Windows XP on Intel Mac Confirmed
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Mar 16, 2006 08:57 AM
from the what-do-you-want-to-do-tonight-pinky dept.
from the what-do-you-want-to-do-tonight-pinky dept.
niemassacre writes "According to winxponmac.com, the contest has been won - nearly $14k to narf2006 for submitting a working solution to dual-booting Windows XP and Mac OS X on an Intel-Powered mac. A thread on osx86project.org has confirmations from several testers that the procedure works on the 17" iMac, the Mac mini, and the MacBook Pro. Many sets of pictures and videos (such as this installation video) are floating around (and mentioned in the thread). The solution itself should be posted soon." Poit! Congratulations to narf.
Related Stories
[+]
WinXP on a Mac, Hoax? 390 comments
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?
[+]
Slashback: Real-ID, PriceRitePhoto, RIM 75 comments
Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including a possible iBill framejob, the first steps towards defying the Real ID act, Peter Quinn continues his support for Open Source, Judge flunks lawsuit against spammers, WinXP on a Mac, round 2, Juniper drops message board suit, Vint Cerf answers questions on TLDs, PriceRitePhoto gets relisted, and RIM goes on the offensive for patent reform -- Read on for details.
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Windows XP on Intel Mac Confirmed
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Cool. (Score:4, Funny)
Very possible (Score:4, Informative)
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the In Denial (Score:5, Funny)
The good, the bad, the ugly, and the OH GOD MAKE IT STOP!?
(And yes, I too leave matching the categories to the OS as an exercise to the reader...)
Re:The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.kompas-media.nl/)
Re:The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Score:5, Funny)
1984 (Score:4, Funny)
state. And today, that great body has purged itself of parasites.
We have triumphed over the unprincipled dissemination of facts.
The thugs and wreckers have been cast out and the poisonous
weeds of disinformation have been cosigned to the dustbin of
history. Let each and every cell rejoice! For today we
celebrate the first, glorious anniversary of the Information
Purification Directive.
We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of
pure ideology, where each worker may bloom secure from the pests
of contradictory and confusing truths. Our unification of thought
is a more powerful weapon than any fleet or army on earth! We are
one people. With one will. One resolve. One cause. Our enemies
shall talk themselves to death, and we will bury them with their
own confusion. We shall prevail!
-- Big Brother, Apple's "1984" commercial
A lot more useful! Excellent! (Score:3, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Tuesday January 17 2006, @08:06PM)
Now all we need is for someone to make a hypervisor, or allow booting XP from within mac os without emulation, and we'll have a great system!
Does this version dual boot fully with Mac OS?
I'm sooo tempted to buy a Mac Book Pro now - my poor wallet.
Re:A lot more useful! Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.chriscanfield.net/)
I, for one, am desperately trying to restrain myself from running out and picking up a Mac Book.
Re:A lot more useful! Excellent! (Score:4, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
LPAR? LPAR?????
You, sir, have obviously used a real machine before. Which means your posts may be filled with actual facts. You must stop posting immediately.
So where's the meat? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So where's the meat? (Score:5, Funny)
As this is for a Mac, there will be no free download. It will instead be provided as a $25 shareware package - just like every other useful little utility.
MacBook Pro (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Lawsuit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is happy. They didn't have to spend any of their own money to get compatibility, and if they're lucky, maybe more than 30% of the dual booters will actually pay for a Windows license.
Re:Lawsuit? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.xmob.co.uk/)
A percent (%) character seems to have slipped in there.
Re:Lawsuite? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lawsuite? (Score:4, Insightful)
As to Apple, I doubt they would care either. They primarily sell hardware. OS X is just something to set their hardware apart from other computer makers. Nobody is gonna NOT buy a Mac because it can run Windows, but somepeople might now buy a Mac (who otherwise wouldn't) because now it can.
It benefits both companies.
I hope ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I hope ... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.zieg.com/)
Re:Dude, Speak for your self. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.getmp.com/ | Last Journal: Monday November 18 2002, @12:11PM)
Let's hear it for peer review (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you really read the original (yesterday's) commentary on this? It looked like a basic peer-review process to me, albeit in true /. style. A person steps up, makes an extraordinary claim, and the community of peers does its best to suggest every possibility for falsification.
It took a while, but the truly hare-brained ideas (like a photoshopped image of a MacBook) were discredited leaving only a couple of reasonable possibilities (like a full-screen display of an XP screengrab image).
So honestly, would you really prefer that a peer-review process work from the premise that the proposal is true, as opposed to false? While the former is certainly much "nicer", the latter is more in keeping with scientific modes of thought. I'd have expected nothing less, had I presented the same claims + shaky evidence.
Re:Let's hear it for peer review (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a big difference between saying "What an obvious fake! What a lousy photoshop job! What an idiot to think that we would believe this!" and something like "While there's no reason that this couldn't be faked, there's no evidence that it has been. Let's wait and evaluate the proof when it becomes available before passing judgement."
Where I come from, the scientific process of peer-review doesn't include name-calling and obviously premature pronouncements of fakery by armchair image analysts with a copy of the GIMP and no knowledge of things like light bleed in cheap CCDs.
Of course, this is slashdot, where making instant pronouncements about things you don't understand is practically the official sport.
M-
an end to speculation (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Saturday January 20 2007, @07:25PM)
Re:an end to speculation (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Saturday January 20 2007, @07:25PM)
Obligatory Pink and the Brain Follow Up (Score:5, Funny)
I'd prefer a VPC-like solution (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.crapfilter.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday August 16 2005, @06:52AM)
soo..... (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Monday March 20 2006, @08:33PM)
Re:soo..... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.chriscanfield.net/)
Mirror of the movie (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.madshrimps.be/ | Last Journal: Monday March 27 2006, @07:31AM)
Re:Mirror of the movie (Score:4, Funny)
(http://francis.uy.googlepages.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday August 29, @09:40AM)
Re:Mirror of the movie (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.gregsmith.com/)
Re:Mirror of the movie (Score:4, Insightful)
Or it could just be the coffee, as another poster has already metioned.
be kind to their server (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Saturday January 20 2007, @07:25PM)
forum
http://forum.osx86project.org.nyud.net:8080/index
Video:
http://www.projectosx86.org.nyud.net:8080/winonma
In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://port80ware.com/)
I find this kind of funny and ironic...
Apple announces that they are moving to intel. OSX is DRM'd and bound to Macs so that it cannot be run on commodity hardware. Senior execs at Apple also state that they will not do anything to prevent Windows from running on their hardware.
Intel Macs come out.
Hackers get OSX86 up and running on Dells with relative ease, despite Apple's best efforts to prevent them from doing so. However, they have such a hard time getting Windows to run on a Mac that a contest is started and 13,000 dollars worth of prize money is offered.
Oh the irony. :-)
Re:Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.zieg.com/)
In contrast, consider Windows, which has been successfully ported to...Alpha? Once, many years ago? Windows is far more intransigent about porting to new hardware platforms, because they've never needed to, never wanted to, and never put any friendly handles in to smooth the transition.
Re:Irony (Score:5, Informative)
Some points to bear in mind: (Score:5, Informative)
Windows NT was built from the beginning to run on multiple processors, it had a very advanced hardware abstraction layer built in. The other versions never sold very well and there were problems with application support (e.g. people targetting multiple processor arch's). Apple has clevery overcome this obstacle by including "Rosetta" from the start, something similar existed for NT Alpha called FX!32 but I suspect by the time it was released it was too little too late to save the OS.
I'm sure that the HAL is in place in NT derived operating systems to this day and if MS were so inclined they could do another port. However, there's no real business need (as there is for Apple with their transition) so it's never been done. They target the largest installed hardware base.
The issue with getting Windows on Macintel to work is that EFI is so fundamentally different to the traditional BIOS XP expects that you require either the source code of the OS kernel to make it work or have to, as has been done here, provide essentially a bios emulator. This is nothing to do with portability or HAL's, it's about having access to the fundamentally low-level parts of the operating system, something people outside MS don't have.
Phew! (Score:3, Funny)
(http://web.mac.com/gentlemen_loser)
Can't play the video (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Can't play the video (Score:5, Funny)
An Intel Mac, obviously.
Re:Can't play the video (Score:4, Informative)
Big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.keirstead.org/)
from macrumors (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Thursday December 14 2006, @07:59AM)
How can you knock flexibility and choice? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand why some people are so negative about something which gives the user greater flexibility and choice. I love using OS X for my personal needs, but my job requires Windows and CounterStrike:Source requires DirectX, so it's made my MacBook Pro even more flexible and that can only be a good thing.
Whilst I can imagine that some software producers will look at the situation and say "The Mac now runs Windows so we don't need to produce a Mac native version", I think the ability to boot Windows tears down one barrier to buying a Mac...if you have to run Windows then you don't need to compromise and buy a Windows only machine.
Finally, I know you can buy a regular PC and dual-boot with a hacked copy of OS X, but it's illegal, whereas dual booting a genuine retail copy of XP on a Mac is legal and that makes it a real option for the workplace. I look forward to taking my MacBook everywhere and leaving that chunky Dell on the table...someone needs to start producing 200GB+ 2.5" 7200rpm drives fast!
Dell = Biggest Loser? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perfect solution for Apple. (and me, yay!) (Score:5, Interesting)
Why this won't negatively affect SW developers view of mac sales:
The average Mac user is never going to set up a dual boot (especially given no support, difficulties involved) so this really won't impact software developer plans (ie they won't stop making Mac software). Even those who dual boot will probably prefer to have native Mac versions of software. In the end all Macs sold will be potential buyers of Mac software. That is why this is a perfect solution, no official support and difficulties make it something only those who MUST have it will do, so it will not have any significant percentage of people using a Mac, but buying Windows software for it.
Why this is better than booting OSX on a whitebox:
Booting windows on a Mac, is a legal solution. Apple has said they are not doing anything to stop it. So you can have legal OSX and legal WinXP on the mac and keep them both updated with ease. Also the Mac which has less HW support will be running on it's intended platform. Windows should have no problem running on the same hardware. Contrast running pirate/hacked OSX on the whitebox (the only way to do it) which will always be of questionable stability and a fight to upgrade without breaking it.
Way to go guys!
explanation (riposte) (Score:5, Informative)
(http://umich.edu/~jamec | Last Journal: Monday November 12, @06:28PM)
According to Intel documentation [intel.com], using a CSM that plugs into the EFI framework should allow for booting BIOS-based operating systems:In the words of Jim Cramer, "booyah."
Mirrors for the files you need to do this...... (Score:3, Informative)
http://leewilkins.com/share/winxponmac0.1.zip [leewilkins.com]
http://www.jerrybrace.com/Winxponmac%200.1.zip [jerrybrace.com]
http://www.geekdinner.co.uk/winxponmac0.1.zip [geekdinner.co.uk]
http://www.apple.tempex.sk/wordpress...nmac%200.1
http://individual.utoronto.ca/kkapoor/winxponmac0
Custom Slipstreamed XP CD? (Score:4, Informative)
For those of us who work in IT, like me, and have already created a slipstreamed XP CD with the latest security updates (and storage drivers--thank god for that! no more F6 during an install), I want to know how to add the XP on Mac fixes to that already-prepared CD. Oh, and I want to know how to do that without having to go and actually figure it out myself (mostly because I don't yet have an Intel Mac of my own to play with). WINNT.SIF I can handle, but I'd rather leave TXTSETUP.SIF to someone more knowledgeable (hopefully that will work with the iastor drivers that are already inserted into my CD).
From a quick glance at the patch provided, it looks like it provides the iaStor drivers for the Windows installer to be able to access the hard drive (since the Intel Macs appear to use an Intel 945 chipset with ICH7 storage, this makes sense, since you can't exactly hit "F6" during boot to load the drivers from a floppy. It also looks like it adds a custom framebuffer driver, since the X1600 is apparently one of the few things that doesn't have working drivers yet (everything else seems to be supported by the generic Intel Chipset drivers, the generic Marvell Yukon Gig-E drivers, the generic Broadcom WiFi card drivers, etc). I guess the X1600 issue isn't an issue on the Mac Minis, since those have Intel 950 integrated graphics.
In any case, this is the greatest news I have heard in a long time. I really want to get a MacBook Pro to replace my aging Power Mac G4/500 DP and my crappy eMachines laptop, and I want to dual-boot Windows XP just so I can play games at LAN parties without having to drag my desktop system around (and run a few bits of Windows-only software). For day to day use, nothing beats Mac OS X.
Torrent to the solution (Score:3, Informative)
(http://www.claytondevelopment.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday July 21 2004, @04:02AM)
Subvert standby/sleep mode for fast OS toggling (Score:3, Interesting)
AFAIK both OS's have both 'light standby' and sleep modes, presumably sleep involves swapping the ram out to disk and even reinitialising hardware on wake, so may just be the ticket.
If this can be made to work and tweaked for speed it would seem that you'd be able to ALT-TAB between OS's with a sub-10 second delay. That'd do for me.
Hope so!
FL
Possible solution to do it without a PC! (Score:4, Informative)
(http://sogeeky.net/)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://robvincent.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 09, @01:55PM)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm kinda loathed to give msft $ for a VM when I can just install WindowsXP from my installer disk.
I need a new laptop anyway, so may as well go with an Intel based Mac and be able to run pretty much anything i want.
Aaaargh (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://anthony.beardsmore.googlepages.com/)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://evil.google.com/)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.geocities...94/tyoras-guide.html)
One example would be the PC interface software for my cell phone. Nice to have, but I only use it every few months to back stuff up and am not about to go buy a PC just to run it. Same story for game hacking utilities.
Congratulations to Narf. I'm anxiously awaiting booting WinXP on my Intel iMac.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.hylobatidae.org/minerva/)
Games.
Stuff like VMWare will do a great job of running applications, but for stuff that requires access to modern hardware, dual-booting is probably the only real answer.
I've been doing it for years on my PC, after all - serious stuff gets done in Linux, but when I want to mess around with modding Half-Life 2 then I quickly reboot into Windows XP, and instantly get 100% software compatibility. If something gave me the ability to dual-boot my new MacBook in a similar manner, then that would be great - I'd essentially have both a Mac and a PC in one shiny laptop case.
This latest news makes me happy - it's like I bought a very fast Mac, then just over two weeks later I received a very fast PC of equivalent specs for free. What is there to complain about?
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/~The+Fun+Guy/ | Last Journal: Wednesday October 31, @11:09AM)
Not quite free, since you have to buy a copy of XP.
Um...
You *did* pay for that copy of XP, right?
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Friday March 31 2006, @11:17AM)
If you have a retail license of XP, it can be transferred to the Mac. If you have an OEM copy, you have to tell MS "I just had to replace the motherboard, CPU, and RAM"
Dual booting is unpractical (Score:4, Interesting)
- You have to stop everything on Mac OS (Linux, BSD, whatever) to get into Windows and vice versa.
- Data exchange between systems is horrible (common FAT32/ext2 partition? yikes!)
Being a fulltime Linux user, I know the pain. Now I have two machines sharing data over the network. That's the proper solution, unless you lack funds for a small x86 system. So, in conclusion, I don't understand what all this fuss is all about.
my 2 cents, of course.
Re:Dual booting is unpractical (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Friday March 31 2006, @11:17AM)
As for data exchange, unless you're packing a notebook, I'd probably just put together a lightweight file server with Linux so that you're not trying to juggle partitions on your local machine any more than is necessary.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.mrbrown.net/)
Considering the fact that the Device Manager screenshot from the iMac Core Duo shows an abudance of "Unknown devices" (including the display adapter), and considering the drivers for these devices probably do not exist for Windows, I don't see people playing games anytime soon.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm thinking of writing a book about a Windows guy who disguises himself as a Mac user to see what it's like.
I call it: "Mac Like Me".
Sounds cool, huh?
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Crossover Office is pretty good on Linux. I'd rather use something like Wine (provided it worked on 100% of the stuff I need -- wishful thinking) than VMWare. Having said that, I'd rather use VMWare than dual boot.
Re:the real question is (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
2. Anybody who does a lot of work so I don't have to gets points
3. The definition of hard has less to do whith whether the technology looks challenging and more to do with how long it actually takes people to accomplish. This was not instantaneous with a bunch of people piling on working solutions at the same time. This guy stands alone after a significant period of time. That makes this "hard" in a defacto sense of the word and is definately worth some points.
4. I'm not a Mac user. I'm a Windows user. Of course Mac users love their OS. I don't. After supporting several Mac people and trying to make use of it myself, I've decided I actually dislike it quite a lot (no flames, please, this is just a personal preference). However, I _love_ Mac hardware. I've lusted after the clean, light notebooks and the "cheese grater" G5 desktops are shear design elegance. As a current Mac user, judging this by the fact that you wouldn't want to run Windows is missing the fundimental point that Windows users might like the option of buying great hardware from Apple. From my perspective, this is worth lots of points.
Add em all up and this guy can redeem his points for several rounds of beer should I ever meet him
TW
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Friday March 31 2006, @11:17AM)
I not a fan of Mac OS. I can't find software for it (I would have to drive 100+ miles to purchase software at a store), and I'm not particularly fond of the UI. I've spent enough time on OSX to know that it still behaves a lot like older versions of Mac OS in some ways that I never liked. So, I'll stick with XP for my general-purpose PCs and Linux for my specialize stuff like file servers.
Now, my wife would love to move her PC into the living room. Problem is, she doesn't like the way it looks. She practically salivated over the new iMac ("oh pretty!") when she saw it in a copy of MacMall last month, and it will likely wind up being a gift for her some time this year since I now have the option of using XP on it.
Aside from that, this means that people who have to work in both XP and OSX can now dual boot and no longer need to have two systems to do their work.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.kibbee.ca/)