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Bounty For Booting XP on the Intel iMac
An anonymous reader writes "The race is on. You can try to get the bounty for booting Windows XP on iMac. At this moment there is $2773 waiting for the winner. However several people have brickified their iMacs when playing with EFI." I imagine those tech support calls are hysterical ;)
Dear God, forgive me, I can't help myself...
customer: I wish to complain about this iMac what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.
Apple: Oh yes, the, uh, the Intel iMac...What's,uh...What's wrong with it?
customer: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. It's dead, that's what's wrong with it!
Apple: No, no, it's, uh... it's resting.
customer: Look, matey, I know a dead computer when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
Apple: No no, it's not dead, it's resting! Remarkable computer, the Intel Macintosh, idd'nit? Beautiful GUI!
customer: The GUI don't enter into it. It's brickified.
Apple: Nononono, resting!
customer: Alright, then, if it's resting, I'll boot it up! (shouts) HELLO, COMPUTER! (presses power button) Hello, computer, I've got some nice software for you...
Apple: There! It came on!
customer: No, it didn't! Do you see anything on that screen?
Apple: Well...
customer: (picks up mouse and bangs repeatedly on the desk. Throws it up in the air and watches it plummet to the floor.) Now that's what I call brickefied. Bricked. Embrickened. Pick one.
Apple: No, no... it's just stunned.STUNNED?? It's not stunned! It's passed on! This iMac is no more! It has ceased to be! It's kicked the bit bucket! It's duo core processor is now history! THIS IS AN EX-COMPUTER!
Apple: Well, I guess I'd better replace it, then. (looks about) Sorry, sir, we're right out of Intel iMacs.
customer: I see. I get the picture.
Apple: We've got this nice Windows machine, though...
"Hey, the third matrix movie would have been good except for the plot,story, and acting." --AC
...a perfectly cromulent word.
Actually, to those people who think Apple is using TPM/Trusted Computing to actively *prevent* anything other than Mac OS X from booting on the Intel iMacs, you are categorically, one hundred percent wrong.
Apple has done NOTHING to prevent other OSes from booting, as long as there are booters that support Apple's EFI implementation.
There will be Linux distributions, BSD distributions, and Darwin distributions that will definitely run on Intel-based iMacs once EFI (and Apple's EFI implementation specifically) is properly supported in their bootloaders. And it will be.
Apple is doing NOTHING to actively prevent (or allow) the booting of alternate operating systems, period. Including Windows.
Now, you might say, accurately, that Apple is doing nothing to help, either. But it has no need for legacy BIOS, and EFI is the firmware of the (foreseeable) future on PC platforms as well. It's just that Apple is really on the cutting edge here, and is, again, the first manufacturer to deploy a technology in a widespread, mainstream way. In this case, it's EFI.
Can a novice or recreational user easily get it to boot other OSes without some further development of, e.g., bootloaders? No. But that will happen, and it's only a matter of time.
I just wanted to clarify this point, because Apple is certainly not going to disallow Linux, *BSD, Darwin, OpenDarwin and other UNIX variants from booting on Intel-based Macs, and it's not doing anything specific to prevent Windows from booting, either. It's also not doing anything specific - indeed, anything at all - to SUPPORT Windows booting on these machines.
Apple knows full well that people will be running Windows in virtualization on these things, and that will be *far* more useful to *far* more people than dual booting, and it's certainly not going to be stopping that, so why would they stop people from booting Windows and only Windows natively? Think for a second, people.
Now, the REVERSE is true, however: Apple IS using TPM to tie Mac OS X to Apple hardware. But it is NOT using TPM to *prevent* other OSes from being run on Apple hardware.