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.
I think this is possible. I do not use the Arc tool suite, but I have other programs that I run in Linux and Windows virtual machines on my Mac.

I only run the Linux or Windows specific code in the VM. Even then, I have mounted my OS X box in the VM, and work in OS X folders. Anything which does not require the VM is run on OS X, in those same folders, but from the OS X machine.

This also allows me to keep everything non-critical on the OS X side of the machine, so it is backed up with everything else, and the VM is not backed up, as that would required 5-10GB for even a small file change in the VM.