April 14, 1997: The Mac Emulates Windows!
The first home run from Connectix was RAM Doubler, a useful program every Mac 680x0 owner thought they had to have. As the price of RAM predictably dropped, the allure of software that allowed more efficient use of physical RAM decreased. Connectix was smart enough not to stand still; they had something great up their sleeve.
The "something" was Virtual PC. Virtual PC allowed the Mac to run the Windows operating system in emulation. If you were forced to use say, Microsoft Access for a few minutes a day, you could opt to spend those minutes using Virtual PC on your Mac. The performance wasn't as speedy as owning an actual Windows machine but many diehard Mac fans found the tradeoff more than acceptable.
Virtual PC wasn't the only option for PC emulation. There were plenty of others floating around, but it was the longest lasting. Connectix first announced Virtual PC this week in 1997.
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How fast time flies - seems like only yesterday that Connectix sold out to Microsoft for 30 pieces of silver (2004?). M$FT then immediately ruined VPC with their own version 7. I run it at work on a dual-2.0ghz G5, running XPSP2. It can be sluggish.
But recently, just for giggles, I reinstalled the last Connectix’ version (6) on a G4 laptop, plus the XP build customized for it. It runs faster and integrates more intuitively, on a slower laptop processor. Go figure.
I switched from Windows to the Mac in 1998, and VirtualPC was one of the main reasons I felt safe in making the “switch.” VirtualPC meant that I didn’t have to buy all new software all at once. Microsoft Access was mentioned above, and that was a program I ran for a while in VirtualPC until I finally switched to FileMaker. That was kind of my last Windows app holdout because while I didn’t have a ton of databases, they all had to be manually converted, including rebuilding interfaces in FileMaker. There’s still no Microsoft Access for the Mac today, and it makes one wonder if that’s not a conspiracy to keep some folks in Windows.
VirtualPC was not very fast, but it worked. The last version of VirtualPC before moving to OS X (I think it was the early version 5 maybe) finally attained decent speeds in OS 9. It was definitely usable. But after it was carbonized for OS X, it became slow again because OS X itself was slower in those early days until hardware could catch up.
I used the same Windows installation created in VirtualPC for about 10 years. I upgraded it to Windows 2000 then XP, and then when Intel processors meant the death of VirtualPC, I used Parallels to convert my VirtualPC data and I upgraded to Vista. Since I no longer have anything mission critical in Windows these days, I no longer even use VirtualPC. I have Windows 7 installed in Bootcamp, but I might boot into it every few weeks or so. I really don’t have much of a need anymore.
Regardless, VirtualPC was a lifesaver for us back in its day.