Apple Buyers' Guide: 4 Ways To Run Windows Apps On Macs

Emulation And Dual-Booting

CrossOver Mac from CodeWeavers is different from either Parallels or Coherence. It's a Windows emulator for the Mac, rather than virtual machine software. That means you don't have to buy a Windows license to run CrossOver -- a big savings.

It also means that the number of Windows applications you can run on your Mac is limited. CodeWeavers maintains a database of 3,300 Windows applications in its Compatibility Center, rating them gold, silver, or bronze based on their tested compatibility with CrossOver, with gold-medal apps being most compatible, and bronze applications being undependable. CrossOver costs $50; CodeWeavers offers a fully-functional, 30-day trial, and recommends you take advantage of it to see if your favorite Windows applications will run.

Finally, Boot Camp is free beta software from Apple that allows you to dual-boot your Mac into Windows. In other words, it temporarily transforms your Mac into a Windows PC, until you decide to shut down Windows and re-start the Mac OS. Installing it is a bit hairy; you need to download a package of drivers, burn them to a disk, then install the drivers from the disk onto your Mac. Boot Camp is free, and reliable despite its beta status. It will be included in part of Mac OS X 10.5, code-named Leopard, due out in October.

If you're a longtime PC user, your first encounter with Windows-on-Mac software is likely to seem (as it did to at least one blogger) "wrong and creepy." Indeed, Lifehacker cracked wise about it: "I know what you're thinking: Disgusting! Unnatural!" That's because, if you've been using personal computers a long time, you've gotten used to the idea that software for Windows just doesn't run on the Mac. And yet, now it does. As Lifehacker says: "Sometimes something that sounds so wrong can feel so right."