Apple releases "Boot Camp" Beta, supports Windows

[Praxis]

Press Release

CUPERTINO, California—April 5, 2006—Apple® today introduced Boot Camp, public beta software that enables Intel-based Macs to run Windows XP. Available as a download beginning today, Boot Camp allows users with a Microsoft Windows XP installation disc to install Windows XP on an Intel-based Mac®, and once installation is complete, users can restart their computer to run either Mac OS® X or Windows XP. Boot Camp will be a feature in “Leopard,” Apple’s next major release of Mac OS X, that will be previewed at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in August.

Product Page

Awesome.

The best part?

The Boot Camp burns a CD with the drivers Windows needs to recognize Mac-specific hardware. It is very important to do this before starting the Windows installation.

Included Amenities

For your convenience, Boot Camp burns a CD with all the Mac-specific drivers for Windows:

* Graphics
* Networking
* Audio
* AirPort wireless
* Bluetooth
* The Eject key (on Apple keyboards)
* Brightness control for built-in displays

Graphics drivers = Windows games And this gets rid of the problem where on the MacBook Pro it wouldn't spin the fan.

EDIT: My only complaint:

Important: Your Windows XP installation disc must include Service Pack 2 (SP2). You cannot install an earlier version of Windows and upgrade it to Windows XP, nor install an earlier version of Windows XP and update it with SP2 later. See below for more information.

My disk is prior to the first service pack I suppose I could borrow someone else's SP2 disk and use my CD key- anyone know if that is legal?

[His Divine Shadow]

Damnit! Beaten.

[Bounty]

I'm almost tempted to make my next laptop a Mac. Almost.

[Praxis]

Damnit! Beaten.

Neener neener

I'm almost tempted to make my next laptop a Mac. Almost.

Well, the last benchmarks put the MacBook Pro as faster running Windows than any laptop on the market, and that was BEFORE Apple released graphics drivers.

Rumors put an iBook in June...
http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2006/04/ ... 1422.shtml

I want to buy a new Mac (my good ol' Pismo fell off a desk and the parents don't let me take the PowerBook G4 anywhere, I'm just tech support ), I think I'm going to buy the next iMac revision, or the iBook.

[His Divine Shadow]

Any word on a 17" powerbook with intel?

[Praxis]

Haven't heard yet, I'll post as soon as I do.
I expect the full lineup will go Intel by the conclusion of WWDC though.

[General Zod]

Does this mean Apple will start incorporating two buttons into its mouse design?

[Ypoknons]

Hmmm... The Macbook Pro is a full pound lighter than the Acer 8200, but then again it's got a gig of RAM less for $300 more. Of course, OSX is included but then I can't afford to get Final Cut Pro anyways. Then it's got that wierd 1440x900 resolution, which is probably ideal but wierd for games. This is hard ...

[His Divine Shadow]

I got another question. All the HDD's on the apple laptops seem to be 5400RPM only, how does this affect performance? I've been using 7200RPM drives and nothing else for years now, isb't 5400 a bit old?

[Beowulf]

I got another question. All the HDD's on the apple laptops seem to be 5400RPM only, how does this affect performance? I've been using 7200RPM drives and nothing else for years now, isb't 5400 a bit old?

Most laptop drives are still 5400RPM for power reasons (slower spindle speed means less power used, which translates into better battery life.)

[Arrow]

My disk is prior to the first service pack I suppose I could borrow someone else's SP2 disk and use my CD key- anyone know if that is legal?

I don't even think your CD key will work, since its from a prior service pack. I think your best bet is to do a slipstream install, which is described here.

[His Divine Shadow]

Most laptop drives are still 5400RPM for power reasons (slower spindle speed means less power used, which translates into better battery life.)

Yeah I figured something like that but how does it affect performance?

[Glocksman]

I suppose I could borrow someone else's SP2 disk and use my CD key- anyone know if that is legal?

Perfectly so, as long as the SP2 disk is the same type as your license key (OEM, Retail, Upgrade, etc).
Alternatively, you could download nLite and make a SP2 disk out of your current version.

[General Zod]

Most laptop drives are still 5400RPM for power reasons (slower spindle speed means less power used, which translates into better battery life.)

Yeah I figured something like that but how does it affect performance?

At most it means that it'll take your computer a little longer to access the data. Faster the disk spins, the shorter amount of time needed for the computer to access it. On most modern systems, the speed difference isn't too major.

[Melchior]

Does this mean Apple will start incorporating two buttons into its mouse design?

They already did.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Does this mean Apple will start incorporating two buttons into its mouse design?

They've been doing that for years

[TimothyC]

I've been holding out for Vista (sort of, my current laptop does everything I want it to but I want a higher res screen!), but this makes me want to start rethinking that decision. The Problem is that I want to be able to read all of my data from both OSs, without using FAT or FAT32.

[General Zod]

Does this mean Apple will start incorporating two buttons into its mouse design?

They already did.

Course, I probably should have been more specific and said I was asking for their laptops as well. Having a laptop with only a one button touch pad to work with when using XP would be annoying.

[Xon]

My disk is prior to the first service pack I suppose I could borrow someone else's SP2 disk and use my CD key- anyone know if that is legal?

It is fairly trivial to make your own.

[Uraniun235]

My disk is prior to the first service pack I suppose I could borrow someone else's SP2 disk and use my CD key- anyone know if that is legal?

It's called 'slipstreaming' - look up a handy program called nLite.

[DaveJB]

The Problem is that I want to be able to read all of my data from both OSs, without using FAT or FAT32.

I think the nearest you'd be able to come to this is by creating a third partition with FAT32 to store and share your user data. Microsoft are never going to release enough data on NTFS to let MacOS write to its partitions.

[Praxis]

I'm happy with FAT32. Why? Windows can't read HFS+ or EXT or other formats. Meaning that if you install Windows and Mac OS X (or Linux), Windows can't read the partitions of the other OS's, but they can read Windows's.

So I can access the files on my Windows partition from Mac OS X, but I can't access the Mac files from Windows.

Why do I like that? Simple- if I get a Windows virus, it can't affect my Mac partition, and if I reboot into OS X I can kill the virus or simply pull my files off and wipe the Windows partition.

[Seggybop]

I think the narf solution is still better at this point, since it allows use of more than XP SP2. I'm sure Apple will improve this shortly.

If I needed a new laptop, I'd go for Apple if not for their use of Intel instead of AMD64. Though with the rumours of them switching to AMD for laptops, perhaps this shall be rectified soon enough.

[Ace Pace]

I think the narf solution is still better at this point, since it allows use of more than XP SP2. I'm sure Apple will improve this shortly.

If I needed a new laptop, I'd go for Apple if not for their use of Intel instead of AMD64. Though with the rumours of them switching to AMD for laptops, perhaps this shall be rectified soon enough.

Why would Apple switch to AMD when Intel gives them all they need? AMD has enough supply issues just supplying its current customers.

[Praxis]

I think the narf solution is still better at this point, since it allows use of more than XP SP2. I'm sure Apple will improve this shortly.

If I needed a new laptop, I'd go for Apple if not for their use of Intel instead of AMD64. Though with the rumours of them switching to AMD for laptops, perhaps this shall be rectified soon enough.

Except the narf solution has no driver support. No graphics cards or special hardware functions. No Airport support. No way to eject the CD drive without going to my computer and right clicking on the drive. No brightness control.

The only reason it's SP2 only is that the drivers are for SP2 only. I imagine you could use any version of Windows with Apple's solution but you couldn't use the drivers.

If I needed a new laptop, I'd go for Apple if not for their use of Intel instead of AMD64. Though with the rumours of them switching to AMD for laptops, perhaps this shall be rectified soon enough.

Actually, Intel's new line of processors (Yonah and the upcoming 64-bit ones) are IIRC much better laptop processors in terms of battery life and performance than any of Intel's.

I'd much rather have an AMD processor for a desktop though.