Is it somehow an option to buy iMacs with Windows instead of Mac OS X?

[Chippy99]

Giving this school the benefit of the doubt by assuming they're not insane, chances are that they got a sweet bulk deal on some surplus stock - someone went bankrupt or had a large order cancelled.






Sure you can. All but the very first Intel macs have included a "BIOS emulator" in their firmware, so they can boot from PC-format CDs and hard drives.

This is factually incorrect.

You cannot boot a 2011 Mac Mini with a Windows install CD, nor a linux install CD for that matter (unless the latter has been built specifically for EFI mode booting).

I have not tried it but Windows 8 *might* load since i believe it has EFI support whereas Windows 7 and earlier does not.

But anything needing a bios will not boot on 2011 Mac Minis. I would guess the same is true of 2012 minis too, since they are essentially the same.

 

[antonis]

So, I went to the library today and booted up one of the iMacs while holding Option. It booted to the boot selection menu or whatever it's called and it showed a single hard drive icon, no other icons that was labelled with my school's name.

Choosing that hard drive will boot the machine to Windows, so there's practically no indication of Mac OS X being installed anywhere on these iMacs.

Why would they do that? They could've bought Dell all-in-one machines running Windows 8, but seeing that it's expensive hardware maybe my school was thinking that the student's wouldn't abuse them...Who knows?

They might have had a good offer from Apple since it's a school, and they bought more than one, who knows.

 

[LOLZpersonok]

As for the firmware upgrades, PC users wouldn't expect this - over-the-air firmware updates are a luxury that Apple enjoys because they can. You don't upgrade the firmware on a PC motherboard unless you are an obsessive techie or if there is a fault. You certainly don't want users upgrading the firmware themselves.

I don't think that's true anymore. Not just Apple users enjoy this.

As far as I'm concerned, ever since the release of Windows 8 and PCs coming with Windows 8 pre-installed, I believe they're using a UEFI BIOS, which allows for insanely fast boot times. My HP Envy is like this as well; once I press the power button, it takes roughly a second for the HP logo to show up, an indication of loading Windows, which roughly takes another 10 seconds.

I've updated the UEFI BIOS in my HP Envy several times since owning it. It's very easy - download the BIOS updater from HP or through Windows Update, run it and it'll automatically flash it, no technical expertise required, just don't shut it off, or you'll brick it for good.

I'm not sure how recently this feature was first seen on Windows machines, but I know it's fairly recent. I've been able to flash the BIOS in the same manner on a Toshiba netbook from around 2009-2010. So Apple isn't the only company that allows anyone to flash the firmware and as of recently you don't need to be a tech junkie to do it on a PC anymore.

 

[MacsRgr8]

This is factually incorrect.

You cannot boot a 2011 Mac Mini with a Windows install CD, nor a linux install CD for that matter (unless the latter has been built specifically for EFI mode booting).

I have not tried it but Windows 8 *might* load since i believe it has EFI support whereas Windows 7 and earlier does not.

But anything needing a bios will not boot on 2011 Mac Minis. I would guess the same is true of 2012 minis too, since they are essentially the same.

Windows 7 is no problem (not sure about XP).
Just make sure the internal HD is formatted with MBR option enabled, and your Mac will install just like a "normal" PC.

 

[yjchua95]

Slightly off topic here, but to the OP, if you really do want to boot into OS X, you could install OS X in an external drive, plug it into the school iMac, hold down Option and select your external drive, and there you go. And the best thing is you get full admin privileges too.

Back in my high school days, I just brought a Buffalo Thunderbolt drive to one of the library's iMacs, booted from it, logged in as root in OS X of the external drive, and opened up all the files in the head librarian's user account in the internal drive.

 

[LOLZpersonok]

Slightly off topic here, but to the OP, if you really do want to boot into OS X, you could install OS X in an external drive, plug it into the school iMac, hold down Option and select your external drive, and there you go. And the best thing is you get full admin privileges too.

Back in my high school days, I just brought a Buffalo Thunderbolt drive to one of the library's iMacs, booted from it, logged in as root in OS X of the external drive, and opened up all the files in the head librarian's user account in the internal drive.

That's what other people were talking about, and if this is true for my school, I can't prove it. The iMacs have no other partitions on the hard drives and as far as I'm concerned there is no trace of Mac OS X, that I can see.