Two Microsoft products for the Macintosh—Virtual PC and Visual Basic for Applications—are being discontinued because of difficulties in moving the code from PowerPC to Intel, as required by Apple's shift in processor architectures. Customers relying on the products to make it easier for Macintosh users to share applications and data with their Windows counterparts will need to rely on alternatives from Apple or third parties.

Virtual PC was acquired (along with other virtualization products) from Connectix in Feb. 2003 and allows PowerPC-based Macintoshes to run Windows applications. It is typically used by customers who must run Windows applications that are not available on the Mac. In June 2005, Apple announced it would be moving from PowerPC to Intel processors and by Aug. 2006 it was no longer selling PowerPC-based systems. Although Intel-based Macintoshes can run PowerPC applications through a translation technology known as Rosetta, Apple is strongly encouraging ISVs to build Intel versions of their applications to avoid the performance penalties associated with translation technologies.

After evaluating the product, Microsoft determined that moving Virtual PC to the Intel platform would entail rewriting nearly the entire application and would take several years. However, several alternatives are available:

• BootCamp—an Apple technology that provides dual boot capability; it is in beta and will be built into the next version of Mac OS X (code-named "Leopard")
• Parallels Desktop for Mac—provides essentially the same capability as Virtual PC and is shipping now
• VMWare—a beta of a Macintosh version of EMC's popular desktop virtualization product is expected later in 2006.

Microsoft also announced that the next version of Office for the Mac will not support Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), again citing difficulties in porting the programming environment from PowerPC to Intel processors in its decision. Removing VBA from Office for the Mac could make it more difficult for Mac users in large organizations to share files with their Windows counterparts. Although Mac users will be able to open documents that contain VBA macros, they will not be able to run those macros. As an alternative for Mac users looking to automate activities within Office, Microsoft will be supporting AppleScript—the scripting language built in to Mac OS X—although that will not help with cross-platform interoperability.

The home page for Microsoft's Mac products is www.microsoft.com/mac.

Information on BootCamp is available at www.apple.com/bootcamp.

Parallels Desktop is described at www.parallels.com/en/products/workstation/mac.

Information about VMWare's Mac product is available at www.vmware.com/mac.

Technical details on the problems faced in moving VBA to Intel are given at www.schwieb.com/blog/2006/08/08/saying-goodbye-to-visual-basic.