Why does MLS hate my Mac?

As a fairly new real estate agent and long-time Macintosh user I find myself at a crossroads. I love my Mac and its operating system, I really do. I left the world of Windows for greener pastures long ago and have never had a single regret. Until I got my real estate license.

It was then I discovered that my Mac was not all that welcome in the world of the MLS. At first I couldn't figure it out. I mean, the MLS is now a web browser based system right? So that should mean that any computer with a web browser should have no trouble accessing the MLS to perform the functions commensurate with that of a real estate agent, shouldn't it?  Well I suppose that in a perfect world it would indeed. In the real world however it just isn't the case. Those who are responsible for the care and feeding of the Multiple Listing Service have gone to great lengths to make the system full-featured and relatively easy to use. With that came a price. Getting it to its current incarnation meant depending upon and using many Microsoft-only browser extensions. This is not necessarily a bad thing in that it allowed them to build a sophisticated system that requires no special software on the part of the users to utilize that system. The downside is that by using these extensions any hope of portability across different machines and operating systems, the entire point of a web browser, goes right out the window (so to speak). But it's not really a problem anyway because everyone uses Windows anyway, right? And my answer, and so many other Mac users answer, to that is, "Only when I have to." So what is a poor Mac user to do? Sure, there's Virtual PC but it never really worked all that well for accessing the MLS and sadly, since Microsoft purchased the product its days had become decidedly numbered.

Fortunately things have gotten better for us in recent months. Apple is now using Intel CPUs in all new Macintosh computers. The benefit of this to Apple aficionados is that now we can set our machines up to dual-boot into either Mac OS X or Windows XP. If you have an older Mac this is not an option for you but a computer is not the sort of thing you buy and then use for twenty years. People tend to upgrade on a fairly regular basis and this new development may make the reason to do so that much more compelling.

There is also a software emulator that has been released called Parallels (www.parallels.com) that will let you run an instance of Windows XP within Mac OS X, much like Virtual PC does. I haven't tried this yet but it does look promising as it would allow you to cut and paste between applications as well as eliminate the need to reboot every time you needed access to the other operating system. This may be the answer I've been searching for as it will allow me to have the best of both worlds; full MLS access, and I get to keep my beloved Mac OS. I'll definitely be exploring this option.

If you're a real estate agent and a Mac user this may be the best news you've heard in a while.