Mrs. Piper and I are thinking about a new computer. It raises one of those mixed-marriage issues: I’ve always been a Mac guy, and she’s a Windows girl. It’s caused stress (much more so than that little Roman Catholic - Anglican issue - that we’ve been able to finesse!)
So she’s been pushing for a nice little Dell, since some of the programs she wants to get don’t run on a Mac. I still like my Mac - it’s just more intuitive for me. Potential crisis!
Then, Steve Jobs announces something about Macs running Windows. Crisis solved? How will that work? Will it be like two seprate OS, both running on the Mac platform? Will the Mac then be able to run both Mac programs and Windows programs? Would we finally have to get us some firewall protection? And will it be avaiable in a laptop?
There’s a couple solutions out there. One is Apple’s Bootcamp. Boot camp creates a separate partition on your HD where you install the Windows OS. Whenever you turn on the computer, you can hold down a key (I forget which it is) to choose if you’d like to start up in Mac or XP mode.
I have Boot Camp, but have not installed XP yet. You need a liscenced copy of Windown XP Service Pack 2 in order to install XP. As far as I understand it, you will need to take the normal security precautions you would with a Windows machine.
There is also another application for the Macintels, whose name escapes me at the moment, that allows simulataneous use of OS X and XP.
Parallels is the name of the other utility I was thinking of. However, while searching, I found some chatter to the effect that Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) will have the capability to run Mac & Windows at the same time.
To answer your question more specifically, any apple computer that has an intel processor should be able to work just fine with bootcamp (newer imacs, powerbooks, newer mac minis). However, keep in mind bootcamp is Beta software and as such, Apple makes no gurantees about it working smoothly. 10.5 will have a finalized version of bootcamp, but i wouldn’t completely bank on Virtualization (running os x/windows/linux at the same time) being built into 10.5 because Apple has not officially announced it. Having said all that, if you intend on dualbooting with XP so you can have access to some windows software, you should be good to go. Keep in mind that the imac/mini/powerbook video card doesn’t exactly pump out stellar performance, so you might be underwhelmed if you plan on doing a lot of gaming with your apple.
I just don’t understand what’s so special. Lots of computers have the ability to dual boot. Most are Windows/Unix/Linux or some combination like that. It’s just a menu that you get when you start the computer which asks which operating system you want to use. Big woop!
Most also allow you to access files from the other operating system too.
The Apple announcement sounds like just a big bunch of hot air. Just the stuff Jobs has been throwing around forever.
Huh? Do you know a Windows machine that dual boots Mac? Because this is more of an apt analogy. It’s actually quite a interesting development, much more than just “hot air.” And, actually, Mac OS X is built on UNIX, so you’ve got a UNIX terminal and your choice of shell underneath it, should you require it.
I thought so at first, but he’s got a decent postcount under his belt, so I wanted to give him the benefit of a doubt. I do 90% of my work on a Windows box, so I’m hardly a Mac convert, I just don’t understand what he meant by the post.
Just wanted to point out that the Macbook Pro is the laptop with an Intel processor. The Powerbooks do NOT use Intel processors and they can’t run Bootcamp.
And the ATI x1600 256MB card found in higher-end Macbooks is actually a very nice graphics card for laptops and it’s capable of running many current games. It ranks third after the GeForce 7900 and 7800… it’s not bleeding-edge, but it’s certainly a far cry above most notebook graphics options.
My Intel iMac 20" runs Oblivion (via BootCamp) substantially better than my 3 Ghz P4 “gaming” Windows box, which has a GeForce 6600 in it. It’s probably twice the performance. Apple has skimped mightily on video cards in the past – not this time.
Hi TimeWinder, I used to live in Philomath. Loved that town.
I am, at this moment, in the Windows screen of my Intel Mac. This is BootCamp and it is beta – there are some features that don’t work (i.e I can’t change my touchpad settings to let me click on the pad instead of the bar; it is driving me crazy) but basically it is working fine. I don’t do any fancy stuff, but it is very functional for my work. By holding down the Option key at start up, I can toggle between modes, but the coolness factor of running Windows on a machine with a glowing apple on the cover has me booting in Windows even with the irritating pad tap issue.
Well, the interesting part is the fact that new Macs use an Intel processor at all. The release of Boot Camp isn’t all that interesting in itself… an Intel-based system that can run Windows is nothing new, and people have been predicting that these new Macs would be able to boot Windows since before they were released.
And of course, the average Windows machine probably would be able to dual boot Mac OS x86, if Apple hadn’t gone out of their way to keep it from booting on hardware that doesn’t have a picture of an apple on it.
I think he means that dual boot is an old idea, and that Boot Camp is not a earth-shattering innovation. Dual boot is indeed not a new concept, and it’s possible to boot more than one operating system on a standard PC - Windows, DOS, Linux, OS/2, Solaris, or whatever takes your fancy.
Boot Camp isn’t magic. It requires on the of the OS updates to install a BIOS emulator in the EFI, which is a modern “BIOS”. Windows requires a BIOS to boot – a remnant of the 1980’s. Macs are typically legacy free, hence the lack of a BIOS and the use of an emulator for the BIOS only.
Once you’ve run Boot Camp, you’re done running Boot Camp. That’s it. Everything is pure Windows. If something doesn’t work, it’s because you don’t have an adequate driver for it, such as for the touchpad. Boot Camp is just there to make it easy to partition and install the drivers for Windows XP SP2. If you have anything less, it’s not supported by Boot Camp.
Standard PC’s can indeed boot modified versions of Mac OS X for Intel. I won’t go into any more details other than to say that I know that it works, and as a consequence two 20" iMacs are slated to replace my Mac and PC box and associated cables, towers, monitors, and other tons of crap (yes, it assuages my guilty feelings).
I’d rather prefer to install Windows in a virtual environment, but I’d want a native partition install such as provided by Boot Camp. I don’t really want to use Boot Camp, though, because it only supports a single partition divided into two partitions, and I would want more and the ability to triple boot. I guess I could use Boot Camp and then copy partitions immages wih dd or something…
That I understand. I’ve had dual-booting PCs for a long time. I agree that Bootcamp in and of itself is not particularly interesting at all. However, for me it is quite interesting to have both a Mac and PC OS in one box at native speeds. It’s pretty neat, although I’m not going to use the feature. I use my new Macbook for one thing, my PC for another, and I really don’t want to install XP on the Mac if I can avoid it.