Some might go out and play Minigolf on their free weekends, I stay at home and fiddle around with some geo things on my new MacBook.
As result of this afternoon I got ESRI’s ArcGIS up and running on Mac OS X. Of course with a little help of a virtual Windows installation in the background.
What needs to be done?
Well, first I had to decide which virtualization software I want to use. Basically I had a closer look at Apple’s Boot Camp and Parallels Desktop (aff link). Whereas Boot Camp doesn’t count as virtualization tool, it just enables booting and running Windows on any Intel Mac. That was mainly the reason why I didn’t go with Boot Camp. Every time you need Windows-only software you’ll have to restart your machine. In the case of ArcGIS I’m not planning to use it on a 10 hrs/day basis on the laptop, it’s just an “emergency” installation, to edit and modify some minor things on the way or to use it for presentation and demo purposes. So in the end I downloaded and installed Parallels Desktop.
There are of course some other tools available, like Virtual PC for instance, but after a quick research on some reviews I decided to focus on Boot Camp and Parallels Desktop for my purposes.
What about perfomance?
Actually I was positively surprised by ArcGIS’s performance in Parallels Desktop. I expected it to be sluggish and painfully slow, but it wasn’t at all. To complete basic tasks and do some map editing it’s quite ok and usable. The main limitations are RAM and video card. On Parallels Desktop you allocate a certain amount of RAM to your Windows installation, 512MB in my case. I think you can only allocate the half of your built-in RAM as maximum.
The video card is another major drawback: Windows sees a virtual graphic card with only 8MB of VRAM available. Not too much if you’re planning to do some 3D visualization (which I won’t). However, I’m wondering how ArcGIS Explorer (3D!) is performing under this conditions since there won’t be a Mac version.
A Windows installation enabled by Boot Camp accesses all of your RAM, makes use of your video card instead of emulating its own and the processor isn’t occupied with Mac OS X tasks while you are working in Windows. There are good chances that ArcGIS will act somewhat faster too.
Something else?
No luck with GPS so far. The Garmin GPSmap 60C is recognized by Windows but not by MapSource. I wish Garmin would fix their USB issue and come up with some Mac support. It can’t be that hard, other devices seem to work just fine.
Along with Apple’s switch to Intel it’s now easier than ever before to use Windows-only applications (like most GIS and GPS software) on Mac OS X. There are various virtualization products available which deliver good Windows perfomances. Using Boot Camp even gives you the full perfomance of your machine, considering some missing hardware drivers (Boot Camp is still beta). Let’s see in August what comes with Mac OS 10.5 out of the pipe.
Vera,
I think you have to start Parallels with the USB hardware key already plugged in. Otherwise the ArcGIS License Manager won’t work correctly and won’t let you start any licensed ArcGIS installation.
Here is an article which should help you to verify that the hardware key is attached correctly. Maybe it helps to update the hardware key driver to the latest version.
I never had any troubles with the hardware key actually.
I am running an Intel MacPro with 2.2 GHz, 2GB with Parallels 3.0 and Windows XP. I installed ArcGIS 9.2 and everything was running smoothly but suddenly, it stopped. I am still able to use ArcCatalog but when I go to load ArcMap, it just stalled on the start-up screen, at first.
It actually worked fine for about a week; then today major errors, starting with (1) stalled start-up screen. I kept trying and then it said (2) that my registration number was not valid, even though it showed that ArcMap was licensed in Administration. I did a repair first, no help, and then removed ArcGIS 9.2 and reinstalled it. No change.
I thought if I downloaded service pack 5 it might help, but then I got more errors:
(3) “Error 1904. Module C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Bin\CadastralFabricLayerUI.dll failed to register. Contact support personnel”
and then:
(4) “The procedure entry point ?GetLength@BString@@QBEKXZ COULD NOT BE LOCATED IN THE DYNAMIC LINK LIBRARY AFCORE.Dll”
and finally:
“Runtime Error! Program: C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE. The application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.”
It was doing so good for a week. What happened? How do I fix it?
Thanks in advance.
Norm
Sorry, but I’d suggest to contact ESRI support. That sounds like a real bad problem.
Dear all,
Currently i’m doing my GIS work on a Win XP Laptop. Origionally i’m a mac user, but diving deeper into GIS forced me to switch to windows two years ago. Now there are Intel Macs, i want to grab my chance and switch back to a Mac.
Now I have a dilemma on what mac to choose, a high end macbook or low end macbook pro. The specs are the same exept that the macbook pro has a video card and the macbook not. I’d love to go for the portability of the macbook but i don’t know if the absense of a video card will be a big issue in daily use of arcgis (not arcscene).
Can you share your experiences on this? Thanks!
Cheers! Niels
Niels et al.
I had the same decision to make earlier this year. I’m running ArcGIS through BootCamp on a lower end MacBook Pro (with upgraded RAM from http://www.macsales.com for a very reasonable price). I have not regretted my decision one second. In fact, I often max out the computer’s potential and appreciate the desktop capabilities of a MBP.
I’m a daily GIS user with large databases, so my observations only reflect heavy usage. For lighter use on the fly, I use Parallels just fine and would imagine that a MB with maximum RAM could do the same.
On another note, I do not feel constrained by the larger size of the MBP.
Good luck -whit-
Hi,
for my bachelor’s thesis I would like to run ArcGIS on my mac. Since I am a poor student I am still using a PowerBook.
Has anyone experiences in running ArcGIS on a PowerBook? I can’t use the Boot Camp on a powerPC, thats all I know. Can I try Parallels?
Somebody recommended me to try Darwine. Does anyone know something about that?
I really don’t care if the performance is bad, it is only a batchelor’s thesis.
Thank you in advance,
Anika
Neither Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion will work with a G4 processor. You can try Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac or Darwine to run Windows on PowerPC Macs, whereas I’ve never tried either one. However, the performance is said to be really poor on such emulations.
I am currently testing the MacBookPro with ArcGIS 9.2 in VMware fusion – so far so good, however there is an issue with Xtools not installing.
I will be testing with Bootcamp as well and roll with the best solution.
Performance so far is comparable to our Dell M90s – so far…
More to follow.
Hi Christian!
You seem to be the expert on all things Mac and GIS related! I have a MBP and have parallels on it. I installed an educational version of ArcGIS 9 and ArcMap simply will not open. I can get ArcCatalog and ArcGIS help to work but ArcMap won’t have it… It crashes right away! Is there anything you can recommend for this? A patch? An update?
Thanks a lot!
Michelle
Hello Michelle,
I’m using Arcinfo 9.2 with a USB dongle under a Parallel environment with no problems including all my extensions including XTools.
It could possibly be a conflict with the educational license.
Collin
Well, the thing is that ArcCatalog and Help seem to work fine. If it were a conflict with the Educational license, wouldn’t it affect those two programs as well? As you can tell I am totally clueless but also very nervous because I need to use ArcMap on a trip to South Africa for which I am leaving tomorrow!
THanks for helping out and please send over any other suggestions!!!
Best,
Michelle
Not sure if it will help but here is a bit more detailed list of the hard/software configuration im using. If you can mirror it there should be no reason it won’t work.
- MBP
- MAC OSX 10.5.3
- Parallel 3.0
- ARCGIS Desktop SP5 w/ arcinfo license, i don’t imagine the extensions make any difference.
I noticed that different versions of Parallels would cause some of my extensions not to work. Perhaps that’s the problem??
hope this helps
Collin
I’ve been using both windows OS and GIS for the past 10 years.
I have recently become very concerned with Vista OS. I am wanting to upgrade my pc and have been thinking a lot about a Mac (never used one before) so knowing there may be a way to load ESRI products on a Mac really solidifies that decision….Thanks
Hi! You are genius! I’m planing to move to apple for about 1 year and I didn’t do yet just because I really need ArcGIS. Well, I’m going to move to apple in the next days…
Regarding Garmim, I saw a friend using it normally in Windows installed in an apple, but you need to restart your computer to use… Well, it’s better than use PC Windows…
Thank you very much for this clue!!!
It’s me again… And version of ArcGIS did you install? Is it the 9.1? Thank you again
I’m currently using ArcGIS 9.2.
regarding Garmin: do you know Project Bobcat?
Hey Fernando.
I’m happy to say that since my last post ARCInfo 9.2SP5 is working flawlessly within a Parallels environment – to the point where I trust it past the R&D phase.
Funny you bring up Garmin..Many of my clients rely on Garmin for nav purposes so I regularly update/maintain these.
Having said that I haven’t tested that in Parallels yet being more concerned with ESRI and ERDAS. I’ll give it a shot this week and post my results – confidence is high.
I’ll check out Bobcat.
What a great resource this thread has been! I think there are enough success stories here that have convinced me this is a viable solution. One by one, the people I work with (professors at a university) are converting to Macs. My coworker just got Windows Vista 64-bit working through Bootcamp on a new Mac Pro (eight-core with 18GB RAM). The ArcGIS install went fine after making sure the license server name was set everywhere. No report on how it runs, though!
The computer store I’m thinking about getting my MacBook Pro at is pushing VMware (as is my boss who has it running on his MBP, but he is not running ArcGIS) over Parallels. Parallels cost twice as much – so is it worth it and/or necessary? I will certainly run Bootcamp, but like others will want to access ArcGIS occasionally while in OS X.
Thanks!
Jennifer,
meanwhile I made the switch to VMware too. Well, I’m still running VMware 2.0 beta which I can use until Oct 2nd. Then I’ll probably get a new license.
But, Sun released a new Version of Virtualbox which I wanted to test before purchasing VMware. It seems to be a very good and free open source option on the virtualization market.
Dear Christian,
I recently bought a Macbook pro and was undecided on whether to partition the windows xp hardrive into FAT32 or NTFS. Any recommended partition format? Will ArcGIS perform better with NTFS or FAT32?
Thanks.
NTFS is the preferred file system. I don’t know what you have in mind, but consider that Mac OS X can only read but not write on NTFS partitions.
If you’re talking about a Boot Camp partition or a virtual Windows image, then NTFS is the best choice because you’ll never access those partitions directly in Mac OS X (using the Finder for instance). For any other partition you want to have read/write enabled in both Windows and Mac OS X you should use FAT.
I’m a longtime Mac user but new to ArcGIS. I’m planning a new purchase of a Mac laptop for grad school in the fall and want to be able to run ArcGIS.
It seems that some are still finding the best results with Parallels but others have made the switch to VMware. Is there a growing consensus on what works best? I’m also interested in hearing about performance issues. What are the minimum and preferred system requirements to be able to pull this off in a virtual environment without it running too slow to be practical? Do I need to buy the top of the line MBP or can I step down to a less expensive Mac?
Thanks to all of you who have pioneered the way on this.
Hello,
I’ve been reading the feedback and it is all very helpfull. I am a new grad student studying GIS and I am looking to buy a new laptop since my current, archaic one can’t handle it anymore. I was considering getting a Macbook or a Macbook Pro, but I am a little concerned about how ArcGIS will run on it. I have been a PC user my entire life but I am so ready to convert, it’s rediculous.
How easy is it to use ArcMap on the Macbook or Macbook pro, and with the new developments for parallels, is it better to get the MBP or the MB?
Thanks so much,
Lara
I recently switched from Parallels to VMware, mainly for the reason because I wasn’t able to convert a Boot Camp partition into a Parallels virtual image. VMware transfered my partition without any problems and I never went back to Parallels.
As for performance: if you have the option for a MacBook Pro, go for it! It’s faster, especially regarding graphics, and comes with a bigger screen.
I’m still using my black MacBook (2 GHz Intel Core Duo with 2 GB RAM). In VMware I have 1 processor core and 512MB RAM allocated to Windows XP, which I only use for working with ArcGIS 9.2. I found this to be the best configuration for working in both Windows and Mac OS at reasonable speeds. What I do with ArcGIS is about 80% visualization and 20% geoprocessing. I recently did some benchmarks comparing various storage options if you’re interested.
However, all I can say, it really works well for my purposes and isn’t any slower than our desktop PC installations (probably because they are messed up with hundreds of other applications running in the background).