Beginning Tuesday morning, Parallels Inc.’s site was slammed as perhaps tens of thousands of people tried to download the latest version of Parallels Desktop. It’s amazing how this application has taken the Mac universe by storm. One estimate I heard (but never confirmed) claimed that this program, which lets you run Windows, Linux and lots of other operating systems on your Intel-based Mac as virtual machines, was second only to Microsoft Office for the Mac in sales.

That makes perfect sense to me. You see, being able to run Windows on a Mac with near-native speeds has been the holy grail for years. It gives you the best of both worlds, and you know that Apple’s Boot Camp was really a watershed. Since then, things have moved along at a fever pitch. First, Parallels Desktop joined the fray, then CrossOver Mac, a solution that uses an open source set of APIs to allow you to run some Windows applications without Windows. VMWare, the biggest player in the virtualization industry, has put up a public beta of their pretender to the throne, VM Fusion.

Parallels hasn’t been standing still, and it almost seems that, whenever one version is released, another is waiting in the wings to enter the public beta arena.

Version 2.5, which is a free update to existing users, attempts to traverse several frontiers of running a virtual machine on your Mac. At its core, the interface is smoothed. Installing Windows XP or Windows Vista, for example, simply requires a few steps in a setup assistant, including entering your Microsoft serial number. Parallels Desktop takes over and does all the rest for you, and you don’t have to return to your Mac until the final steps of the process. This is an area where Microsoft is trumped big time, because it has never figured out how to make operating system installations easy.

If you’re presently using Apple’s Boot Camp, you won’t have to reinstall Windows, and battle with Microsoft over using the same user license on the same computer. Parallels will be able to use that environment for its virtualization, so you don’t have to reboot to switch operating systems unless you’re playing a 3D game or require some powerful rendering software that would bring Parallels Desktop to its knees.

Even better is Coherence, which is basically a feature that opens any Windows application in its own window that displays against the Mac OS X desktop. This is as close as you can get to mimicking the Mac OS 9 Classic environment. In addition, Windows application icon appear in the Dock, and you can even launch that application (and the Parallels Desktop if need be) by clicking on that icon. This clever bit of legerdemain is similar to what you could do with Microsoft’s now-departed Virtual PC for the Mac, except that the icons are lots prettier.

Another feature, which I’ve yet to try, is Transporter, which is designed to import your VMWare and Virtual PC environments. Readers, feel free to give it a try and let me know how it works.

There are lots and lots of clever touches, such as mapping Mac keystrokes to a virtual machine, so you don’t have to remember to switch between Command-S and Control-S in order to save a document. It’s all done the Mac way, but you can switch that off should you prefer to go back and forth when moving to that other operating system. But I think you’ll leave it be.

Upgrading is pretty simple. After installing the new version, when you launch your Windows virtual machine, you’ll be prompted to reinstall Parallels Tools, which provides the seamless integration with the Mac environment. That process requires a restart of Windows, after which things should be working at full tilt.

Indeed, performance is sped up somewhat, and Parallels boasts an up to 50% improvement in graphics power, which means more fluid and snappier display of menus and screen resizing. This, however, is not true 3D support, which Parallels is promising in a future update, one that’s still a few months away.

In saying all that, nothing that Parallels Desktop does with its virtualization magic can really make Windows Vista run faster and in a more seamless fashion. Vista is one huge lumbering beast, and the features that are supposed to make it better, such as the plethora of security warnings, and the 3D eye-candy (on PCs that support the Aero interface) actually work against you most of the time. And early sales are apparently nothing to write home about.

As for Parallels, well, for a free upgrade, version 2.5 is magnificent. In its rear view mirror, however, is VMWare’s Fusion for the Mac, with a release date that’s still uncertain. For now, however, Parallels remains the best way — with a bullet — for running Windows and Linux on your Mac.

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In recent months, I’ve settled on Firefox as my default browser. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Safari, but Firefox seems to provide fewer complications in acccssing some sites. It has, however, some issues with printing certain sites, which forces me to revert if there’s no “Print” link to access the specially-formatted variation.

There has, however, been an alternate to Firefox, one that used the same (or at least a similar) Gecko rendering engine. However, it has largely been consigned to second-tier status as far as upgrades are concerned. The browser, Camino, uses Apple’s own Cocoa development environment, and thus has a more “Mac-like” veneer than Firefox, which is designed to look and operate basically the same across platforms.

For this reason, I’ve put Camino on the back-burner, even though it launches faster than Firefox, hoping that the folks at Mozilla would eventually get with the program and give it the major upgrade it deserves.

That day is rapidly arriving, witness the release of a version 1.1 beta. Indeed, for all intents and purposes, Camino pretty much incorporates everything Firefox has to offer, except for the rich selection of add-ons, which may or may not mean so much to you.

Here’s the short list of some of the most notable new features, most of which will be familiar to you:

• Privacy & Security: Camino now warns users if the login form on a website differs from the form used when saving the password, and Camino 1.1 Beta also supports Kerberos authentication used in many internal networks.
• Annoyance Blocking: Camino 1.1 Beta can now disable all plugins. This version also includes the ability to block Flash animations until the user clicks on them.
• Session Saving: Camino can now restore tabs and windows that were open before an unexpected quit, and there is also a preference to save a list of all active tabs and windows when the user quits and restore them when launching Camino again.
• Spell-checking: “Learn Spelling” and “Ignore Spelling” now appear in the spell-check context menu.
• Pop-up Blocking: Camino 1.1b introduces a new set of options for blocking pop-up windows, allowing users to “Always Allow,” “Always Deny,” “Allow Once,” or simply close the pop-up notification.

As I said, nothing terribly original if you’re already familiar with the workings of the latest Firefox. There are, however, minor differences in the way sites appear, such as using Mac-style buttons on sites rather than the traditional type supported in other Mozilla browsers.

So why switch to Camino?

That’s a good question, and it comes down to a matter of performance and personal taste. Now I can’t say that Camino necessarily delivers Web sites onscreen noticeably faster than Firefox. However, because it’s produced in Mac OS X’s native programming language, it launches faster, and, in general, feels snappier. I noticed that on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs.

The difference is not insignificant. On my 17-inch MacBook Pro, for example, Firefox 2.0.2 takes about 10 seconds from initial launch to the full display of my standard home page, which is Google News. In comparison, Camino handles the same task in four seconds flat! This is on my standard 12 megabit cable modem connection.

The matter of looking a little more like a true Mac application may not be so significant, so I won’t dwell on it.

Negatives are the same as Firefox, and that won’t be changed until a new print engine is incorporated into the application. Then I wouldn’t worry about sites printing with pages and/or images missing if they don’t have a dedicated Print feature.

Since Camino 1.1b is somewhat distant from the final release, it may not be for everyone, although it seems stable enough to me, except for one crash during several hours of intense browsing. If you’re curious, go to the Camino beta site and give it a whirl. For the time being it has replaced Firefox as my default browser.

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Apple’s legal adventures don’t show any sign of lessening. No, I’m not referring to those little lawsuits that you regularly read about in their SEC filings. Instead, I’m talking about the larger issues that Apple faces in the course of normal operations, such as that recent matter with Apple Corps, the company run by the Beatles, their heirs, and “their people.”

That particular skirmish may have a pleasant outcome: The near-future release of music by The Beatles in downloadable form on iTunes and elsewhere.

Then there was the issue of the iPhone, and Apple’s rights to deliver a product using that name. After a few weeks of on-and-off discussions, they made nice with Cisco Systems, with vague promises that they’ll be working together on “inoperability,” whatever that means. Maybe we’ll see better Mac support on Linksys routers (Linksys is owned by Cisco, in case you hadn’t heard)? A good question, and one that won’t be answered anytime soon.

But that’s a small matter, and I suppose it wouldn’t have made much of a difference if the gadget was called an iPod phone instead. Well, it would involve an extra syllable, and maybe that’s a little awkward from marketing standpoint. But nobody has to think about any of that now, since the matter is moot.

On the other hand, there are other issues that Apple is confronting, one that exists and another that might, both of which could potentially cause some degree of aggravation.

Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.

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