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Microsoft's Virtualization Stance Eying Apple?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the shifty-glances dept.

Pisces writes "Over the past several days, Microsoft has flip-flopped on virtualization in Vista, with one ascribing the change in policy to concerns over DRM. A piece at Ars Technica raises another, more likely possibility: fear of Apple. Apple is technically an OEM, and could offer copies of Vista at a discounted price. 'All of this paints a picture in which Apple could use OEM pricing to offer Windows for its Macs at greatly reduced prices and running in a VM. The latter is absolutely crucial; telling users that they need to reboot into their Windows OS isn't nearly as sexy as, say, Coherence in Parallels. If you've never seen Coherence, it's quite amazing. You don't need to run Windows apps in a VM window of Vista. Instead, the apps appear to run in OS X itself, and the environment is (mostly) hidden away. VMWare also has similar technology, dubbed Unity.' Is Microsoft terrified of a world where Windows can be virtualized and forced to take a back seat to Mac OS X or Linux?"

2 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. MS a Metaphor for the US? by RevHawk · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Is Microsoft afraid of Apple? Not sure. I'm beginning to wonder how much Microsoft is like the United States these days. Think about it. A monopoly with unfair advantages set long ago. Desperate to crush anything that could threaten that in the smallest way. Ruthless, with little to no regard as to what the rest of the world..err market thinks. A country err competitor steps in with something new and innovative, something different? Well, if we have no use for it and can't copy it, crush it! Maybe I've just woken up on the wrong side of the bed?

  2. The real problem by mmeister · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Perhaps the real problem is that Microsoft priced its Vista products at such a premium price, that folks don't find the features worthwhile. Now, they feel forced to drive the higher priced products by not allowing the Basic to be virtualized. I don't need all the bells and whistles of Premium, I just want to run some software in a VM environment.

    MS is once again flexing its monopoly muscles to force end customers to pay higher prices to get stuff they don't really need/want.