Apple to Charge for Boot Camp?

An anonymous reader writes "According to a report MacScoop has obtained, Apple will charge current users of Mac OS X Tiger for the final version of Boot Camp that will be released at the same time as Mac OS X Leopard, this Spring."

Re:Looks like I'll stay with Tiger then

[SachiCALaw]

BootCamp is currently a beta. Apple would charge for the release version.

The reason given will no doubt be

[Hawthorne01]

Sarbanes-Oaxley compliance. Again. FWIW, I have Boot Camp on this very machine. It's worth an addtional 30 bills, if for no other reason than it opens up the world of Windows gaming to me yet again. If some of the Wine-based alternatives for OS X pan out, then I'll drop Boot Camp. Until then...

Re:Looks like I'll stay with Tiger then

[Bastardchyld]

Its because they are selling the final version. This no different than any other public beta. No one expects Microsoft to offer the final version of Vista for free because there was a free public beta.

Nothing to see here.

Just like iChat

[Finque]

This is nothing new from Apple. I believe when iChat AV came out with Panther (10.3), users of Jaguar (10.2) could upgrade to it for $29. Apple wants you to buy the latest OS from them, but for certain things (iChat, now maybe BootCamp) you can purchase them separately for a previous OS.

Yeah and you expected?

[shawnce]

Apple stated all along the Boot Camp would ship with Mac OS X 10.5 (aka you buy 10.5 you also get Boot Camp). So this left open the question if you would be able to purchase Boot Camp (the final version) for 10.4 or not. This rumors implies that 10.4 users will have the ability to use the release version of Boot Camp... which is a good thing. It was never really likely that Boot Camp would be free for 10.4 users.

Yes way.

[Finque]

iChat AV was an integrated part of Panther, but Jaguar users could upgrade iChat to iChat AV for $29, since it was sold separately.

Re:No way.

[avalys]

We already know that BootCamp will be part of Leopard. This article is about Apple allowing Tiger users to buy the Leopard version of BootCamp (as opposed to the betas that have been released thus far) for $30.

Re:No way.

[masklinn]

Apple doesn't care, full Bootcamp will be part of Leopard (for "free"), this is just a boon to the few users who don't want to get Leopard but want a non-beta bootcamp in the end.

They already did it with iChat AV (OSX 10.3 included iChat AV, you had to pay $29 to get it on 10.2) and with the 802.11n update (will be available with the 802.11n Airport, should be included in Leopard, $29 if you stick to Tiger without getting the 802.11n Airport Extreme)

Most people will buy Leopard anyway.

Re:Looks like I'll stay with Tiger then

[Firehed]

It's probably not a driver thing, it's most likely an EFI thing. Booting is done differently since the current line of Apple hardware uses EFI instead of BIOS, so GRUB (etc) probably isn't compatible. That, and the live partitioning without destroying data that's currently on the drive, which I've never seen before (though I haven't dabbled in the Linuxes in a while).

Mind you, I still think it's a lame cash grab, but I figure that Leopard will include the full version at no extra cost so it won't affect future switchers anyways. When I tested out the current beta version, it worked fine, other than the fact that Parallels was much more useful and it meant having a Windows installation on my MBP. In either case, I needed the hard drive space back. I wonder if they'll put this down to the S-O Act too...

For those only having a few Win32 applications...

[(H)elix1]

Check out(http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac) Crossover for OSX. Just a commercial version of WINE, but for the $40-60 I can run office 2k without having to put a Win32 OS on the machine. It feels like it launches a hidden copy of the OS for each application under the covers, so I stay in OSX with my win32 apps running along side the Mac ones. Not a dual OS boot like boot camp, not a vmware OS in a OS like parallels. Just another option. I suspect you could do WINE for free, but the helper stuff was well worth the money, IMHO.

Re:Looks like I'll stay with Tiger then

[tepples]

Booting is done differently since the current line of Apple hardware uses EFI instead of BIOS, so GRUB (etc) probably isn't compatible.

They're working on that [enbug.org].

That, and the live partitioning without destroying data that's currently on the drive, which I've never seen before (though I haven't dabbled in the Linuxes in a while).

FIPS shortens FAT32 partitions. Linux had it in 1999.

Re:What is the difference between Boot Camp and GR

[battery111]

Well, actually a lot of things. Boot camp isn't simply a bootloader, it is a packaged solution. Upon first running bootcamp, it has you do a destructionless partition on your HD in order to hold windows (if you don't already have a windows part). Then it burns a cd with all the drivers you will need for your mac hardware once windows is installed and looking for drivers for these things. Now yes, it also doeds include a bootloader, but it is designed to be a more "plug and play" solution than having to find and download the individual programs that would do these things, and configure them properly. Just more of a "mac-like" experience.

Re:What is the difference between Boot Camp and GR

[Sancho]

Boot Camp actually prepares a Windows disc for you including drivers for Apple's hardware. It also partitions the disk. It's basically an all-in-two solution for adding Windows to your Mac (it's all-in-two because you still need a Windows CD, which you still need if you repartition manually). I don't know if the Windows drivers are available any other way.

Re:What is the difference between Boot Camp and GR

[wolrahnaes]

Intel Macs use EFI instead of the legacy BIOS, so the versions of GRUB and/or LILO shipping with any current Linux distros do not work. GRUB appears to have partial EFI support working on the Mac Mini and LILO has the elilo fork, but at this point neither have made it in to mainstream distros.

What Boot Camp does is it provides BIOS emulation so NTLDR, GRUB, and LILO then work unmodified after the Boot Camp loader has already run. The Boot Camp assistant also provides a non-destructive GUI partitioning tool and allows the user to burn a CD containing all the drivers they'll need for Windows XP on their Mac.

BootCamp-helper app., NOT a bootloader

[Anonymous Coward]

EFI boots the system, not BootCamp. You can instal win/linux without bootcamp. rEFIt is a nice bootloader for OSX/Linux/Win (you still have to use lilo in combination with rEFIt for linux - rEFIt launches lilo which launches linux). Right now EFI is not compatible with GRUB Details are presented in amother Slashdot post:

http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=218036&c id=17702948 [slashdot.org]

Re:No way.

[trogdor8667]

Apple confirmed the 802.11n fee at being $1.99. [macrumors.com]

Boot Camp isn't really needed

[iCEBaLM]

The one thing to understand here is that you don't really need Boot Camp to run other operating systems. Intel macs will boot, install and run other intel OS's just fine without it. All Boot Camp does is gives you a pretty interface to partition your drive and makes a nice CD with all the Windows drivers on it for you.

Re:Define Vista then...

[bsane]

Apple tends to lock 10.2 from running new software, and you bet your ass they'll lock 10.3

Apple isn't restricting what you can do with 10.2 or 10.3, the problem is that each new release has included a major new api or toolkit (CoreData comes to mind in 10.4). If developers take advantage of the new features then their apps won't run on previous versions.

Re:Looks like I'll stay with Tiger then

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

That, and the live partitioning without destroying data that's currently on the drive, which I've never seen before (though I haven't dabbled in the Linuxes in a while).

Ubuntu's installer can resize NTFS and FAT partitions nondestructively, though don't try it on a Vista system as the version of NTFSResize that Ubuntu ships with renders Windows unbootable (though it can be fixed using a newer version of NTFSResize, and 7.04 will almost certainly work fine).

Vista's disk management can resize NTFS partitions as well, including the boot partition - without restarting the computer.

Time to Use EasyBCD Then...

[Anonymous Coward]

If Apple is going to start charging for Boot Camp, I guess its time for dual-booters to start using the multi-purpose EasyBCD [neosmart.net] or OnMac [onmac.net] to get Windows running on your Macintosh. They're both free, and written by the community, not a big money-making company. You can (and should) donate if you like, of course.

Re:"will be sold for $29 to Tiger users"

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can run BootCamp (i.e. you have an Intel Mac) then you will meet the requirements for Leopard out of the box. Apple froze the APIs in 10.4 so I suspect that there will not be huge incompatibilities with existing applications, either. Leopard does add numerous new features and APIs, so developers will definitely want to enhance their apps for 10.5, but it won't be required.

Re:Apple milking its users? I'm shocked!

[Pink Tinkletini]

Apple's said from the start it would be bundled with Leopard, and it still is. And as usual, people still on Tiger—over two years old at this point—can upgrade to it at a heavily discount (compared to the full price of Leopard).

What's the fuss about? What's wrong with you Apple-hating malcontents?

Bootcamp does not provide Bios emulatio

[Anonymous Coward]

I installed linux and windows on my MacBook without installing bootcamp, the Bios emulation is already in the firmware (if you have an old intel mac, just upgrade the firmware, no need for bootcamp)
Bootcamp:
1) uses diskutil for repartitioning
2) creates a CD with win32 drivers
This is all, you can do everything, and much more, without bootcamp, for example install linux. See the following slashdot post:
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=218036&c id=17702948 [slashdot.org]

a different perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

About 4 months ago I was in the market for a new PC (my Sony PCV-MXS10 with its Pentium 4 was getting long in the tooth) and the Mac Mini came out on top weighing price/ performance/aesthetics so I looked at a *lot* of information about Boot Camp before buying a Mac to run XP.

Everything I saw made it *quite* clear that Boot Camp is currently a beta product whose license has an expiration date (although it's been unclear whether that will ever be enforced in the software it is in the licensing terms) and that the only way to get a copy with a non-expiring license would be to eventually buy an upgrade to OS X 10.5.

I decided that the last 4 months of use I've gotten plus use over the next several months before 10.5 is expected to be released would be well worth the anticipated $129 to eventually get to a supported configuration and bought back then. This announcement means I now have an option they'd previously made clear wouldn't be offered ... and at a lower price. So I get to give serious thought as to whether to just pay the $29 and skip the OS X version upgrade (I very well might since nothing in 10.5 looks worth upgrading for someone who spends most of his time in XP).

As someone who is smack in the target set of folks who might buy Boot Camp for 10.4 and who bought a Mac solely because Boot Camp was promised to be coming, I'm here to say this is the first suggestion that a permanently-licensed Boot Camp for 10.4 would be available at all. Which is why I will also seriously question the integrity of Apple's execs if they also try to blame GAAP for attaching a fee to it (as opposed to simply claiming "we think this function is worth $29").

Re:For those only having a few Win32 applications.

[istewart]

You can in fact do WINE for free, it's been supported on OS X since sometime in the 0.9.2x versions. However, you are correct that you don't get any of the helper stuff (you pretty much have to figure out how to launch your app using command-line WINE), and compatibility isn't as good as CrossOver -- there's no Direct3D support at all, as far as I can see. Of course, you don't get the same user support that Codeweavers gives you either. Plus you have to compile it yourself (meaning you need the dev tools installed), since there's no installer package yet. I just have it installed for the PokerStars client, but for someone who needed more extensive support or was running a mission-critical app, Crossover Mac is probably well worth it.

Re:Same shit different day

[kalidasa]

Do you know what the version number is of Windows XP? It's Windows NT 5.1. Care to guess what the version number was of Windows 2000? Windows NT 5.0.

Re:Looks like I'll stay with Tiger then

[TheRaven64]

That, and the live partitioning without destroying data that's currently on the drive, which I've never seen before (though I haven't dabbled in the Linuxes in a while)

It's not exposed via the Disk Utility GUI, but the command-line disk tools shipped with OS X can do this.

Re:Looks like I'll stay with Tiger then

[hammock]

That, and the live partitioning without destroying data that's currently on the drive, which I've never seen before (though I haven't dabbled in the Linuxes in a while).

# FIPS
# GNU Parted
# Partition Magic (bought out by Symantec and discontinued)
# Paragon Partition Manager
# Acronis Disk Director Suite

Some of these have been out for quite a long time.

Re:Core 2 Duo? Miss Leopard and you miss a lot.

[mrchaotica]

There is no extra speed merely from switching from 32 to 64 bits, in general. However, on the AMD64 (aka EM64T in Intel-speak) architecture in particular, switching to the native mode of the processor (which happens to be 64-bit) also enables a bunch of extra registers -- and that does speed things up.

Re:Not til they fix it...

[sokoban]

Sorry, but I'm not paying a cent for Bootcamp til they make it work 100%.

Okay, then I won't charge you for the Bootcamp Beta. Though if you want to post your credit card number, expiration date, name, and security code, I'll gladly take them. Also, if you only run software that works 100% do you mostly run software written in HAL/S?

For a bunch of guys that brag about how much better their product is than Windows, they certainly code their Windows-based stuff poorly.

Apple doesn't have a lot of experience coding for their competitors' platforms. Strange, isn't it.

Itunes on Windows uses more juice than nearly every other application I run.

Your computer runs off juice? What kind is it, Apple or Orange?

Back to Bootcamp... it took almost a solid year for them to release a build of the Windows drivers that actually made use of all of the system's hardware... until then, the two-finger trackpad drag didn't work (and it's still sub-par to the responsiveness of the OSX drivers)...

Okay, and every company that sells PCs with Windows preloaded ships drivers that work well? If you're this up in arms about Apple shipping beta Windows XP drivers that don't work as well as their OS X counterparts, what do you think about the actual final version drivers that are shipped preloaded on Windows based computers?

opening the onboard camera blew the OS up...

And I bet it splashed juice everywhere.

Even now, running the latest code, when you bring Windows back from hibernate on a Macbook, the trackpad doesn't work at all and a reboot is required to bring it back. It's been tolerable because it's a beta, but put a price tag on it and we have a different situation. They're going to have to put a lot more effort into making a quality product if they want us to shell out for it.

So, in order to sell a piece of software, it should have less bugs than the free beta version. That should be modded: (+liek infinity, Insightful)

Re:Apple milking its users? I'm shocked!

[Rodness]

While Apple does put out great products.. please dont think you are giving your money to the good guys. They are every bit as altruistic as Microsoft.

You completely missed my point. I'm NOT buying their products because "I want to give my money to the good guys" or any such philosophical or idealistic bullshit.

I buy their products because at the end of the day, they just work. It's not just a marketing slogan. I can sit and relax on my couch and not fight with my computer.

That's all it is. I don't care about their philosophy, or revolutionary upgrades. I just want a computer that does what I want, when I want, without irritating me.

All I care about is the quality. And I'm willing to pay for it. And people like me are Apple's target demographic. That was my point.

Re:Looks like I'll stay with Tiger then

[Alioth]

Linux had it in 1999? Try 1992. We were resizing partitions so we could install Linux 0.14 (there were no distros, you basically did a 'cp -a' of the root disk to the hard disk, and using a hex editor, changed the boot device in the kernel to the hard disk).

Re:Looks like I'll stay with Tiger then

[gabebear]

In this case he is talking about resizing an HFS+ disk so that you can create a NTFS partition for Windows. I ran into trouble with bootcamp's resizer and had to use GNU Parted to shrink my Mac's disk. GNU Parted supports shrinking just about every file system, although it can't enlarge HFS partitions while bootcamp's resizer can.