QTAmateur is a small, simple QuickTime video player. It can play any format that QuickTime can understand, it runs full screen and can also export to any format that Quicktime can.

This application will make you wonder, why you you want to pay for QuickTime Pro?

QTAmateur is a free download.

Apple today released updated versions of the Mac Book Pro, they now boast the new intel Core Duo 2 chip. It pretty much means they're faster, Apple claims 39% faster than the previous models.

Prices:
15-inch 2.16Ghz £1349.01
15-inch 2.33Ghz £1699
17-inch 2.33Ghz £1899

Support for more memory, up to 3GB, increased storage, standard double-layer SuperDrive and ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics processor (up to 256mb Ram). They've also added Firewire 800 to the 15-inch models.

Recently I had a meeting with a technology company for some work. Running windows on a Mac came up, and they mentioned Boot Camp, I told them about Parallels (see below), which unlike Boot Camp allows you to run Windows without the need to restart, oddly, the chap said a colleague had told him about it, but hadn't believed him. Strange that a technology company wouldn't know these things? Anyway, this made me think, I'd quickly note the various ways Windows applications can be run on the Mac at the moment.

Running Microsoft Windows on a Mac.

On PowerPC Mac's there is still pretty much one option (though, there is also some software called Q you could look at). Microsoft's Virtual PC. It will require a copy of Windows, but doesn't require you to restart. Version 7 was designed to take advantage of the G5. I don't believe anyone would describe it as being very fast. You can see a little review here.

Virtual PC will never be released for Intel Macs, for a good reason, there are a lot more better options available.

Firstly Apple's own Boot Camp, available now, and is meant to be rolled into Mac OS 10.5.

Once you've installed Boot Camp (and your own copy of Windows), it's a simple matter of restarting and holding down the option/alt key and selecting Mac or Windows to boot up into. You've then pretty much turned your Mac into a PC and everything should work as such, the only problem being, you do have to restart. But even PC users think it's impressive.

Next comes Parallels, it requires no restart as it takes advantage of the Intel chips virtualization technology (VT). You can run Windows (XP, 2000, 3.1 etc) as a guest operating system, and Linux if you feel like it, all at the same time. It also runs a lot quicker than Virtual PC. You will of course need a copy of the operating systems. You can read more about it here.

The newest addition is Codeweaver's CrossOver. It allows you to run some Windows Applications, at the moment they're concentrating on getting specific applications to run, but the list is increasing. Now, the main difference with CrossOver is, you don't need a copy of Windows! It doesn't run or emulate Windows, you are able to run Windows applications straight from the finder. You can read more about it here and here.

Why do people want to run Windows applications anyway? New switchers are meant to find it comforting, there are still some Windows applications that aren't available on the Mac, so using one of these products would allow you to run AutoCad or Access. Though there are alternatives to these already, for instance FileMaker and various Mac CAD software can be found at architosh.com. Of course, there are situations where you HAVE to run Windows software. Another reason is Games, although surprising to some, there are many games available for the Mac, as can be found at MacGameFiles. There are still a lot of games which don't make it to the Mac (or to the PC from game consoles really), so these solutions above makes running them an option. The other reason is probably web developers, being able to run Windows Internet Explorer to check how sites look.

Anyone fancy buying me an Intel MacBook?

There's a lot more information available on running Windows on the Mac over at macwindows.com.