Going To Boot Camp 531
An anonymous reader writes "PC World has first impressions of what it's like to run Windows with Boot Camp, the recently announced official dual-boot software for the Intel Macs." From the article: "Back in Windows, I got right down to business and installed a few games to put the graphics and sound support to the test. The quick and dirty verdict on performance? Most impressive. Doom 3 and Far Cry both ran smoothly with high-end graphics options turned on. In both cases, I had to tweak visual settings manually, since the games automatically set themselves to very low settings. Far Cry, for example, autodetected very low settings, but it ran without a hitch when I bumped the resolution up to 1280 by 720, with all visual quality options set to 'High.'"
Anxiously awaiting the new towers... (Score:5, Interesting)
Oblivion? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Dual boot? How about virtualization, too! (Score:5, Interesting)
Other than that though, it's an excellent product. I've been running the Q front-end for Qemu, and used Virtual PC 7 on PPC. This blows them both away. But please can I have a sound card? Pretty please?
Usenet thread containing my walkthrough comments whilst I was performing the install is here [google.co.uk] (scroll down the thread a little).
Cheers,
Linux Also Runs Through Boot Camp (Score:5, Interesting)
Given the desire for Linux to run on everything, it's not surprising that someone's already tried running Linux with Boot Camp [theweeklyrant.com], which apparently does seem to work. Granted, there's still the issue of Linux drivers for the hardware, but it is a start.
Amazing for research (Score:4, Interesting)
I personally see no reason why macs will not completely dominate the research world now. I know I cannot wait for my own. SWEET!
What's Apple up to? (Score:1, Interesting)
I recall all the propaganda on how "Apple is a hardware company" and that its software is secondary to its business model... but how far is that going to get them as their computers progress ever further to being a beige box in a magnesium case?
What's really going on here? It's obvious: Apple has decided that the first salvos in the war between OSX and Windows will be fought on their home turf. We may only be months away from a general x86 release of OSX. It's going to be a fun decade!
Re:WILL SOMEBODY MOD THAT COCKSUCKER DOWN?! (Score:3, Interesting)
An interesting side effect... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is how it works out with Windows. Here, have one installer. It will work on all our machines, and support everything in it. One Installshield script. It was the fastest WinXP or ANY Windows installs I've ever done.
Thank you for playing, have a nice day.
Can bootcamp boot from an external hardrive? (Score:3, Interesting)
Virtual Reality (Score:5, Interesting)
How long before the OS is just another app, along with any other OS'es required to run other apps? Just a library collection, running on a "nanokernel": the virtualization SW? And which OS will best run the virtualization: Windows, Linux, or some RTOS?
don't hold your breath.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't hold your breath. Adobe is busy digging itself out of the huge mess that is "we never got off Codewarrior", and won't go Universal-Binary until the next release. Microsoft isn't in quite as bad a position, but is desperate to get people to upgrade to verion N+1 in office, so don't count on a free UB version there.
Mark my words: you won't see a pro intel tower until Adobe (and possibly MS) are Universal Binary.
While the "cottage industry" is mostly embracing UB and virtually everything I use has been UB for at least one or two minor revision numbers- the big boys are dragging their feet. Even Diskwarrior (from the vaporware kings, Alsoft- DiskExpress for OSX anyone?) isn't UB yet.
I'm not exactly thrilled about Bootcamp. Why? 1)I don't want to dedicate 20-30GB to a disk partition for a host OS I'm not going to use except for gaming and 1-2 Windows-only apps I need. I much prefer an emulator-based solution like Qemu, or WINE aka "darwine". I'm also not thrilled because this just largely removed the "necessity" fire from under the pants of darwine and Qemu developers, and both projects desperately need more work.
Unfortunately, Qemu/Q is buggy enough that Windows Update doesn't run on an installed guest OS and it doesn't import VPC7 systems cleanly like it claims. Darwine can't handle anything more complex than Minesweeper; half the installers I try don't run, and what does install never works. One error I saw in the WINE log said "JPEG support not builtin". Just loooovely.
Oh yeah- and if you use Mono on OSX, there's an intel-only build, but it's missing a lot of standard important libraries, and the devs have refused to release a proper build. Oh yeah- and setting up a system to actually build mono is a goddamn pain and two thirds.
Re:That's funny (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Apple is going to make a killing... (Score:5, Interesting)
I go to MIT. I would say that fully half, maybe more, of the computers used by professors and students here are Macs.
And obviously, these are not hippie artists or non-technical people. They are scientists, engineers, Nobel-prize winning physicists. Hell, a few weeks ago, we had Gilad Bracha (the guy at Sun responsible for maintaining Java) give a guest lecture. He presented the slides with a PowerBook.
That should tell you something. These are some of the smartest people in the world - they're not buying the Macs for the pretty colors. My friends tell me the situation is the same at other technical colleges.
Did you ever open up the command line? If you expanded it to fill the screen, you could pretend you were running Linux. Hell, you can even run KDE under Mac OS X if you wanted to. Unless you're tinkering with the OS, there are very few things you can do in Linux that you can't do in OS X.
But the beauty of OS X is, you don't have to deal with all the hassles of Linux. With OS X, every feature of the OS just works, leaving you with more time to get actual work done, instead of fighting to configure some new software you installed, or resolve a dependency problem.
Also, Linux on laptops sucks. Power management support, fan control, wireless network support, sleep support, bluetooth, manufacturer-specific keys, none of those work. It may be possible, but it isn't pleasant.
Over-reactions. Only small % will dual boot. (Score:5, Interesting)
Type A: Woo who! Apple is going to the moon, and taking over the PC market. Brilliant... (stock market in this camp as well).
Type B: Apple just doomed themselves, OSX will die now...
Hmmm. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between? Which do I think it is closer?
First off, The vast majority will never dual boot. So this will not create a mass movement one way or the other. (A much bigger impact will be the virtualization program announced.
The only real impact will be those potential switchers who didn't want to abandon windows. A safety net. And the bet is that once they switch they will be doing more and more mac and less and less windows. So a small net win. I put myself in this camp.
Negative possabilities: Game devs will drop mac since they can dual boot. Well most people won't dual boot, I think they will simply watch sales of mac games. If Macs pick up market share, someone will want to exploit that with native games.
So I think this is a net positive, just not on the scale most think. This is of interest to me, but I am a small part of the market. Now where is is my Conroe Mac?
Re:boot camp made me buy a mac (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dual boot? How about virtualization, too! (Score:5, Interesting)
Cool, but I still won't buy one to dual boot (Score:2, Interesting)
So far I've found no insurmountable problems with this, including performance (I don't play games, though.) The day this is available on MacTel I'll buy one.
20 inch iMac + resolution (Score:3, Interesting)
However the drivers didn't seem to let me set the native resolution of the display... the 20in display is at 1680x1050 but the highest res allowed in the windrivers was 14xx X 10xx or something I forget. And none of the available resolutions even matched up with the ratio of this screen so no matter what the desktop was stretched one way or another. Anyone figure this out?
Re:Dual boot? How about virtualization, too! (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure this isn't happening at the level of integration you were thinking, but it's still a neat trick. Suprised the hell out of me when I first saw it.
Re:What's Apple up to? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hey, I can play that game!
Windows without OS X on general x86 = Software revenue for Microsoft
Window with OS X on general x86 = Software revenue for Microsoft and Apple!
Explain why this is a good argument?
Re:Oblivion? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:WILL SOMEBODY MOD THAT COCKSUCKER DOWN?! (Score:4, Interesting)
You posted nearly the same paragraph in two threads on consecutive days. It smells a lot like marketing, even if that's not your stated intention:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=182273&cid=15
Virtualization company Parallels [parallels.com] announced that it will be bringing its Parallels Workstation virtualization product to Intel-based Macs [techworld.com]. Parallels is a hypervisor-based (with a kernel module) virtual machine solution already shipping for Windows and Linux, and is the first desktop virtualization product to support Intel VT/Vanderpool CPU "partitioning". It's also only $50. Parallels also has a long list of officially supported guest OSes [parallels.com], and that's just the ones that are *officially* supported. So either way, we'll have a nice dual boot solution AND a nice virtualization solution!
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=182379&cid=15
Virtualization company Parallels [parallels.com] announced a public beta of its Parallels Workstation virtualization product to Intel-based Macs [parallels.com] (direct download [parallels.com]. Parallels is a quasi-hypervisor-based (with a kernel module) virtual machine solution already shipping for Windows and Linux, and is the first desktop virtualization product to support Intel VT/Vanderpool CPU "partitioning". Once out of beta, It will also be only $50. Parallels also has a long list of officially supported guest OSes [parallels.com], and that's just the ones that are *officially* supported. It will likely run any x86-based OS you throw at it.
Perhaps better than you think (Score:3, Interesting)
Has Anyone Tried Installing Linux After Boot Camp? (Score:4, Interesting)
I heard a few people complaining here on Slashdot that Apple is ignoring the Linux community with this Boot Camp beta, although a lot of people pointed out that a few distros already had EFI boot capability.
I got a Mac Mini last night, installed Boot Camp, installed and reinstalled WinXP several times trying to figure out what partitions would work for my purposes. That took until well past midnight, so I'm finishing up setup for OS X and WinXP this morning at work, since this is for work (where the only Windows app I ever, ever have to use is Lotus Domino Admin and Designer since they dropped Mac support after R5).
We use SuSE Linux 10 Pro on some entry-level desktops and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 on all our servers. I popped in the SuSE 10 DVD, tried to pick it for booting in the Startup Disk control panel, and it worked! I tried picking it during boot-up, and it also worked. I got it to the point where I could resize the Windows partition to install Linux, and everything else gave no errors.
We have some other odd linux live-boot CD's and even Solaris x86 that we're going to try just for the heck of it. I'm not going to go as far as to install any of them until I've tested the OS X and Win XP dual-booting for about a week, since that would be most useful for our users.
I'm the I.T. Director in a business with about 300 employees world-wide, and the fact that we could boot Mac OS X, Win XP, and Linux on Apple hardware essentially removes all obstacles to purchasing these computers. I've been a Mac fan for 15 years since I started working here, and in the last 5 years it's been virtually impossible for me to convince the President or CEO that in certain cases it makes sense to buy a Mac. The reason has always been that "they don't run Windows".
For guys like me and companies like us, Apple is going to start to see business they haven't seen in years because of what they did yesterday...
Re:You get what you pay for... (Score:2, Interesting)
I realize there are downloadable equivalents to just about everything, but the last thing I want to do everytime I have to wipe the drive on this Dell (only twice in a year and a half) is go through and download or install tons of software that I need/like to use. I've had miserable experiences with Windows over the last 5 years, which lead me to Linux and eventually the Mac.
The Apple is more expensive on paper and up front than the Dell, but it's worth every penny to me for reasons I can't entirely quantify. It's the first computer since my C-64 that I just plain enjoyed.
This is so Not good for Apple and OSX... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure this may help their hardware sales, and it does offer this argument for the Apple community, "Why not buy an Apple, you can run Windows too?"
However, what this says to developers is what it said to them during OS/2 days, and why no 'native' good OS/2 ports of popular software existed. There was no need, it ran Windows just fine, so developers would just write a Windows version and expect OS/2 to run their application inside the Windows binaries.
The same could potentially happen for OSX and Apple. Especially in the games market. Why spend good money on an OSX port of your game if you assume most Mac users could just boot WindowsXP or Vista and run your game? Especially when Windows still has a video/performance margin over OSX technology for gaming.
The are two marginal ways this could benefit Apple.
1) Apple becames a major hardware vendor, and competes with Dell and Gateway, etc.
2) Users do start buying Macs to dual boot, and find they like OSX much better than Windows. (Unfortunately, as hard is this is to stomach for a lot of Slashdotters, this doesn't happen in the world as much as OSX proponents would like to believe.) Usually when users are forced or try to move fully to OSX they do it kicking and screaming and if they were comfortable in Windows, end up back there. (And yes, I have seen this in several companies, management gets on the buzz, flips over a department of 20 or 30 users to OSX, and the users end up forcing the return of Windows PCs - especailly in department that were once Mac dominated like graphic design but later moved all their users to Windows in the 90s. The Users have not always been so keen to move back to Mac when it is forced on them.)
So even if this does help Apple and Mac with marketshare, it will also become a contest of preferred usability between Vista and OSX, and I don't see OSX 'always' winning.
My personal opinion is that this will boost OSX and Mac sales initially, but in the long run will destroy OSX, and Apple will potentially just become another Dell or Gateway.
Which I do not think is such a good thing. Competition is a good thing.
Besides, like I said above this type of move certainly didn't work for OS/2, and not only from the developer perspective, users liked OS/2, but not 'enough' to purchase it and Windows to run Windows applications.
So will OSX be strong enough to keep users in OSX for the majority of use or just be a side booted OS, and people end up flipping to Windows for games and applications OSX doesn't yet have?
If people keep finding themselves flipping back to Windows, they will start spending more time in Windows, just to not have to reboot. And when this slide happens, OSX will not be the dominate OS even running on Apple Macs.
(Sure Windows runs on Macs already in VirtualPC, but there is big difference between running an emulator to 'get by' for some business applications, and booting into the full experience of Windows and running Windows games at high speed. And I think Apple is a little to arrogant on how good OSX is to think they will keep the market even on their own hardware.)
Re:Apple is going to make a killing... (Score:3, Interesting)
So your idea of 'real work' is configuring the UI of your desktop? (By the way, all of the features you listed are available, either as part of the default OS or with shareware)