Windows XP Booting on Mac Contest Over

[Gordy]

I was one of the testers. It does NOT yet work on a 20" iMac. There's an issue with handling the framebuffer on the 20" output. When booting into Windows for the first time to run setup, the CSM is supposed to hang for about 2 and half minutes with no feedback. It never gets past this.

But the graphical boot screen is really nice, although it is offcentered on the 20" at this time.

Out of interest how easy is the process of getting the solution installed?

Or are you not able to say yet?

 

[technicolor]

I don't want to see developers drop OS X. But since Adobe is being a PITA at least I can run PSCS on my MacBook Pro for now (or at least hoping to).

Who removed my second post, ARGH!?

YOu dont need to dual boot to do that. It runs pretty damn good under rosetta.

 

[0098386]

Nice! More reason for me to upgrade. can finally get rid of my hideous laptop PC.

 

[technicolor]

I think this news is effectively the death-knell for companies like Aspyr who have traditionally ported PC games across to the Mac. With Windows XP dual booting on a Mac, there would seem to be little to no incentive for Mac users to wait 6-12 months for a PC game port to appear on Mac OS X, along with the potential loss of performance that porting a game sometimes introduces.

There might still be a hard-core of Mac OS X users who might be willing to wait out the porting time and pay a premium price for a native OS X port, but from what I understand, the margins in the Mac OS X game porting market are fairly slim as they are. I can't see Mac OS X game porters surviving this new twist in the evolution of the platform.

Thanks for the games while they lasted guys...

Are you serious?
LMAO!

 

[macros]

Nevertheless, this blind faith and ignorance is not something to be proud of. So so many people here think OS X is just without flaw and that XP is so bad they can't understand why anyone uses it. Everyone is an OS X user simply waiting to break free of the Windows world....

Half these people haven't even used XP.

I have to agree, but this is pretty much a human nature. There always will be people like this.

I have discovered some problems with multitasking in OS X the other day, and was searching in google about it. All i could find was forum posts and articles saying how OS X multitasking is superior, and how XP sucks, but nobody really questions those claims.
Sorry for being off topic there.
XP on a mac in my opinion is good news, the more functionality for the end user - the better.

 

[janstett]

I'd be interested in using OS X on a Sony Vaio- is anyone working on that angle?

Yes, it's already been done, do a google on "Maxxuss". I have OS X running on a Gateway tower. The catch is driver support. It worked with everything except my nVidia video card (uses generic VESA instead limited to 1024x768) and sound card (but it worked with an old USB sound card I had lying around). Someone is working on nVidia support (MacVidia project) but they haven't posted an update in 2 months.

 

[Detlev]

I think any discussion of how this is going to affect software development for OS X (i.e., "OMG, now companies will just target Windows and forget about Mac OS") is totally ridiculous. No sane developer who is serious about wanting to sell their product to Mac users is going to expect them to install some hacked up bootloader and whatever else it needs so they can run Windows in order to use the product.

Don't expect it to remain a hack. I think going into this with the years of "secret" research on the Apple campus that they knew this would happen, planned on it, or at least expected it. They'd be foolish not too and would deserve the reduced development if they did not. Good grief it was one of the first things mentioned in these forums the day MacTels were announced.

As for developers your forgetting one key aspect: money. Mac users are such a small group and development is expensive. Given the option to write code once rather than reinventing it or rewriting it is an economics debate not to be confused with wants and desires. Developers are already dropping development and have been for years while others come on board. It's a natural progression. Am I expecting companies like Adobe, Intuit, or Microsoft to stop development tomorrow, no. As this develops I think it would foolish not to discuss it as I am sure their developers who are. Again, since day one of the Intel announcement users of many software have been asking if they can boot the PC version. If sales of Mac version software lag it can be expected that developers will at least slow development and possibly discontinue. Not tomorrow, but in the near future.

Off topic: does anyone know the sales numbers of retail versions of Tiger? How does it compare to previous versions?

 

[janstett]

I'm glad this finally happened. I'm looking forward to trying it myself. While it will eat precious disk space, it will give me an emergency parachute when I am using my MacBook Pro. And I think it will get my boss to dump his Powerbook and get a MacBook Pro, if he can now use just one laptop instead of two.

Eventually I still think I'd prefer Virtual PC (partitioning will be wasteful) but I like knowing I can do this, and that when I retire the MacBook in years to come I have the option of running Windows (or Linux) on it if I want.

Or, if XP can boot off of an external disk, maybe I'll keep a USB drive handy from which I can boot XP, and keep my internal drive untouched.

This is a win for me; I start a new job in 2 weeks, now I have a reason to bring my MacBook.

 

[janstett]

why would anyone buy a mac if they intended to use windows to run applications? this whole theory that software development will cease to exist is ridiculous... apple exists because it has a superior OS, not because their hardware is superior to the windows world (and is alot more expensive!).

Oh come on! Where have all the industrial design fanboys gone? One of Apple's biggest advantages was the industrial design, not just of the Macs but the iPods. Now all of a sudden you guys are crawling up in the fetal position and sucking your thumbs, "It's all about OS X, it's all about OS X".

I've heard people say they would buy Apple hardware to run Windows and only Windows. Think about it -- no other laptop offers MagSafe or a slot loading DVD drive, or a battery with a charge indicator. If the MacBook costs in the same vicinity as a Dull or whatever else, and has these design features, why not buy it and load it up with XP instead of buying a Brand X notebook?

Personally I don't think I'd do it, but I can see where some people would. Heck my boss wouldn't shut up about the "elegant design" when he got his PowerBook -- well, now he can buy a MacBook and put XP on it.

 

[Steve1496]

Out of interest how easy is the process of getting the solution installed?

Or are you not able to say yet?

Since it's won now, I guess I can talk. The install requires a Windows XP PC, with which Windows is already installed. From here you use Nero Burning ROM to mix files from your XP SP2 CD, copy them to a new project, and add in some $OEM$ files and folders, and fix some of the files in i386. From here, you use xom.efi (which is the bootloader), and bless it in Terminal. Once it's blessed on startup you get a pretty nice selector, and you choose Windows. From here the CSM layer pauses for 2.5 Minutes while it does whatever its doing. Then you'll get into Windows Setup.

I should also mention at this time, you cannot reboot Windows. You need to shutdown. If you attempt rebooting it will hang at Windows is Shutting Down screen.

 

[joelypolly]

Don't expect it to remain a hack. I think going into this with the years of "secret" research on the Apple campus that they knew this would happen, planned on it, or at least expected it. They'd be foolish not too and would deserve the reduced development if they did not. Good grief it was one of the first things mentioned in these forums the day MacTels were announced.

As for developers your forgetting one key aspect: money. Mac users are such a small group and development is expensive. Given the option to write code once rather than reinventing it or rewriting it is an economics debate not to be confused with wants and desires. Developers are already dropping development and have been for years while others come on board. It's a natural progression. Am I expecting companies like Adobe, Intuit, or Microsoft to stop development tomorrow, no. As this develops I think it would foolish not to discuss it as I am sure their developers who are. Again, since day one of the Intel announcement users of many software have been asking if they can boot the PC version. If sales of Mac version software lag it can be expected that developers will at least slow development and possibly discontinue. Not tomorrow, but in the near future.

Off topic: does anyone know the sales numbers of retail versions of Tiger? How does it compare to previous versions?

While what you say does have some truth you are forgetting that while Mac sales are less than 5% its still a large enough market in the relevant industries e.g. the market for photoshop might be around 50/50 between Mac and PC some how I doubt that Adobe will drop photoshop for Mac. Also a lot of software on the Mac side are Mac only.

 

[janstett]

Are we going to have contests for first blue screen of death, first virus, first major crash?

If people FEAR OS X the way you FEAR Windows, nothing is ever going to change.

Open your mind. Let go of your fear.

 

[c-Row]

or a slot loading DVD drive, or a battery with a charge indicator

Slot loading DVD drives are built into Acer notebooks. Batteries with charge indicators are quite regular in our office - don't remember whether it was Dell or something else, though...

 

[janstett]

Personally, If I had an intel Mac at the moment I wouldn't waste the Hard-drive space installing Windows XP alongside Mac OS X. So far, any program that I have needed is available for Mac OS X anyway. Who would bother putting a 5 year-old OS on their Mac?

....for games maybe....but thats all....

Are you really this dense? You think there aren't professional applications that don't exist on the Mac? Just for starters, let's look at the gaping holes in the Office suite. Mac: Offce doesn't have Outlook, doesn't have Access, and what torpedoes it for me are the absence of MS Project and Visio. Just those two alone torpedo the Mac in any development house. Shall I continue?

 

[Manatee]

Congratulations to the winner!

I think this will sell a bit more Apple hardware. More importantly, people like myself who use OS X wherever possible, but make a living with Microsoft Visual Studio and SQL Server, will be able to live with one machine. (Ok, can anybody really live with one machine? Of course not! )

 

[janstett]

quick question: can you easily transfer files between partitions on a dual boot system? or would you need to burn to disk and transfer manually?

Good question. Since OS X can read but not write to an NTFS partition, you would need to

(a) Use FAT32 for the XP install, or
(b) Use NTFS for the OS and keep a common FAT32 partition to share between OSX and XP.

 

[sishaw]

Battery indicator

Slot loading DVD drives are built into Acer notebooks. Batteries with charge indicators are quite regular in our office - don't remember whether it was Dell or something else, though...

My old Toshiba satellite has a battery indicator.

Also, while we're de-bunking myths---the Windows BSOD was a Win98 thing. Under XP, it's more like OSX--individual program crashes/freezes are isolated to the program, which can be stopped separately using the task manager. I don't recall ever seeing a BSOD in the several years I had an XP computer.

 

[Veldek]

Since it's won now, I guess I can talk. The install requires a Windows XP PC, with which Windows is already installed. From here you use Nero Burning ROM to mix files from your XP SP2 CD, copy them to a new project, and add in some $OEM$ files and folders, and fix some of the files in i386. From here, you use xom.efi (which is the bootloader), and bless it in Terminal. Once it's blessed on startup you get a pretty nice selector, and you choose Windows. From here the CSM layer pauses for 2.5 Minutes while it does whatever its doing. Then you'll get into Windows Setup.

I should also mention at this time, you cannot reboot Windows. You need to shutdown. If you attempt rebooting it will hang at Windows is Shutting Down screen.

Oh, this means it's still quite complicated and has a lot of room to improve...

 

[Steve1496]

Oh, this means it's still quite complicated and has a lot of room to improve...

Actually it sounds tough, but it's really easy. There are step by step (really dumbed down) instructions for everything.

 

[Veldek]

Actually it sounds tough, but it's really easy. There are step by step (really dumbed down) instructions for everything.

Perhaps. But you still need a PC with XP on it, which is contrary to the number 1 reason people want to have XP on a Mac...

 

[janstett]

Since it's won now, I guess I can talk.

Congratulations! Is it possible to install XP on an external USB drive?

 

[Marx55]

The Ultimate Computer - Triple Boot!

The ultimate machine should be capable of booting as:

Mac OS X
Linux
Windows

Wow!!! Great for University computing facilities!!! Apple will sell millions of new Mactels with such a feature!!!

And once people taste Mac OS X, they will not want Windoze ever!!!

 

[janstett]

Perhaps. But you still need a PC with XP on it, which is contrary to the number 1 reason people want to have XP on a Mac...

It sounds to me like you only need a PC running XP in order to doctor up the XP SP2 install CD. The same way you needed a Mac running OSX to doctor up the OS X install CD to run OS X on generic PCs. Once those images are made, once could theoretically get the ISO/DMG image from a hypothetical file sharing service and simply install. Theoretically.

 

[DPazdanISU]

Nevertheless, this blind faith and ignorance is not something to be proud of. So so many people here think OS X is just without flaw and that XP is so bad they can't understand why anyone uses it. Everyone is an OS X user simply waiting to break free of the Windows world....

Half these people haven't even used XP.

I have to agree, but this is pretty much a human nature. There always will be people like this.

I have discovered some problems with multitasking in OS X the other day, and was searching in google about it. All i could find was forum posts and articles saying how OS X multitasking is superior, and how XP sucks, but nobody really questions those claims.
Sorry for being off topic there.
XP on a mac in my opinion is good news, the more functionality for the end user - the better.

Ok, you guys are generalizing about the people that use Mac OSX. Most of the people that do speak of its superiority have and still DO use windows. I have been using windows since DOS and I am only 22 so you can see that I clearly grew up with computers around me. I used macs at school and liked certain things about them but Mac OSX gave me a reason to switch. As for problems with multitasking in OSX, there are some, I mean very very few (that I have seen). Last time I checked I can burn a dvd, have ten sites open, 10 widgets, ichat, imail, itunes playing music, and whatever else going on with no problems ever (osx does deal very well in my eyes with these tasks). On a windows machine I feel like after opening two things, I can't even get a third thing open without clicking it a few times b/c windows has ADD. Also it runs very sluggish when switching between apps, etc. I get frustrated trying to do these things on a windows machine. So, Macros and Mark88, I have to say on this topic, you guys probably have a similar approval rating to Bush and Cheney.

 

[Steve1496]

Congratulations! Is it possible to install XP on an external USB drive?

I'm not sure this would work. Since xom.efi detects partitions that are MS-DOS on the main (internal) drive, it seems unlikely. But it doesn't sound like that would be hard to implement. Then you also have the issue of XP killing USB devices during install.

I was just chatting with Blanka (very nice person by the way), and he has sent me a modified xom.efi to debug and get this going on 20" iMacs. I'll fool around with it today and let you know if I get any more progress!