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Apple to Charge for Boot Camp?
An anonymous reader writes "According to a report MacScoop has obtained, Apple will charge current users of Mac OS X Tiger for the final version of Boot Camp that will be released at the same time as Mac OS X Leopard, this Spring."
I'll believe it when I see it.
"Everything worth innovating today will go to court tomorrow."
Ok I just read the article, "there is strong possibility that Apple's boot manager software, allowing to use Windows and Mac OS X in dual boot mode will be sold for $29 to Tiger users." How will they do this when we *already* have bootcamp?
My little Linux and tech blog
Although this is still speculation, I wouldn't be surprised given what happened with the 802.11n upgrade. But, I would be willing to bet that Boot Camp will be free as part of Leopard. Sort of how the 802.11n upgrade is "free" if you buy the n-compatible Airport.
BootCamp is currently a beta. Apple would charge for the release version.
Well. I guess most users will want to upgrade to Leopard (isn't that why some use the mac instead of XP/Vista/Ubuntu, the OS itself?). If you don't want to, 29$ looks like a fair price (and you can stick with the beta version afaik if you don't want to shell out money at all).
;-).
There are now great alternatives. Boot Camp, Parallels, CrossOverMac, Wine. Competition is great (even if cooperation is better
Animoog.org
Umm, yes? Because they have already, and it will be an integrated feature of OS X 10.5? And Boot Camp does in fact do what it claims to do, make it very easy to dual boot Windows and Mac OS? It seems like this is mainly something to give people who don't want to pay the full amount to upgrade to Leopard the ability to at least buy the Boot Camp functionality if that's all they care about.
Damn accountants.
Sarbanes-Oaxley compliance. Again. FWIW, I have Boot Camp on this very machine. It's worth an addtional 30 bills, if for no other reason than it opens up the world of Windows gaming to me yet again. If some of the Wine-based alternatives for OS X pan out, then I'll drop Boot Camp. Until then...
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Its because they are selling the final version. This no different than any other public beta. No one expects Microsoft to offer the final version of Vista for free because there was a free public beta.
Nothing to see here.
$diff terrorists hippies
$
$rm -rf *terrorists *hippies
This is nothing new from Apple. I believe when iChat AV came out with Panther (10.3), users of Jaguar (10.2) could upgrade to it for $29. Apple wants you to buy the latest OS from them, but for certain things (iChat, now maybe BootCamp) you can purchase them separately for a previous OS.
Apple stated all along the Boot Camp would ship with Mac OS X 10.5 (aka you buy 10.5 you also get Boot Camp). So this left open the question if you would be able to purchase Boot Camp (the final version) for 10.4 or not. This rumors implies that 10.4 users will have the ability to use the release version of Boot Camp... which is a good thing. It was never really likely that Boot Camp would be free for 10.4 users.
What everyone has right now is a time limited beta, I think, so it will eventually expire. I'm not quite sure how that will work though (i.e. if it will prevent you from accessing the other partition, or just not let you create a new bootable partition, etc.).
iChat AV was an integrated part of Panther, but Jaguar users could upgrade iChat to iChat AV for $29, since it was sold separately.
I'm not sure I understand the logic. You have Tiger right now, and you are unhappy that they will be charging (or at least possibly charging) for Boot Camp for Tiger, and that is the reason you will not upgrade to 10.5. But 10.5 will have Boot Camp included as part of its featureset, so it would not cost any more or less than what it would if you had been planning on upgrading to 10.5 anyway. So I'm not sure I understand why charging for Boot Camp for Tiger affects your decision to upgrade to 10.5?
We already know that BootCamp will be part of Leopard. This article is about Apple allowing Tiger users to buy the Leopard version of BootCamp (as opposed to the betas that have been released thus far) for $30.
This space intentionally left blank.
Just to make something clear that is not so clear in the summary: Boot Camp is included with Leopard, it is free with Leopard. It is BETA on Tiger, and if you wish to use the supported final Boot Camp on Tiger after Leopard is released, you will have to pay.
This is an inducement to upgrade. If they let you just keep BootCamp for free, without wrapping it up in something else you paid for, then the SOX fairy would surely turn them into a pumpkin.
I hope every lobbyist is working overtime to fix this damn GAAP rule. It makes sense on paper, but the implementation is "Retarded".
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Sub-point release?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I suppose when you put it like that then the $29 charge to Tiger users is just a sop to Panther users ('look you get a "free" version of bootcamp). Although I understand that Apple wants to keep everyone up to date, an easier solution would be a yearly $50 service charge to keep with the updates and then we can forget the version numbers.
But as I said I do not care too much as the main use of OS X is firmware updates, I boot straight into Linux normally.
My little Linux and tech blog
I assume it will try to stop you setting up a new partition, because presumably the boot loader has no idea what the date is.
My little Linux and tech blog
$50/year for updates when you have to (and will) shell out $130 for your update box?
Dude, Apple's in for they money, why would they offer you a service that would yield them $80 less per year per Mac user?
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Apple doesn't care, full Bootcamp will be part of Leopard (for "free"), this is just a boon to the few users who don't want to get Leopard but want a non-beta bootcamp in the end.
They already did it with iChat AV (OSX 10.3 included iChat AV, you had to pay $29 to get it on 10.2) and with the 802.11n update (will be available with the 802.11n Airport, should be included in Leopard, $29 if you stick to Tiger without getting the 802.11n Airport Extreme)
Most people will buy Leopard anyway.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Inconsequential. Dual booting is *so* 2005.
Nobody even turns off their macs anymore, much less boots into a different OS.
Apple is the king of "nickel and dime"ing the user for all it's worth.
Right, because the millions of dollars a month they spend on developing OSX should be coming out of the kindness of their hearts.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Sorry, but I'm not paying a cent for Bootcamp til they make it work 100%. For a bunch of guys that brag about how much better their product is than Windows, they certainly code their Windows-based stuff poorly. Itunes on Windows uses more juice than nearly every other application I run.
Back to Bootcamp... it took almost a solid year for them to release a build of the Windows drivers that actually made use of all of the system's hardware... until then, the two-finger trackpad drag didn't work (and it's still sub-par to the responsiveness of the OSX drivers)... opening the onboard camera blew the OS up...
Even now, running the latest code, when you bring Windows back from hibernate on a Macbook, the trackpad doesn't work at all and a reboot is required to bring it back. It's been tolerable because it's a beta, but put a price tag on it and we have a different situation. They're going to have to put a lot more effort into making a quality product if they want us to shell out for it.
---
"how can the same street intersect with itself? i must be at the nexus of the universe!" - cosmo kramer
Excuse my ignorance to all things Mac, but what is the difference between Boot Camp and GRUB/LILO? Can't GRUB/LILO boot a Mac OS?
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
It's probably not a driver thing, it's most likely an EFI thing. Booting is done differently since the current line of Apple hardware uses EFI instead of BIOS, so GRUB (etc) probably isn't compatible. That, and the live partitioning without destroying data that's currently on the drive, which I've never seen before (though I haven't dabbled in the Linuxes in a while).
Mind you, I still think it's a lame cash grab, but I figure that Leopard will include the full version at no extra cost so it won't affect future switchers anyways. When I tested out the current beta version, it worked fine, other than the fact that Parallels was much more useful and it meant having a Windows installation on my MBP. In either case, I needed the hard drive space back. I wonder if they'll put this down to the S-O Act too...
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Check out(http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac) Crossover for OSX. Just a commercial version of WINE, but for the $40-60 I can run office 2k without having to put a Win32 OS on the machine. It feels like it launches a hidden copy of the OS for each application under the covers, so I stay in OSX with my win32 apps running along side the Mac ones. Not a dual OS boot like boot camp, not a vmware OS in a OS like parallels. Just another option. I suspect you could do WINE for free, but the helper stuff was well worth the money, IMHO.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
This is the same company that charges you $10 for the ability to use their media player to play videos at full screen, for crying out loud.
If all you want from QuickTime is full screen, go here. I'm not sure where you're getting $10 from, because QuickTime Pro is $30, and that gets you a lot more than just the ability to play movies full screen.
They charge $130 for incremental OS updates every 12-18 months, which is basically a subscription service.
Wrong. Truly spoken like somebody who doesn't actually know what they're talking about! Don't be fooled by what looks like a change in the minor version number; what you think are "incremental" updates always have a large amount of new features -- it's closer to uprading from Windows 2000 to Windows XP than applying a service pack. Besides, if you don't want the new features, it's not like the older versions of OS X stop working, and they still provide security updates for them.
They're charging $2 to enable the 802.11n hardware that they will ship.
For legal reasons. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act really is that stupid.
Apple's terminology currently for OSs goes, Complete change, major update, minor update. Thus Apples .# is equal to Microsofts name changes, and Apples .#.# is equal to their Service packs.
I honestly dont see why it confuses you Windows people, its not like it takes a rocket scientist to figure that out.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Since new OSX releases aren't annual, $50/year would be more revenue, more regularly, for Apple.
Umm... People using Panther on their Mac do not have a "Boot Camp"-compatible Mac
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
Sweet Jesus, they never described BootCamp as anything but a beta technology from their upcoming major OS release. The fact that Tiger users even have the option at any price to continue using it once Leopard is released is more than they ever stated they would do and more than any Tiger user had reason to hope for. I think everyone needs to stop their goddamned whining about it. I fully expected to have to upgrade to use it. I don't know why anyone wouldn't have had that assumption.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
OS updates every 12-18 months
... in 2001 Mac OS X was a relatively new operating system under going rapid concurrent team development and now that it has matured Apple has stated customers should expect major releases every couple of years as the norm.
10.4 -> 10.5 - ~24 months
10.3 -> 10.4 - ~18 months
10.2 -> 10.3 - ~14 months
10.1 -> 10.2 - ~11 months
Notice a trend?
Apple made major releases Mac OS X available relatively often to get newly implemented features out to end customers and developers sooner (a good thing)
Apple will support the current version of Mac OS X and one prior. So in reality customers concerned about the relatively small upgrade fee of $129 (family pack is even a better deal) could skip every other release and hence only purchase an update every 4 years or so (that falls in the Window release time frame and of course the 129 is less then what MS charges). On the time scales of 4 years you also start to get into purchasing new hardware mindset which would get you the latest version of Mac OS X for free.
Why would Apple charge for something that is basically akin to GRUB? Sure, they offer you native drivers for their hardware ... *rolls eyes*
Ok let me know when you have it working and will support customers using it? Surely something less expensive then $29 would win the market
They're working on that.
That, and the live partitioning without destroying data that's currently on the drive, which I've never seen before (though I haven't dabbled in the Linuxes in a while).FIPS shortens FAT32 partitions. Linux had it in 1999.
Well, actually a lot of things. Boot camp isn't simply a bootloader, it is a packaged solution. Upon first running bootcamp, it has you do a destructionless partition on your HD in order to hold windows (if you don't already have a windows part). Then it burns a cd with all the drivers you will need for your mac hardware once windows is installed and looking for drivers for these things. Now yes, it also doeds include a bootloader, but it is designed to be a more "plug and play" solution than having to find and download the individual programs that would do these things, and configure them properly. Just more of a "mac-like" experience.
As far as I know Bootcamp is no big deal: .pax archive but I am not sure -anyway it is buried somewhere in the installer)
1) It provides a GUI (not very good and limited, it does not support linux) for resizing the patritions. The actual job is done by DiskUtil, which can be used without installing BootCamp.
2) It contains a disk image with Apple Win32 drivers (you can extract the image from the BootCamp installer - just search in the package and you'll find the image somewhere - i remember waguely it is in a
You dont need BootCamp to instal windows and/or linux. You need a Mac with a firmware which supports BIOS emulation; for windows you also need the Apple win32 drivers.
Boot canmp is an irritating application, You cannot use it if you want to configure a triple boot (OSX/Linux/Windows)- It WOULD NOT LET YOU CREATE a LINUX PARTITION.
Another irritating feature. Apple firmware mistakenly identifies any non-Apple operating system as 'Windows'; for Apple 'Linux' is the same as 'Windows'. That is an offense for each and every Linux user all over the world (Bad Apple, Bad!). Fortunately this can be easily corrected by using a third party bootloader (rEFIt).
For installing Linux and Windows on a Mac you need a Mac with a Bios emulation (if it does not have it just upgrade the firmware). For windows you also need Apple Win32 drivers.
1) Make Win and Linux partition at the command line with DiskUtil.
2) Install Win and Linux.
3) Install the rEFIt bootloader. I would suggest to install it even if you do not use linux, it is much better than Apple's bootloader.
Sure, they offer you native drivers for their hardware, but what manufacturer of computer equipment WOULDN'T offer a Microsoft Windows XP driver for their hardware?
Apple.
As is demonstrated by the fact they used PowerPC chips for years, with nary a thought for people wanting to boot windows.
Just my $0.02
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
Boot Camp actually prepares a Windows disc for you including drivers for Apple's hardware. It also partitions the disk. It's basically an all-in-two solution for adding Windows to your Mac (it's all-in-two because you still need a Windows CD, which you still need if you repartition manually). I don't know if the Windows drivers are available any other way.
Boot Camp is a feature of Leopard, and a for-pay add-on for Tiger. If Apple isn't in Enterprise now then selling Boot Camp for their old OS isn't going to hurt their play.
Intel Macs use EFI instead of the legacy BIOS, so the versions of GRUB and/or LILO shipping with any current Linux distros do not work. GRUB appears to have partial EFI support working on the Mac Mini and LILO has the elilo fork, but at this point neither have made it in to mainstream distros.
What Boot Camp does is it provides BIOS emulation so NTLDR, GRUB, and LILO then work unmodified after the Boot Camp loader has already run. The Boot Camp assistant also provides a non-destructive GUI partitioning tool and allows the user to burn a CD containing all the drivers they'll need for Windows XP on their Mac.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
Charge for undocumented, unsupported software? Who do they think they are, Microsoft?
But really, I see this as a good thing. If they are going to release it as a full retail release with documentation and actual support, then by all means put a price tag on it. It will only take one half hour phone call to support to burn through the $30 retail price, and in the scope of things the price vs additional functionality you will get from a Mac is a mind bending proposition.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Apple confirmed the 802.11n fee at being $1.99.
Ubuntu's installer can resize NTFS and FAT partitions nondestructively, though don't try it on a Vista system as the version of NTFSResize that Ubuntu ships with renders Windows unbootable (though it can be fixed using a newer version of NTFSResize, and 7.04 will almost certainly work fine).
Vista's disk management can resize NTFS partitions as well, including the boot partition - without restarting the computer.
Apple's said from the start it would be bundled with Leopard, and it still is. And as usual, people still on Tiger—over two years old at this point—can upgrade to it at a heavily discount (compared to the full price of Leopard).
What's the fuss about? What's wrong with you Apple-hating malcontents?
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
About 4 months ago I was in the market for a new PC (my Sony PCV-MXS10 with its Pentium 4 was getting long in the tooth) and the Mac Mini came out on top weighing price/ performance/aesthetics so I looked at a *lot* of information about Boot Camp before buying a Mac to run XP.
... and at a lower price. So I get to give serious thought as to whether to just pay the $29 and skip the OS X version upgrade (I very well might since nothing in 10.5 looks worth upgrading for someone who spends most of his time in XP).
Everything I saw made it *quite* clear that Boot Camp is currently a beta product whose license has an expiration date (although it's been unclear whether that will ever be enforced in the software it is in the licensing terms) and that the only way to get a copy with a non-expiring license would be to eventually buy an upgrade to OS X 10.5.
I decided that the last 4 months of use I've gotten plus use over the next several months before 10.5 is expected to be released would be well worth the anticipated $129 to eventually get to a supported configuration and bought back then. This announcement means I now have an option they'd previously made clear wouldn't be offered
As someone who is smack in the target set of folks who might buy Boot Camp for 10.4 and who bought a Mac solely because Boot Camp was promised to be coming, I'm here to say this is the first suggestion that a permanently-licensed Boot Camp for 10.4 would be available at all. Which is why I will also seriously question the integrity of Apple's execs if they also try to blame GAAP for attaching a fee to it (as opposed to simply claiming "we think this function is worth $29").
It shouldn't be. Apple did mention when they released BootCamp that the final version may have a charge. They also mentioned that there was a possibility that they would never release a final version. BootCamp beta was an experiment, obviously they got good results; and I think that has a lot to do with Parallels Desktop.
Both Apple and Parallels efforts to allow both products to co-exist and even work together in some fashion is what put the steam back into Apple's BootCamp efforts. Without it, for a brief period of time, it looked like Mac OS X Leopard would get some BootCamp integration but BootCamp as a separate project/product was dead. Parallels software cost $80 ($79.99), so I think $29 is a pretty good price--assuming that that would be the final price. It's all just rumors now.
Personally, I'll be recommending the Leopard upgrade for any of my clients that want both BootCamp and Parallels running. But, it's nice to know for those who Leopard isn't a strong possibility that BootCamp would officially become an Apple Support product. Something it isn't right now.
Where else can you find a driver for the iSight?
You can in fact do WINE for free, it's been supported on OS X since sometime in the 0.9.2x versions. However, you are correct that you don't get any of the helper stuff (you pretty much have to figure out how to launch your app using command-line WINE), and compatibility isn't as good as CrossOver -- there's no Direct3D support at all, as far as I can see. Of course, you don't get the same user support that Codeweavers gives you either. Plus you have to compile it yourself (meaning you need the dev tools installed), since there's no installer package yet. I just have it installed for the PokerStars client, but for someone who needed more extensive support or was running a mission-critical app, Crossover Mac is probably well worth it.
Do you know what the version number is of Windows XP? It's Windows NT 5.1. Care to guess what the version number was of Windows 2000? Windows NT 5.0.
The complaint of charging extra to enable included hardware seems like a legitimate one to me.
It's been said, but.
I need Windows for my job, and I refuse to reboot my macbook twice a day into XP and back. I had tried Parallels but was entirely unsatisfied with its performance until I upgraded to 1.25 gigs of RAM. Sweet Jeebus is it cool. Booting XP in a window takes about fifteen seconds from launch to login, automatically recognizes my hardware setup and network connection and does exactly what I need it to while staying the hell out of my way.
BootCamp looks neat, I guess, but really - who the hell restarts their computers anymore?
Spoken like someone who gets their news from Slashdot, zealously uses and advocates Linux, and doesn't own a Mac.
Their OS releases are not 'updates', they bring significant new functionality while evolving an already great code base. They only APPEAR to be 'incremental' because of their versioning scheme, but each release packs in more upgrade than any corresponding major version upgrade of windows.
And you have to also bear in mind that Apple's target demographic doesn't give a crap about a few bucks here and there. They're not after YOU, they're not trying to capture the low end $500 dell market, or the "build your own and run Linux" market, nor are they trying to capture the "$3000 gaming rig j00 g0t pwned" market.
They're after the upper middle demographic who has money to burn and wants quality at any price. People who aren't going to feel nickeled and dimed over 30 bucks. People who are far more interested in getting reliable quality stuff than saving a few bucks.
I would not call myself a fanboy, I just really like my Mac. (But I'm not trying to have sex with it, like this guy.) It's my "I'm home from work, not the network admin anymore today, and just not going to have a fight with my computer tonight" machine. I bought it because I wanted something less aggravating than windows, at any price. This is exactly the same reason why I sleep on a Tempurpedic and drive a BMW... quality and reliability are more important to me than paying a little more.
People like me are Apple's target demographic, and we just don't think they're being at all unreasonable about their pricing for the quality of product that they put out. Especially compared to all the other total shit hardware and software out there.
Exactly. Which is why they will be able to buy the Tiger version for $29. It's quite simple, try to follow.
One should never throw the letter Q into a privet bush.
it's not reading the date that's hard, it's verifying that the date given is true, and not user-set.
How can you prove this is related to Sarbanes-Oxley? Or that they're not just invoking the specter of SOX to generate more $$$? It seems to me if they really wanted to thumb their nose at the new rules, they'd be charging $0.01 to let everyone know how silly it all is. Sure would net a C|Net article, at the least.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
"This is great. It will encourage more people to move to Leopard at a faster rate.
More revenue for Apple. More profits for Apple. More Macs for us to buy. Yea!"
This is a comment on the site. Most illuminating, people who do not know the difference between their own interests and that of other people.
Hardly know where to begin....
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That, and the live partitioning without destroying data that's currently on the drive, which I've never seen before (though I haven't dabbled in the Linuxes in a while).
# FIPS
# GNU Parted
# Partition Magic (bought out by Symantec and discontinued)
# Paragon Partition Manager
# Acronis Disk Director Suite
Some of these have been out for quite a long time.
Is $29 more or less than buying a PC to test your application on?
Is $29 more or less than buying a new desk to hold your new computer?
Is $29 more or less than your hourly rate?
There is no extra speed merely from switching from 32 to 64 bits, in general. However, on the AMD64 (aka EM64T in Intel-speak) architecture in particular, switching to the native mode of the processor (which happens to be 64-bit) also enables a bunch of extra registers -- and that does speed things up.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
And surely 30 bucks is better than 500 or 600 for a whole other computer.
Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.
I think it's actually a good thing that they're making bootcamp available, even if they are charging for it. It's included with Leopard, and it would've been nice if Apple made some of Tiger's features available to Panther users and Panther features available to Jaguar users. Especially the updated Mail.app, exposé, safari, iChat or the dashboard (although I'm so much a fan of the latter product).
think of it like a free preview of an upcoming feature in a future version of the OS. It would be the same way if they made a beta of TimeMachine or Spaces (that's the name of the VirtualDesktop feature, right?) available, and said that Tiger users could pay a small fee to be able to use the release version.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
While Apple does put out great products.. please dont think you are giving your money to the good guys. They are every bit as altruistic as Microsoft.
You completely missed my point. I'm NOT buying their products because "I want to give my money to the good guys" or any such philosophical or idealistic bullshit.
I buy their products because at the end of the day, they just work. It's not just a marketing slogan. I can sit and relax on my couch and not fight with my computer.
That's all it is. I don't care about their philosophy, or revolutionary upgrades. I just want a computer that does what I want, when I want, without irritating me.
All I care about is the quality. And I'm willing to pay for it. And people like me are Apple's target demographic. That was my point.
A street-corner hooker is significantly cheaper than a high-class escort.
$2B OR NOT $2B = $FF
Why not just get Office for OSX? Granted, it doesn't have Outlook (it has Entourage instead), but that's not necessarily a bad thing...
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Except IE is software that's available to download freely whether or not you bought anything from MS or not, which is quite different in terms of the Sarbanes-Oxley law and 802.11n where you already bought hardware previously that is now receiving new functionality not previously advertised.
Errm... no. Did you miss the "this is an add-on to Microsoft Windows XP, you have no right to use it except on a properly licensed copy of XP" clause in the license? Not to mention the use of WGA to stop anyone from downloading and installing it on anything but a validated copy of XP...
Hmm. Well, I'm not sure what benefits, if any, bootcamp (free or at $30) offers over Parallels at $60; while I am quite certain of a very long (and quite relevant to me) list of advantages Parallels has over bootcamp.
So I guess this is about as much news as changes to Safari — because I don't use that either. Once I tried Omniweb, I basically never had a reason to go back. It kicks Safari's butt right off the face of the planet, particularly in the area of tab features and controlling how individual web sites are allowed to act.
I sure wish Apple would concentrate on fixing the basics instead of duplicating functionality available in far more sophisticated forms from third parties; for instance, the Terminal's character addressing modes haven't been working 100% for the last three years, the system-wide implementation of function keys is a disaster, the single button on laptops is insufficient to the task of dealing with the full range of two button operations any windows laptop can pull off (and yes, I know all about the two finger emulation... try a right button drag and let me know how that works out for you) and why, on a laptop wider than my PC's keyboard, can't Apple be bothered to put a numeric pad? And why on a dual core, high speed laptop, running what is nominally supposed to be a modern multitasking OS, do I *ever* see that *&^&$^$ beachball when doing I/O? And why can't I refresh a network share?
I'm a huge Apple fan, really I am, but it just seems to me that they could do better - and bootcamp doesn't appear to be worth the time they are spending on it. Maybe I'm missing something. Why - anyone - is bootcamp better than Parallels? I'm booting linux, win98, winxp all in windows on my laptop using Parallels. Concurrently. They run great. What would using bootcamp gain me? I mean, besides losing the incredible convenience of OSX running alongside those other OS's, and vice-versa?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Why is it that the Mac cultists always support ANYTHING Jobs and Co. do, but down on MS. I mean, if MS were to do this, people would be up in arms! "Charging for something we have free already? Come on! This should be FREE to all users! They just want more money!" Apple's basically pulling an MS and Mac people are going "Sure, it costs a little more, but what doesn't? :)"
Just pointing out the massive hypocrisy here, and I'll probably get modded down for it by rabid fanboys, but I can't ignore the massive hypocrisy here.
But both will give you syphilis if you don't wear a condom...
Hmm, mod me insightful if you find a deep meaningful analogy to the OS debate, hidden in the above. I personally could not, but of course I posted anyway.
I have no idea what kinds of features Apple's recent upgrades offer, but I have a hard time believing that they are worth $150 a pop. Heck, after 5 updates to OSX, you've shelled out around $750, nearly five times the cost of upgrading XP to Vista Home Premium (what most home users will go for).
I was unaware that 3*$129=$750.
Linux had it in 1999? Try 1992. We were resizing partitions so we could install Linux 0.14 (there were no distros, you basically did a 'cp -a' of the root disk to the hard disk, and using a hex editor, changed the boot device in the kernel to the hard disk).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
You think thats early? Back in '89 I was resizing partitions by manually dragging electrons across the surface of the disk with a tunneling electron scanning microscope and a really small pair of tweezers.
ant.
In this case he is talking about resizing an HFS+ disk so that you can create a NTFS partition for Windows. I ran into trouble with bootcamp's resizer and had to use GNU Parted to shrink my Mac's disk. GNU Parted supports shrinking just about every file system, although it can't enlarge HFS partitions while bootcamp's resizer can.