Macintosh owners might read today's article on Family Atlas software for Windows and wonder, "Why can't someone create a program like that for the Macintosh?" You might be surprised to learn that I wrote that article while running Family Atlas on my MacBook. In fact, I have never run Family Atlas on a standard Windows computer; I only have it installed on a Macintosh laptop. I wrote the article in NeoOffice (a Macintosh word processor) while simultaneously running Family Atlas (a Windows program) in another window.
The entire process is rather simple for anyone using a Macintosh computer with an Intel processor and OS X.4.6 or later. You need two more things: (1.) Parallels software and (2.) a copy of Windows.
If you would like to do the same, I'd suggest that you use Windows 2000, XP, or Vista. To be sure, Parallels will also work with earlier versions of Windows, all the way back to Windows 3.1. However, most of today's Windows programs require Windows 98 or later versions. Even Windows 98 and ME are aging operating systems and are not capable of running all of today's Windows programs. Windows 2000, XP, and Vista are powerful enough to run nearly all Windows programs of today, even on a Macintosh.
When I ran Family Atlas on my Macintosh, I kept looking for any compatibility problems or other difficulties. I didn't find any. I booted up the Macintosh, launched Parallels, and then launched Windows XP. It always amuses me to see Windows running inside a window on the Mac. Then I inserted the Family Atlas CD into the Macintosh. and everything after that performed exactly as expected. The installation was simple. The program's intensive graphics displayed perfectly, and the printer worked as expected. Family Atlas worked the same on the Macintosh computer as it would on Windows. If fact, it was working on Windows! The only difference is that this copy of Windows was running as a "slave operating system" under Macintosh OS X.4.
Let's return to the original question: "Why can't someone create a program like that for the Macintosh?"
Answer: "Someone did: the same someone who wrote the Windows program."
In fact, every single Windows program that I have tried so far works well on my Macintosh that runs Parallels.
You can learn more about Parallels and even download a free trial copy at http://www.parallels.com. You will still need to obtain a copy of Windows someplace else.
I suspect that Family Atlas will also operate under Macintosh BootCamp although I did not try that.
As always, it seems Macintosh users have the best of all worlds!
