Windows on Intel Macs - Yes or No?

With the announcement of the Intel chip based MacBook, the door is now open for running the Windows OS on Macintosh hardware, right? jaypatrick writes "BetaNews reports that along with the announcement of the first Intel based Macs yesterday, many users have rejoiced in being able to dual-boot both Mac OS X and Windows. Unfortunately, this is not the case; due to Apple's use of the extensible firmware interface (EFI) rather than BIOS, current Windows releases will not run on the systems." I guess not. But, wait... Big Z writes "Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice-president of worldwide product marketing, said in an interview Tuesday that the company won't sell or support Windows itself, but also hasn't done anything to preclude people from loading Windows onto the machines themselves." I think someone actually trying it out is the only way this is going to get straightened out.

Comments

Probably not and here's why ...

[eldavojohn]

When something like Linux is ported to anything, it's because there is a cult following in the community and this is what they specialize in. Window's has a cult following, it's just not specialized in this sort of development.

The benefits of a port might be because of cheaper or easier to find hardware capable of running something that it wasn't meant to but is very useful to users. I don't think this is the case in putting Windows on an Intel Mac because Intel Macs are cheaper than what I can piece together in PC x86 form. Don't get me wrong, Macs are nice machines but they're not exactly easy to upgrade or fix on your own.

I'm sure someone will port the extended firmware interface to run Windows through a virtual layer (if it needs it) but this can only introduce Windows running as fast or slower than the speed it could run at without EFI.

For this reason, I doubt people are going to find much use using the port since it's a) cheaper to piece their own machine together and leave the specs up to themselves and b) Windows will probably run slower.

Yeah, there might be someone out there bragging about running Windows on an Intel Mac but he's probably the rare Window's equivalent to the guy with a penguin displayed on his microwave's LCD.

Re:Probably not and here's why ...

[macurmudgeon]

Looking at the problem from your angle, you're right. As a Mac user who needs to occasionally run Windows, I think you miss the point. It's not about cost as much as convenience and quality of experience. Many Mac users are in the same boat. We need to run some Windows program but would love the opportunity to get in and out of Windows as quickly as possible without extra computers or the molasses speed of emulation.

When I get my new Macbook, I will still need to run Windows and certainly won't want to drag around a second notebook. I run VirtualPC now and am very much looking forward to being able to run Windows natively. Remember that over half of all Mac sold are laptops.

You are also forgetting that many Mac owners don't want to run some pieced together kludge box any more than most people who are proud of their cars want to drive some pieced together junk pile, faster, cheaper or not. Performance and cost aren't the issues as much as the elegance of the solution.

Re:Probably not and here's why ...

[sgant]

Ok, I'll bite...for the same hardware that's in the 20" Intel iMac...with the x1800 and a 20" widescreen screen and a DVD-R and a 250 gig HD. Where are you going to buy two Intel x86 machines from scratch that both have a 20" widescreen LCD screens?

Or then again, I can buy 3 Mac Minis for the price of the new iMac too....if you're using lesser hardware you can use ANYTHING you want to make it seem cheaper. Now that it's all Intel, let's compare apples to apples now!

Come on...two systems with 20" widescreen screens that are cheaper than one iMac.

We'll wait...

I still don't understand why you would want to.

[Oz0ne]

Dual booting is nice for a play thing, and in some very specific instances, but not as a general practice. There's a lot of hardware you could get that's nearly as nice, for cheaper.

Honestly, what's the draw to this? Back in the mid 90's I understood it completely with windows/linux. Linux didn't provide what most people needed to be productive back then, and costs were prohibitive to have dual machines for most of the people that were interested in linux at the time.

Now we have a high end (and high priced) peice of hardware, that runs an operating system that provides everything you need to be productive, and it's polished as heck. So why would you want to dual boot to anything? You can get the performance out of many other peices of hardware for cheaper if you want to run windows.

Re:I still don't understand why you would want to.

[Sockatume]

Gaming.

Agree, this will not be not a common occurance

[blueZ3]

Let's face it, one reason people "buy" Windows is that the cost is hidden in the cost of the machine. This is also generally true of OS X (the cost is hidden) but the hardware is "cooler." Your average consumer who buys an Apple does so because of design or ease of use.

In order to run Windows on Mac hardware, it would first be necessary to buy Mac hardware, which isn't cheap. (The value proposition of Macs is a separate issue). Then, you have to look at the OSX interface goodness and decide that you want Windows instead. After that, you have to do whatever porting is necessary and install Windows. All this to get cool hardware running a not-so-cool OS. I mean, Apple is the BMW of computers and Wintel is the Ford. Are you really going to buy a 3 series and stick an Escort engine in it?

If and when Windows supports booting without a BIOS, I can see some folks having dual-boot Apple hardware. Especially folks who want Apple's nicely designed hardware but still want to run Windows games.

But an out-and-out port seems unlikely.

Re:Agree, this will not be not a common occurance

[Endareth]

Actually there is a pretty straightford case for doing this -- gaming. Currently the only thing that Windows has going for it that Mac is lacking (looking only at my own usage), is the range of games available. To be able to use my Mac for everything else, including many of my favourite games, but with the option of switching to Windows for specific games that simply aren't available on the Mac sounds fantastic to me.

Re:Apple should support this.

[LochNess]

I was thinking the same thing, but something else also occurred to me. I can see the companies who currently publish games for the Mac saying, "Hell, since the Mac can run Windows now too, why bother with a Mac version at all?"

Re:For VMs, avoid Virtual PC

[operagost]

Have you ever considered the possibility that Virtual PC runs Windows VMs slowly because the CPU is being emulated? That will no longer be the case with Intel-based Macs.

The draw is simple

[sterno]

I'd much rather have a laptop running OSX than running Windows and I can only run OSX on Apple hardware. Besides, Apple does make some very nice hardware.

The issue with dual booting is that I have some software that simply does not exist for OSX and likely never will. The software is rather performance intensive and so virtualization is not a viable solution. Thus the need to dual boot. Eventually I hope to move completely away from using Windows at all, but for now, sometimes I have to use it.

That was never the issue.

[Some Random Username]

The issue is dumbasses writing games in direct3d instead of opengl. You don't have to rewrite your game to take advantage of PPC, that's why we have compilers. Its already easy to make your game run on windows, mac and linux, you just have to choose to do it. Most companies don't because the extra support costs. None of this changes just because macs have different CPUs.

Re:That was never the issue.

[Ancil]

The point I'm making is that in your college 3D class, you write a bunch of generic OpenGL code, and eventually a spinning teapot comes up on the screen. Good job, A+.

If you actually want to write a 3D engine along the lines of Doom or Unreal, this won't work. Differences in pipeline architechture mean writing a whole lot of redundant code. Otherwise, get ready for some ugly benchmark numbers. In the academic world, 50 fps or 20 fps makes no difference. Commercial game developers don't have that luxury.

Now imagine what that code would look like if instead of just compensating for minor differences in the OpenGL pathway, you were running on a whole different CPU. By the way, some of the important parts of a 3D engine are still hand-coded in assembly. Will x86 assembly work on PPC?

Bottom line, the idea that game companies should write for OpenGL and then just recompile for MacOS is completely ludicrous.

For space

[Gorimek]

I don't comfortably have the room for two computers, and wouldn't enjoy the noise or power bills of two of them running at the same time. Nor would I enjoy having to maintain a network to access my files from both machines.

And I'm not even in the majority of computer users who use portables.