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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.
Apple hasn't done anything to preclude Windows, or any other OS, from being installed on the Intel-based Macs. That is a perfectly accurate statement. Apple Vice President Phil Schiller's two direct quotes on the subject, the most recent which was made on January 10, 2006, can be seen here. Intel has also specifically said that Apple will not be using proprietary chipsets and/or processors, and they'll just represent standard Intel offerings.
;-)
Windows XP would directly boot and install on the Developer Transition Kit platform because it was just a standard Intel motherboard and processor, and also used a standard Intel BIOS.
However, the shipping Intel-based Macs use EFI (Wikipedia article), Intel's "next generation of BIOS". (more info)
Windows XP 32-bit does not currently support EFI for booting. Windows XP 64-bit does, but Intel Core Duo is not a 64-bit chip. Now, there are a bunch of other variables, such as whether or not Apple's current EFI implementation offers BIOS backward-compatibility, and so on, but it's clear that regardless, EFI is the future, and it's only a matter of time before the PC world at large transitions to EFI. Further, Windows Vista does support EFI. See here for Microsoft's presentations on EFI, particularly the first two links.
That said, dual booting is intensely annoying anyway, and the really interesting thing will be able to just run Windows (or some other x86 OS) and Mac OS X side-by-side.
What we will *definitely* see are "Virtual PC"-like programs that let you run Windows alongside OS X (in a Window, or taking over the screen, etc., with a hotkey to flip back and forth, for example).
It's important to note this will NOT be emulation: Windows (or other x86 OS) will run at essentially the native speed of the underlying hardware (with certain exceptions). There could even be direct access to video, with support for things like DirectX.
vmware already has a version for Mac OS X in development, and Microsoft has already announced they will be developing a version of Virtual PC for Intel-based Macs that one can only presume will be a virtual machine. Then there are things like QEMU, Xen, etc. The Darwin/Mac OS X version of WINE, DarWINE, has even been working under betas of Mac OS X for Intel. Now that Intel Macs are shipping, it will only be a matter of weeks/months before we have several options for running Windows itself, and/or Windows applications at essentially the native speed of the underlying hardware.
And since Intel Core Duo also supports Intel's VT hardware virtualization, the possibilities of future virtual machine technology are even more interesting. But the bottom line is that Apple is again leading the way with the adoption of technologies like EFI and ExpressCard. Naturally, it will take a little while for Windows to catch up.
Empty your wallet.
...the posts breathlessly announcing "Hackers manage to make Windows run on Apple", "Hackers manage to make Windows run on off the shelf Dell PC", "Hackers manage to make Windows run on X-Box", "Hackers manage make Windows run", complete with little pictures of the device in question displaying something characteristic of Windows....
The real question is, how well will WINE/Cedega work on the new Macs? I know a lot of Mac people who want to play PC games, and this could well be their chance. Contrawise, I know a lot of people who'd love a Mac, but the games issue is what's stopping them from moving over.
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.
It's not like the BIOS is a processor architecture. I highly doubt that any work required to make Windows XP work with EFI will not drastically, or even noticably affect the speed of the machine.
GRUB already works with EFI, and GRUB can launch Windows... From my experience, WindowsXP has pretty much ignored anything about the hardware that the bios has told it (I've disabled HDs, but windows sees them, etc). Could it be possible that GRUB could be installed on a Mac and used to load Windows?
Otherwise both WinXP 64 and Vista support EFI... one could always wait for Vista or illegally grab a beta...
EFI has BIOS emulation, so Windows XP should be able to run on a Mac. We'll see what steps are needed to get it installed. You don't even need a bootloader, since EFI replaces bootloaders.
It's gonna happen. But I'm not interested in that--I'm interested in someone taking advantage of the hardware virtualization in the Core Duos and letting me run Windows in a window on an OS X desktop with no performance hit. Screw dual-booting.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Windows already runs on EFI on some architectures.
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.
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Mmmh.. I dont think Mac users will migrate. Why would they do that?
It's not about migration. I'm a Mac person, but my graduate program requires a couple of Windows-only programs. At least 75% of my time is spent on programs with Mac versions available (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc), but due that other 25% (for Rhino and AutoCAD), I can't use a Mac. So right now I'm on a Windows-only machine, and have to suffer through Windows 100% of the time. If I could get a Mac running Rhino and AutoCAD at full speed, and could use OS X for all other programs, do you understand how wonderful that would be? It's not about games, and I'm not looking to escape from OS X to Windows, I'm desperately trying to get back to Macs.
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?"
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.
I placed a Windows 95 CD in viewing distance of my linux machines and they never gave me troubles since. MS, ensuring your hardware behaves for two decades and counting.
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