WinXP on a Mac, Hoax? 390
Brill writes "Ars Technica is reporting that a member of the 'WinXP on Mac' forums called narf2006 may have succeeded at the impossible. He's submitted his solution to get XP on an Intel Mac, for the $12,000 prize, but for now the only proof available is a blurry Flickr collection of photos that could be faked with virtual PC. His reputation on the forums however is strong, and he's already calling for testers." We've had people write in to say this has been announced a hoax on the contest page. The contest page is, of course, down due to bandwidth reasons. Engadget's conversation about this announcement has several theories on how this may have been faked. What's the verdict? Real or Fake?
Explain how? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I sorted the bits (Score:5, Insightful)
Verification? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this so difficult?
Vice Versa (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realise you answered your own question don't you?
Anyway, whilst I don't like or run windows at home, I keep a spare 1GB partition with my old legal copy of win2k on it.
Why? Because I think two operating systems are better then one - and its not exactly like its hard work (or much overhead) to set up a dual boot these days.
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:4, Insightful)
For many people, those two things are reason enough to dual boot. It allows you to keep using your existing software, which makes the switch to Mac that much easier for people who have large libraries of Windows-only software.
Re:Vice Versa (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vice Versa (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not hard to hoax (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Go to a Windows box. Take a screen shot.
2. Open the screenshot on your iMac. Display it full screen.
3. Take a picture.
I mean, he hasn't posted a video of him using the computer and his mousing syncing up with the screen, right? Just a blurry photo. So, that proves basically nothing. I'm not saying he absolutely didn't do it, just that a photo doesn't count for much.
Another Case of Poor Slashdot Journalism (Score:2, Insightful)
XP on Mac works in apples favour? (Score:3, Insightful)
A real fix, emulate BIOS to run XP an non-EFI unix (Score:4, Insightful)
No, what we really want is... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm becoming more and more a fan of virtualization; why deal with dual booting and configuring the disk when you can just run the client OS as a task in the main operating system. Also, if you trash your copy of Windows, just restore it from a snapshot or recreate it from a "good" image.
But, OTOH, kudos to him if he has in fact gotten it to work.
Re:Even if this one isn't real... (Score:4, Insightful)
Running Windows in a VM would be perfect for checking out websites during development.
Monitor (Score:0, Insightful)
Think about it
Re:Explain the fricken 12,000 bucks for this... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not about buying mac hardware specifically to run windows, it's about the ability to dual boot mac osx and windows on the same laptop. Honestly, I'm at the point in my life where I need fewer computers, not more of them. Having a whole closet full of junky old PC's isn't worth the time and energy anymore, so I just have 2 laptops now, a powerbook and an old gateway. I'd gladly sell them both if I could buy one laptop that could run both OS's.
For what I do (audio programming and music production), emulation is not an acceptable solution due to obvious performance and hardware issues. Plus, there is so much good software available for both platforms, why limit yourself to just one?
Re:Maybe interesting as an exercise... (Score:4, Insightful)
The best way of comparing has always been to benchmark the particular job you have in mind, an then to remember that generalizations are not really valid.
Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you a bridge.
Re:Even if this one isn't real... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Explain the fricken 12,000 bucks for this... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because WinXP boots just as nicely on a Walmart laptop. If people who own Mac hardware find themselves booting to Windows as often or more often than OSX, their next purchase may rationalize that the premium is just not worth it to run OSX.
The debate goes two ways - way one, I get to run both OSes, how wonderful is that? Way two, I run XP more and more, why buy Mac hardware?
It's only time that will tell us which is which...
This is all well and good... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Even if this one isn't real... (Score:2, Insightful)
For that matter, other kinds of cross-platform testing, for example, for Java applications, would benefit similarly.
Re:obivous! (Score:5, Insightful)
OSX boots on PC. Win boots on PC. OSX boots on Mac. Should not Win boot on Mac?
What a sad state of affairs (Score:4, Insightful)
And as for why do this to begin with? How about because we can! Sheesh. Getting things that aren't supposed to work to work is part and parcel of being a true hacker. It's breaking the pigopolists' rules and doing things with hardware/software you bought that they never intended. Lighten up, guys. It's cool. If this is real, it's definitely a sick hack and we should salute him.
Re:Maybe interesting as an exercise... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What I don't get... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:OK, I just don't get it.. (Score:4, Insightful)
If almost all PC's have Windows, and almost all Macs run Windows apps, then you can just write a program for Windows, and there is no need to make a Mac specific port.
If there is no native Mac OS software, why get a Mac?
Sure, lots of developers would develop for the Mac out of love for the platform or whatever, but a lot of other devs would declare that just supporting Windows is sufficient for a very large percentage of their user base.
Benchmarking isn't rocket science (Score:3, Insightful)
No fanboi it isn't. Comparing a Windows PC to a Sun Niagra based server would be complicated, comparing a PC from Apple running typical desktop loadsets under OS X to basically the same loadsets under Windows XP on the same hardware isn't complicated at all. Encode some video, run Microsoft Office through some timed task lists, script some compute intensive Photoshop transformations, etc. If one OS is faster at all of the tasks it is the clearcut winner, if as is more likely, each excel at some tasks and falter at others this will inform customers which is more appropriate for their intended loads. Of course if the intended load doesn't imply long waits under either OS the choice of which to boot can be made purely on personal preference.
Re:Even if this one isn't real... (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey
Re:Explain the fricken 12,000 bucks for this... (Score:3, Insightful)
This seems doubtful to happen in any significant numbers. It isn't as if Intel Mac owners don't know about this option known as the "Windows PC", or the "cheap Walmart Laptop" that you mention. The systems have been available for just a bit more than two months now -- if Intel Mac owners wanted a Windows XP machine running on cheap Intel hardware, they would have bought a Windows XP machine running on cheap Intel hardware.
There may be a percentage of "switchers" who decide to "switch back" -- but I imagine this has always been the case, so I don't see how anything would really be changing here. The only thing that is new is that the "switch back-ers" don't have to buy a new PC -- they can do it on their existing Mac hardware (assuming the challenge has indeed been met).
Yaz.
Support. (Score:2, Insightful)
When Apple designed the MacIntel architecture, it started with a clean sheet of paper, including only the hardware and firmware that would be useful to a Mac OS customer. The result was a simple, legacy-free design that avoids much of the baggage that the x86 world has carried for over 20 years.
To support Windows, Apple would have to include a legacy BIOS layer, VGA BIOS, and who knows what else. This would complicate the hardware from the get-go. Second, Apple would have to either A) License Windows from Microsoft, and include it with every Macintel (a very expensive proposition) or B) answer dozens of AppleCare calls from users as they try to install WinXP, configure appropriate drivers, and get a registration key (also a very expensive proposition, especially for a company that does not already have Windows-trained call center techs.
I know of no mainstream vendors who support home users with a dual-boot configuration. And very few will support even corporate customers who dual-boot.
Re: they never said it would be impossible (Score:4, Insightful)
The parent message is referring to well-reported statements by Apple's Jobs and Schiller, who both said Apple would do nothing to prevent people from running Windows on Intel-based Macs. See this link: http://news.com.com/2100-1014_3-5733756-2.html [com.com]
As the article states, Schiller's words were, "That doesn't preclude someone from running it on a Mac. They probably will. We won't do anything to preclude that."
Re: Yes! (Score:3, Insightful)
And if he's faking, he won't be able to hide. Anybody know more details on narf2006?
Re:Benchmarking isn't rocket science (Score:3, Insightful)
(Note I use Photoshop as the example because it's what everyone will try to prove is faster on one platform vs the other, but I imagine the code for the filters will be the same tuned assembler across both platforms - even if it's not, all you've proved is that they need to GET the tuned assembler from the other platform).
Re:Benchmarking isn't rocket science (Score:4, Insightful)
> the PC version used a better compiler. What are you trying to show exactly?
Exactly. The only differences should depend on the OS and it's supporting infrastructure. Compiler, libraries, memory management, disk throughput, etc. And those differences are likely to be highly variable. OS X might have UNIXy goodness (not sure how Darwin stands compared to a modern Linux or Solaris though) in it's favor while Microsoft probably has the advantage on compilier tech vs GCC. Some good benchmarks should be interesting to read through.
Who cares about dual-booting? (Score:3, Insightful)
Give me basically a natively fast virtual machine. I don't ever want to boot my mac into Windows. Just let me run it like VPC on steroids when I have to, and you've got a sale.