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OS X Businesses Operating Systems The Almighty Buck Apple

Apple to Charge for Boot Camp? 501

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-wait-a-minute dept.
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."
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Apple to Charge for Boot Camp? More

Apple to Charge for Boot Camp?

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  • Re:Looks like I'll stay with Tiger then (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Marcion ( 876801 ) on Sunday January 21, 2007 @12:20PM (#17702472) Homepage Journal
    Ok I just read the article, "there is strong possibility that Apple's boot manager software, allowing to use Windows and Mac OS X in dual boot mode will be sold for $29 to Tiger users." How will they do this when we *already* have bootcamp?
  • Well. I guess most users will want to upgrade to Leopard (isn't that why some use the mac instead of XP/Vista/Ubuntu, the OS itself?). If you don't want to, 29$ looks like a fair price (and you can stick with the beta version afaik if you don't want to shell out money at all).

    There are now great alternatives. Boot Camp, Parallels, CrossOverMac, Wine. Competition is great (even if cooperation is better ;-).

  • No way. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by severdia ( 745423 ) on Sunday January 21, 2007 @12:24PM (#17702516) Homepage
    Nobody will buy this if they charge for it. There are competing solutions already out which are better than BootCamp (like Parallels), They've already promised this will be part of Leopard and the Boot Camp page still says so: http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/ [apple.com] The quote in the right column says "Get a sneak peak at the other new features in Leopard on the Mac OS X Leopard site." That implies this is stil a feature of Leopard and will not be sold separately. MacScoop should stop smoking MacCrack.

  • Re:Looks like I'll stay with Tiger then (Score:5, Interesting)

    by iluvcapra ( 782887 ) on Sunday January 21, 2007 @12:30PM (#17702562)

    Just to make something clear that is not so clear in the summary: Boot Camp is included with Leopard, it is free with Leopard. It is BETA on Tiger, and if you wish to use the supported final Boot Camp on Tiger after Leopard is released, you will have to pay.

    This is an inducement to upgrade. If they let you just keep BootCamp for free, without wrapping it up in something else you paid for, then the SOX fairy would surely turn them into a pumpkin.

    I hope every lobbyist is working overtime to fix this damn GAAP rule. It makes sense on paper, but the implementation is "Retarded".

  • Apple milking its users? I'm shocked! (Score:1, Interesting)

    by I'm Don Giovanni ( 598558 ) on Sunday January 21, 2007 @12:35PM (#17702606)
    No surprise. This is the same company that charges you $10 for the ability to use their media player to play videos at full screen, for crying out loud. They charge $130 for incremental OS updates every 12-18 months, which is basically a subscription service. They're charging $2 to enable the 802.11n hardware that they will ship.

    Apple is the king of "nickel and dime"ing the user for all it's worth.

  • Re:Looks like I'll stay with Tiger then (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Marcion ( 876801 ) on Sunday January 21, 2007 @12:35PM (#17702610) Homepage Journal
    I assume it will try to stop you setting up a new partition, because presumably the boot loader has no idea what the date is.

  • Not til they fix it... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by justin_w_hall ( 188568 ) on Sunday January 21, 2007 @12:46PM (#17702684) Homepage
    Sorry, but I'm not paying a cent for Bootcamp til they make it work 100%. For a bunch of guys that brag about how much better their product is than Windows, they certainly code their Windows-based stuff poorly. Itunes on Windows uses more juice than nearly every other application I run.

    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)... opening the onboard camera blew the OS up...

    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.

  • What is the difference between Boot Camp and GRUB? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sporkinum ( 655143 ) on Sunday January 21, 2007 @12:46PM (#17702688)
    Excuse my ignorance to all things Mac, but what is the difference between Boot Camp and GRUB/LILO? Can't GRUB/LILO boot a Mac OS?
  • Since new OSX releases aren't annual, $50/year would be more revenue, more regularly, for Apple.

  • Dont need it: We need only the BIOS emulation (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21, 2007 @01:18PM (#17702948)
    As far as I know Bootcamp is no big deal:
    1) It provides a GUI (not very good and limited, it does not support linux) for resizing the patritions. The actual job is done by DiskUtil, which can be used without installing BootCamp.
    2) It contains a disk image with Apple Win32 drivers (you can extract the image from the BootCamp installer - just search in the package and you'll find the image somewhere - i remember waguely it is in a .pax archive but I am not sure -anyway it is buried somewhere in the installer)

    You dont need BootCamp to instal windows and/or linux. You need a Mac with a firmware which supports BIOS emulation; for windows you also need the Apple win32 drivers.

    Boot canmp is an irritating application, You cannot use it if you want to configure a triple boot (OSX/Linux/Windows)- It WOULD NOT LET YOU CREATE a LINUX PARTITION.

    Another irritating feature. Apple firmware mistakenly identifies any non-Apple operating system as 'Windows'; for Apple 'Linux' is the same as 'Windows'. That is an offense for each and every Linux user all over the world (Bad Apple, Bad!). Fortunately this can be easily corrected by using a third party bootloader (rEFIt).

    For installing Linux and Windows on a Mac you need a Mac with a Bios emulation (if it does not have it just upgrade the firmware). For windows you also need Apple Win32 drivers.

    1) Make Win and Linux partition at the command line with DiskUtil.
    2) Install Win and Linux.
    3) Install the rEFIt bootloader. I would suggest to install it even if you do not use linux, it is much better than Apple's bootloader.

  • Re:Looks like I'll stay with Tiger then (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Glonoinha ( 587375 ) on Sunday January 21, 2007 @01:29PM (#17703022) Journal
    Charge for undocumented, unsupported software? Who do they think they are, Microsoft?

    But really, I see this as a good thing. If they are going to release it as a full retail release with documentation and actual support, then by all means put a price tag on it. It will only take one half hour phone call to support to burn through the $30 retail price, and in the scope of things the price vs additional functionality you will get from a Mac is a mind bending proposition.

  • Re:Looks like I'll stay with Tiger then (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kalidasa ( 577403 ) on Sunday January 21, 2007 @02:00PM (#17703288) Journal
    Where else can you find a driver for the iSight?

  • Re:Looks like I'll stay with Tiger then (Score:3, Interesting)

    by drix ( 4602 ) on Sunday January 21, 2007 @02:49PM (#17703656) Homepage
    How can you prove this is related to Sarbanes-Oxley? Or that they're not just invoking the specter of SOX to generate more $$$? It seems to me if they really wanted to thumb their nose at the new rules, they'd be charging $0.01 to let everyone know how silly it all is. Sure would net a C|Net article, at the least.

  • Re:parallels (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MadCow42 ( 243108 ) on Sunday January 21, 2007 @03:57PM (#17704214) Homepage
    Add dual monitors to your setup, and you'll REALLY be blown away. I'm running the 24" iMac, with a 17" flat screen hooked up on the side. OSX is running full-screen on the iMac, and W2k is running full-screen on the external flat screen. It's like having to computers for the price of one, with a shared keyboard and mouse. Bootcamp took the risk out of going to Mac, but Parallels made it sweet. I can't give up Windows 100%, so it's there whenever I want it. But truthfully, 95% of what I do is on the Mac only (unless you count running the Windows screensaver).

    MadCow.

  • Re:Looks like I'll stay with Tiger then (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MyDixieWrecked ( 548719 ) on Sunday January 21, 2007 @04:42PM (#17704518) Homepage Journal
    I think it's actually a good thing that they're making bootcamp available, even if they are charging for it. It's included with Leopard, and it would've been nice if Apple made some of Tiger's features available to Panther users and Panther features available to Jaguar users. Especially the updated Mail.app, exposé, safari, iChat or the dashboard (although I'm so much a fan of the latter product).

    think of it like a free preview of an upcoming feature in a future version of the OS. It would be the same way if they made a beta of TimeMachine or Spaces (that's the name of the VirtualDesktop feature, right?) available, and said that Tiger users could pay a small fee to be able to use the release version.

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