Question: I'm currently using ArcGIS 10 on a Windows 7 64 bit Macbook Pro (2.53 Ghz and 8GB of RAM) using VMWare. However, when I am using ArcGIS I find it quite slow even with Windows 7 (64-bit) optimized for performance (no shiny graphics). My work involves making some python scripts and testing them, and whenever I run them, that is also slow, but even opening ArcMap and adding a small shapefile takes a long time (30s to 1 minute).

Is it possible to make my python program in OSX, import the ArcPy module and somehow run them from the Mac side? I realize that ArcGIS runs on Windows, but I was not sure whether any of the ArcPy part can be run separately. Or, could it be quicker to use the 'Unity' feature on Vmware to run these scripts?

I would also appreciate any tips on how much memory/processors to allocate for the virtual machine. At the moment it is 1 processor, and ~4gb of RAM and I would expect it to be quite a bit quicker.

Answer: 
For ArcGIS to work faster on a MAC ( arcgis is not that fast in the first place) in comparison to old arcview 3.2 on startup,geoprocessing & joins.

have successfully created a faster environment using parallels - which is tested against windows xp pro

<http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/>
(a 30 days trial is available to prove your concept)
is capable of using more than 4GB which xp is limited.
**Until there is a 64-bit version of ArcGIS** products most are stuck with slow processing.
You're going to need to stand up a Win XP or Win7 machine with ArcGIS installed. You're going to need to use that VM's Python to test the scripts. Unity will make ArcMap run seamlessly, but you're really just using Windows with OSX window borders.