up on the Mac VMware front. Last week Parallels released version 3.0 of their desktop software for Macintosh and VMware released Beta 4 of their Fusion product for Macintosh. And today, VMware announced the pricing for VMware Fusion will be same as Parallels: $79.95 (only $39.95 if you pre-order before the final release).

I’ve been a Parallels customer since the beta of their Desktop software first came about in April 2006 and have upgraded to 3.0. I am also using the VMware Fusion Beta 4.

Up until these last round of releases, I’ve been using Fusion for running Ubuntu Linux 7.04 and Parallels for running Windows XP SP2.

Windows Integration

With Desktop 3.0, Parallels added quite a bit of Windows integration points. For starters, in Windows when you right-click on a file and select Open With, you can pick from a list of both Windows and Mac applications. If you choose a Mac application, it starts in OS X with the file. It’s very slick. You are supposed to also be able to do this on the OS X side where you can specify a Windows application using Open With and it will open in Windows with Parallels, but I have not gotten this to work yet.

Parallels seems to set up shared folders between OS X and Windows quite nicely. Fusion seems to require you to do this manually.

Fusion lets you access Windows programs from its Applications menu. Parallels let you run programs from its Applications menu or the dock icon.

Coherence vs. Unity

Coherence is Parallels term for its ability to hide the Windows desktop and make it appear as if your Windows applications are running directly in OS X. It works very well, although since I have dual monitors I usually just run Parallels in full screen on the second monitor. Dual monitor support in Parallels just makes both your monitors work as one giant monitor which I find a bit weird.

Unity is Fusion’s term for Coherence. It also works very well, although not with Windows Vista, yet. In fact, even though it is still in beta, Unity looks better than Coherence. Windows applications have a drop-shadow so they look more “native” on OS X. They also seem to move around more easily without any of the jumpiness that Parallels has. And a big thing is that the Windows applications are treated independently. With Parallels, when you click on any Windows application, all your Windows applications are brought to the front. With Unity, Fusion just brings the window you clicked to the front. Unity doesn’t really work with dual monitors either.

Linux Support

Before Desktop 3.0, Parallels Linux support was very limited. I’ve now installed Ubuntu in Parallels Desktop 3.0, installed the tools without a problem and it is working wonderfully. The Parallels tools only give you mouse and video integration, but that is enough for me.

I had previously been using VMware Fusion for this. It also works just fine with Linux.

BootCamp support

My BootCamp partition is set up with Windows Vista Ultimate. With Desktop 3.0, Parallels now supports BootCamp partitions, so I gave it a try. It took a while for Parallels to install all the stuff it needed into the partition, but once it did so Vista started up in the VM just fine. There was an incompatibility with the new BootCamp 1.3 drivers and the initial release of Parallels Desktop 3.0 (Build 4124). Luckily for me I hadn’t updated my BootCamp drivers yet. To their credit Parallels has just released build 4128 which is supposed to fix this driver incompatibility.

Alas, I have not tested the VMware BootCamp capability. I really don’t want to screw up the partition since it is working now. Perhaps someone braver than I can comment on this?

Vista support

Neither Parallels nor Fusion support Vista Aero effects, but otherwise Vista seems to work fine on both. Vista is a bit of a CPU hog, though, so you’re probably better off with using XP in the VM.

Snapshots

Desktop 3.0 added a Snapshot feature which lets you save a copy of your VM at a point in time. You can create a snapshot for a stopped or running VM. When I created a snapshot of my Windows XP VM, it took about 25MB. Parallels also has a nice UI for managing the snapshots.

VMware also has snapshots, but they seem less robust. It appears that there can only be one snapshot available at a time and I was unable to find where the snapshot files are stored. Parallels lets you have any number of snapshots and they can all be managed nicely through the UI.

Other features

I use Windows and Linux for work-related tasks so I really don’t care much about USB 2.0 or 3D graphics support. I will say that graphics on everything I’ve tried work fast on both Fusion and Parallels, but then I haven’t tried any games (does FreeCell count?). I’ve tried a USB camera that did not have an OS X driver and it worked fine on both as well.

Fusion can emulate two processors and Parallels cannot, but I don’t find this to be a useful feature.

Conclusion

It looks like I”ll be sticking with Parallels. I’ve already paid out my money and it doesn’t have any significant problems that warrant me also using VMware Fusion. If I hadn’t already purchased Parallels though, I would probably go with Fusion just because of VMware’s stellar reputation in this space, aggressive pricing and the fact that its VMs directly work with VMware Player, Workstation and Server on Windows and Linux.

At REAL World 2007, I met and talked with a lot of people that have software solutions written in Visual Basic 6 and are wondering what they should do about them. Since Microsoft is no longer supporting VB6, it has left many, many people with a quandary: Do they stick with Microsoft and move on up to Visual Basic .NET, do they tough it out with VB6 or do they consider moving to something else such as REALbasic?

Frankly, I think a lot of VB6 developers are overwhelmed by Microsoft’s .NET offerings. Microsoft has more technologies out now than anyone could possible follow and its mad rush of new technologies continues with .NET 3.0 and Orcas. It’s hard to keep up when you’re trying to deliver software. And besides, it’s not like it easy to migrate from VB6 to VB.NET, even with Visual Studio’s migration assistant.

I also don’t think people really want to continue with VB6. It’s several years old now, the IDE UI is poor, it probably isn’t fully Vista compatible and really just doesn’t have a future. I think REALbasic is a realistic alternative to Visual Basic and I don’t think I’m alone. In fact, I got the impression while at REAL World that there are a lot of companies that would be extremely interested in migrating from VB6 to REALbasic, but it’s not at straightforward as they would like.

First, there is not a lot of information on how to go about moving your software from VB6 to REALbasic. Sure, REAL Software has their VB6 to RB whitepaper and their VB project converter. But the white paper does not go into much depth and the project converter is not well regarded in the community. In fact, there’s been much talk on the REALbasic forums about creating an all-new community project converter.

In my opinion a converter is probably not a realistic goal. Sure, some simple code could be converted, but not the complicated stuff. And who really needs help with the simply stuff, anyway? I think that a migration analyzer would be more useful, perhaps like MoMA for .NET to Mono migration. An analyzer scans your projects and gives you a report of areas that you need to focus on while migrating your code.

In most cases, I think REALbasic is a much better choice for VB6 developers than .NET is. REALbasic is more powerful than VB, but not nearly as complex as .NET. RB has a fully object-oriented language, many more controls than VB and is currently supported by an excellent company. And of course, it is cross-platform, which is not insignificant.

The biggest areas where REALbasic falls down when compared to VB are:

• 3rd party controls. REALbasic cannot use all the ActiveX and COM controls that VB can. And there are fewer REALbasic 3rd party developers making controls.
• REALbasic cannot create DLLs or COM components
• Reporting solutions are few and far between

Still, I think it makes sense for more VB6 shops and developers to evaluate REALbasic to see if it makes sense for them to use. In order to help with this, I am pleased to announce that LogicalVue Software is now offering a new service: VB to REALbasic Migration Analysis

Follow the link for full details, but to briefly summarize: We will review your VB software and provide you with a report of how good of a candidate it is for migration to REALbasic. This report will describe the level of effort, areas to focus on and provide general guidance. And if you like, we can also provide estimates for helping you do the actual migration.