Go to Boot Camp for WorldWide Telescope

Early this morning, Microsoft launched the public beta of WorldWide Telescope. This is the same project that made blogger Robert Scoble cry. Say, Robert, if you want a real reason to cry, grab your video camera and accompany me home to Northern Maine. I'll show you a wondrous sky of stars, the Milky Way's splendor and the Northern Lights. You'll weep, for sure.

WorldWide Telescope comes from Microsoft Research, and, yes, it's impressive. I highly recommend the experience for anyone running Windows. Projects like WorldWide Telescope give people reasons for buying Windows PCs, the way iLife wooed new users to Macs (a few years ago, anyway).

I got a chuckle looking at the system requirements, because Microsoft lists them "for Mac." I startled, too, because WorldWide Telescope requires .NET, which isn't officially supported on Mac OS X. Microsoft is treating the Mac like another Windows computer. The system requirements explain it all:

• Mac OS X with Boot Camp and Windows XP SP2 (minimum) or Vista (recommend)
• 2.2GHz or faster Intel Core 2 Duo processor
• 1GB of RAM (minimum); 2GB RAM (recommended)
• 128MB nVidia GeForce 8600M GT graphics accelerator
• HFS+ formatted hard disk with 10GB available space
• 1440 x 900 resolution (no monitor-size specified)

Well, those requirements surely mean MacBook Pro or newer iMac. MacBook and MacBook Air won't make it (unless the requirements are overstated, which wouldn't be typical Microsoft).

What's interesting: How much heftier are the Mac requirements than those for Windows. The Windows PCs only need a 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 128MB 3D-accelerated graphics and 1024 x 768 screen resolution. Now, why is that?

Posted by Joe Wilcox on May 13, 2008 12:27 AM