So Apple has announced that yeah, XP will run on the new dual core Macs, and now has a web page all about how to do it and a driver kit and everything.
As a long time Windows user (since 3.1), I am intriqued by Mr. Job’s ideas and would like to subscribe to his newsletter. A few things don’t work in the beta, like the camera and the inertial sensor, the remote. Big whoop. The rest seems pretty cool.
I would love to be able to boot into OSX and run Final Cut, yet keep all my investment in Windoze software. I figure the dual core will benefit XP without recompiling all the apps, and limp along well enough under OSX until all the apps get ported. Anyone have any experience running Final Cut under the emulator?
Hoping this will become a generall discussion of the merits of all this.
At first, I was thinking “Oh, this is just using Rosetta to emulate Windows” but no, this is real Windows dual-booting with OS X. You do need to supply your own copy of Windows XP. If you don’t have one, it’s not hard to find legal copies of XP Pro for about $100.
Apple has finally removed the one and only obstacle that stood in the way of my next PC being a Mac.
For me, this is really, really freaking cool. I’ve been dealing with the desire to use MacOS but the need to run bioscience software that only works on Win32 by either running between two boxes in different rooms, or using VirtualPC. Even on a dual 2.0GHz G5, VPC running Win2k is dog-ass slow for some things, and only tolerable for others. To just boot into XP native and have it all in a single box will be fan-frickin’-tastic.
I just have to make sure to disable all networking while running whatever flavor of Winblows and I’ll finally have a convenient solution. Once they get some virtualization going, that’ll be even better.
Oh, and actually getting a Mactel will help enormously…
Come to think of it, didn’t Apple do something like this about 15 years back? Something like you could partition the hard drive on one particular model (pre-power PC, as I remember), and by holding down the right keys at startup, you could boot into DOS.
(I’m guessing that setup weren’t none to popular, in the long run.)
Well, anyway, I can only hope that by the time I get a Mactel machine, someone will have figured out a way to run Classic on it, too. (I figure I could spare a few hundred MHZ of processor speed efficiency so I can run “The Oregon Trail.”)
There were, I think, a Quadra model and an early PowerPC model that basically had a PC built into them in the form of a NuBus card. I think it was possible to run both MacOS and Windows (probably Win3.1 that long ago) simultaneously, with the Win environment in its own window. Not entirely unlike a remote desktop, actually, and it allowed one to cut&paste between the environments, to a limited extent. If I recall correctly, the processor in the last iteration of this hybrid Mac wasn’t exactly a speed demon (it may have even been a 486), so one wasn’t likely to entertain using it as a replacement for a fast PC. It certainly was faster than the emulators that were hitting the scene back then, though.
It was an imperfect solution, and only marginally cheaper than buying a seperate PC. With ever-falling PC prices and greater demands on the hardware that a coprocessor card simply couldn’t supply without putting a hugely expensive and entirely autonomous PC on the card (its own memory, its own video, etc.), the idea was obsolete pretty much from the get-go.
With the current Mactels…well, the thing says Mac on the box, but it’s now an Intel PC through and through (Macs had become pretty similar to PCs on the inside even before Apple dumped the PPC processors). The only thing that truly differentiates it from a Windows box is a chip that will allow you boot MacOS and an alternative to the standard BIOS. You just know somebody’s going to hack the chip eventually, and then you’ll be able to run MacOS (unsupported and illegally) on your Dell or whatever. Microsoft doesn’t need a fat hardware margin, so they’re happy to let you run Windows on a PC that happens to have the Apple logo. More cash for them. More convenience for you.
Not using a BIOS may make it very difficult to run Vista on a Mactel, though. Not that you need to worry about that any time soon.
My understanding is that Vista is now planned to use BIOS, after all. The firmware update that allows BIOS emulation will allow you to run Vista as well as XP.
I used to be a mac hater. I fell in love with OSX. As far as I am concerned, it’s not a Mac without OSX. I’ll never go back to XP (and hopefully will never be forced to use Vista), but I would go back to linux. Honestly, the only time I have ever needed to use a Windows app has been for illegal activities, so I don’t see that as a loss.
LoopyDude, I thought Macs were the pioneers in science technology. For this reason, my university is Macs only in the science labs (which the science students detest). Which reminds me of an anecdote: I had to use some electrophysiology program in VirtualPC in the labs, which meant I had no printer (or network) access. I needed to print off part of it for the practical however. So I figured I’d go home, see if there was some sort of version I could run at home, and if not, come back tomorrow and screengrab. So I searched for the program, and whaddya know? It was made FOR Macs. It got ported to 98, and for some reason, that’s the license the Uni bought to run it on their Macs. :wally
They were maybe up to the early 1990’s, but after that the transition to Windows started in full force. Presently I’m heavily using ArrayAssist (and lightly using all sorts of other Wintel-only software), and I’m not even aware of a Mac app. that will let me do a good job of analyzing Affymetrix arrays. The TaqMan machine, spectrophotometers, HPLC, luminometers, you name it, they’ve all gone Wintel years ago. Primer Express hasn’t been supported on the Mac for years. MacVector is the only software I use regularly for which there isn’t an exact clone on the PC side. Prior to the Mactel development, I was convinced my dual G5 would be my last Mac at work. My life would probably have been easier in some ways if I’d abandoned the Mac five years ago, maybe earlier.
I’m not as up on my Winspeak, but IIRC Vista will support EFI only for 64-bit processors, and BIOS for 32-bits. Since the current MacIntels use 32-bit processors, you need that BIOS bridge.
(Me? No interest in running Windows, but I think it’ll only help expand Apple’s marketshare)
This is Yet Another Thing I Don’t Get About Apple.
“It’s the software stupid.”
There is no money in commodity consumer electronics. The big money is in software. Bill Gates didn’t get rich selling mice.
Apple should have gotten out of the PC (original meaning) business and focused on just selling it’s software for x86 machines.
So they finally make the jump to x86 and what do they do? Rather than focusing on getting Apple software to run on non-Apple machines, they focus on getting MS Windows-XP to run on Apple machines. This is a classic shoot yourself in the foot mistake.
And it’s coming at the wrong time. MS has screwed up big with Vista. Apple has a golden opportunity to double it’s market share in the next year.
I don’t see why any of this is true. The entire motiviation is to give people who want a Mac but need a PC on occasion the ability to have both in the same box. There’s obviously huge demand for this, and Apple did the completely reasonable thing, under the circumstances. The cost to them is essentially zero. It will likely encourage PC users who were interested in the Mac, but didn’t want to sacrifice the ability to run some PC-only apps and games, to finally make the switch. While lacking any new goodies (like the perennially-delayed and partially vaporous Longhorn/Vista) from u$oft, they’ll take the plunge with the MacOS and maybe get hooked. Clearly the market approves. It’s all good as far as I can see.
Not when you take a look at what Apple really does. They’re not a software vendor, and they’re not a hardware vendor; they’re a vertically integrated, whole-computing-experience vendor. The reason using a Mac is so much smoother and more satisfying than Windows is because Apple doesn’t attempt to code for the infinite possible PC configurations out there; they build the hardware and write the OS in tandem, and that integration is precisely what makes a Mac a Mac. It’s not “the software, stupid”; it’s “the software and the hardware complementing each other, stupid.” Indeed, Microsoft’s increasing struggles to finish Vista show that the “write to everything” model is rapidly becoming a fool’s errand; it is simply too big a job for one company, and one product, to handle.
People blithely state that Apple should follow Microsoft’s model as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. In fact, Microsoft’s market dominance was made possible by some extraordinary circumstances and strokes of good luck that will never be repeated, and its one-size-fits-all model, as I’ve said, is well on the way to collapsing beneath its own weight anyway. Some of the Microsofties posting on Mini-Microsoft are publicly doubting that it’s even possible to ship another Windows without throwing out the legacy code, dumping backward compatibility, and starting over. (Apple did exactly that five years ago, and are reaping the rewards; having to tailor OS X to hundreds of PC configurations would blunt that advantage significantly.)
Actually, it’s coming at a perfect time. Vista’s system requirements are so steep that almost anyone wanting to run it is going to need a new PC. Apple has now given customers a choice between “a PC that runs Windows” and “a PC that runs Windows and Mac OS X.” Not everyone will bite, but even a few added points of marketshare could completely transform Apple’s computer business.
I’m not even sure Gates can get rich selling software these days. The only thing propping Microsoft up now is from sales of Windows (to OEMs) and MS Office (to corporate clients), and that’s largely due to legacy effects – e.g., people “choosing” Microsoft because they already have their files and software invested in the system.
…and promptly implode as their stuff gets pirated by 90% of the users out there.
