Ron Schenone

Windows Vista Running On A Mac – Why?

Posted by on Dec 5, 2007 | 17 Comments

Here is another one of those WHY questions. The Apple folks are running a commercial on TV with the PC guy and Mac guy at it again. But this time it relates to an alleged fact that Vista runs faster on a Mac. Naturally the PC guy denies this fact and does try to lead us to believe that this isn’t so. Up pops the Apple logo and thus ends the commercial.

Putting aside for one moment the dubious test results being touted as fact, and putting aside also the PC vs Mac debate to which there will never be a clear winner, one needs to ask WHY? Why would anyone want to run Vista on a Mac in the first place, except as a testing platform and bragging rights to say that it can be done? What is the purpose of the commercial?

Maybe I am missing something in the translation. But last night when the commercial aired once again, my wife asked me “why would anyone want to run Vista on a Mac?” I didn’t have an answer for her. Thus again the question goes back to WHY?

For years we have been told from the Mac crowd that the beauty part of using a Mac is the operating system itself. Little is mentioned about the hardware nor the performance capabilities. We have been told that Apple systems are more secure, less prone to infections, and more intuitive with the added benefit of being easier to use. For the most part these assumptions have always been based on the operating system, not the hardware. With Apple using an Intel based system along with its own hardware specifications tuned for the Apple operating system, one would suspect that this is the reason a Mac OS does not function on a standard PC.

My WHY question is not designed to start a Mac vs PC debate. But rather to enlighten me as to WHY anyone should care if Vista runs faster on a Mac than on a PC? Wouldn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of buying a Mac in the first place?

Comments welcome.

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  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/theoracle/ the oracle

    I would not be surprised if that claim was not well disputed by this time next month. Apple is indeed using Intel hardware, and it is not much different than what anyone can buy off the shelf or from an online retailer like Newegg – so any speed differential would have to be a result of hand tuning – the same sort that Dell, Alienware, H-P, or any other PC manufacturer could do. (motherboards are not different other than the TPM, and the processors are not a special speed grade nor do they have more cache or anything else to make them special)

    The reason you can’t simply put OS X on any hardware is partly because of the TPM (trusted platform module) that is found on the Apple boards – this is a security feature, but would hardly enhance speed. The guys running Hackintosh models have to try and approximate the TPM code in order to partially run OS X.

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  • http://bullium.com Will Bradshaw

    In my opinion the only reason Apple is advertising that Vista runs faster on Mac than a PC (not sure how true it is) is because they want people to switch to the Apple hardware and still have the option to run Vista or Windows for that matter on the Mac. Of course they want to give this option so people can’t use the excuse of “Software X doesn’t run on the Mac so I have to stick with the PC and Windows”. Also, I think they advertise that the Mac runs Vista faster than on a PC so people won’t be afraid of performance problems that seems to be the major complaint when running Vista on existing PC hardware.

  • Phil

    I have to have all three OSes available on my laptop and so a MacBook is the odvious choice – I have to administer XSANs, run AutoCAD (OS-X donesn’t let you do that! And AutoCAD under Parallels is stil painful) and stay on top of Linux-based film/TV software. That’s one good reason to run Windows on your MacBook – Vista or XP.

  • Petey

    To play games…. Plus they probably ran vista on the 8-core, 16gb ram Mac pro. Thats the only difference between mac and pc. Pc does not sell computers like this, but you can build a pc better than the Mac Pro for cheaper. All the hardware in the mac and pc are no different. The only difference is the brand name. With MAC brand add a few hundred on the price tag for the apple imprinted on you computer.

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  • Millsy

    I would never have even bought my Mac if they hadn’t switched to intel in the first place.

    I’ve definitly switched to using the mac for all my day to day stuff, with 2 exceptions. I can’t find any replacement for google’s Picasa that comes anywhere near to it, and that still requires windows. Plus there is all my games, which I am not going to rebuy (even if I could which I can’t with most) So not only do I get a system that has 2 dual core CPU’s, and up to 16GB of ram, plus 4 video card slots, but it runs both OSX and Windows.
    I don’t see the down side.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Hi Millsy,
    Thanks for sharing your experince with us.
    Ron

  • http://woolf2k.spaces.live.com/ Woolf2k

    I’m with Millsy.
    Having Vista on the Mac would be a form of “compatibility”. If what I want isn’t on the Mac, then get it for Vista. This is the only way I would switch over to a Mac. No matter how much hippy mac huggers deny it, it’s a Wintel centric world, at the momment.

  • Paul Martinis

    If you ask why then you just don’t get having windows and a mac in the same box. whata concept who cares about speed they both perform faster than i do. My question is why would I like to limit my computer to pc when I can have both ?

  • GiM

    20 years ago we were running Windows on Unix machine. Sorry, under Unix… WHY? On the same hardware, compare running software on a Windows pure machine with a Windows under Unix machine, under Unix it run quicker! WHY? I DO NOT KNOW EXACTLY, but seems the Unix were more friendly with the software especialy with resources management. WHY Vista is ten times slower on the same machine compared with XP? Don’t ask me, just ask Microsoft… they certainly know why!

  • bruceb

    I would run Vista on a Mac to allow me to access my employer’s network, unfortunately for me the VPN and network client only run on Windows so I don’t have much choice.

  • Victor

    I think your only saying that “Why should we care if Vista runs faster on a Mac” because you want people to forget

  • James

    One reason is that the Windows version of Dreamweaver CS3, running over a network on an iMac in VMWare emulation, is at least three times as fast as the Mac version of CS3 running natively under OS 10.5.3