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MacBook Air's Wifi Boot Menu (Photo)

What? Alt key ? Are you a newbie Windows switcher?
There's no such thing. We only have the Option key :D


well, samh004 beated me.
 
This is the beginning of some wonderful hacks with virtualized disc drives.... oh I'm gonna have fun with this one..

#1 remotely boot the disc from 30,000 miles away by fooling the network into extending with my bsd router

In a few years, you'll be able to do this really neat trick..

Hold down option/alt
Select "Google Worldwide WIFI"
Watch your very small/stored on server google docs, and apps load in the google mini OS.
No more worrying about the losing your laptop, since your data is stored with someone else (scary big brother)

Folks we are one step closer to cloud computer, what Jobs envisioned with the original iMac....
 
I have to say this machine looks pretty sweet to me. I like everything they've done with it. I want one though I can't justify it, so alas I must wait until either I can or my funds are such that there is no reason not to.
 
inkhead said:
This is the beginning of some wonderful hacks with virtualized disc drives.... oh I'm gonna have fun with this one..

#1 remotely boot the disc from 30,000 miles away by fooling the network into extending with my bsd router

In a few years, you'll be able to do this really neat trick..

Hold down option/alt
Select "Google Worldwide WIFI"
Watch your very small/stored on server google docs, and apps load in the google mini OS.
No more worrying about the losing your laptop, since your data is stored with someone else (scary big brother)

Folks we are one step closer to cloud computer, what Jobs envisioned with the original iMac....
Click to expand...

That would be pretty cool. Imagine being at work/uni and realising that you've left some important file at home? Just boot one of the computers there into your Google account. Or if you have a break and are bored - boot up Google and play a game/work of that side project.
 
DukeofAnkh said:
That would be pretty cool. Imagine being at work/uni and realising that you've left some important file at home? Just boot one of the computers there into your Google account. Or if you have a break and are bored - boot up Google and play a game/work of that side project.
Click to expand...

It's called VNC and it's built directly into OS X now. All that is required is to set up port forwarding on your router and sign up for a dyndns account.
 
log me in

DukeofAnkh said:
That would be pretty cool. Imagine being at work/uni and realising that you've left some important file at home? Just boot one of the computers there into your Google account. Or if you have a break and are bored - boot up Google and play a game/work of that side project.
Click to expand...

www.logmein.com

its free and easy. just remote connect and e-mail it to yourself.

i have done it more than once!
 
Bootcamping?

As a soon-to-be, stupid & rich pc-->mac reconvert (i ern $25k/yr fellas!) - MBA isnt just for college grads or execs! - does anyone think wi-fi booting will let me boot into XP via a remote (and cheap) MAC ?

At Applestore in Ardmore, PA , a nice Appler said MBA might not support BootCamp at all, even locally, and in any event I certainly couldn't run Photoshop on MBA... (he said "couldn't" - not "shouldn't" !) and he was referring to MAC version !

I told him I would use it only for touch-ups, fixes, in PC PageMaker and say PC PS/6, while on the road, etc... since a reinvestment in all Adobe products for MAC makes the MBA that much pricier... so BootCamp would be molto mucho nice!

Being Stupid-rich tho - I suppose I could just have several SSD drives on-hand for each potential system & circumstance (one with larger XP partition, one for MAC games, one for MAC versions of Adobe products...)

Just need to get a 24K Phillips #0 - or is HD/SSD going to be soldered inside?
 
diabolic said:
And what would this functionality be used for, other than if your optical drive broke?
Click to expand...

We use Altiris Deployment Server to (re-)image all of our computers, so being able to wireless network boot would be a nice option to add to the wired network boot.
 
Photoshop will run on the MacBook Air. I don't know why you were told that. The performance won't be as good as a MacBook Pro, but I would imagine it would at least match that of my nearly 2 year old MacBook, on which the performance is pretty decent.
 
peterlobl said:
As a soon-to-be, stupid & rich pc-->mac reconvert (i ern $25k/yr fellas!) - MBA isnt just for college grads or execs! - does anyone think wi-fi booting will let me boot into XP via a remote (and cheap) MAC ?
Click to expand...

<Off topic> Damn, I have to get to the US of A, if you are rich with 25k per year. I hardly can live over here with that money. </Off topic>

I sure bet as hell, that you can boot XP on it. I don't know, if it will work wirelessly, but heck, why not. I mean you have Leopard on that thing, so you have Boot Camp as your friend. It must work with XP.

I also remember a referral in the keynote, that the MBA will ship with software, to let it recognize shared drives in Windows. So I guess it should work.
 
swagi said:
<Off topic> Damn, I have to get to the US of A, if you are rich with 25k per year. I hardly can live over here with that money. </Off topic>

I sure bet as hell, that you can boot XP on it. I don't know, if it will work wirelessly, but heck, why not. I mean you have Leopard on that thing, so you have Boot Camp as your friend. It must work with XP.

I also remember a referral in the keynote, that the MBA will ship with software, to let it recognize shared drives in Windows. So I guess it should work.
Click to expand...

I'm thinking the problem might be that one you start installing windows/are running off the windows install CD, it will stop seeing Mac-inherent things like the wifi boot potential while it's formatting and installing things on your Boot Camp partition. Whereas the Leopard restore disks that come with the thing would have that written in.

Just a guess, but it could be problematic.
 
-Garry- said:
Picture this... The MBA has no optical drive. Your OSX installation is hosed and won't boot. You don't own an ethernet dongle or external superdrive. How do you reinstall your OS? I would assume you put your restore discs in another computer and choose the wireless boot option on your MBA, allowing you to access the CD and reinstall your OS over the network, wirelessly.

That's all assumption though.
Click to expand...

It would also be useful if you'd like to have complete use of your desktop Mac in another location.
 
Netboot is available for both PPC/Intel-Macs

Netbooting is available on both PPC-macs through Open Firmware, and through an EFI-shell on the Intel-macs. This makes it possible to load the kernel from another machine serving files with tftp/ftp.

The root filesystem can then be either local to the client machine, or server from another machine as well.

This is excellent when either debugging new kernels, or for centrally managing a network of Macs (computational cluster etc).

The difference for the MB Air is that the "graphical" boot menu supports this directly for use by the common man. Forcing grandma to use an EFI-shell to awake her dead MB Air would not be very Apple-like.
 
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