Intel Macs do Windows too - officially, now!

[Bob Crabtree]

Would you Adam and Eve it? Apple today made available a beta installer to allow Intel-based Mac computers to dual boot between Mac OS X and Windows XP operating systems! The so-called Boot Camp Beta - an 82.8MB download - is a forerunner, Apple says, to building Win XP dual-booting into Leopard, the next version of Mac OS X.

So, a fresh round of congratulations would appear to be in order to Colin, the guy who set up the successful dual-boot competition, and blanka and narf2006, the two clever buggers who scooped the US$13,854 prize mid March, apparently forcing Apple into formally supporting Windows XP dual-booting on its Intel-based Macs. Naturally, though, Apple says nothing on its Boot Camp Beta pages about the compo.

There's lots more about this intriguing development over in the HEXUS.headline.

When you've checked that out, don't forget to let us know what you make of all this and whether it's now any more likely that you'll buy an Apple Mac computer.

[DeludedGuy]

About time.

[MSIC]

Very cool, wonder if anyone will actually start selling dual-booting machines?

[darrensen]

Great news!

I was about to take the plunge as i knew this would happen!

I'm now going to sell my pc to my parents and buy a Macbook Pro. It should run CSS at a resonable rate.

[Jonny M]

I'd buy a Mac if they made something in between the Mac mini and the PowerMac, which didn't insist on giving me a new screen.

[smtkr]

Wait, so Apple releases a pretty boot loader and the stock shoots up? Why? Why would someone want to run Windows on their mac? The hardware is overpriced; people buy macs for the OS. Get a cheap PC if you need to run Windows.

[darrensen]

Wait, so Apple releases a pretty boot loader and the stock shoots up? Why? Why would someone want to run Windows on their mac? The hardware is overpriced; people buy macs for the OS. Get a cheap PC if you need to run Windows.

The reason why people install XP on mac's is because maybe they like to play games that are not available for the mac, or for reason like me who have to support Mac and PC platforms and having a dual boot system is great as i dont have to spend money on 2 bits of hardware!

That's 2 reasons, i'm sure other people would be able to list more.

[Bob Crabtree]

Over the years, I've been called a Mac hater and a Mac lover but truth is, I'm neither.

I just assess stuff for what it can do and, with Apple's Mac hardware, the thing you can almost always say is that it's amazingly well built - but for a long time it's been hamstrung by using slow, old processors and that's all changing now with the move to Intel (just as it would be if Apple had gone for AMD CPUs).

Better than that, Apple Macs can be astonishingly well supported with, for instance, hardware fixes being available free many years after the guarantee runs out.

Given a choice between an Apple-built Windows PC and almost anyone else's, I'd pick the Apple-built machine.

Add in the fact that it can also run Mac OS X and the decision becomes a no-brainer unless, that is, the Mac is stupidly more expensive than non-Apple-built equivalents; though that's not a possibility that can be ruled out, of course.

[kempez]

I think Apple hardware is very nice. It looks great, its quiet and now it has some great processors too. MAC OSX is a great OS and with the ability to dual boot with windows....I'm very tempted to buy one

[fuddam]

my clients increasingly need me to run FCP but I prefer to have the software range of PC, including my normal edit software

this is a no brainer



and ROTFL!

[Bob Crabtree]

David Ross's blog has an interesting take on this.

[Gordy]

Windows Xp Sp2 on a Macbook Pro

I have to say the whole process was fairly painless the only issue I had was due to a hard disc error which was down to a bug in Photoshop CS2 as opposed to Boot camp or windows.

The process is fairly straight forward, certainly easier than any other I've seen.

Once you've booted off the windows xp disc is exactly the same as installing windows on any other machine. Only issues I've noted is the lack of the second mouse button which can be got around with this tool http://www.geocities.com/pronto4u/applemouse.html

I had a very quick play with counter strike and it runs just as well as my main machine, only complaint I had was that cs doesn't support the native res of the mbp but that I can deal with.

Images:













Gallery of images
http://gordyhand.co.uk/gallery/v/cas.../apple/mbpwin/

Movie of Counter Strike
http://www.gordyhand.co.uk/files/mbp-cs.avi (9mb)

[Gordy]

Just got cs source downloaded and played a quick game.

It plays just the same as my pc apart from the fact I'm using a track pad not a mouse at the moment hehe.





Stress test ran with no problems and came back with a result of 83fps which is more than playable. I was able to run cs:s at the default res of the display 1440x900 which is great news.

I had one crash when I tried to run militia but it was fine with other maps so I think its the version of militia as opposed to the macbook

I took some vids of it in action

Stress test starting:
http://www.gordyhand.co.uk/files/mbp-css-stress.avi
(5mb)

Quick play on office:
http://www.gordyhand.co.uk/files/mbp-css-play.avi
(11.5mb)

And for comedy effect what happened to the dell pc in the office:
http://www.gordyhand.co.uk/files/mbp-css-dell.avi
(6mb)

[Whiternoise]

Sounds like a pretty good idea to me, it should remove some of the negativity associated with macs. But whether people will want to switch to mac just yet.. Interesting about hardware.. does that mean that you'll get much better performance on a pc that can support more than 4gigs of ram?

[kempez]

Good work Gordy

Damn I'm tempted....must...not...buy...

[Mike Fishcake]

Someone's just sent me this link:

http://www.parallels.com/en/products/workstation/mac/

Sort of a cross between virtualpc and bootcamp. Anyone care to test this one?