switch — the video

Update: Now with a soundtrack!

Just amazing stuff. Here’s a demo using VirtueDesktops to switch between OS X and Parallels with lots of eye candy. This is the solution I was hoping for back when the Intel announcement was made, only it plays much cooler than I anticipated.

Everything that I had an issue with before is now fixed in Beta5:

• full-screen 1440×900 resoulution
• guest can now see shared folders on the host
• near-flawless mouse tracking (in the Parallels Tools, no tweaks needed
• more than adequate performance

The only issue left is the ability to grow the drive-size past the original setting. There are a number of work-arounds for this, but I hope that a utility will be provided with the final release.

No need for Boot Camp any more—at least not for me. It’s time to buy pre-order a copy of Parallels Workstation.

boot camp vs. parallels — conclusion

I haven’t booted into the Windows partition in over two weeks. The Parallels Beta4 is simply amazing. It now supports full-screen mode at least up to 1280×1024 (as much as I can handle on my secondary Dell LCD). I’ve been able to do everything I needed to (run web applications on the client network in IE, connect to others via NetMeeting, use the client’s Jabber network, etc) without any issues.

The irony: my largest “switch� experiment failure is related to the OS X side of life. I have to do my graphics heavy lifting in Windows.

What? You have to switch to Windows for your most intense graphics work? Isn’t that why you got a Mac to begin with? Better graphics, right? What in the world can’t you do with 256MB of graphics power?

There are still no universal binary nor native x86 (if there is such a thing yet) solutions for editing PNG files. When I use Fireworks on the OS X side (via Rosetta emulation) it chokes on large files. By large, I mean a large canvas. One sign I was working on was only a 500KB PNG file, but it was 5400×3600 pixels (36×24 inches at 150 ppi) large. Fireworks beachballed when opening, and it crashed during printing or trying to print preview. This evening I plan on installing Fireworks in the Parallels VM to see if it handles large files better.

I’m dismayed that Adobe (Macromedia) is not going to release neither binary universals nor native apps until their next regularly scheduled versions. I hope Adobe doesn’t abandon Fireworks, as I have always preferred it to using both Photoshop and Illustrator. It does the best of both worlds (vector and bitmap manipulation) without the bloat of features I don’t need. If anyone reading this has a recommendation for a nice PNG editor (besides Gimp in X11) please share them in the comments for this post.

So for my needs, Parallels works great. It allows me to perform a few Windows-only tasks on my Apple OS X machine without rebooting into Windows. I’m convinced now that I’ll delete the 20GB Windows partition, and maybe reinstall it with 5GB or 6GB just incase I need it in a pinch. It’s a cool party trick to boot into Windows completely. Well, at geek parties anyways.

basic elements for visual design

I’ve had “write post on elements of visual design” on my “someday/maybe” list for the past two months now. After a visit with Glenn a few weeks ago I decided to elevate it to a new project.

Writing that post now would be redundant considering Mike Rundle’s article published last week on Vitamin. I’ve used Robin William’s C.A.R.P. (or other memorable anagram of those four letters) for years when teaching developers and clients about the basic elements of visual design. It’s an easy means to understand why effictive designs work.

I recommend reading Mike’s article if you are a developer. It’s a good overview of the four basic elements. Using these principles in your own form and screen layouts will increase the value of both form and function.

I might still write a short series that goes a little more in depth on each. But for now, it’s back on the someday/maybe list.