Leopard and Boot Camp: Faster "Restarts"

[MacRumors]

One promising feature that wasn't mentioned in Apple's keynote speech about Leopard is a feature that was originally described on Apple's Leopard Bootcamp page:

New, faster restarts.
Leopard brings a quicker way to switch between Mac OS X and Windows: Just choose the new Apple menu item "Restart in Windows." Your Mac goes into "safe sleep" so that when you return, you�ll be right where you were. It's much faster than restarting the computer each time. Likewise, a "Restart in Mac OS X" menu item in the Boot Camp System Tray in Windows makes for a faster return to Mac OS X. With Windows hibernation enabled, you can pick up where you left off.

Curiously, the feature was removed from the page since it was posted, but a Google cache remains available.

Update: One comment indicates that this features has indeed been pulled:

I have it on good report from someone attending WWDC that this feature has been nixed.

He mentioned this feature to the Apple BootCamp build engineer. Who responded that this feature will not be supported. The engineer then called the Apple BootCamp program manager who "freaked out". Within an hour it was removed from the website.

 

[dartzorichalcos]

That will get more PC users to switch to the mac.

 

[Luis]

But why then did they pull it out from the web-site??

 

[Grimace]

soooo......for the dummy in the crowd (me) is this considered virtualization because you don't have to physically reboot? Or is virtualization the ability to see another OS in a window while everything else remains functional?

I guess I kinda know the answer...but it does make me think of what is most appealing to consumers. Would you spend $80 to use OSX and XP/Vista simultaneously? I think the hassle of having to fully reboot was the only thing that really turned me off of BootCamp originally.

 

[mikeinternet]

i wonder why steve didn't mention this.

instead he tells us the obvious... 'it'll be packaged with the new os.'


...not that i have any personal interest in running windows in any way.

 

[iceflyhigh]

That's gonna be parallels killer

 

[EricNau]

So, has this feature gone the way of Home on iPod?

 

[flopticalcube]

Maybe they are considering pulling it from the final release?

 

[PlaceofDis]

they probably need to do some further testing and thus don't want to promise it. also they probably don't want to piss off parallels and vmware so they'll keep it hush-hush for now. i hope it makes it into the final release though.

 

[bdj21ya]

This is hibernation and safe-sleep mode. All things you can already do with Tiger and XP or Vista (though I'm not sure Tiger's Safe Sleep allows for booting to another OS, both XP and Vista already allow for this).

However, I'm somewhat doubtful. If you use Hibernation in XP and then write to the volume it is using, it completely screws up the files. I hope Apple is testing for this and making a protection against it. Of course IF you use NTFS for Windows XP, it wouldn't be a problems for most users (since you can't write to NTFS from OS X without a special program).

 

[arn]

soooo......for the dummy in the crowd (me) is this considered virtualization because you don't have to physically reboot? Or is virtualization the ability to see another OS in a window while everything else remains functional?

The difference is that in this situation, the you can't run Mac OS X and Windows applications simultaneously... whereas in Parallels and VMWare you can

arn

 

[danielwsmithee]

This Feature Has Been Nixed

I have it on good report from someone attending WWDC that this feature has been nixed.

He mentioned this feature to the Apple BootCamp build engineer. Who responded that this feature will not be supported. The engineer then called the Apple BootCamp program manager who "freaked out". Within an hour it was removed from the website.

 

[rainydays]

This is pretty much what BeOS did in the R5 PE release But it only worked one way though.

 

[ajhill]

Now we're talking

Wow, what a cool feature. Why the heck didn't Steve Jobs demo this yesterday. This "secret feature" would have brought the crowd to their feet! Okay, well it might have gotten them to stretch a bit. But its a lot more useful than some of what they showed yesterday.

I do think Leopard will be a big hit. Just hope the clean up the code before October. Much better than Vista.

Hey Steve, don't tell us you are taking this Killer app away from us?!!!

Bring "Insta Switch" back!!!!!!! Okay you come up with a better name...because fast switching isn't nearly as cool a name as this feature deserves.

Now THIS is why I use a Mac, great features like this!!!

 

[Luis]

So, has this feature gone the way of Home on iPod?

Hope not... this is a great feature, as was Home on iPod *wonders why it was nixed*

 

[GregA]

is this considered virtualization because you don't have to physically reboot? Or is virtualization the ability to see another OS in a window while everything else remains functional?

Virtualisation really means that the OS (Windows) is running on a virtual machine - not the REAL machine. One side effect of this is that you can run another OS while your actual OS remains functional so you can have both doing their own thing. Parallels & VMWare (& Virtual PC) put this virtual OS in a window - and Parallels/VMware even integrate Windows' individual apps into the OSX desktop.

The new boot camp feature is just a quick and easy way of switching entirely between OSX and Windows. Neither is a virtual machine - they each run entirely on the actual hardware (and thus Windows requires drivers for your Mac hardware, as OSX does).

It's great to see this kind of quick switch. Sleep one, then wake the other - I was hoping for something like that (though virtualisation is still useful to me!). If Apple integrates some flash ram in the future, for quick sleep/wake up, it could be very quick to switch OSes.

Anyone know how fast the OSes switch with this feature now?

 

[dongmin]

(Not to encourage anyone to break their NDAs, but...)

Can anyone with the beta confirm whether this feature is IN or NOT?

 

[Peace]

That's gonna be parallels killer

That's exactly why it was pulled from Apple's site.They wanted Parallels to get as much money as they could before introducing fast O/S switching.

 

[floam]

.

 

[Luis]

Wow, what a cool feature. Why the heck didn't Steve Jobs demo this yesterday. This "secret feature" would have brought the crowd to their feet! Okay, well it might have gotten them to stretch a bit. But its a lot more useful than some of what they showed yesterday.

I do think Leopard will be a big hit. Just hope the clean up the code before October. Much better than Vista.

Hey Steve, don't tell us you are taking this Killer app away from us?!!!

Bring "Insta Switch" back!!!!!!! Okay you come up with a better name...because fast switching isn't nearly as cool a name as this feature deserves.

Now THIS is why I use a Mac, great features like this!!!

I certainly would have preferred to see this demoed than spaces or one of the ones we had already seen...

 

[iSee]

It's removal from the features page must mean it's getting yanked from the final release. It's just too cool not to brag about. Oh well.

The only reason to pull it would be if it wasn't stable, so I guess it's the right thing to do. Maybe they can work out the bugs for 10.5.1+.

 

[bigjohn]

Is it me or is Leopard turning into a "point release" for Tiger? It's sounding alot less like a revolutionary new way of working and more like OS 10.4.11

 

[Westside guy]

I have it on good report from someone attending WWDC that this feature has been nixed.

He mentioned this feature to the Apple BootCamp build engineer. Who responded that this feature will not be supported. The engineer then called the Apple BootCamp program manager who "freaked out". Within an hour it was removed from the website.

I always love these sorts of reports.

"My cousin's dating this girl who knows someone who works on Boot Camp for Apple. That person overheard a guy telling his wife that Steve Jobs was so upset he started eating babies! It's true!"

 

[zwida]

It's removal from the features page must mean it's getting yanked from the final release. It's just too cool not to brag about. Oh well.

The only reason to pull it would be if it wasn't stable, so I guess it's the right thing to do. Maybe they can work out the bugs for 10.5.1+.

Agreed, but there seems little chance that they'd implement a feature like that in a Leopard.1 release.

Too bad. For my needs, that kicks the crumbs out of virtualization.

 

[Freyqq]

That's exactly why it was pulled from Apple's site.They wanted Parallels to get as much money as they could before introducing fast O/S switching.

Unless if it takes less than 2 full seconds to switch OS, I don't think it will be a parallels killer. Parallels is for running osx and windows programs SIDE BY SIDE. If it's in the developers build, which is supposably feature complete, i'd say it'll be in the final release. If not, I doubt they'll add it now that it's off the website. Great idea though. Maybe someone will figure out a way to do this third party if not.