Although Macintosh computers run on Intel processors, the Pirouette code base has not been optimized for this platform. However, you can still run Pirouette, and other Infometrix products, on a Mac by using virtual desktop software. Many packages exist for this capability, but there are three that are most recommended:

• Parallels Desktop 9 for Mac
• VMware Fusion 5
• Virtual Box

First, the virtual desktop software must be installed on the Mac system. Installation runs like that for any other program, though it does require a large amount of hard disk space. A little configuring is necessary after installation, then you are ready to install programs. The Pirouette installation runs just as it does on a real Windows box. Because these virtual desktops are just an emulation, they run a little slower than you would expect on a computer with comparable processor speed. After installation, you request and register your Pirouette license just as you would on a PC. Ready to roll.

Pirouette in a virtual window looks just like Pirouette in Windows. Behaviors are identical, including mouse actions and keyboard shortcuts, but the keyboard accelerators are not available. As mentioned, operations do run more slowly, although processing speed is affected less than graphics operations which are also dependent on the graphics card in the Mac.

A nice touch is that the clipboard is shared between the Mac and Windows environments. Thus, you can copy a figure in a Pirouette window and paste it into a document on the Mac side (Ctrl-C in Pirouette, cmd-V on the Mac). Here is a view of Word on a Mac in which a Pirouette graphic has been pasted.

Similarly, tabular information can be passed back and forth. The data in the main Pirouette spreadsheet was copied and pasted into Excel running on the Mac side, as shown here.

Data files stored in a Mac folder can be opened from Pirouette using the normal Open Data dialog and computed objects can saved to files on the Mac side.

Another useful behavior of most virtual desktops is that you can quit the emulation while the Pirouette program is running, then restart the virtual desktop and resume your Pirouette session as if nothing had happened.

So, if you are a Mac-ophile but would like to explore the capabilities of Pirouette for multivariate analysis, jump on in. The window is open.