Windows XP on Intel Mac Confirmed 627
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.
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 and the Ugly (Score:4, Funny)
Re: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...)
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)
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)
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:3, Insightful)
Re:A lot more useful! Excellent! (Score:4, Funny)
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:MacBook Pro (Score:3, Informative)
As long as they are USB, PC mice are fully supported out of the box -- no problem.
The same is true for PC keyboards, with a few annoyances. All the functions are available, but the Mac-specific ones are on non-obvious keys, which is somewhat annoying. The following is as found out experimentally on my Logitech officially-PC-only keyboard, for which there is no Mac driver available, in combination with
Re:MacBook Pro (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:MacBook Pro (Score:3, Informative)
Myself, I'd just get a small USB mouse to plug in. Then you get a scroll wheel too.
I hope ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I hope ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dude, Speak for your self. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:3, Insightful)
The real Peer-review process was when the 10 enlisted testers verified that the solution works on their machines.
It was completely unnecessary to come up with a zillion ways the pictures/video could've been faked when it was obvious to anyone that was easily achievable.
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)
Re:an end to speculation (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know but as soon as the method is posted on the web and is verfied by the community I'll be ordering an Intel iMac. I can't wait to be able to run OS X on a Mac with the ability to boot into Windows for Half Life 2 and Counter-Strike.
Re:an end to speculation (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/03/16/xponmac/i
Re:an end to speculation (Score:4, Insightful)
Obligatory Pink and the Brain Follow Up (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obligatory Pink and the Brain Follow Up (Score:3, Funny)
Hey Brain, what are we going to do tomorrow night?
The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to tripple boot OSX/WinXP/Linix!
Narf!!
Re:Obligatory Pink and the Brain Follow Up (Score:3, Funny)
I'd prefer a VPC-like solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'd prefer a VPC-like solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'd prefer a VPC-like solution (Score:3, Informative)
There is also VirtualPC (sloow and buggy)
I've been using VMware for years now on my personal laptop. It's barely usable in speed terms.
But why use any of these? I'm not interested in running small PC apps my grandma gave me on a CD she got from the cover of PCWorld magazine! And there is nothing I really need to run on my Mac apart from games and doing
Let see, there is Omnigraff
soo..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:soo..... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:soo..... (Score:3, Funny)
Mirror of the movie (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Mirror of the movie (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Mirror of the movie (Score:5, Funny)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Re:Big deal (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Big deal (Score:3, Informative)
from macrumors (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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.
Possible solution to do it without a PC! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Funny)
May i be damned if i let m$ anywhere near a mac.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
For me it's not about running Microsoft products on a Mac, it's about being able to run Quickbooks Pro 2006 for Windows so I can process client credit cards without having to boot up the PC or rely on emulation software.
Now, if Intuit could get it together at some point to make a version of Quickbooks Pro 2006 for Mac that can do everything the Windows version can do, that would be even better
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)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
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:5, Funny)
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)
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"
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
-nB
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)
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.
Swiss army laptop (Score:3, Interesting)
Why do swiss army knives sell?
Having two OS available in a single portable laptop or BYODKM-box(*) where you may not always have a network by which to connect to another machine is the point. It reduces your burden of having to carry two expensive laptops.
For an iMac, it is less compelling.
(*) by-odd-kem? be-yod-kem? by-o-dickem? beeyod-kim?
Re:Dual booting is unpractical (Score:3, Informative)
Not quite true. [suspend2.net]
Re:Dual booting is unpractical (Score:3, Insightful)
My iMac has a 2.0 Ghz Intel Core Duo and a Radeon X1600. My fastest non-Mac has a single Athlon XP 2100+ and a GeForce 3 Ti 500. You do the math.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Or you could, y'know, buy an OEM copy [scan.co.uk]...
(For that route, you still need to buy new hardware. Although a mouse is classified as an 'integral system component'. I need a new mouse anyway - this Logitech effort looks a bit manky.)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Graphics card? (Score:3, Informative)
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, 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)
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 int
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
A percent (%) character seems to have slipped in there.
Re:Lawsuite? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lawsuite? (Score:3, Insightful)
Surely Apple will think this is great; they've got the profit on the hardware and needn't make expenses on OS-X support.
For Microsoft, on the other hand, this might not be so great.
For the first time ever, there is an efficient way to migrate to OS-X:
- Cheaper than buying both a Mac and a PC; my next PC upgrade might just be a Mac.
- Fit both OS-X and WinXP worlds in the same desk space.
- Keep WinXP compatibility as long as you like.
Even
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.
Re:Lawsuite? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:the real question is (Score:4, Interesting)
Moreover... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The dark times are upon us (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:why why why why (Score:3, Funny)
As an Apple shareholder, I recommend you buy *many* Macs and destroy them in creative ways.