How My Mac Finally Got its Own Groove

October 2007

Page 1  2   

Finally, Macintosh users now have quick, direct-entry access to the Groove file-sharing tool. I admit I did my own happy dance when I realized everyone can easily enjoy the same global team-working environment that PC users had all to themselves.

I've been torn between two loves for years. My love of the Mac OS for its elegance and simplicity and my love of Groove and its ability to allow me to organize my work more effectively and protect me from the mind-numbing tyranny of my email in box (as well as nasty viruses). After all, as the BBC reported almost 2 years ago, Email can be as distracting and mind numbing as weed. Not that I would know any thing about that.

Mac-Groove compatibility has taken way too long. It's sad really. Call me biased, but I've always believed Mac users had an innate preference for highly collaborative creative work. Thanks to the availability of Parallels, a new software than runs on a virtual machine, Macintosh operates effectively and dependably inside a Groove environment--with all the functionality that PCs can exploit. I like to think of Parallels as the St. Valentine of software--allowing once forbidden loves to be consummated.

Before Parallels, Mac owners could tie into Groove Via Remote Desktop. This was a long distance love affair no matter how it was executed. The performance was ok on Remote Desktop, but it contained nothing like the speed and clarity that Parallels has demonstrated. Running Parallels on a Mac yields much faster results than anything that's been possible on a remotely connected PC. Here I'll betray my lack of technical knowledge: Why is it that Windows runs faster in Parallels on a Mac than on a comparably priced Dell? My observations are limited and anecdotal, I'll admit. They are rather surprising nonetheless. Ask anyone. I've found almost unanimous agreement on this--and a complete void of understanding about how it can be that an OS can run faster on a virtual machine than on a native one.

With Groove, team members working a common project from remote locations can tap into each other's secure, privileged work practically in real time. That's why Groove is so valuable. It keeps everybody--and the team--together. While Macintosh still claims a very small market share, enough people swear by it so that its previous incompatibility with Groove created a broken-link-in-the-chain dynamic: you couldn't assemble a working group through Groove if one essential member would be on Mac. That's how delicate modern collaborative environments are.

Page 1  2   

To get the latest from MEDIATHINK in your e-mail click here.