ParallelsFor the past four months, I have been working on a MacBook Pro at the company I currently work at. The machine was ordered literally seconds after Steve Jobs uttered the words ‘MacBook Pro’ in his MacWorld keynote speech back in January 2006. And since it arrived in late March of this year, I’ve been working on this fantastic laptop computer since then happily ever after.

There has, however, been one rather glaring exception to this happy relationship: Photoshop running on Rosetta, the background emulator that allows me to run pre-Intel based Mac software. As a visual designer, I need a tool that can run fast and smooth and not trip me up in my work flow. Smooth sailing has not been possible with a Rosetta-powered Photoshop, with extremely long start ups, slow file opening, consistent hangtimes and the frequent pulling out of my crop of hair.

Since Adobe announced that it won’t release a universal binary version of Photoshop until spring of 2007, that’s a lot of time to remain frustrated with the status quo. Why Adobe has chosen to wait so long while other companies are spitting out new versions of their Mac software to work on Intel-based macs is beyond me. Clearly, something had to be done.

On my MacBook Pro, I run the VMware program, Paralles, a wonderful program that allows me to run Windows off my Intel-based Mac (and any other OS), while running OS X at the same time. This is much better than Bootcamp, since I don’t have to restart my machine every time I want to access the opposing OS.

With Windows running effortlessly on my MacBook Pro, I barely notice any hang time. Video also runs effortlessly, and I can run and install any software for Windows, all while running several other programs on OS X. Granted, one needs about 2 gb of RAM to attain these results, as 1 gb clearly wasn’t enough. This also allows me to fix the glaring problem with Photoshop on my Mac: installing Photoshop in Windows via Parallels on my MacBook Pro. I know this a bit on the heretical side, but I have to say that this instantly fixed my problem. Hangtime and slow startups are a thing of the past, and it is something I can certainly live with until Adobe finally gets its act together. And this is all made possible by installing software that is native to the OS its intended to be installed on. Don’t forget that Photoshop on an Intel-based Mac is not native to that system. Rosetta is a temporary solution until one can upgrade software, such as Photoshop, to navtively run on an Intel-based mac.

To give you an idea of the differences, startup time for Photoshop on Rosetta was at least one minute and twenty seconds while in Windows, startup lasted only 6 seconds. In OS X, after Photoshop had launched, opening a file also lasted a long time, and once open, there were frequent hang times to even the most simplest of commands. Photoshop in Windows, on the other hand, allowed for a more seamless workflow, with virtually no hang time. Granted, for all of this to be possible, one should have 2 gb of RAM installed in their MacBook Pro, which I believe is the limit the machine can handle. But spend the extra money: it’s worth it and reduces the stress of slow software.

So the choice is obvious: while I might feel dirty and sinful, I have no choice but to use Photoshop in Windows that is running on a MacBook Pro via Parallels. When Adobe finally releases a universal binary version of Photoshop, I’ll be the first in line. But until then, I must live this graphical bi-platform existence in order to keep me from pulling out the remaining hair from my head.