Granted, we're lucky enough to be able to keep our Mac experience pretty Windows-free, and we realize that many people don't have that luxury, but frankly, we've been a little surprised by how everyone's all ga-ga over Microsoft finally planning to ship Virtual PC 7 next month. Sure, it'll be the first version that'll actually run on the G5 (gee, and only a little over a year after the G5 first shipped; isn't that convenient), and Microsoft doesn't stand to net any particular gain by somehow hobbling it as we rabid anti-Redmond conspiracy theorists are naturally predisposed to suspect. We suppose the idea of running Windows on a Mac at drastically reduced emulation speeds is, if you have no compelling need to do so, both underwhelming and maybe just a little bit nauseating.

But life's one long kick in the teeth, so plenty of people apparently do have a need to run Windows-native software on their Macs, and ever since Connectix sold off the one useful Wintel emulation product for the Mac to the Evil Empire, people have been rightfully a little tweaked about what might happen-- like, say, needing to wait over a year before the product made it to a G5-compatible state. We know, we know-- there's no conspiracy, Microsoft got it done as fast as it could, Connectix would have take even longer, yadda yadda yadda; nevertheless, if a Windows emulation product is necessary to keep the Mac market viable, we'd feel a lot better if Microsoft didn't have its claws into the only product currently filling that need.

That's why this WIRED article that faithful viewer Mike Scherer sent us is so intriguing. It seems that some outfit called Transitive Corp. is demoing software called "QuickTransit" that allegedly "allows applications to run 'transparently' on multiple hardware platforms, including Macs, PCs, and numerous servers and mainframes." Yes, it's an emulator, but Transitive refuses to call it that because it lacks the most commonly known earmark of existing emulators: it's not slower than a glue-soaked snail on two bottles of cough syrup. Indeed, one of Transitive's killer demos is reportedly showing "a Linux version of Quake III running on an Apple PowerBook," and anyone who's ever been fool enough to try to play a semi-modern first-person shooter in Virtual PC can tell you exactly how impressive that is. Says Transitive, "you can't tell the difference between a translated application and a native application."

So how's it work its magic? Supposedly instead of translating every little bit of code as it comes through the pipe, QuickTransit can translate larger chunks at a time and also "identifies and store the most commonly executed code." The result is 80% the performance of the native processor, which, in emulation terms, you may as well round up to 100% because at least as far as x86-to-PPC is concerned, no one's ever come close. We have no idea whether this is all legit or not, but Transitive claims it's already signed up six PC manufacturers to ship QuickTransit on their hardware. Wouldn't it be interesting if one of them were Apple?

Don't get your hopes up too high just yet, though, since Transitive says it's going after the mainframe and server markets first, so we doubt the next PowerBook will ship with Windows compatibility out of the box. It's something to think about, though, while you go buy Virtual PC, since it's currently the only game in town. But who knows? Maybe in a year the cross-platform compatibility landscape will look a whole lot different.

By the way, does anyone else think it's odd that none of Microsoft's "Top 10 tips for Mac users getting started with Windows" is "get really drunk first so you'll be less aware of your soul fleeing from your physical body when you click that 'Start' button"? No? Just us? Hmmm.