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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."
This would be an interesting race:
- Will Windows or Linux be ported to these new MacTel boxes first?
- Which OS will support 90% of the hardware on one of these boxes first?
Linux is more modifiable, but Windows has a far larger userbase then Linux on the desktop. Porting "Linux to Mac" doesn't seem to have the same coolness factor of porting Windows to Mac.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Assuming you're a "Good Person"(tm), none of the companies directly involved should care if you could boot XP onto a Mac.
You've bought the hardware from Apple, and part of your purchase price included the OS. So long as your check clears they don't care if you ever turn the damn thing on.
You've purchased XP from Microsoft (and likely paid more for it than if it came OEM) so they don't care if you try and install it on your toaster.
Dell would be the big loser in this scenario as they failed to sell you a PC.
Now if someone should get WINE running under OS X, or get OS X to easily install on a generic PC then you will see an unholy alliance of MS and Apple attempt to destroy the persons responsible.
If you can dual-boot (which shouldn't be any harder than getting Windows to boot at all), you need one fewer computer. Or you might want $1000 of thermal engineering and design. How many vendors are selling Intel hardware in consumer-level packaging that puts the entire computer inside a flat panel display? Chances are that the iMac is also the quietest off-the-shelf Intel machine available now.
Hi, my name is Scott, and I have used the infrared port on my laptops for various reasons. I've HotSynced a Palm via infrared, played games over infrared, printed via infrared.
Just so you know, you now know someone who has used infrared on a laptop.
There are already VMWare images of OSX to run out on BT sites. We played with one at work. I'm sure the people running it on normal PCs will just wait a few days to patch the release version and there won't be any issues. The key is to have the hardware that matches the current drivers. There is an HP notebook running around my office I've seen with OSX on it with full wireless and everything going.
Since I write Windows software during the day and play Windows-based games at night, OSX has zero appeal to me; but Apple's packaging is reasonably good, and the price is in the ballpark of high-end Dell and HP laptops. So, what's wrong with running the OS I want on the box I want?
In my dorm computer cluster in about 1996 there was a Mac that had an x86 processor on it as well as a PPC. It ran Windows natively on the x86 daughtercard. You could run both OSes at once, I didn't think it was a very elegant solution.
Lasers Controlled Games!
I have to agree with this. It's not that I wouldn't like to own a Mac but I have no real use for one, more a curiosity. If they make a Mac that can boot Windows and OSX without major problems for either OS I'd probably buy one at some point in time.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
From TFA: EFI allows devices in the PC to be initialised before the operating system boots, and has features like full network support before the PC has even booted, allowing drivers to be downloaded and updated before an operating system loads.
I hope someone has thought through the security issues of that. Are EFI boards required to have hardware firewalls on the motherboard like the nForce 4 boards do?
. . . so I can let you know later tonight:). I don't really have any interest in dual-booting per se, but I feel like it's my obligation as a geek.
Got delivered at about 9:00. I only had a half an hour or so to play with it before I drove to work. I'm currently trying to convert my mother, so I set it up at her place so she could play with it today. Thoughts: Just as snappy as the G5's. Much better than my laptop. My only complaint is the mighty mouse - apparently it uses inductance to determine where your finger is, and normally I have my fingers constantly resting on either side. I only played with Safari, Photo Booth, and the MS Word trial, and I opened up system information to make sure it was the right iMac, of course.
And now that I think about it, I guess Word was running on Rosetta. Holy shit! I didn't even notice.
Now, if i format the HD in 2 partitions. 1 in a UNIX or mac only filesystem (HFS+?) and the other in a Windows compatible file system. If i now install Windows it will see only this one partition yes, viruses too? Does XP always need a C-drive? I'm new to all this as its been years since i last used Windows but i want the games! :(
it's right here! only 512 of ram but man does it run fast. I don't know where i should start though on how i should properly test if it can run windows. any ideas?
www.omglolh4x.com
Elegant or no, this was not an atypical solution. I had catalogs showing available emulator cards for the Apple II (x86 for DOS or Z80 for CP/M) and the TI 99/4A (which was actually an outboard hardware module, not a card)
-mkb
I know that some PPC Linux distros had trouble controlling the fan speed on G5 PowerMacs, causing the fans to run at full-speed continuously. If cooling is maintained by OS X on these machines, would one really want to bother installing Windows on them?
I understand that Canadian Geese are now contemplating walking south next winter.
why fly when you can walk like all the others?
1. The new iMacs don't include the shell component of EFI. So no EFI shell.
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2. The command-line utility, bless, has a bunch of new stuff to enable multi-OS booting. Take a look at the manpage for bless(8):
http://absent.org.nyud.net:8090/~jgw/stuff/bless8
They can sell every MacBook Pro in their inventory in the next couple months for $2,500 a pop, but they won't be able to keep that up indefinitely.
They don't have to - the iBook replacement will be coming along shortly, I'm sure, targeted directly at the lower end of the notebook market. Plus larger and smaller screen MacBook Pros.
and for once consumers will be able to compare between PC's and Macs "apples-to-apples", so to speak.
I'm not sure this will apply in the traditional sense to Apple; it's a comparable _hardware_ platform now, but it was never entirely about the hardware; you've still got the real reason people buy Apple: the total package includes the OS, which is a very different world from that of Windows.
I'm planning on switching to an Intel-based Mac mini when that comes out, assuming it's done well. (My biggest fear being they'll go with the single core version of the processor.)
What's interesting now is that they're on the same hardware platform, upgradability becomes much easier with Macs. Buy a Mac mini, and strip the guts from the too-small box it comes in; mount it in something decent and use real harddrives and upgrade the processor (since it's now standard). Mac mini with an upgrade path - that I like.
At least the MacBook Pro finally offers the build option of 7200rpm laptop drives; they've been around forever, but Apple never even offered the option before.
Also, by the end of September I imagine Apple will be coming out with a 64-bit dual-core laptop based on the Jonah or Merom chips, which would bump the current MacBook Pro down a notch. The Yonahs may seem like top of the line now, but should be pretty commonplace within a year.
I doubt that they'll feel the need to go with 64-bit on the laptops as soon as possible; most likely those chips will be tied up in the new PowerMacs (whatever those will be called - Mac Pro? Ugh.) Going 64-bit just for 64-bit sake doesn't gain you any noticeable performance advantage for desktop users, though it's hard to convince people of that. Merom's biggest advantage (IMO) over Yonah (with a Y) isn't that it's 64-bit, it's the other architectural improvements that will affect IPC. AMD needs to really get on the ball with 65nm M2-based processors so it can compete with this platform. They've got the edge for now, but things will be different come fourth quarter.
Alas, poor DDR memory, I knew him well...
Even better, you could say that I have this great Ferrari, but I can replace the body and interior with that of a Ford Taurus! A Ferrari drive train will operate in much the same way, regardless of whether you have a Ford body around it or the original Ferrari body.
In the case of running Windows on an Intel Mac, you would be changing the user interface, mostly. The APIs could conceivably be emulated either way.
The roads are more of an example of what the processor supports. Change the processor and you change where you can drive and how much power you have. Change the OS and you change how you can drive, but not what the hardware is capable of doing.
I recently picked up one of these, a Performa 640CD DOS, at a thrift store for $5. It's actually not a terribly bad setup. It's not too unlike the Classic environment is today. There is a Control Panel that lets you start and stop it, with a few other options. Then you can have a keycode to switch between the two full screen. The one I got was a 486DX2/66, but there was a Pentium model available later on. It actually ran pretty decently, and I could see how handy it'd be to be able to run not only the bulk of Mac OS software of the time, but also any DOS/Windows app.
More technically, it was implemented by way of a daughter board plugged into the 68040's CPU socket. On there was the actual 68LC040 (which I swapped for a real 68040) and the 486. There was a separate pair of SIMM sockets for the PC side of things; it had it's own RAM and didn't share the Macintosh's. There were runner ribbon cables that ran the audio over to the Macintosh's audio input plug (shared with, and mutually exclusive with, the Macintosh A/V card), as well as an output for midi/joysticks. All in all it wasn't a bad system, might have been cool if Apple had kept it up longer and perhaps allowed an intermixed interface with a Windows running on the system.
Apple is now focusing on innovative software. The last few years has been about getting OS X out the door. Then they focused on making it better and faster. The last 10.4 release has included some really innovative features and has finally brought about a polished 'complete OS'. Safari, Mail, iLife and iChat (and dashboard for fun :) are all best of breed applications that will satisfy 90% of the basic users needs.
Even MS Office took time to get market share, but with many incremental improvements, like supporting the importing of different file formats - they slowly took down all 'the barriers of entry'.
Being able to run Windows XP natively just removes another 'barrier of entry' for the common user.
Apple has released 4 incremental improvements to OS X, while simultaneously porting their entire software suite to x86 in the time MS had to ship another windows.
When their transition to x86 is complete, all their resources can go back into bringing out more innovative products like .Mac, iLife, iWeb, Pages, Keynotes Dashboard widgets, Aperture, Final Cut Pro, etc. Once they sort out being able to run games natively there will be no reason to require windows (hopefully with the increased marketshare more games will be built on Open GL)
This is the start of Desktop Wars II. It will be an interesting year!
Not true. I had a 7300 PC compatible. The Mac side was really fast for the time - 180MHz 604e. The PC card had a 166MHz Pentium clone. and only 8 MB of RAM. You could run both side by side and hit CMD-Return to switch between the two. You even have the Mac display on one monitor and the PC on the other. You did have to boot in Mac OS first, but that was more because the PC was on a PCI card.
I have a shitty sig!
Apple is the only provider currently positioned to provide a seamless experience for the end user, starting with quality engineered hardware, coupled with a integrated OS that is perfectly complemented by .Mac internet connectivity.
Controlling the hardware will be a huge advantage. Most current and all future Mac's will be shipping with a built in camera, DVD burner, massive hd space, remote control, fast wireless as standard. These specs are a recipe for a multi-media power house.
Knowing this allows for apple to build unique 'killer apps' such as Front Row and iWeb, that no one else (not even MS) can provide. Soon you will know that everyone with an IM account ending with @mac will be able to do video conferencing out of the box instead.
Imagine interupting the on-demand movie your streaming, and taking a video call, and then resume watching with a few clicks of a 6 button remote.
The difference with Apple is they aren't telling you to put your 20" iMac in your living room. They just build hardware so beautiful and easy to use that you will think it is your idea!
There will always be a demand for integrated, high quality solutions.
Dual-boot will have some performance benefits. But before the end of 2006, Microsoft will release Virtual PC to run Windows near flawlessly, on it's native x86 base, within OSX. Just buy a copy of Vista, or maybe even XP, if MS isn't greedy -- nah, they won't support XP -- but now you can run either GUI at the same time (dual-screen monitor. yeah), or run Windows apps integrated directly on top of OS X. It will rule. It has been forseen. Microsoft has years of experience (all considered with the purchase of Connectix) emulating Windows on the PowerPC. They know OS X quite well, they'll be damned if they don't know Intel inside and out. I'm telling you, OS X on one screen and Vista on the other will be the fantastic fuckin future (FFF).
A B A C A B B
Yes, I've used it many many time. Yes, I've done speed comparison tests too... Yes, there *is* emulation involved.
Dual booting isn't a satisfactory procedure for that, at-least it wasn't in the past when I worked with Windows and OS/2 environments. The boot times for the OS, combined with the need to carefully map documents, data and other information so it can be accessible in both environments complicates things. (even if they are network shares, the process and procedures are slightly different).
If viable you are better off with using VNC, Citrix or even Remote Desktop setup, which allows you to access a smaller group of machines for testing and evaluation. Both Windows XP and OS X support adaquate methods for remote access.