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More on Booting Windows on the Intel Mac?

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Apr 12, 2001
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Many believe that booting Windows on the new Intel Macs will become an eventuality, and are still to try to achieve it.

OpenOSX announced they are achieving "nearly native" performance on Intel Macs with OpenOSX WinTel 2.0 - a PC emulator. This appears to be a re-brand of the open source Bochs emulation project. This sort of commercialization has been met with some controversy. User experience with this particular product is limited at this stage, but one comment claimed "It does seem to be working, but I am pretty positive that it is working nowhere near native speeds on this brand new Intel iMac."

Meanwhile, one user reports on his experience booting into the EFI menu on an Intel Mac. This is of limited use at the moment, and of course, proceed at your own risk.

 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2006/01/18/more-on-booting-windows-on-the-intel-mac/
ya, I know some people don't like all this talk about Windows on the Mac... but it will be a big selling point for many.

arn
 
For many of us that do IT work on mainly windows machines, Windows on a Mac will be a huge boon for us. I can finally get rid of two computers I have that are just for Windows and Linux and now all I have to do is focus on one.

This is great for Apple and probably exactly what Phil was talking about because now I will use the money I would have normally used on those PCs and use it toward the purchase of a much more powerful (and expensive) Mac then the one I would previously been able to afford.
 
Chaos reins in Apple land! :eek: :D Seriously I expect to see a random report soon of OS/400 running at native speeds on the Macintels soon to be countered with oops my bad its OS/2 Warp. Soon after to be countered with. . .Sorry my friend was being a tool and lying to me. :D
 
arn said:
ya, I know some people don't like all this talk about Windows on the Mac... but it will be a big selling point for many.

arn
Click to expand...

Amen to that. I know of three people right NOW who are in a holding pattern. As soon as the news shows up that you can dual boot Windows onto the MacBooks they are ordering. Like it or not this is an important component to getting Windows users to purchase Apple hardware.
 
Great! Anything that puts more money in Microsoft's pocket has to be a good thing. Hopefully it becomes so simple to dual boot in the future that some developers abandon making Mac versions of their software.
 
EFI in the iMac

This blog from Nakfull Propaganda that discusses how to get into the EFI boot menu on the new iMacs. Apparently there is no support in the Mactel EFI boot loader for UDF or El Torito volumes, which Windows falls under. It seems that currently only GPT and APM are supported in the Mactel EFI.

From the article...
First a word of caution. You can leave your system in a state where Mac OS X won't start up again. You can fix it by booting with the install CD (hold down C as you turn on your computer) then using the Start-up Disk utility).

Now, on to the instructions.

1. Download the EFI Sample Implementation from Intel.

2. Unzip the file to /efi (or anywhere else, but /efi is what I'll be using)

3. In terminal do 'sudo bless --folder /efi --file /efi/Binary/BIOS32/Bin/GraphicsConsole.efi --setBoot'

4. Reboot your computer.

5. You'll get the familiar chime and gray screen, wait about 10 seconds then hit the spacebar.

6. You're now in EFI!

Let's head over to the shell...

1. Select Boot Maintenance Manager

2. Select Boot From File

3. Select the option that begins with "NO FILE SYSTEM INFO", this is your start-up volume

4. Navigate your way to /efi/Binary/BIOS32/SHELLBios32/Shell.efi

To get your machine booting Mac OS X again, you have a few options. Probably the easiest is to put the restore CD in the drive, and reboot while holding down C. Once in Installer, go to Utlities, Start-up Disk and select the System folder on your hard drive. Another way to boot back in to OS X from the EFI menu is to follow the same steps as for launching the shell, except navigate to /usr/standalone/i386/boot.efi. Once back in OS X, change your start-up disk back to the system folder on your hard drive using system preferences.
Click to expand...
 
I too think this is a huge selling point for Apple. In a way I think it's a trojan horse to chip away "somewhat" at microsoft's dominance of the operating systems. Everybody that I show OS X to falls in love, and wants to run it, but has trepidation of losing all their window's programs. With the ability to dual-boot that would ease alot of people's fears so they can try out OS X but still have the safeguard of booting windows when necessary.

Case in point: My sister started law school last semester with an iBook. She was able to connect to all the wireless networks seamlessy, along with having a 5 hour battery. Alot of students in her section became very interested in getting a Mac because they thought it was just so "pretty" and it seemed to just work. That was until they found out that for their exams, they would HAVE to use a windows machine no questions asked. Some of them were very dissapointed but refused to spend the money on something they couldn't even take their exams on. Virtual PC was not an option as told to my sister by the administrators. With the ability to dual-boot I know at least 10-15 people that would have gotten a Mac. This is all good for Apple!
 
quigleybc said:
Unless there is a way to not have to hack OSX to put windows on mac...it won't sell anything..


And unless it runs flawlessly, it will just be a gimick.
Click to expand...
Perhaps it'll be a gimick, but if you can emulate it and have it run near native speed, that's a boon for Apple. You could test software and web development easily. I'd love it. X86 on PPC is dead slow and not worth the admission price imo.
 
toneloco2881 said:
I too think this is a huge selling point for Apple. In a way I think it's a trojan horse to chip away "somwhat" at microsoft's dominance of the operating systems. Everybody that I show OS X to falls in love, and wants to run it, but has trepidation of losing all their window's programs. With the ability to dual-boot that would ease alot of people's fears so they can try out OS X but still have the safegurd of booting windows when necessary.

Case in point: My sister started law school last semester with an iBook. She was able to connect to all the wireless networks seamlessy, along with having a 5 hour battery. Alot of students in her section became very interested in getting a Mac because they thought it was just so "pretty" and it seemed to just work. That was until they found out that for their exams, they would HAVE to use a windows machine no questions asked. Some of them were very dissapointed but refused to spend the money on something they couldn't even take their exams on. Virtual PC was not an option as told to my sister by the administrators. With the ability to dual-boot I know at least 10-15 people that would have gotten a Mac. This is all good for Apple!
Click to expand...


That is exactly the point I think. Though Apple needs to fix up the boot loader to allow it to support the right volume types. I think they may be holding that back for the 10.5 release at the next MWSF. If that IS the case, then I think they are waiting too long, as the prime window of opportunity for converting users is now, before Vista gets released.
 
Why emulate when you can run the real deal?! I can see the point to emulating for web developers and other people that need to run just that one application that is only for Windows. Other then that, if you need hardware support (gaming) then there is no substitute to dual booting. :cool:
 
pgwalsh said:
Perhaps it'll be a gimick, but if you can emulate it and have it run near native speed, that's a boon for Apple. You could test software and web development easily. I'd love it. X86 on PPC is dead slow and not worth the admission price imo.
Click to expand...


Thats a good point... the emulation may be done now with very little overhead. Perhaps we will see Apple release its own crossover emulator.... VPC-lite.
 
With Apple remaining tight lipped on the whole scenario of Dual Boot & with Microsoft's continued presence at Apple Keynotes where the MBU mentions that they work closely with Apple Engineers, could it just be that Phil, Steve & co. know that the next version of Office Pro will still include Virtual PC, although there won't be anything virtual about it!
After all, if something is 'round the corner they're bound to know about it, maybe WWDC, they're just after keeping Microsoft sweet!
 
Randall said:
Why emulate when you can run the real deal?! I can see the point to emulating for web developers and other people that need to run just that one application that is only for Windows. Other then that, if you need hardware support (gaming) then there is no substitute to dual booting. :cool:
Click to expand...
For gaming you're probably right. I'm not into gaming, so peak performance isn't an issue for me. But not having to partition a drive and being apple run and test Windows 98,2k,XP, Linux with just a click of the button is a great. Access to all the same files and folders.
 
Look at at this way:

* How many people will install Windows on their Mac and then NOT use Mac OS X or buy Mac OS X software ever again? Very, very few.

* How many people will buy a Mac who never would have before, just because they have the "comfort" of knowing they COULD run Windows if they want to? A much larger group! (And many of them won't bother installing Windows anyway--but knowing they CAN is a mental safety net that allows them to consider a "scary" new way of computing.)

For some individual users, the ability to run Windows will be a great tool of last resort.

For Apple, it means Mac sales!

For Mac developers, it means more Mac users! Users who are seldom willing to buy a Mac and then just give up Mac OS X. Users who are buying Mac software.
 
Where I work and go to school is very Mac friendly, so my Powerbook works just fine. But I know some people that would get a Mac if they could boot into Windows. So I guess we'll have to see. I wonder if Mac gaming will be better now or if super serious gamers(which I am not) will still need Windows. That is the only reason that I might possibly be interested in having Windows on my Mac.:p
 
this is great news, at least its working. I for one would need it to run Autocad since autodesk has no plans for macs at this moment.
 
I'm surprised they havent cracked it yet, shows its gonna be a hard job and therefore will never become easy for the mainstream to do, it will remain a thing for hackers to do to there intel mac's, therefore won't bring in buyers who want a mac just to run windows,

Shadow
 
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