14 DAY TRIAL // The Redmond Company has announced that it will shelve its Virtual PC software for Intel-based Macs. The Redmond Company's confirmed an anticipated foregone conclusion with its Macintosh Business Unit's decision to halt all progress involved with the development of the software native to Macs based on Intel platforms. "Developing a high-quality virtualization solution, such as Virtual PC, for the Intel-based Mac is similar to creating a version 1.0 release due to how closely the product integrates with Mac hardware," stated a Microsoft spokesperson. In this regard, Microsoft 2003 acquisition of Connectix' Virtual PC and Virtual Server products has failed to pay off, as the Virtualization initiative for Intel based Macs has been laid to rest.
Following third party virtualization solutions from Parallels and VMWare, both having announced releases of virtualization software this year, and taking into consideration Apple's own Boot Camp application, Microsoft strategy comes not without a certain flavor of inevitability as the Redmond Company has altruistically decided to let the market in the hands of the alternatives provided by its rivals. "The Macintosh business unit still recognizes that customers need access to Windows applications from their Intel-based Macs and feels confident that alternative solutions offered by Apple and other vendors, combined with a fully packaged retail copy of Windows will satisfy this need," said Microsoft.
The Redmond Company has however announced that it will continue development efforts for a native variant of Office to Intel-based Macs, being hard at work transitioning code lines, but without venturing to deliver a release date. Microsoft also plans to release Messenger 6.0 native to Macs later this year.