ArcView Hardware Requirements - For MAC
About
ESRI's software is not designed to run directly on the MAC. However, there are some options for MAC users if your lab does not contains PC's. These options are software programs that allow a MAC computer to run another operating system (windows). The ESRI software can then be installed on the computer. ESRI lists a few options on their website for MAC users including virtualPC, bootcamp and parallels. Click here to read more.
MACs and Intell Processors
Any newer MAC that has an Intel processor (click here to find out how to check your MAC to see what processor is has) can run the windows operating system. All of the new MACs including the G5s are shipped with intel processors.
What ESRI has to say about MACS
The information below comes directly from ESRI (click here to view page). BootCamp and Parallels seem to be the ideal options for MAC users running intel processors as both packages run windows and ArcGIS at or near "full speed".
Windows-based tools under BootCamp
http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp
Apple has released a product called BootCamp (currently under Beta, but reported to be included within MacOS 10.5 and higher) which allows the Intel-based Macs to load a full version of WinXP, and run Windows applications at "full speed." Upon boot-up, the user chooses to boot into MacOS or into Windows. The testing done by ESRI staff and others seems to confirm that such a setup is indeed able to run Windows and applications at "full speed", and that ArcGIS applications are able to run even heavy-duty analytical operations very swiftly. The key here is that the user must have a properly licensed copy of WinXP and must be facile with running Windows.
Windows-based tools under Parallels
http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/
Parallels has released a product called Parallels Desktop for Mac which allows the Intel-based Macs to load a full version of Windows (many versions) and run applications at "high speed." The user can move back and forth between Windows and MacOS applications. Testing done by ESRI staff and others seem to confirm that such a setup works quite well, and current versions of ArcGIS applications run swiftly even for analytical operations, though perhaps not quite as fast as on a native PC or under BootCamp (since memory is split between the two operating systems). Here again, the user must have a properly licensed copy of Windows and must be facile with running Windows-based applications