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No EFI Support for Vista
DietFluffy writes "Microsoft revealed today that it will not support EFI booting for Windows Vista on its launch. The news will be a shock for owners of Intel Macs who had hoped they would be able to dual-boot between Windows Vista and OS X. Intel Macs only support booting via EFI."
"If you won't let us boot yours, we're not gonna let you boot ours either! Hehehe!"
Well, Microsoft has always been a slow adapter of everything. USB was late, even a GUI came late. There is still support for floppy disks... no surprise here.
This is good. I don't want to see Macs contaminated with 10 GB of installed rubbish.
Would it be possible to create some kind of bios level switcher so that dual-botting would be possible?
Its up to the hackers of the world to glue these things together then. Isn't it great when they put up these artificial obsticales we have to go over to get something usefull done? The funny part being we pay them to do so?
I don't care. Really. BIOS isn't the best option, but EFI has it's own problems. Nothing will ever be perfect, just get used to it.
But can it run Windows Vista?
Oh wait...
I'm not at all excited by the idea of shutting down my computer just to use another operating system.
Anybody who's used a virtualization product like VMWare knows what I'm talking about. That is where it's at.
You can run another operating system in a window without leaving your current OS. It's not an emulator in any traditional sense of the word; things run at (or a few percent shy of) native speed. The only downside is that you need enough RAM to run both operating systems simultaneously in a comfortable fashion, but 2GB of RAM is under $200 these days.
I'm going to buy an Intel Mac as soon as VMWare releases an OSX version of VMWare or an open-source implementation reaches that level of quality (there are some strong contenders). I'm willing to put down the cash to run Windows on an Intel Mac, but dual-booting isn't even part of the equation.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
"Although Microsoft has previously said EFI booting would be supported by Vista, Ritz admitted that EFI support won't be seen in any version of Windows until the release of Longhorn Server."
Great, yet another vista feature removed before released.
/* FUCK - The F-word is here so that you can grep for it */
Who cares about this stupid story? Nobody wants to lose time rebooting. Just run these at once. The real question is "will VMWARE support Vista"? Why Running Vista in a virtual machine? Because it's what DRM desserves.
Smile, don't click...
Quote from the article: "It said its decision to 'reprioritise'[sic] EFI development to the server version of Windows was based on a lack of available desktop PCs with EFI support on the market."
Maybe the reason that there are no desktop PCs with EFI support is because everyone knows that Windows still only boots on BIOS. If Microsoft was serious about jump-starting a move to EFI (or any other alternative) they would support it now, and watch the hardware follow.
I wonder if this is due to laziness, maliciousness, or a combination of both?
I guess this means that someone is going to have to hack a Linux bootloader to boot Windows. Maybe something with elilo. It's be kinda cool for these guys to say, "Sure. You can run Windows on an Intel Mac. You just gotta install Linux first!"
What is mankind really? Well, it's just two words put together Mank, and ind.
This isn't a sarcastic comment - I've never personally used a Mac or OS X (just never had the need to) so I just don't understand why this issue has even made it to a Slashdot article.
Besides, it should come as no great shock that Microsoft do not tolerate dual booting systems anyway - look at how easily Windows wipes over the boot block when you reinstall it on a PC where you're booting Linux also.
It took the developers of Lilo and GRUB to make dual-booting possible with Windows & Linux, not Microsoft.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
We've got an existing boot standard. What's so great about EFI? Inability swap a hard drive and be able to boot it?
FTA : It said its decision to 'reprioritise' EFI development to the server version of Windows was based on a lack of available desktop PCs with EFI support on the market.
This could create a cath-22, chicken and egg situation. Less EFI in market causes no EFI support causes Less EFI in market, causes no EFI suport.......
I love humanity, it is people I hate
And does this really come as a suprise to anyone anyway? "Oh my God! Someone tries to update the x86 architecture in a meaningful way and Microsoft arrives late to the Party: Drunk, kicking, and screaming! Who knew that might happen?"
Who cares? This is about as significant as Microsoft not releasing a PowerPC version of Vista.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I can't help thinking that Microsoft does this just to make life harder for potential switchers.
This sig is just as redundant as the rest of this posting
For those of us who DON'T have a BN acronyms in a LUT in our heads, EFI means "Extensible Firmware Interface". Read up on Wiki.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
I know it's the fashionable thing to do, but the whole article summary is a troll. I can't imagine all that many people are buying Intel Macs because there's a chance they might boot Windows, or rather any one who is going to be shocked-SHOCKED! if they can't. Not out in the real - not /. - world anyway. Some might be a bit miffed perhaps. I would hope that those who do want to dual boot Windows and OS X are savvy enough to wait to see if it's actually going to be possible before making a purchase. If not, well, sad for them but they have a pretty good OS and machine. I'm sure there'll be some sort of virtualisation environment available which will probably make for a more useful experience than dual booting anyway - much easier to share stuff between OSes when you can run both at the same time. Using Windows on my PC via RDC on one of my Macs is often more convenient than flipping between machines using my KVM.
:-). I only know one or two first time Mac buyers who have been waiting for a spread of Intel Macs ( i.e. mini, iMac and MacBook ) to choose from. None of them seem to be particularly interested in running Windows on their new machines.
;-).
:-).
Many of the people I'm aware of who are buying Intel Macs are people who have been hanging out for a pepped up PowerBook. There are a few who seem to be getting them because they're the "new Mac", more money than sense
I have a 17" Intel iMac, which I got as a replacement machine from Apple for my DTK prototype Intel Mac. It's a great little machine. I have no intention at all of booting Windows on it - that's what my PC is for
BTW, does anyone know where the "shocked-SHOCKED!" thing ( not necessarily with my capitalisation ) came from? I've seen quite a few people saying/writing it, and the only place in the popular media, if you will, that I've seen it is in the movie "High Fidelity" where Joan Cusack says it when having lunch with the Laura character. Is that where it came from? It's been buggin' me
Regards,
Jo Meder
I've read countless comments about the superiority of EFI (and Open Firmware) and how much the BIOS sucks, but I still haven't found anyone explaining how exactly they are superior, and why exactly the BIOS sucks, except that EFI is newer and better. And that OF has a Forth interpreter. (How many people have ever used that, honestly?)
Incidently, for all the superiority of Open Firmware, most Macs of the past few years can't even boot from USB. While a coworker showed me a 4 year old Compaq D510 desktop with a bog standard BIOS booting and flawlessly running a pirated OS X 10.4.3 from an USB hard disk.
As far as I'm concerned, the only thing the BIOS has to do is to be able to find the boot sector of a boot device for the real OS. Anything else is handled better by the OS. What exactly is the advantage of moving to EFI?
I'm really worried now! It seems like almost every feature boasted in Vista has been pulled. Database filesystem and all that? What will be left that isn't essentially Windows XP with a much larger greed for memory and other hardware requirements?
Supporting EFI would be supporting competition. Incentive to abandon Microsoft.
"I want a computer that's good for gaming and graphics. Either PC or the new Intel Mac, which I'd dual boot, OS X for gfx, Vista for games."
EFI supported:
"So, supposedly Mac is better for gfx than PC, let's try it... Wow, this OS X rocks and Vista sucks. I'm gonna get a PS3 for games and drop Vista altogether, staying with OS X."
EFI not supported:
"Well, there is Photoshop for Vista and no games for OS X, so I'd better buy a PC so I have both games and photoshop. Well, it sucks, but I bet OS X would suck just the same if I ever tried it."
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Who would have thought we would see people complaining about not being able to run Windows on a Mac!
For mainstream adoption, Windows basically requires support from the PC vendor. That's particulary true on Macs, which are going to have some non-standard hardware.
And why would you want to boot Windows anyway? It will run fine on a virtual machine under OS X.
...I'm sure someone will very quickly produce a hacked version of lilo or grub or something that boots from EFI and installes the necessary interrupt handlers etc to emulate a BIOS enough to boot Vista. Hacking the real BIOS is probably too dangerous for most people to want to do with their new macs.
As I understand it, one of central features of EFI was the hardware level encryption and digital signing happening between core motherboard components, an intergral part of the Trusted Computing Platform implementation - which Windows Vista was supposed to fully support? If Vista has to use the old BIOS architecture is there hope still for freedom or is there another way to tie us onto the TC-shackles?
And does this mean Apple's products will be the only ones that fully implement the TC platform idea both in hardware and operating system level. I seem to remember the Macintosh launch involved an ad related to the year 1984, can't seem to remember exactly what it was about (mind blanked out)...
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
EOM
The PC needs to get past BIOS booting soon... I cannot boot my 4TB RAID array because the BIOS is limited to 32bit partition-tables. EFI would allow 64-bit partition tables and the ability to boot from a disk larger than 4TB... (Note: because this is a partition table problem you cannot just set up a small partition to boot from at the beginning of the disk - and if you want the OS on RAID, the only way round it is to set up a small RAID array for booting as well as the main array...)
So Vista is coming to seem more and more like an XP service pack with a massive price tag and unwelcome restrictions. I don't know why Gates doesn't throw in the towel and announce that from now on the chair of Microsoft will be held on a rotating basis by the chairs of the major Hollywood studios. All Microsoft seem to be doing these days in the consumer market is kowtowing to the content providers while trying to grab a slice of the action for themselves. Microsoft offer no vision, no inspiration or feel-good factor. It's a pathetic end to the dream of a computer on every desk. What we have instead is a glorified credit card processor.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
I guess the lack of a VGA BIOS is still a bit of a problem.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
EFI may have some advantages but *REMEMBER* EFI is part of the Trusted Computing design. Interestingly, I had to dig through to an old January 11 version of the EFI page at wikipedia that details this. It seems like someone has edited out this information:
/.? I find it stupid that people are chiding Microsoft for failing to include a feature like this. Yet when a real threat is shown that *IS* going to be included, there is very little coverage of the boycott. As much as I hate Microsoft, I'm not giving them crap for not including another device that will take the keys away from MY hardware.
The Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) is an updated BIOS specification developed by Intel. Designed for use with trusted computing, it allows vendors to create drivers which cannot be reverse engineered. It also allows operating systems to run in a sandbox, delegating networking and memory management to the firmware. Hardware access is converted to calls to the EFI drivers. The EFI BIOS is used to select the operating system, replacing boot loaders.
I'm not for conspiracy theories but reading the Intel EFI 1.1 spec and looking at how Apple has resorted to locking out XP and requires a separate HFS+ partition to get dualboot Linux on a MacTel. Luckily Linux can be booted from HFS+ but do you think this will always be the case? EFI could be used in the future to prevent untrusted file systems, operating systems, kernel-level (not just EFI) drivers or apps from making use of a computer. So where are we on this
Does Windows still do that? I certainly remember much annoyance when Win98 wiped out lilo, but when I upgraded that to Win2K it didn't touch anything. No damage. Up comes the bootloader, pick 'windows', up it comes no problem...
Do the NT versions behave better in dual-boot configurations, or was I just incredibly weirdly lucky?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Adding EFI support would allow people to run dual boot Windows and OSX on Apple hardware the next time they purchase a computer.
Worse case for Microsoft would be that they try OSX, like it and then gradually migrate across to it.
If they don't support EFI, then there is no good and legal way of running both on one machine. You could use software based solutions, but none of them are as good as a dual boot machine.
As such, if you want to jump from Windows to OSX, it requires significant cash investment - something which a lot of people (myself included) aren't prepared to do.
</tinfoil hat>
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UFIA booting?
A-Bomb
I don't want no stinkin' Windows on my Mac. Otoh it would perhaps be nice on occasion to be able to use Windows software directly, via a runtime engine, and avoid Windows completely.
I don't see why everyone acts so surprised here. Expecting Microsoft to make it easy to use Apple products or Apple to make it easy to use Microsoft products would be like Ford announcing it will release a kit to allow Mustang owners to replace their current engine with products from Toyota.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
This link has the proof
As most owners will be 'traditional' mac users, I don't think this is a real issue.
The article also reads: Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) is the modern and flexible successor to the 20-year-old PC BIOS. It just shows that Microsoft doesn't understand true concepts of usability, innovation and excellence. As most Windows users enjoy crippled systems, using Mac OS X will come as relief to those who dare to swap. Unless you're gaming all day...
-- Neminem laede, immo omnes, quantum potes, iuva.
The news will be a shock for owners of Intel Macs who had hoped they would be able to dual-boot between Windows Vista and OS X. Intel Macs only support booting via EFI."
Neither of them was available for comment.
Looks like MS is trying to mark it's territory on the intel platform..
it's either my way or the highway..
another arm twisting tactic?
I can't understand it. After all, XP boots on a Mac...
My other post is a First.
Soory, but will not be a bad idea if you read an 80386 users' manual...
286 processors and up start in what is know as real-mode. like the original 8086. That is the 16 bit mode.
There is not 8 bit mode (not any more, and I think that was only available in the nec v20 AFAIK).
VGA cards do not start-up in CGA mode. They are initialized by the VGA BIOS in text mode, compatible to CGA but is not the same because 480 vertical lines (plus retrace) are used instead of 200 plus retrace.
BTW, newer graphic cards don't even support all C/E/VGA modes anymore, and I think that has benn for almost for 8 years more or less.
I don't think that the setup of the protected mode should be done in BIOS, but some useful mode (better than the crappy real-mode) should be enabled.
May be some flat mode (32 or 64 bits).
On the other hand, you don't enable more than protected mode, the "features" are always available (but maybe just in protected mode the instruction don't produce illegal opcode... I don't know that.)
If motherboard manufacturers suddenly moved away from the old BIOS to EFI, wouldn't this create problems for Vista which is meant to be a mostly re-coded OS which supports all kinds of new technology?!
:/ Kinda annoying, but I use OS X exclusively now anyway so no skin off of my nose :)
Do mobo makers have leverage in this area?! Or is it likely to be the other way round, "This motherboard doesn't support Vista, I ain't buying it" kinda scenario.
I am guessing the latter, but if everyone was educated enough about PC's, coupled with knowledge of other OS's, it could be the other way around.
ah well
Jan
Jan
Takes me back to when EFI wasn't introduced into nearly every car. Ohh wait my bad they did. Sounds like vista isnt going to be more fuel effiicient and economic. Long live assembly.
This is awful. I really wanted to be able to run both systems on my future system. However, instead of making me want to get a Windows computer, this simply means I won't be able to run any of the Windows applications; Microsoft aimed for the goal of me giving all my money to them, but ends up getting the opposite. In my case, that is, and I'm not sure about the others. I assume, however, that I'm not alone in this.
My reason would be Adobe. I have invested a lot in Adobe software (After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator...). I know these programs and I'm not willing to change them. Now:
1. There is no universal binaries for any of these programs and Rosetta is too slow in advanced applications.
2. Even if these binaries were available, Adobe doesn't have cross-upgrade policy. I'd have to pay full price again. I think I'd rather dual boot than spend the money again...
Just another thing for a coder to hack
The more I think about it the more I think that if Microsoft ever provides official support for installing Windows natively on a Mac then it very likely will be the end of MacOS X and eventually Apple.
Why? Because in general developers want "one true" operating system to develop for, often religiously so. I have heard people tell Mac users to "just get a PC" to run popular Windows-only software, but that is not a realistic expectation. That would be asking the Mac user to throw away thousands of dollars of hardware, and is generally considered unreasonable.
If it ever becomes possible to easily install any version of Windows on a Mac in a manner that is supported by Microsoft, even if not by Apple, then these same people will demand that Mac users "just install Windows" to run their software. And they will consider that to be perfectly reasonable thing to do - they are adding something to they system and taking nothing away. They could afford an expensive Mac, so certainly they can afford to spend a few more buck for Microsoft Windows, right? And if it is running natively on the Mac rather than in VirtualPC developers will not worry that they might be making the users work in a crippled or limited environment.
Then in time no one will see the need to develop MacOS X applications any more and all Mac users will be forced to use Windows.
Apple will then be just another boring commodity PC maker like Dell or Gateway.
So let's please stop even thinking about running Windows on the Mac. It just isn't cool.
ON ITS LAUNCH --
will not be supported ON ITS LAUNCH... so later then? that's right... just not right away...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Do you know how much space the OSX install takes up? I can't remember, but I'm sure it is up around 10 gig. Of course, it could be argued that this is not rubbish...
There's no point to run Mac or Windows, they are both worthless.
Windows XP boots on A Macbook Pro! Apparently it wasn't so hard really.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why would Apple deliberately screw customers who would buy Macs to run Windows? It's not like they'd have to support the OS at all. I mean, it's such a trivial thing to boot Windows it's a wonder why Apple is actually spending R&D dollars to prevent it. It's disgusting. I guess Apple really isn't in the business of selling computers anymore.
There is no need to by RAM from Apple. When I bought by G4 Powerbook, and RAM-Upgrade from Apple would have cost me 800 Eur or so - instead I bought two Kingston 1GB SO-DIMM modules for 140 Eur each (at that time) and they work just fine.
They propose to do this very thing, for free. To bad they abondoned the PPC side for those of us resistant to the change to intel CPU.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So Macs are Injected and windows vista will use double-barrel carburetors?
1) I never boot my Mac ... so how and why should I dual boot? (exception: OS upgrades that require one)
Thats especially true for laptop (Pwerbook, MacBook Pro, iBook) owners, you only sleep the Mac and wake it up when needed.
2) No one having a Mac would boot into Windows, why? Because he likely has no access to his Data on the Mac Partition, no eMails, no Adresses, no Calendar etc. It makes no sense to boot into Windows.
If a Mac user *needs* Windows and wants to use it he uses a Virtual PC or OpenOSX or soon vmware. Of course you use a virtualized PC, because then you don't have to boot, and not to dual boot at least, and you have the advantage to access the data from both platforms on the other platform.
No sane Mac user will use MS Office for Mail (Outlook etc.) and/or IE for browsing but will use his Mac Software for most of his work, so booting into Windows is very unlikely.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
This is ridiculous! The story is, the crippled (I am amazed they are even releasing it) 32-bit version of Vista won't support the odd mac-only combination of 32-bit chips, and EFI. The 64-bit version of Vista, will support the standard configuration of 64-bit chips, and EFI, just like XP 64 already does.
I love all the comments about how far behind Apple MS is, as proven by the fact that they can't even get EFI working. No, they have it working, just on modern 64-bit systems. Apple is the only company on earth that decided to go with a brand new technology like EFI, and then stick 32-bit chips on a 32-bit OS in their system! If Apple actually comes out with a 64-bit machine (like most modern PCs), I'm sure 64-bit Vista will boot on it just fine. This is one of those cases where the problem isn't how far behind MS is on their support for EFI, but how far behind Apple is on their choice of x86 chips. I have no idea why Apple let itself get talked into dumping a 64-bit architecture, just to get what basically amounts to some fast dual-core P3s, but they did.
Talk about the very definition of FUD!
Redmond - In a surprising turn of events Microsoft held a press conference yesterday stating that Windows Vista will not support the 32 bit mode of Intel 80386 and compatible processors. When asked about why this feature was left out from the release lead coder Alfred E. Newman replied: "We felt that 32 bit support was just not ready for Vista. The NT line of operating systems is still too cutting-edge to be used in the productivity powerhouse that Vista is going to be." Instead, Microsoft will deploy a new version of MS-DOS as the operating system's foundation. The new DOS, called "MS-DOS 2006" will feature improved support for TSRs and the capability of automatically loading supporting programs directly into extended memory, allowing it to have all 640 kilobyte of conventional memory ready for applications that depend on it.
Microsoft promised that all other proposed Vista features (except for those already canceled) will "have a chance of making it into Vista". When asked about whether customers coud be expected to put up with Vista's proposed 480 installation floppies Newman replied: "What, me worry?"
The new decision was universally met with conetempt within the Apple world. "They think that pushing the MS-DOS version number from 7 to 2007 is a big step," Random MacGeek from AppleRumorsUpYourButt.com commented, "but we clearly had the biggest version number jump when Bungie went from Marathon 2 to Marathon: Infinity. Microsoft is late to the game, as always."
When asked about the topic of Microsoft being late to the game Apple replied: "It's true! Microsoft promides to buy me and GNU here a beer at the game. Now it's halfway over and Microsoft is nowhere to be seen!" "We're not going to invite Microsoft to the next game," GNU added, "we have better things to do with our time than to spend it waiting for some guy from Redmond."
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
It runs RandMcNally TripMaker97 just great. It's my last Win proggie. QB2005 is a zillion times better as a Mac than a Win, anyway.
As far as word processors go, OO 2.0 runs under MacX11 just fine, so why does anyone care about Win programs, anyway?
"Hot Product! Windows XP with NEW hat! "
OS independant device drivers sounds like a big plus to me.
That explains why Microsoft doesn't support it. Driver support can often be a problem with other OS's. When all OS's could use the same driver Microsoft would loose their advantage.
The revenge of Apple will be a one-button mouse that WILL NOT support Vista, heh !
Damnit Jim, I'm [root@localhost w00t]#, not an AD-Adminstrator(tm) !
but MS isn't? MS has years and years of x86 development under it's belt and Apple is a newcomer(in x86 land), so how come Apple can make their OS use EFI and MS can't? It can't be a technical reason unless Vista developers are a bunch of idiots, so it has to be political. Of course, Apple led the charge with USB, Firewire, dropping the floppy, etc. so I guess embracing new tech is more Apple's area than MS.
Plain and simple. Microsoft knows that if you can run Windows on a Mac, more people may actually purchase a Mac. Then the comparison will start, and in my opinion, end very quickly. OS X is and will be light years ahead of Vista and Microsoft knows this.
I hope you weren't implying that Wine is an emulator because Wine Is Not an Emulator. ;)
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Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) is the modern and flexible successor to the 20-year-old PC BIOS. It is responsible for initialising hardware in the PC, and importantly, device drivers are stored in the EFI flash memory rather than being loaded by the operating system. It is a major change for the PC industry and both PC makers and Microsoft have been slow to make the switch.
Obviously, the only real advantage that Microsoft has over other operating systems is that you and plug anything into it and Windows will recognize the device.
If you take the device drivers out of Windows and put them in EFI, then there is a level playing field for operating systems.
Microsoft is content to drive forward quantity (more disk, more memory, and so forth), but when it comes to dropping relics of aging architectures, they make obviously stupid decisions like this. Full support for EFI is not about booting on the Mac, it's about dropping BIOS for everyone. Yet another example of how Microsoft holds us all back, whether we use their products or not. Nevertheless, there will eventually be a way to dual boot Macs with Windows. It is inevitable.
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Hello? KVM switch. Mac stays nice and clean;) DONE.
I might be barking up the wrong tree here, but once we have a port of elilo for OSX we could probably boot it that way (not that im particularly interested in doing that anyway).
In anycase im not sure Windows has ever supported dual booting - It's been a while since i installed newer versions of windows. In the past installing windows meant rewriting the boot sector regardless - removing any dual boot menu that might be there (lilo or grub) a pain in the ass if you had linux or other on a different partition. If this is still the case then it really isnt news when Microsoft say "It isnt supported". That doesnt mean that its not possible, just that they havent gone to the effort of making it possible.
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Nope, RTFA. It MIGHT be added into the server version. But EFI support will NEVER be added for 32 bit CPU's under Vista.
Windows supports EFI. Here, now, today. Has been for years. Currently is. Except only on the IA64 architecture. This makes the article partly bullshit, and a large amount of comments here as well. But the bullshit doesn't stop here.
Of course the thing about drivers being stored entirely in EFI is completely false, misleading and somewhat retarded (it really depends on how twisted your idea of drivers is. If you come from a Linux background there's a 9 in 10 chance you are clueless and forever jaded about it). Of course the DRM comments here don't make the slightest sense, since TPM chips are here, now, have been for years, and they work with the old, usual, actually-existing BIOS extensibility interface (i.e.: drop a function pointer somewhere, get called). Have you bought an IBM laptop or workstation that was made some time after the Cretacean? congratulations! your cute little black box is Trusted Computing compliant (r), (c) and (TM)!
From a more technical point of view: Windows doesn't depend on legacy hardware. It used to, in ye olden days (until before Windows Server 2003 R1), but it was so easy to get around it with software emulators (provided by Microsoft herself, as part of Windows NT 4 Embedded, Server Appliance Kit for Windows 2000 Server, et cetera) that only people with a really small penis complained. Nowadays it's a matter of the right boot loader and Hardware Abstraction Layer (all aboard the cluetraaain! if you are among the differently-endowed mouth breathers who confuse "instruction set" with "hardware" - and you know if you are one - this might just be your chance to finally get it!).
Technical trivia: the Windows boot loader is a beauty. It totally mops the floor with anything in the wild, save maybe for Grub. The horrid ntldr flat executable is just a teeny weeny stub containing the real thing, a PE executable called osloader.exe (with a resource section, even - the description simply says "Boot loader"; sadly it has no icon) which is the universal loader - why, yes, your humble peecee can network-boot too! In short, the little bugger comes with a full SCSI+ATAPI stack (it can even stay loaded and be used by the kernel as the SCSI class driver - no shit!), a network stack for the TFTP client (yep) and its very own hardware abstraction layer, since the thing was written against ARC (think EFI, only for the Alpha AXP architecture) which is only really available on Alpha. The thing is a driver model short of a full operating system
So, reconsider the length of your penis in the light of these new facts
Make a difference - use Windows! (open source clone of Windows NT)
Hello? KVM switch. Mac stays nice and clean;) Done.
All the mac fanatics I've talked to dont frigging CARE about running windows on mac computers. They are into macs. They buy only mac stuff. They pay through the nose. They use software that runs on mac OS X, etc.
I dont understand why everyone is pushing the stories about running windows on macs.
No, the REAL interesting question is, will we ever be able to run the Mac OS on a normal windows machine?
Really, apple is now mostly a software company (excluding non computer areas like ipods, or things like the apple cinema displays), they are moving to intel hardware. Thier OS has always been exceptional, and MS has always copied features for it for windows.
Why not just give it up, admit the truth, and move to marketing the OS? Sell it so it can run on a normal windows machine! A TON of people (including me) would dual boot our windows machines with the Mac OS in a heartbeat. Then we wouldn't have to pay through the nose for the overhyped overpriced mac hardware (and apple practically lying about how fast thier CPU's are compared to pentiums). Instead we'd get the software, which is where its always been at. Even if they charged $500 per copy, it would still fly off the shelves, its still cheaper than a Mac computer.
Plus, then apple could grab a much larger percentage of the market. As more people dual booted and did more and more work in Mac OS, there would be more and more games and applications made compatible with the Mac OS. Especially now that the CPU is a normal intel one. Eventually people could just stick with the Mac OS and forget windows.
Anyway, thats my 2 cents. Forget about the boring question of a Mac running windows, think about an IBM PC compatible computer running Mac OS X!
One word: CAD.
a) It would not be profitable for Apple to do that because they'd have to price it to make up for at least some of the revenue loss due to the lost hardware sales. The people who are too cheap to buy Macs will not buy an OS that costs as much as their cheap computer did.
b) Even if Apple did sell it for generic PCs, many, many, many people would still download it illegally, anyway. More lost revenue.
c) Microsoft would not stand idly by while Apple made this incursion into "their" turf, and would quickly retaliate. They'd probably discontinue Office for OS X* and lean on Dell and the other big-name PC makers to ensure they didn't ink any deals to sell PCs preloaded with OS X. In other words, Microsoft would just go back to their old, anticompetitive ways to the degree they could get away with it (and if you think the Bush administration would lift a finger to stop them you're smoking some potent shit).
* How much do you want to bet the five-year agreement Microsoft and Apple announced at MacWorld included a condition that Apple not release OS X for generic PCs?
~Philly
It took some time, but someone finally made it happen: Windows XP boots on a Macbook Pro! Screenshot included!
I don't think that Microsoft is as worried about Apple as they are about screwing over yet another long time partner, Intel. I am not trolling when I say that Microsoft really seems to enjoy screwing over long time partners, and their getting cozy with AMD over the x86-64 extensions in favour of the Itanium has been a case in point. Microsoft has, since then, been doing just about everything they can to screw Intel and favour AMD. EFI comes from Intel. AMD can use it but it's still an Intel spec and Microsoft will do what they can to kill it, thereby killing (from their POV) two birds with one stone: Intel and Apple.
The sad reality is that AMD is being plainly stupid to get into bed too much with Microsoft. Microsoft will almost certainly screw them over in the future some time. It's MS' way of doing business.
Fortunately, I think Apple has enough sway in the market to force PC makers to switch over to EFI, just like they did with USB, which was also used by nobody and not properly supported by Windows at the time. Give it time and PC makers will start pestering Microsoft to make a Windows version that boots with EFI and they will start making motherboards that use EFI in legacy BIOS mode to boot Windows.
Don't panic.
Needless to say, this makes Dvorak look like even more of an idiot before by completely refuting his moronic Apple switching to Windows prediction.
This space left intentionally blank.
Steve Jobs actually tried this with NextStep, and learned a painful lesson. While NextStep was heralded for its stability and features on the Next hardware, as soon as it was "out in the wild" on commodity hardware, it was pretty much panned as a buggy, slow, cumbersome piece of garbage that never really sold or gained any major following.
There were a few reasons for this.
First off, the people who went out of their way to buy a Next box, much like macheads, had already decided that it was a wonderful machine before they ever turned it on, so were a bit more forgiving than someone just trying out the OS alongside others.
Secondly, it is a lot easier to develop an OS that only needs to run on one or two motherboards, with one or two chips, and one or two graphics systems, than it is to develop something that has to work with everything.
Thirdly, if you have complete control of the hardware, you can cheat on a lot of things. For example, if you know a feature crashes horribly on anything under a certain amount of RAM, then you can hold back that feature on any system that doesn't have enough RAM to handle it. When the user has control of the hardware, all you can do is make recommendations, and hope they abide by them, which almost without doubt, some won't.
Lastly, the number of bugs and problems you have to fix is limited to the number of users that have problems. Every piece of software as complex as an OS has bugs, if you have a few thousand users, the chances of them running across all the bugs is a lot smaller than if you have tens of thousands of users.
All of this, at the very least, taught Steve Jobs that trying to be Microsoft is harder than it looks. I think that Apple would probably make a ton of money if they could release their OS as a software product for commodity PCs, and would probably put a HUGE dent in the Linux market. However, I don't know if the company is really up to handling that, and I am quite sure that from his Next experience Jobs realizes the danger of trying to make that move when you aren't ready for it.
Hillary or Cheney in '08.
ME: 8==D--. O-: --Slashdot
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Because mac owners are the only ones naive enough to think that cop-out flies. No our lives WON'T be much easier as Console gaming cannot and does not replace PC gaming.
I'm so sick of hearing that suggestion.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I have electronic fuel injection and I've had to flash my BIOS many times, thank you very much.
I for one would purchase a Mac Mini for myself and two more for family & friends right away if I could run some major Windows apps on a Macintel.
Just as an example, I help an older lady with her computer. She uses Quicken for her accounting, and cannot move off of it because that's what her trusted accountant wants her to have. Intuit makes Quicken for Mac, but no Canadian edition, so she cannot move to a Mac platform unless Quicken for Windows runs on OSX.
She has seen the Mac Mini in the store and loves both its interface and its tiny size. I know I would far rather support her using OSX than Windows. Maybe we'll see Crossover Office eventually come out for OSX: I hope so.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
I dont understand why everyone is pushing the stories about running windows on macs.
Games. Dual-boot to Windows to run games.
Apple has been a software company since the Mac came out. They're just a software company that makes their money selling hardware, like Cisco. And if they had Cisco's market share they'd be smart to stick with that model. I don't see anyone pushing Cisco to sell IOS for Wintel hardware.
Since they don't, though...
Isn't this good news for AMD? The reason Intel developed EFI, after all, was to patent it and require AMD to license it from Intel, right? Now AMD doesn't have to license it in order to run Windows.
It's unlikely that their decision had anything to do with Virtual PC, but it's noteworthy that if Vista supported EFI, that'd probably be it for Virtual PC.
The next question is will Virtual PC come out for Intel-based Macs and how will it perform? So far, Microsoft has not committed to it:
It'd be cool if there was a simple convention/architecture/method/whatever for booting to multiple OSs simultaneously so that each used some memory and CPU time and other resources were shared/swapped on the fly...
The point wasn't that Microsoft is in the right for not supporting EFI, it was that it is not surprising that Microsoft has decided to be slow in adopting something that benefits computer users but doesn't necessarily benefit Microsoft.
...because Wine has *never* been an acronym for "Wine Is Not (an) Emulator".
It does in fact stand for WINdows Emulator.
Or at least until as recently as July 2003 it did...
"Wine (the Un*x Windows emulator)"
http://www.winehq.org/?issue=160
The "debunking myths" guy got it wrong. Let him consider himself debunked!
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
I think the way MS wants to include EFI support is through large OEM licenced resellers of Vista (Dell, HP, Compaq). This way, when you buy a new system with EFI, you get support bundled in. If this is the case, what will happen to independent system builders? Will the OEM copy of Vista be avilable to smaller builders?
And if this isn't the case, I can envision an updated version of Vista (e.g. like 95 OSR2, Win 98 ME) with support for that and other hardware which can't be had with patches.
This has to be about Dell. If Macs could dual-boot, it would impact Dell the most. I imagine it was something along the lines of, "Gee, we're seeing increased demand for Linux servers, we're thinking of ramping up our promotion there. BTW, are you still planning on letting your desktop OS run on Macs?"
um,I did RTFA
Is the complaint that (1) folks will not be able to dual boot microsoft and apple os on the same hardware? if so, boo fucking hoo, that wasn't the case before, why should it be now? just because apple is using intel chips? if consumer demand for a system that can dual boot both os's is strong enough, I think it falls to the minority manufacturer (apple) to try and snag the 'dual' buisness by providing an architecture that is compatible (ya know, kinda like when compaq overtook ibm by making the then next gen 386's without ibm).
or is the complaint (2) that windows OS users can't use EFI? then my response (which it was tailored too) is wait, it will be supported later. ~ yes, only with new hardware.. 64bit hardware should be minimum spec for vista machines anway, new os, it's the best time to launch into 64bit..
If I could have my druthers, 32bit cpu's wouldn't be supported under vista-- it would make for a clean break.....
if apple wants the increased marketshare that dual booting capable machines can make, they should make it possible, either by dropping efi requirements, or adding 64bit cpus... but apple has said NO, and microsoft has said NO, neither side seems to want the capability in the marketplace.
Apple, beacuse they want you to use their hardware, and not put their OS on other peoples hardware
Microsoft, because they want you to use their software, and not have the experience of the other software.
who is more in the way of progress? I'd say it's balanced..
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Sorry if this has been asked/answered above...
Does this mean that there will be no 'Trusted Computing' possible under Vista on existing 32-bit machines?
(As far as I understand EFI is a required part of it)
start linux, start vmware in linux, start XP, start vmware in XP, start linux on vmware on xp on vmware on linux, then you can unplug the iMac and carry it off leaving the operating syatems hanging in mid-air in an endlessly self-supporting loop.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
I didn't know the detailed history of nextstep. Interesting.
:)
But a lot of your comments are moot.
a) The OS X system runs on intel hardware, and an intel CPU. So its been tested and debugged already (at least to the extent of having the capabilities to run on the platform)
b) The OS has been out a while and is already really good and really polished. MS steals ideas from it all the time.
c) They no longer have quite as much control of the hardware, they are using off the shelf intel CPU's rather than thier own. I imagine its the same with the majority of their parts. They might have a lot of control over the selection of the parts, but the actual parts are not nearly as much under thier control and specifications anymore.
Sure it might be nessasary to do a lot more testing of various IBM PC compatible setups and configurations, but the porting part is done.
And yeah, this would be hard. And difficult and cost money. But the potential rewards are HUGE! And isn't MAC os X based on linux anyway? Haven't we been wanting linux to give windows a run for its money on the average desktop?
I have a NeXTstation. NeXTstep on a 68030 isn't anything to write home about either. And the contemporary Windows systems weren't any better.
NeXTstep didn't sell on commodity hardware for the same reason that other operating systems than Windows have never sold well on commodity hardware. People don't buy commodity hardware to run operating systems, they run them to run apps, and there's only two platforms that have enough apps to cut it.
Windows and Mac OS X.
Thanks for the sweeping generalization. I'm a Mac owner who also has a Linux box that dual-boots Win2000 for the sole purpose of playing games due to the inferiority of consoles. Blah.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
1. Load magazine with ammunition.
2. Insert magazine.
3. Rack slide.
4. Disengage safety.
5. Align front and rear sights.
6. Align sight picture with right foot.
7. Pull trigger.
I don't know if it's "the original", but a canonical version of this occurs in the classic Humphrey Bogart movie, "Casablanca". The brave anti-Nazi dissident has arrived, and Major Strosser, the Nazi "liaison" to the Vichy French civic government in Casablanca, orders Rick's Cafe closed down, so that dissident conspiracies cannot be hatched there. The prefect of police, Captain Reynard (brilliantly played by Claude Rains), comes up with a pretext. He blows his whistle, and announces that the place is to be closed because he is shocked -- SHOCKED -- to discover that *gambling* is taking place in this establishment! As he is finishing his sentence, the croupier comes up to him and hands him his winnings, which he politely accepts.
There's more to Capt. Reynard's corruption, of course, he also has a sideline in providing exit visas to young couples in exchange for time alone with the young women, and it is implied that he does better-than-random at the roulette table.
ObGrouch: You kids today ought to see more *good* movies. And get off my lawn!
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
All their new Intel Macs use EFI, not a BIOS.
There are almost NO Windows running PC's shipping with EFI. Even if some DID start shipping, including a BIOS Bootstrap for legacy systems is a part of the EFI Spec (Apple chose not to include it, because they do not require Legacy BIOS Support, never having used it in the first place).
So any Intel based systems that DO ship in the near future, will have the ability to bootstrap from the BIOS Compatibility layer through EFI anyway, because if they didn't, there wouldn't be any Windows based operating systems that could run on them (except for 64Bit Windows Vista).
So it's not an inability on Microsoft's part to figure out EFI, there's no need for it at the present time, as there are almost no systems that even use it available.
For what 90% of the computer using market wants/needs/enjoys using a computer for a Mac is a far better choice, so having Windows not boot on it is a good thing. My wife is a designer, and I'm a writer/gamer/researcher. I have wanted only one thing that the Windows side offers. Half-Life. That's it. Now, where's iLife on the Windows side? iWork? (no, not Word and PowerlessPoint).
Currently playing: StarWars Lego, World of Warcraft, Civ III Complete.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
OK, so Mac owners won't be able to buy Vista. Big Whoop. It's not like they don't have OS X, *BSD and handful of linux distros to choose from.
PC users won't be able to buy EFI based hardware... now thats the real tradgedy
My, limited, understanding is that it is because traditional x86 boxes use the old BIOS that you can't have instant sleep like Macs and you can't have firewire/usb target disk mode. These are small, but important improvements that significantly improve the end user experience.
MS should be supporting it out fo the box, not because Mac users might buy Vista, but because hardware vendors should be free to move towards EFI.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
I've got a PowerBook at the moment, and will definitely be upgrading to a Macbook Pro in the near future. Being able to run MS Windows on it at (near) native speed would be a huge bonus for me, but I've got zero interest in dual booting to get that. I don't give a rats ass about running games under windows; I hardly have enough free time in my life to play WoW on my PowerBook more than a few times a week (without getting into trouble with my other half).
...... QEMU + Accelerator seems to be the only choice for Intel OSX right now. VMware are apparently showing interest (but nothing solid yet) and another outfit called iEmulator.com are supposed to have an Intel port of their existing Mac OSX product in the pipeline.
:-)
What I really need it for is those work occasions where I run into equipment that needs a dedicated Windows app to manage it, and dual-booting to deal with that is just stupid. I need a good native virtual environment I can just fire up in a minute, do my work and then close it down. VPC on PowerPC just doesn't cut it. It's way too slow.
The things I'm keeping an eye on
If Xen worked I'd be delighted, but there seem to be problems that are going to take some time to work out. 1) there is no Intel VT support in the current Intel Mac's, and 2) Moshe Bar has said that "OS X has its own virtualization technology that interferes with Xen". Apparently he's been able to get FreeBSD and Debian working, but Apple's protectiveness of its hardware specs has so far prevented Bar from getting the graphics, sound or Wi-Fi to work.
So it's really only a matter of time
Ok, really quickly, here we go:
A) Have you looked at all the chips Intel makes? Their roadmap is more complicated than a Los Angeles freeway! I assure you, testing on the Core Duo and Core Solo processors they are curently using is by no means a an indication that there won't be any problems with any other Intel chips. First off, those are 32-bit chips, and Intel has a couple different flavors of 64-bit chip out there. Then there are all the extra features of the various chips that at the OS level can cause real problems if you don't properly compile and optimize. And this isn't even getting into the AMD products!
B) Ignoring for a moment the "MS steal from it all the time" troll, the kernel of OSX has been around for quite a while, and most of it was not written by Apple. It is basically BSD. A LOT of the features of OSX are very new (in OS terms), and have really never been tested in the sense of the kind of abuse features in Windows get with hundreds of millions of people banging on them all the time.
C) Apple never made their own chip! The used off the shelf Motorola chips, then they used off the shelf IBM chips, now they use off the shelf Intel chips. Apple never made their own harddrives, or video cards, or much of anything. At least not for over a decade. Everything Apple has been doing since the move to PowerPC is following standards set by consortiums. That hasn't really changed.
Yes, the rewards are huge, but many a company have tried to market their OS as software, and many a company have failed. Solaris, OS2, NextStep, BeOS, AT&T UNIX, BSD, Linux, and some others I am sure I have forgotten have all made a run at the boxed software market, and not many of them are around anymore.
By the way, no OSX is not based on Linux, it is based on NextStep, which in turn was based on BSD, both of which had their own run at the PC market, and both of which didn't even get as far as Linux has.
I haven't been paying close attention, but does anybody know what WILL Vista have? It seems like I hear more about what it will not have.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Elilo is probably your best bet. It does Linux on macs and there is no reason I can think of why you should be able to boot another os with it. I will have to wait to figure it out cuz the macbooks are in horribly short supply in my neck of the woods..
u nce&ANN_user_op=view&ANN_id=95
http://www.geeknet.nl/phpws/index.php?module=anno
has some links on this.
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
VMware does make a good product, but by not making a generic UNIX host (Solaris 10, Apple, & Linux) I believe this limits their uptake. I'm not "downgrading" to Linux from Solaris to run VMware but would buy a copy today if I could run VMware on a Solaris host.
Fortunately, the innovations in Solaris such as Brandz (formerly "Project Janus"), may enable a Linux version of VMware to run anyway.
Who really wants to purchase VMware to run Solaris or Linux guests on a Windows host???
I never said it would be easy, thats why I specificaly said the porting part has been done. Testing differant configs is a huge job. But at least we know that it works fine on a single intel compatible config, this bodes well for other configs, it is at least a starting point.
As well, saying MS grabs concepts from the mac OS, thats not a troll, its a fact. Last few vista articles I read go on about the search while you type feature (one of the few features MS hasn't canceled or pulled or rendered non vista exclusive), and many mention that that feature has been in the Mac OS for a long time now, whats it called again? Searchlight? Spotlight? Anyway something like it has been in the Mac OS for a while now.
Or what about the GUI idea of windows being basically an idea from the original mac OS x gui? I think the transparent window stuff in windows GUI was done in mac OS prior to windows as well.
I'll modify this slightly and say that from what I found on a random quick google search, MS originally liscensed some GUI stuff from apple for windows 1.0. So they "borrowed" that legitimatly and didn't "steal" it. Although they practically blackmailed apple (threatened to withdraw some early Mac apps at last minute unless MS got the liscense) to give them the liscense. And apparently from apple having vauge liscensing terms, apple hasn't had much chance of a success in sueing MS for grabbing lots of features since then.
And know this and I'm not even a mac fanatic. I dont own a mac, or any of its products, or an ipod. And I think apple is disgusting for the times its wildly exaggerated its hardware performance claims compared to a pentium. So I'm not in any stretch of the imagination a mac/apple supporter. But I would like to give the OS a try someday.
And the last part, ok fine, its based off of a derivitive of another software that was based on a derivitave of a flavor of unix. It still has had in its past open source roots to some degree.
No they didn't make thier own chip, but being as they were one of the largest purchasers, they had some influence into things like a potential features on the next generation, etc. I belive that they previously had much more control over the hardware and specs than they do now.
I have no idea why everyone seems to be forgetting about one thing. WINDOWS XP DOES WORK ON MAC G5 WITH VIRTUAL PC BY MICROSOFT yes it run like complete ass because it's emulating to the powerPC architecture. But what happend recently between apple / MS. didn't they sign some 5 year agreement? Gee, i wonder why.. I strongly believe within the next year or two MS will be offering Virtual PC for the Intel chips in the Macs.. WHen this happens no more dicking around with EFI, 64bit, dual booting and all that other crap everyone's trying to hack onto the new intel macs. You'll be able to run XP hopefully almost perfectly in a window within OSX. MrJynx
I must be old or missing the point, but I don't see why anyone would want to boot Windows on a Mac. Yeah Yeah Yeah, i know about the hardware change and it's significance, but I don't see why anyone would care to run Windows XP on overpriced intel hardware.
What's the point?
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
At my workplace, everyone (including us developers) runs XP pro. All of our production servers are running Red Hat Enterprise. We created an identical configuration in VMWare for each production server. We use these emulated environments for testing rollouts before going live. Its very convenient, and if you mess something up, just grab a fresh copy of the environment off the internal file server.
Not liking windows is one thing, living in a box is another.
Well, a subset of DirectX 8. Work is progressing though, and it probably won't be long before it supports all of DX9.
Read info here.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Why are people so obsessed with dual booting? It's an antiquated and annoying way to have multiple operating environments. You have to completely shut down one operating environment, have an entirely different filesystem partition and make sure your data is on (possibly) a third filesystem that is friendly between the two (or more) environments. It's annoying as all get out! I know, I've done it before!
Instead of dual booting, how about VPC or better yet VMware for the Mac OS X for Intel platform? Why aren't people picking up on the fact, yes fact, that you will have NATIVE performance out of these virtual machines on an Intel Mac? There is no emulation anymore!!! Wake up and see the forest for the trees people. Virtualization is the way to go. If I can have multiple virtual machines that I can tinker with, blow up, reboot, and all without taking down the whole system why on earth would I want to dual boot? Plus, if the virtual machine app is well written it will be able to access all my data and I don't have to have a separate partition and filesystem just for it.
Running Windows and OSX (and Linux) on the same machine would be great, but I'm not interested in dual booting.
Dual booting means the computer has to be restarted every single time you need something in the alternate OS. I dual boot XP and Linux now: it bites, and I just don't get to Linux very much since I mostly use XP for work.
I'm using MS's VirtualPC on the same box. I have pretty much every OS they've made since Win95 available instantly (multiple versions in some cases) with little or no performance hit, and I can run as many at a time as I need. I can mark virtual disks readonly, so hosing an OS doesn't mean a reinstall or reimage (and "reimaging" is just replacing a disk file with a backup copy and restarting anyway.)
Realistically, it's better for most purposes than running the OS directly. If I could do that from OSX I'd buy a MacTel tomorrow (well, this year) and make my current white box Linux only. Otherwise I'll probably wait several years, at least until my last PPC machine dies.
Call me crazy, but generally I would think that the best developers for any given platform also use the same platform for development?
Mind telling us, even just a wiki link or something in the summary, what the heck EFI is?
It's stupid to assume site that everyone knows what EFI is. Too many dizzying acronyms.
How are we supposed to tell the good guys from the bad guys in the movies and on TV?
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
In general it a good thing to keep developers off production boxes and kitty corner them into test and devel boxes so that everything is well documented. You dont want to force a devel to document every change they make to there development server just every change they had to make to get it working in preproduction so that the admins can do the same in production. Besides production should never have x running and putty etc gives a better envirnement than local text console.
No sir I dont like it.
Okay crazy, what about developers using a corporate mandated Windows desktop, developing a cross-platform (or unix only) app? It happens, unfortunately.
Running multiple copies of Windows on Windows happens a lot too.
Man, you have to start using capitals or I'll have to get my mind out of the gutter. :-)
Sure, no problem. All you need to make that work is an EFI-emulator written in Java; there's already an x86 emulator written in Java, so then we hook that up together with the EFI emulator and basically what we have then is an Intel-Mac emulator, which runs on the JVM. The JVM is available for OS/2, so we'll have XP running under VMWare in Linux on an emulated Intel iMac running on the JVM under OS/2, running in VirtualPC on OS X, which is running on PearPC under FreeBSD, which is running under bochs on DOS in domain2 on Xen. That'll be much faster and more convenient than dual-booting, since at least three of those emulation layers promise near-native execution speeds.
Kinda like an Obfuscated C contest for Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, only here the objective would to be include as many possible layers of emulation and still have a working final product.
Actually sounds like it would be kinda fun - God, am I a nerd, or what?
Ditto, except in my case I have 2000 installed for the purpose of running exactly one game: Steam. It would be incredibly great if I could get it running under WINE on my new iMac, especially since then my Linux box could become a full-time file server.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
This is actually playing out exactly as I predicted. Microsoft isn't going to make it easy to boot any of their OS's on a MacBook Pro or any other Intel-based Mac, because doing so would mean the slow "death by irrelevance" of their VirtualPC product they bought from Connectix a few years ago.
The beauty of forcing a Mac user to run Windows through the VirtualPC product is Microsoft can sell them a legal software license bundled with the product, making it an easy "one stop" way to collect the entire revenue stream. If they simply coded booting support for EFI on MacBooks into Vista, they'd encourage a lot more piracy. (How many Mac users do you know who despise Microsoft - and would justify running a bootleg copy of Vista in dual-boot mode as "So what? It's not really my primary OS anyway, and Microsoft doesn't need to get any more of MY money!"?)
On the flip-side, the next version of VirtualPC will be able to completely drop all the x86 emulation code, and simply become a "sandbox" that fools a Windows OS into booting up inside of it, and then passes all the x86 instructions to the Intel-based Mac's CPU natively. This will let them brag about the incredible performance boost in the latest version of VirtualPC, etc. etc.
The only thing I'm not sure about is if MS will decide to simply drop support for PPC based Macs at some point, keep both VirtualPC 7 and this new "version 8?" version as branded for "Intel Macs only", or actually code all of it together, so the traditional PPC emulation stuff is automatically installed/used where needed, and the alternate code for Intel-based Macs used where possible?
But I'd practically bet money on one of these scenarios panning out.
For all those who were just as stumped as I was trying to figure out what EFI was, here's Wiki to the rescue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Firmware_I nterface
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And then tries to discount his troll by adding "I own a Mac Mini". Yeah... sure he does.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/
If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
You're wrong. EFI is what IA64 machines use, and Windows supports those today when you buy the IA64 version. EFI is not exactly new.
Run Windows in a sandbox/VM if you REALLY need it and be done with it. That's where it belongs anyways and even Microsoft agrees( see Microsoft purchase of VM software in the press ). IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
What's the big deal? By limiting its potential market share, MS only hurts itself.
I do think it is rather trollish, because it is only looking at it from one side. Yes, Microsoft has seen things that work on the Apple platform and emulated them, but Apple has done the same thing. That is the nature of the computer industry. I mean, there really isn't much in OSX that is actually original to start with. Most of what Next did was copy SGI, and then OSX was built on top of that, and took a lot of ideas from what was going on with Linux.
I don't know how many times I have seen some technology or feature that comes from one company, end up in the product of another company. It is just the way things work. Yet the popular telling of the story is that Apple invents everything, and Microsoft just follows along ripping it off. For example, for years, Apple maintained that Windows wasn't even a "real GUI OS" because it was just a presentation shell running on top of a text mode OS. Well, here we sit today, and XP is a full GUI OS, and OSX is just a presentation shell on top of a text mode OS. PCI(as well as X and E), USB, right click menus, multibutton mice, DVI, these are all PC standards that Apple ended up adopting after failed attempts to promote their own alternative. For years, Apple maintained that no one needed preemptive multitasking (like Windows NT or UNIX), because cooperative multitasking was more efficient, the whole time working feverishly to try and copy the feature, then they bought an OS that had it and suddenly it was the cat's pajamas. For years, Apple and it's followers scoffed at the command line interfaces and scripting in general as an inelegant solution for nerds. Now they promote their command line and scripting tools as one of the biggest strengths of their OS.
As far as the Vista GUI goes, there is no denying that the look and feel is a ripoff of the OSX GUI, but if you look under the hood at what Microsoft is doing with the Windows Presentation Foundation, you will see that actually the technology is totally different than anything Apple has ever done, and quite impressive.
As for the spotlight feature, you mean Apple's ripoff of the Google desktop search feature? Well, I don't know how long Apple worked on that, but I know I was hearing about that feature of Longhorn well before Apple came out with their tool. Of course it was supposed to work with their new file system (which got cut from the final release of Vista), but the feature was still being talked about years before Apple had put out theirs. That in and of itself is funny, because Finder sucked. When MS started puting more complicated search and indexing tools in their OSs, the Apple reaction was that they didn't need them, because the OS was so intuitive that users "just knew where their files were" instead of having to look through a bunch of directories for where they had put them. I heard all sorts of criticisms from macheads about how many systems resources got chewed up by Windows constantly indexing everything, when on the Apple you "just knew where your files were." Now we come full circle, and MS is being accused of stealing the idea of an indexed search feature from OSX.
My point is that while you could just see it as the natural evolution of the market (as most people do with most companies) whenever Apple is involved, suddenly people start talking about how things were "ripped off" or "stolen" from Apple, as though they are the only company in the world that ever came up with an original idea.
Exactly, well said, Virtual Machines work fine... I utilize Virtual windows servers on windows servers running VMware. and I also have had VPC installed on my AlumPB, two different win installations, perfect for my online banking that needs IE6.0 or meaner. And, in my opinion, the challenge has been presented. Someone will make it work by hook or by crook... just like I always say, challenge a human and loose..... cause they will find a way to beat you.
Sig Hansen?
Because there are some things that just can't be done outside of 16 bit 80286 operating modes...
It looks like EMM setup and the wonderful world of segment registers are safe for a few more years.
Yaay. Tiny, small, medium, compact, large, and huge mode models forever. So, what will we call 64 bit addressing mode? Ginormous?
Yo, Microsoft. The 1980s called. They want their x86 addressing models back.
Didn't I just read this announcement? But read something about "initial release" and not for 32 bit! and not until Longoverduehorn? Let's all read something besides the dot! http://apcmag.com/apc/v3.nsf/0/E666E4A0A303D9AACA2 5712C008166C4/
Sig Hansen?
This is neither a "shocker" nor a "big deal" to me.
All I really want is a decent Virtual PC any-ways
With Virtual PC running even 70% of native speed I'd be very excited, plus everyone wins.
1) I get the speeds I want for the stuff I need to run in windows.
(sorry games aren't a high priority, and most games I like would run fine at 70% of the
current mac lineup with some extra ram)
2) Microsoft still gets a Windows sale from me, as well as a sale of Virtual PC.
I think this is the kicker, Microsoft knows that mac users who want windows will be paying for 2 products instead of one, and they want to milk that for what it's worth.
3) I don't have to worry about windows or windows apps monkeying around with my hard drive since it will be kept in it's only virtual hard drive file as VPC has been doing in the past. I don't want a Windows virus, malware, etc. or even non-destructive apps to have access to the stuff "I really care about".
5) I don't want to reboot just to do the tasks I need in windows anyway.
4) I buy a mac for the "mac package" not because it will or won't boot/run windows, so I'm fine with Windows being a "second rate citizen" by just running in emulation.
iEmulator is just a proprietary interface for QEMU, so it will get virtualization at the same time that QEMU does. Not that there's much point in buying it when you can just use Q for free. ;b
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
You must love looking like a moron with your conspiracy theories. All the posts around you show how Windows supports EFI, and you simply trust a /. summary.
...is why God invented "vmware".
You do realize that the only reason XP boots on these machines is because it includes a _legacy_ firmware as well?
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
I just couldn't get that working on XP Tablet Edition no way no how.
The news will be a shock for owners of Intel Macs who had hoped they would be able to dual-boot between Windows Vista and OS X.
Being able to dual-boot would have been nice. But anyone who bought a Mac Intel for that purpose was stupid.
While I will champion their right to be stupid, I won't shed too many tears for them.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I recommend MoneyDance in place of Quicken.
It runs on the Mac, Windows, Linux, Solaris, OS/2, and Unix and imports Quicken files cleanly. You can write your own extensions (using python) and it is easy enough to use that my (non-techy) significant other happily uses it. I migrated from a Quicken a few years ago - and am thrilled with the application, and the support.
It's worth at least considering before beating your head against the wall again dealing with another Quicken upgrade.
My only association with this company is as a happy customer. - Robert
Give you the same experience as OS X at a higher price, in six confusing variants, with less security, on a new and unproven codebase. From what I've seen, the new Office actually has some pretty cool improvements, but Vista is simply a crude rip-off. "Gadgets" are Widgets, and even the picture-viewer-thingy is a straight iPhoto copy. The list is of things copied is pretty long.
Mind you, it will be big leap for Windows XP users, especially live search. Live search ("Spotlight" on the Mac) changes your life. But for those of us with Macs, it's just Microsoft catching up to the status quo again. Briefly.
I found MacOSX inherently poor, for the software I can get on it.
Opensource software I've used on it, that use GTK, just totally mess up with UI widgets and act strange (clicks not being registered, double clicks etc.). For example I had this issue when trying to use The GIMP on MacOSX (I'm not buying photoshop to stick on a comptuer that isn't mine to begin with). The built in applications in the OS are terrible at supporting various standards, one example is where I've been using TELNET to communicate with a old proprietary online system I use for work. It's worked for years and years, never had a problem with it.
But here I use MacOSX's telnet, and the terminal doesn't support ANSI colors. So you have to use either these workarounds which add a lot of CPU overhead or forced to buy some rediculessly expensive software just to get ANSI.
I have some old propietory applications originally built for MacOS 10.1, 10.2 etc. and they absolutely don't work on 10.4. So I'm either forced to get new versions or find a alternative.
MacOSX doesn't really have many functioning programs, I'm pretty sure you can get a lot more actual functioning software under Linux, including older propietary software.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Interesting that you should speak of indexing files. I'm looking for a file indexer right now, google doesn't do the kinda file/folder name search that I like, windows does, but is SO freaking slow, and turning on the indexing service to speed it up is something that apparently can use up to like 30% of your hdd space. I'm not about to give up that much hdd space for an occasional search.
I found MacOSX inherently poor, for the software I can get on it.
Opensource software I've used on it, that use GTK, just totally mess [...] I'm not buying photoshop to stick on a comptuer that isn't mine to begin with [...] MacOSX's telnet, and the terminal doesn't support ANSI colors [...] forced to buy some rediculessly expensive software just to get ANSI
If you're not actually using any Mac OS applications, yes, I suppose you WILL find it poor. Though if you want familiar Linux xterm behaviour on OS X try running xterm (it comes with X) or whatever other X11-based terminal program you prefer to get the same telnet behaviour you get on Linux. Remember, there's no reason you need to run Terminal to use telnet.
You might actually find that using ssh and X forwarding and running your terminal program remotely works even better for you.
Anyway... have a look at places like Macupdate and Versiontracker to get a better idea of what's actually available for the average user
I should stop screwing around with my cars too much...
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
A. Apple has already shipped Mac OS X intel on P4 and PIII cores. The OS it's running on (Darwin) has run on AMD.
B. Apple made a lot of their own chips, and have used some very nice and Apple-unique boot firmware. They're now using EFI, and Intel chips where they were using custom ones.
C. BSD and Linux are absolutely around in the "boxed OS market". Apple made a run for it once before but because there was no pool of compatible machines so they had to OEM the OS really cheaply to get people to BUILD them, and ended up cutting into their own market. Today, they could sell generic OS X for more than the Mac-only version and still get sales... enough that they'd be turning more profit than they do selling an actual Mac... so they wouldn't be cannibalising their own sales but opening up the market of people who don't like the Mac hardware but do want the software.
There's a LOT of people like that. The Mac mini opened up one of the markets they were missing out on. A real desktop Mac... as opposed to an all-in-one or the crippled mini... would open up even more sales. But having too many products was one of the things that was hurting them before, and selling a generic version to fill in the edges of the potential market could actually reduce the complexity of the problem, not increase it.
And BSD hasn't "made a run at the PC market"... FreeBSD (which is what you're probably thinking of) is far more a server OS than a desktop one. Unless you want to count Mac OS, in which case it's the most successful desktop UNIX out there.
> If you're not actually using any Mac OS applications, yes, I suppose you WILL find it poor.
So Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Adobe whatever, Unreal Tournament, World of Warcraft etc. aren't Mac OS applications because they share common code with a app that was originally written for another platform, I see.
> Though if you want familiar Linux xterm behaviour on OS X try running xterm
Actually I would like standards behaviour, that even Microsoft Windows tends to support from time to time (hyperterminal/cmd's telnet in my case).
Hm, what left 'Mac OS' software, I guess iTunes, iLife, Quicktime etc... Although I can pretty much get much more than that from a KDE + koffice installation.
> You might actually find that using ssh and X forwarding and running your terminal program remotely works even better for you.
Don't get me started on the Xserver support.
> Anyway... have a look at places like Macupdate
Displaying 1-70 of 1230 and Versiontracker to get a better idea of what's actually available for the average user
Looking through Versiontracker, I can see quite a few opensource applications (which are even considered popular) that I did try, and have had some weird issues with, Audacity, mplayer, VLC. While not having such issues with them on other platforms.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
the Mac software market is at best flat.
That's an interesting way of looking at things, but the use of averages is misleading, as we all know Apple went through a horrible near-death "dip" several years ago. Take a look at the graph here: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/print/200506092 15358.html ... sales of Macs grew 40% last year, and the sales growth rate has been steadily increasing for a few years. Apple sold over a million computers in just the last quarter ... they will sell at least several million during 2006 and several million the year thereafter, so the Mac software market is anything but flat.
I don't think you're right - firstly, I'm pretty sure Microsoft bought out Virtual PC so they'd have a product to compete with VMWare in the server-space, and to a lesser extent on PC workstations - the Mac market would be nigh-insignificant. Secondly, I'm pretty sure that VirtualPC does full x86-emulation even on Windows - what you're talking about is 'virtualisation', and I believe VMWare has that particular technology entirely tied up in patents.
It is interesting that there are many technical comments that claim that Windows actually can boot from EFI, but I think you defined most clearly that main point here.
Microsoft won't ever officially support Windows on new Apple computers, period. We could find it quite funny, but Microsoft is _clearly_ afraid of already so big comparing between OS X and Vista, so they don't want any additional troubles. And it is not that they afraid from Apple fanboys, no, they are afraid that some CIO will buy new, shinny PowerBook, as he will be heard that those "expensive, but cool toys" could run operational system that he is found of (or he is used to) and then...bums!...he loads OS X. And suddenly he understands.
There is other operational systems than Windows! There are other systems! And heck, they can be even BETTER ones!
Yes, I made it a little bit dramatical, but Microsoft is afraid from Apple. Again. This time they should be, because people don't want simple blank, confused computers. And even if they own shares in Apple (which I personally think is worth now quite a money, but is not about money at all this time), they are not happy about what power Apple under Jobs have appeared to be.
Ohh, I didn't finish what people want. They want entertament systems. In my opinion, I would like to claim that PC market is already very saturated for this level and have reached maximum. Future belongs to consoles (for games), easy to use web systems (we have very useful webmail, productivity packages on the web, thank to small-to-big but new companies like Google), Nokia 770 and that new Microsoft thingy... Mobile, easy to use devices. Yes, laptops will stay, and will take place of PCs. MacMinis.
For me, Microsoft Windows is clearly at dinosaur level. It is meant to disappear. Question is - what will stay in his place. So far, Vista does very bad job to prove that it can be that one.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
... the grammar nazis have already won.
So Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Adobe whatever, Unreal Tournament, World of Warcraft etc. aren't Mac OS applications
The message I responded to said, flat out, that the poster didn't use Photoshop, and only listed open source applications. What am I expected to assume?
hyperterminal/cmd's telnet in my case
Hyperterminal is completely unrelated to the command line telnet, and the command line is unrelated to the command WINDOW, and the command WINDOW doesn't follow any standards at all.
(more stuff about open source apps)
Like I said, if you want Linux, get Linux, there's a reason more people use Macs as their desktop than use Linux even when Linux is free. But if you're not "most people" more power to you.
Because they use an Intel chipset, any RAM that works on PCs should also work on a new Mac. But even with PPCs, I've never had any problems.
Willy
> Hyperterminal is completely unrelated to the command line telnet
True, however it was a free alternative, that supported ANSI, which actually has a telnet connection method. This would solved my particular issue in that case I mentioned earlier, I thought I made that clear.
> and the command line is unrelated to the command WINDOW, and the command WINDOW doesn't follow any standards at all.
What are you talking about? I don't know of any 'WINDOW' command.
> Like I said, if you want Linux, get Linux, there's a reason more people use Macs as their desktop than use Linux even when Linux is free. But if you're not "most people" more power to you.
Theres a reason why people use Macs, but unless you've got some actual statistics from a not-so-questionable source, I'm not going to accept what you said in your first post as the reason.
I'm not debating the use of Linux.
In your first post, you mentioned " People don't buy commodity hardware to run operating systems, they run them to run apps, and there's only two platforms that have enough apps to cut it.".
Which you so kindly point out "Windows and Mac OS X."
I see two problems with your first post:
1) If MacOSX has enough apps that run on it, then Linux/BSD systems certainly go beyond it, since they have far more software availible, plus software that actually works.
2) *A lot* of the software availible for MacOSX seems to have issues (Opensource and propietary software, plus software compiled for older versions of MacOSX)
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Would it be so hard to fathom that Apple kept Red Box in development along with Rhapsody on Intel? And is it so hard to imagine that they might use that trusted computing stuff for something besides FairPlay? Just an idle thought...
Simple, as much as they support EFI, the only consumer machines that support it are macs.
If windows can run on an apple machine, that's still points against microsoft as it means it will result in more apple purchases. (potentially) which would be fueling one of their competitors, so in the meantime, they wont support it until their next OS, when the pc market will use EFI instead of the bios.
Also, since most pc boards dont support EFI, and if microsoft supported EFI, and all the above applies, it wouldnt bode well for the many OEM's that use them, as it would take money from their mouths as well.
Starve apple of potential profits. that's the key.
What are you talking about? I don't know of any 'WINDOW' command.
The console window that cmd.exe uses is not part of cmd.exe, and it's what you use when you run telnet from the command line, and it's a truly horrible and incompatible implementation of an ANSI terminal.
If MacOSX has enough apps that run on it, then Linux/BSD systems certainly go beyond it
Virtually all Linux/BSD open source software in the world runs under Mac OS X. It's a bit more work to get it to run, but you can have the same KDE or Gnome environment on Mac OS X, if that's what you want, that you have on Linux... but if that's what you want, Linux is a better choice.
On top of that it's got 20 years of commercial software. Mac OS had commercial GUI software for it before Windows, and in some areas it is far better quality. If you don't want to run commercial GUI software, then you're better off with something else, but most people do.
And I can, right now, on Mac OS X, run software for OS 9 and OS 8 and even some OS 7 software... with no difficulty. I have yet to find software written for OS X 10.2 (10.1 and earlier can be ignored, there really wasn't any significant amount of OS X software before Jaguar) that won't run on 10.3 or 10.4, or for which free upgrades aren't available.
Accept it or not, I can't help that. All I can do is state facts... I've been writing and working on open source software since the '70s, since long before Linux or even the GPL... and Mac OS X is the best possible platform if you need both commercial and open source software that I can find, and it's clearly a good enough platform for commercial software that it's kept selling... even at a significant premium... to people for whom open source is a closed book.
> will definitely be upgrading to a Macbook Pro in the near future
Apple loves people like you.
And your point is ???
Companies like people who believe in them whatever it is.
They drop money to them at any given time, company keeps going.
I've got an iBook, and there's no way I'm upgrading to this rev of the MacBook Pro. Have you felt the heat that comes off the bottom of those things? I checked out all the floor models in the local Apple Store, and every one of them was almost too hot to hold on to for more than a few seconds. The extra horsepower and promise of decent Windows perf under a new VPC in the future sound good, but that needs to be offset by the blistering of ones thighs.
Happy now?
My 1.67Ghz PowerBook G4 gets like that too after 10 mins of playing World of Warcraft. The cpu monitor shows it's going flat out, the fan is working constantly and the underside is too hot to sit directly on my knee. It doesn't surprise me that the extra horsepower of the Core Duo does the same.
Having said that, I'm hoping the Core Duo can handle WoW a bit better than my G4. It's fine most of the time, but seems to run out of gas when I'm in the proximity of lots of other players. In some of the busier parts of Stormwind with about 30+ other players on my screen, the frame rate drops off and play can get a little jerky.