Microsoft won't develop a universal code version of its Virtual PC product to run on Intel powered Mac systems and plans to discontinue the product.

"We will discontinue development of Virtual PC for mac and we willl not be creating a universal version or a version that will run on the old and new Apple machines," Microsoft's director of product management and marketing for the Macintosh business unit Scott Ericson told vnunet.com.

Creating a universal version of the application would take too much effort because of the Virtual PC's age, he said.

"We realized that it would essentially be like creating a version one product all over again."

"It's not an apples to apples comparison. You need to start over again and rebuild it."

Programmers are required to create a special version of their applications to make efficient use of the Intel processors in the new systems. Old applications will still run on the Intel Macs through an emulator, but this leads to a significant performance drop.

News source: vnunet.com