MadCap Flare on Mac OS X (virtually)

I use MadCap Flare, an XML-based help authoring tool, regularly in my work as a Technical Writer. Until recently, I was a Windows user, so running Flare (a Windows-only application) was never a problem. Not too long ago though, I switched over to Mac for various reasons (none that are worth exploring here – that poor horse is already well beaten).

The first obvious challenge this presented was, how would I run Flare, since it runs only on Windows? Well, I didn’t make the jump to Mac without first considering this – I knew of a few solutions. Since keeping two machines around just did not make any sense whatsoever, the first viable option was just run Windows using Boot Camp. Anytime I needed to use Flare or another Windows-only app, I could use Mac’s Boot Camp and reboot into a natively installed version of Windows and go along my way.

The problem – I use Flare a lot – booting back and forth did not sound like how I wanted to spend all of my time. I needed something better.

The solution – virtualization – use software to run the second operating system on top of my native operating system.

With virtualization, I had a few choices. Mac has a program called Parallels, which allows you to run another operating system (Windows, for example) on top of the Mac operating system, for around 80 bucks.

There’s an Open Source solution, VirtualBox, offered by Sun, that will also run on Mac (or Windows, Linux, or OpenSolaris).

And also, there is VMware’s Fusion for Mac, which, like Parallels, for around 80 bucks will let you run your second operating system on top of Mac OS X.

In the end, the choice ended up being made for me – my company bought licenses for Fusion (since we develop software that runs on VMware, it was the logical choice).

Once installed, I used Fusion to load a pre-built Windows XP virtual machine. Once booted, the virtual version of Windows is no different than Windows running on a dedicated device – I was able to install Flare, adjust my environment settings, and I was ready to go. The real beauty of using Fusion, though, is Unity mode. This allows you to run your Windows applications as if they’re running natively, on Mac. Basically, Unity mode strips away the Windows OS front-end and allows the Windows apps to be launched directly from Mac OS X. They appear right in the dock when running, just like any other Mac application.

Even better, Flare (and any other installed Windows application) can be found and launched using Spotlight – note the tag “Doc Dev” after MadCap Flare in the following image, that’s Fusion letting me know that this app lives on my Windows virtual machine, which happens to be named “Doc Dev.”

Virtualization offers a ‘best of both (or any) worlds’ scenario. For me, that was sticking with the Mac OS X operating system and having access to the tools I need to get my job done, regardless of whether or not they were actually built to run there.