Slashdot Mirror
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.
You might not be able to boot into WinXp on an intel mac, but I'm pretty sure you will be able to use Virtual PC. Heck, you might even be able to do that now with Virtual PC 7.0 with Rosetta, but it would be kind of inefficient with a x86 emulator to PPC back to x86.
With that said it won't be too hard to get native x86 speeds with a newer version of Virtual PC in the shorterm future. I'd wager before the end of this year it will be out.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
> "complete with little pictures of the device in question displaying something characteristic of Windows..."
You mean something like a Blue Screen of Death?