Dual Boot Windows XP on Mac: Apple's Boot Camp

[dduardo]

Apple now supports dual booting on their new Intel Macs.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/

 

[Integral]

But... Why?

 

[dduardo]

I actually think this is a good business move.

1) People who buy Macs are still buying OSX.
2) More people with Apple hardware are more likely to buy more Apple hardware.

 

[exequor]

Smart move Apple. Yea, I think that this will be good for Apple because now that people have the ability to run windows on Apple hardware, I personally would be less reluctant to purchase something from apple. It may seem like this would kill the mac os but it should boost the hardware department. Aren't they primarily hardware?

 

[Curious3141]

How "cleanly" (error free and without quirks) does ported WinXp run on a dual booting Mac-intel ?

I mean, even desktop linux has more than its fair share or problems and weirdness running native Linux apps, let alone something like using Wine to run Windows apps. Is WinXP on a Mac smoother ?

 

[dduardo]

Curious3141, there was no porting/emulating done. All apple did was modify it's bootloader to trick windows into thinking it was booting from BIOS instead of EFI. From there you just stick your stock windows xp cd in the drive and install like you normally do. Windows XP and OSX run on separate partitions and you choose which one you want to boot at startup. They are completely isolated from one another.

 

[franznietzsche]

How "cleanly" (error free and without quirks) does ported WinXp run on a dual booting Mac-intel ?

I mean, even desktop linux has more than its fair share or problems and weirdness running native Linux apps, let alone something like using Wine to run Windows apps. Is WinXP on a Mac smoother ?

Its not ported, its dual booting. Windows already runs on that processor natively, it just needed drivers for the rest of the hardware.

 

[Curious3141]

Ah, I see, so as long as one can get a "normal" Win driver for each piece of hardware, it runs perfectly ? That's cool.

 

[heartless]

I think apple are true idiots looking for money and not caring about mac users. Apple OSs are only protected from viruses because powerpcs are expensive and not many people know asm for OSX, but now, when hardware becomes cheaper - intel, people will start to write real case malware for macs too, because there's many assembly-coders or virus writers, and learning asm syntax of another os is a matter of weeks, I think OSX should stay off on apples and don't bother with intel.

Thanks,

 

[dduardo]

hearless, I disagree. The majority (99.9999%) of exploits come from flaws within system libraries/applications. The issue isn't hardware architecture, but the quality of the software.

 

[dduardo]

It looks like investors are happy about the move. The stock went up 10% yesterday.

 

[Curious3141]

dduardo, could you advise on whether Vista will also be able to run on Macs ? Thanks.

Also, are Mac intels 32 or 64 bits ?

 

[dduardo]

You probably won't get the full Vista Aero GUI on the mac mini, but it might be possible on the iMac or Power Mac. I'm sure it will run, but I don't know how much of the experience you'll get.

The intel core duo is a dual core 32 bit processor.

 

[Curious3141]

You probably won't get the full Vista Aero GUI on the mac mini, but it might be possible on the iMac or Power Mac. I'm sure it will run, but I don't know how much of the experience you'll get.

The intel core duo is a dual core 32 bit processor.

Supposedly, the 32 bit procs will only be able to run Vista without Aero or some lesser version of it.

 

[Anttech]

It looks like investors are happy about the move. The stock went up 10% yesterday.

So did intels and M$ but not by as much..

I think its a very savy business move, they will catch a lot of people with this stratagy...

Job's is a good buisnessman, this was the whole idea behind moving to intel, IMHO, it had zip to do with IBM not making good enough procs. It seems to fit in with the whole "consoladation" the IT (and telecoms) industries are going through... Although I don't whole heartly aggree with this ideal, less consumer choice is bad...

 

[dduardo]

Supposedly, the 32 bit procs will only be able to run Vista without Aero or some lesser version of it.

32bit will be fine. You just need a high end graphics card.

 

[Curious3141]

^Ah, thanks.

 

[blaire576]

yeah

yeah actuall i have my mac os X running smoothly on my P4 processor