In Mac Matters we scour the Web for news that matters to Mac professionals, short-term and long-term. Here are two stories worth visiting:

Microsoft is Looking Afraid of Apple and Virtual Machines

Analysis: MacIntouch reader Geoffrey Green has been looking into some of Microsoft's upcoming Vista licensing documents and how they will affect installation on Apple computers. It appears that Microsoft is clearly trying to "limit" the appeal of running its upcoming Windows operating system alongside other native OS's. Its license for Vista Home Edition and Home Premium Edition (its two least expensive Vista versions) does not allow for the installation on virtual machines or emulated hardware.

This clearly indicates to us that Microsoft is trying to make running Vista on an Apple machine a very expensive proposition, striking at the very heart of the argument that trying a Mac doesn't mean you have to give up Windows. Certainly many folks will want to try Vista and be caught between trying a Mac too. However, you can use Boot Camp, but many will argue that dual-booting is terribly inconvenient.

To make matters worse, its appears from the licensing info that running Vista under virtualization will not allow you to access Microsoft software that is protected by Microsoft DRM and enterprise rights management technology. From the license:

You may use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system. If you do so, you may not play or access content or use applications protected by any Microsoft digital, information or enterprise rights management technology or other Microsoft rights management services or use BitLocker.

Microsoft's new Vista licensing proposals are already seemingly draconian enough to piss-off the Windows loyalists, so this news should not come as a surprise to Mac users. What is the take-home point in all of this? Don't expect Redmond to make it easy for Apple to accelerate its Get a Mac Movement. Reference.

Microsoft Launches Computer Architecture Group

Analysis: Redmond's latest series of moves continue to validate Apple's model and many of Steve Jobs most public thoughts about the future of technology. In this article on Microsoft moving chip-design "in-house" we hear essentially that MS has been doing hardware design for years but now is getting more formal and serious about it, especially in light of new tools. But there is more to it than that. Consider these two sentences:

The explosion of chips with an increasing number of "cores," or multiple processors, is bringing parallel computing - the ability to divide tasks for faster processing - into the consumer electronics market. That could give companies like Microsoft a competitive advantage by controlling hardware and software and the way they interact.

All you have to do is substitute the word Apple for Microsoft and you would swear that was just a typical pro-Apple sentiment statement from some writer like Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal.

The company that has been telling the market for over two decades that there are critical advantages to controlling hardware and software and their interaction is Apple. But what does this mean for the general computer industry when Microsoft decides that to succeed it now must act a lot more like Apple, if not act like Apple entirely? Reference.