Boot Camp Flaw Leaves Some Users Fuming

Karl Cocknozzle writes "Some users who chose to install Apple's recent beta-offering of Boot Camp without basic precautions (like a full backup) have found themselves unable to boot their Macs to OS X. In a discussion thread on Apple's technical support Web site, more than a dozen users reported that Boot Camp successfully partitioned their hard drive and allowed them to install a working version of Windows, but then would no longer allow them to switch back. The download-agreement page for Boot Camp contains the explicit warning that Boot Camp is still 'Beta' software, and would not be supported if problems arose. On the whole, it sounds like the number of affected users is quite small, but may reflect a common lack of knowledge of what a 'beta' release really is: Not ready for prime-time."

Comments

Please read before you install..

[kupekhaize]

For the rest of the people that did not bother reading the fine print, it is also recommended that you make a firmware restoration cd before you install the firmware update that makes boot camp work. Otherwise, you could leave your computer in an unbootable state.

At least with these guys they have the option of doing an erase and install to restore their software to the way it was before. Some people are not able to boot their computers any more without using the firmware restore CD.

Please, please, please, before trying this type of stuff, RTFM...

Partitioning

[Universal Indicator]

I just got my Intel iMac yesterday, and I installed Boot Camp and Windows on it. I am willing to be that what happened was these users didn't know what they were doing. When you use Boot Camp to install XP, Windows exposes the entire partition table when you are installing, which includes a couple of small system partitions. Chances are these users didn't understand that those partitions were necessary and they deleted them while they were installing Windows. It's not Windows' fault, it's ID10T error.

Beta is not always a clear term...

[MadAnalyst]

It's no wonder people are confused. Beta doesn't seem to mean "testing" any longer, it just means great product with a greek letter attached. Or at least that is what I have learned by surfing around at Google.

Re:And this make the news?

[slamb]

back when I took software engineering the definition I was given for beta was: has major bugs but will not lose user data.

It sounds from the article like it doesn't lose data. The complaining users are saying things like this:

"This isn't a minor glitch, but a major problem. Barring erasing my drive and reinstalling OS X, I am stuck with an Apple laptop that only runs Windows," wrote a user. "I don't want solutions that entail using the command line. I would like something from Apple saying that they recognize the problem and are working on it."

There's no data loss here. He can restore the system using the commandline but won't because he refuses to learn. He shouldn't be using beta software.

Your college definition of beta is oversimplified, anyway:

• Betas are released to a wider audience than alphas. The purpose is to find problems. If no one released a beta until they were absolutely confident there's no data loss, then no one would ever release a beta.
• Sadly, some vendors release production versions of software which does destroy entire partitions. I'm still mad about Windows destroying my Linux partition. There's a known bug here. In fact, my situation was different than described, and Windows still destroyed my Linux partition!