Intel Macs May Boot Windows XP After All

mister_tim writes "While we'll have to wait till someone actually tries it to get absolute confirmation, news coming from Intel in Australia, reported here by Dan Warne in the Australian Personal Computer magazine, is that the new Intel-based Macs may be able to load and boot Windows XP after all. Several of the early stories after the announcement of the MacBook Pro and the Intel-based iMac assumed that Windows XP would not boot on Intel Macs, since XP doesn't support EFI (replacing BIOS in the new Macs), and Apple's statement that they wouldn't prevent the use of XP on Apple hardware didn't really give people much assurance either way. This statement from Intel implies that there is really no issue."

Comments

Just wait a couple of days!

[jellomizer]

Except for hedging your bets. Why not wait at least a week, possible less. I am sure There are Thousands of people who will soon get their iMacI and try to install XP on it and post it for an attempt to have "eternal internet glory" for being the first to get a Production Macintosh to run Windows, along with other people who don't want to get outdone who will Try to have x86 Linux installed, with vmware that will run Windows, and possible OS X(But unlikely until...), then I give 1 month for them to figure out how to get OS X to run on normal PC hardware, and Vmware.

Is this a dupe? I can't tell anymore.

[TripMaster Monkey]

Honestly...on the 12th we had a story on whether of not the Intel Mac would run Windows...a story that said nothing more definite than 'perhaps'. And now, today we get another story with essentially the same message...nothing definite, just useless speculation.

Please don't post another story on this subject until a story surfaces about someone who's actually tried installing a Windows OS on an Intel mac, and can actually say something definite on the matter.

Corroboration of the findings by another party or three would be nice, too.

Oh, and this is the fourth Apple story today. Slow news day?
If so, then why is the story I submitted at 8:26 am EST still 'pending'?

Re:Does anyone think these articles are nuts?

[gunpowda]

I can think of a few reasons. Firstly, any Mac OS is going to be locked-down to their hardware, so if someone wants to experience that famed GUI, buying Apple hardware is the only option.

The second main reason would be gaming, and simply so one could run popular Windows applications.

Not nuts -- hackers

[fm6]

I was wondering how long it would take somebody to ask this question. (Two minutes after the story was posted, big suprise.) The answer is that economics is irrelevent.

Every time we get a story of the form "I hacked A to run on B" or "I hacked C to do E", somebody always asks whether it wouldn't be more cost effective to buy something off-the-shelf. The answer is almost always "yes". Even if the hacker is saving money on hardware, he's expending a lot of his well-paid time. But that just doesn't matter.

A good hack is pretty much an end in itself. It might satisfy the hacker's curiousity, or improve his professional skills. Or it might add some minor functionality that the hacker's geeky priorities can't live without. But these are all secondary goals. The big goal is a sense of accomplishment, of having done something special. Asking a hacker why he doesn't just buy an off-the-shelf solution is like asking a Marathon running why he doesn't just call a cab.