14 DAY TRIAL // TUAW points out in a Saturday piece that Microsoft's Photosynth website features a note in which the company admits it is "not cool enough" for OS X just yet. So, like, is this how they're going to counter-attack Apple's "Get a Mac" ads?
Microsoft's Photosynth website says, "Unfortunately, we're not cool enough to run on your OS yet. We really wish we had a version of Photosynth that worked cross platform, but for now it only runs on Windows. Trust us, as soon as we have a Mac version ready, it will be up and available on our site".
On the Photosynth website, Microsoft also notes (as "Important") that "Photosynth makes heavy use of your graphics hardware. If you have an older graphics system, Photosynth may not run," says the company behind the Windows operating system. "Also, Photosynth requires that your graphics acceleration be set to full."
Currently, Photosynth only works natively on Windows XP (SP2 or SP3) and Windows Vista. The company notes that Photosynth runs under Boot Camp only, while Parallels and other VM software cannot run it.
The aforementioned source, however, also mentions that VMWare Fusion's Pete Kazanjy actually got Photosynth running in Fusion 2 Beta 2, posting a video to prove it. But since it's not Microsoft's feat, again, the message posted on the Photosynth site still holds.
VMware Fusion is a desktop product for Intel-based Macs, coming from the guys at VMware Inc. It allows users to run OSes such as Windows, Linux, NetWare and Solaris in separate virtual machines, all at once, along with Mac OS. Currently at version 2.0 (Beta 2), which extends the seamless integration of VMware Fusion 1.x, it adds new ways to protect and control your virtual machines, enhances video performance and adds tons of power-user features.
To run Photosynth, users must also have Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2 or Firefox 3 installed, and at least 256 MB of memory. 1GB is the actual recommended amount of RAM needed to run the application. As far as graphics memory is concerned, 64MB or more is recommended, while Photosynth runs on some DirectX6 capable cards and all DirectX7 cards.