Hell's temperature just hit 32 degrees.

[raydeen]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060405/ap_on_hi_te/apple_software_1

Apple is releasing software that will allow XP to boot and load on the new Intel Macs. And of course they release it just days after I give up on them and ordered a new Dell laptop. I'm not too miffed though as I'm getting just about the same specs as the Macbook Pro for around $1100.

But there ya have it. Good news for the diehard Mac'ers. Now they can play something other than WoW and Shadowbane.

[Sky]

Suhweet. It was only a matter of time anyway, but this is huge for my workplace, which uses macs but needs VPC to run our catalog software because our lazy system people won't upgrade to the 2004 version.

And I should be getting an intel mini, imac, and macbook in sometime next week. Shweettitties. I wish the macbook were for me, I'll have to settle for my intel mini + dell 2005fpw. That imac will have a higher end ati card w/256MB....

Downloading now, wish I had them here today! This is cool. Amazing.

[raydeen]

I really thought my next machine would be a Mac, but my wife's cousin got a great deal from Dell so he, his brother and myself went in on it. 40% off an Inspiron e1505, 2Ghz Core Duo, 256 meg ATI x1400 mobile chip, free Gig of ram, blah blah blah. Too good a deal to pass up and no way in hell Apple could match that for the price. Now I just have to wait for Apple to get even smarter and start selling OS X for non-Macs. I'd buy it and duel boot.

Now, the wait begins for delivery and then the burning question: will this puppy run Oblivion....DUM DUM DUUUUUUMMMMMMM!

It better 'cause nothing I have right now would even be able to look the game box square in the eye and live.

[Soukyan]

While I like the idea, I just don't have the desire to switch from OS X on my Mac. Perhaps once I have several more Mac computers I'll do it, but until then, it's just not necessary. In addition, there are a lot of applications that are only made for OS X that I use. Dual-boot is nice, but not when you have to reboot to use an application and then reboot again to go back to another. I honestly see this as more useful for those with multiple Mac boxes. And as far as organizations go, it would still be more economically feasible for them to buy cheaper Dell computers than it would be to buy Mac and then go through the bother of setting them up with XP.

I like that they are doing this and it will be nice in the long term, but there are a couple issues. It has the potential to hurt OS X sales (although I doubt that it will - it'll more likely cause more rampant piracy of Windows XP). Second, it could make developers less likely to make their software cross-platform, which could be annoying. There are several apps that I would like to see ported from Windows to Mac OS and vice versa, but now those developers can just point at Boot Camp and shrug their shoulders. I hope this won't happen, but it has the potential to delay such cross-platform development.

In any case, very nifty program and kudos to Apple for releasing it. I wonder how much it will cost once it is out of beta...

[HaemishM]

What is it about the Apple Hardware that would make it so much better (and thus justify the added expense) than just buying an AMD or Intel PC for about half as much? I thought the whole benefit of Macs (and thus the "justified" added expense) was that the OS made computers so much easier. This seems like a waste of money for anyone but zealots.

[Viin]

Like mentioned above, if you can dual boot into XP then that's not bad at all. While OS X is great for some things, other things (like games) typically run on XP instead.

I doubt anyone will run XP exclusively - if they are, then they are retards.

[Morfiend]

I think this is a really smart step for Apple. Their computers ARE good, even though they are way over priced. But the fact you could now choose your operating system and still use a apple computer cant hurt them. also, never underestimate peoples want to buy some thing "pretty".

[raydeen]

I think the only real area where the hardware is better is the casing. We started an Apple laptop initiative this year and the iBooks are pretty tough lil' bastards. We had one extreme case where one of the students thought it would be a good idea to use her iBook as a jukebox while she was driving. She had a head-on collision (how much you wanna bet she was changing playlists at the time) which of course threw the iBook forward into the dash of the car. The screen was absolutely destroyed (hanging on by 2 thin wires) but the computer still worked. I was able to hook it up to an external monitor and sync her files up to the main server before giving her a loaner. I've seen kids drop them, knock them off desks, and generally abuse the shit out of them and they keep on tickin'. Only once have I seen a screen go when one hit the floor, but it was a concrete floor so I'm not real surprised. All in all, we've had very few damaged units here at the school. Now the inner workings are another story. We've had a number of video cards, power supplies and motherboards go bad. No great numbers, but enough to show that Apple is not infallible with the innards of the unit. And the OS is no great shakes either. It can become corrupted just like Windows can. I've already had to image mine once because it locked me out of my account. Couldn't even gain access through the root account. And for a while, it wouldn't display a list of accounts when booting up. I had to go in through a guest account and then do a 'fast user switch' in order to get to mine. Macs are as goofy as PCs.

[Lt.Dan]

I'm no tech so could someone explain the Boot Camp software.  Is this an install app or does it do some kind of low level stuff to enable XP to run on an intel powered apple?

[Lantyssa]

I have not read the details, so someone correct me if this is wrong, but it sounds like a boot loader from what I have heard.

[raydeen]

Boot loader and driver package. You have to have a retail XP SP2 disc for it to work.

Now I'm forced to wonder. Did Apple plan this and only released it once the cat was out of the bag in the hacker world, or did they wait for others to do all the leg work and then basically cobbled togethor a similar solution with official drivers and such?

Now everyone has been saying that this will kill OS X app and game development. Maybe it will. I think what Apple needs to really do is liscence the OS to the rest of us. If they would allow anyone to install OS X on any Intel box, they'd get a much bigger audience than being able to install XP on a Mac. Mac is not defined by the box as has now been proven. It's defined by the OS. And I really don't see the fuss about 'Oh, then we'd have to support all these different hardware and software combos...' Knoppix, Ubuntu, and other Linux distros handle all the myriad PC configs very nicely, some to the point of almost being magic. I was blown away when the Knoppix Live DVD picked up my Netgear wireless card and shot me right on the school wireless network without any configuration or driver installation. That's a fucking OS. No fuss, no muss and it works with no real setup from the user. and if it crashes or corrupts...reboot. All your work should be safe on your thumbdrive, which also was picked up without any prompting. I'd love to run an IT program like that. But then I'd have nothing to do except scrape bubblegum out of the USB ports.  :-D

[Lanei]

It's not so much that the hardware in Macs was ever qualitatively better as they were selling the lack of choice in component sources as a feature.  It did and does reduce a lot of the driver conflict bullshit that we've been putting up with forever on PCs, and thats a plus, but at the cost of, well, cost.. which is passed on as price to the consumer.  The major justification for the price has always been, that It Just Works.  Especially in the days pre-PCI and PnP, when us PC users were having to fuck with IRQ and DMA settings, resetting jumpers, and trying to find the version of the driver for a cheap-knockoff device that didn't make the OS have a conniption.

This won't necessarily hurt OSX sales, as you still have to buy OSX with your mactel, and the costs or sales of OSX 'upgrades' likely won't be effected, since those who are willing to forego the latest and greatest upgrade still will, whether or not they have WinXP on the computer too.

As for what boot camp is, its basically a polished up analog of what came out of the contest at onmac.net.  Which amounts to:
- A boot-loader hack for XP to make it work with the mac's boot-loading schema
- A boot-loader hack for the mac to allow you to switch back and forth
- A procedure for getting both OS partitions set up and working

Boot camp also supposedly includes working drivers for all the hardware in the computer, which the onmac.net folks haven't cobbled together or figured out yet.

Its a pretty fair compromise for people who like macs, carry and use a laptop, and run into occasional situtations where they Absolutely Must Have Windows for something.  Its also nifty for the nerds and other propeller-heads that like to do weird shit to their computers.

[raydeen]

Ah the gold old days. Setting jumpers and tweaking config.sys and autoexec.bat built character. I remember spending 3 hours one day fooling around with the boot menu opton in DOS 6.2 trying to get as much free conventional memory as possible so that I could play Arena with as few memory list blown errors as possible. When I was done, I had 614k of conventional memory and still had Expanded memory, all the CD drivers, sound drivers, mouse drivers, Smartdrv, etc loaded and playing nicely. I was God. Loaded High.

[Engels]

It makes me wonder if this will somehow tarnish Mac's halo as a mysterious and secretive company that produces 'perfect' hardware/software. I mean, if MS can glom onto its hardware, how great can it really be?

And Raydeen, I too have drooled over Knoppix and its thumb drive storage off a live cd. I wish I could parcel this out to my coworkers, but getting them onto Open Office instead of MS would be such a huge ordeal that no matter how nicely any Linux distro runs, or how cheaply, my workload would quadruple overnight. I just keep a closet full of imaged pcs that I hand out as coworker's workstations fail.

[Trippy]

It's not so much that the hardware in Macs was ever qualitatively better as they were selling the lack of choice in component sources as a feature.

Actually they were better -- SIMMs, DIMMs, NuBus, SCSI, AppleTalk, built in Ethernet, slotted CPU boards, Firewire, digitized sound, 24/32-bit color space, so on and so forth -- Apple had these things long before they or their equivalents appeared on PC/MS-DOS compatible machines.

[Trippy]

I remember spending 3 hours one day fooling around with the boot menu opton in DOS 6.2 trying to get as much free conventional memory as possible so that I could play Arena with as few memory list blown errors as possible. When I was done, I had 614k of conventional memory and still had Expanded memory, all the CD drivers, sound drivers, mouse drivers, Smartdrv, etc loaded and playing nicely. I was God. Loaded High.

Why didn't you just let QEMM do that for you automatically?

[Brolan]

Ya!  Now you Mac users get to spend more for your computers AND pay for TWO operating systems!!!   What a deal!!!!!

[Samwise]

Ya!  Now you Mac users get to spend more for your computers AND pay for TWO operating systems!!!   What a deal!!!!!

That's pretty much what I thought.  Now, getting OS X to run on a Dell, THAT would be something.

[schild]

Ya!  Now you Mac users get to spend more for your computers AND pay for TWO operating systems!!!   What a deal!!!!!

That's pretty much what I thought. Now, getting OS X to run on a Dell, THAT would be something.

Just get this.. It's just as good. I'd know.

[raydeen]

I remember spending 3 hours one day fooling around with the boot menu opton in DOS 6.2 trying to get as much free conventional memory as possible so that I could play Arena with as few memory list blown errors as possible. When I was done, I had 614k of conventional memory and still had Expanded memory, all the CD drivers, sound drivers, mouse drivers, Smartdrv, etc loaded and playing nicely. I was God. Loaded High.

Why didn't you just let QEMM do that for you automatically?

QEMM and the DOS 6 memory manager never did as good a job. Besides, it was kinda fun. It was like playing Tetris in RAM. :)

[Sky]

There is a virtualization software for the intel macs. Since MS will probably kill VPC, and Boot Camp requires, well, booting, it seems like an interesting package.

[Trippy]

There is a virtualization software for the intel macs. Since MS will probably kill VPC, and Boot Camp requires, well, booting, it seems like an interesting package.

Parallel doesn't support DirectX/Direct3D, though, so if you want to play modern PC games on your Intel Mac you are still going to have to reboot.

[Sky]

For me, it wouldn't be a big deal. If I had the dough to upgrade (to a mac OR pc), I'd probably buy a macbook pro right now. Hook up a Digi002 for a portable digital workstation, set up Office and my remote apps for work and have XP set up for gaming.

In fact...if things don't start looking rosier on the home buying front, I might just do that. Just doing live recordings could pay it off pretty quickly.

[Shockeye]

I never had a problem with QEMM but the DOS memory manager thingy was a joke.

I miss Desqview.

[Lantyssa]

Just get this.. It's just as good. I'd know.

It took too long to boot.  I'm going back to my PC.

[squirrel]

Well being the pretentious prick i am i just picked up my 2ghz MacBook Pro. I wouldn't have bought one but i had an offer on my 15" Powerbook that defrayed the cost pretty well so i decided to go for it. Boot Camp was a deciding factor as well as it means i can play EVE (or any of my other PC games) when i'm on the road, or when my G/F has the gaming rig tied up acting as a media server. Will post results here anon...

[schild]

Just get this.. It's just as good. I'd know.

It took too long to boot. I'm going back to my PC.

Odd. I have no slowdown to speak of with it.

[squirrel]

Ok well I've tried it and it works pretty damn well. With a few caveats:

• You must have a bootable XP install disk that is already updated to SP2. This is a pain in the ass to create but it won't work otherwise. I have a recent PC and disk so it was relatively easy for me, YMMV. Note it does not need to be a 'retail' or blessed MS disk, any XP install that has been streamlined with SP2 will work.
• You want to unplug all periphals during the WinXP install. I left a USB2 camera and a Firewire drive attached and had to start over about half way through when my Mac BSOD'd on the install of XP.
• You must update your machines firmware - from apples site

Other than that it's pretty straight forward. The Boot Camp utility does 2 things; it creates a disc with an .EXE that has XP drivers for all the mac hardware (ATI x1600, Airport, Apple Bluetooth, Soundcard) none of which are 'certified'; and it creates a Boot Manager that allows you to choose between OSX or WinXP while also presumably providing XP with some sort of EFI BIOS compatibility.

The whole process was about as painful as installing XP on a new PC - less so in some ways as I didn't have to hunt around for drivers. I'll leave the whole windows vs. mac vitriol for the peanut gallery, i like OS X for my work and general computing needs and far prefer Wintel for Gaming and HTPC. Up to today when i travelled for work i mostly had to leave my games behind (save for SB & WoW when i played them). No longer :D

Boot screen - barebones but functional


Patching EVE


Playing EVE (Airport wireless connection, 1440x900 fullscreen)


Apologies for low quality pics - taken quickly on my low end camera.


EDIT: I'd personally stay away from Parallel's virtualization solution. They alter the OSX kernel somewhat significantly and that is always a recipe for trouble on the mac in my experience.

[schild]

What's up with that odd resolution? Does the monitor go up to 1680x1050?

[squirrel]

What's up with that odd resolution? Does the monitor go up to 1680x1050?

No, and it is an odd resolution. 15.4" LCD native at 1440x900 (16:10?). That's specific to the Macbook Pro though, believe the imac and mini are more standard in resolutions. Scaling down to a more standard res looks ok but i won't be doing that often.

EDIT: Just did a test with my Viewsonic LCD. The mac will drive it's own screen at 1440x900 and the external monitor at 1680x1050 at 32 bit. Pretty nice actually. (this model has the 256 MB ATI 1600).

[schild]

Yea, I'm running the beefy ATI on my Dell but the screen is 1680x1050, that's why I was wondering. I still couldn't bring myself to pay the Apple premium.

Also, sent you a PM.

[Ironwood]

 I'd buy it and duel boot.

Giggle.

[schild]

I'd buy it and duel boot.

Giggle.

You've obviously never seen Windows and Apple go 10 paces have you? Apple's plan is to take 9 steps and turn around and shoot before he gets a chance. But Windows follows Apple silently and stabs him in the back before he can turn around. It's truly a sight to behold. The only thing that compares? The pilgramage of little blue penguins on the beaches of New Zealand.

[Ironwood]

Actually, I imagined it kinda like dueling banjos, except that they're both retards...

[raydeen]

God. I just saw my spelling error. Freudian slip or plain stupidity? I'm leaning towards the st00pid. Why is it I'm funniest when I'm unconscious?