RichB

http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/

I'm sure this was supposed to be posted 4 days ago!

LOL


Not that you'd want to poison your lovely Mac but you might need to run some old PC app

Good news...

Bad news for my bank balance...

Markus

****ing nora! One does wonder if they were wating for the winonmac chaps to finish the contest before doing this.

Good to see an official thing from Apple though, absolutley fantastic!

mattbeef

pah it would have been worse to announce it 4 days ago

least it stops total idiots killing their macs

Markus

Just noticed it's going to be standard in 10.5. That explains Apple's registration with, umm, whatever standards programme it was, that records performance stats for PC's. People thought it meant virtualization was on the cards, but looks like it'll probably just be Dual boot, which is ok in some respects, but not perfect for all.

Markus

Got the download, read the PDF, might play later. Thing is, apart from the "cool" factor, dual boot won't help me much. a VM solution would. I know Parallel's is meant to be announcing VM system for intel macs later this week, but I'll wait to see.

I do like the new partitioning utiliy in boot camp though, dynamic repartitioning of live drives is something the Mac OS has been needing for a very long time, so hopefully that points to a new feature in disk utility for 10.5.

I would also have a little bet that Apple will release a VM solution within 10.5 as well, giving the best of both worlds, dual boot and VM. You could use boot camp to create the partition and install windows onto it in a DB environment, then boot into OS X, where you'll have a windows drive all ready and waiting, then fire up the VM software and tell it to use the real drive, rather than a disk image with the OS on it.
Now that would be very very cool indeed. If you need max horsepower, then boot the machine into windows. If you need to get access to files, then simply run the VM.

One can dream I suppose...

DrEvil

Hmm... interesting development, should widen the appeal to the masses.

Markus

I could see why the unofficial winonmac solution would not appeal to everyone, simply as it's not official, whereas this is.

I am expecting the mac haters to be rather vocal on this on slashdot. Will be interesting to see what the ***** John C Dvoark says about it.

KiwiGTI

All of my PC equipment will now be on ebay. XP partition for games and Mac OS X for everything else.

paulg1979

iTrader: (1)

I can't stand windows. I've had Macs for 3 years now and can't even look at a windows based system. Its like going back in time!!

ozzy

Why would you junk PC hardware and run XP on a Mac?

You can get a Dell PC for £150 that's good enough for XP, Internet browsing and basic stuff. Cheapest Mac is £500, so it sounds like something for diehards or people with money to burn.

It appeals to me on a techie level, but I can't see me buying Apple gear just yet. Apple do some things better than PC's, but at a cost ... or maybe I'm missing something completely

BTW, I use my home PC for Music, Internet surfing, photo editing (basic holiday snaps), some video editing (again holiday stuff) but that's about it.

Markus

Some people need both Mac and PC. For example, we are a mac software developer and so all us techs are on Macs, but the sales/accounts chaps still use PCs. Dual boot would, in theory, allow us to put those sales chaps on the Mac platfom. The ideal end being that we transition everything over to Mac, and when this happens, they won't have two machines on the desktop, it'll be the same machine.

Right now we need virtualization software, as we have to run various PC only apps, alongside Mac apps, for example, running mail on the mac, and Access and an Accounts package on the PC. The database is a sales DB, so need to be up at the same time as email to cross reference things.

We will eventually transition the database, but it will take time, and we need it running now, so running a VM is the best option. Right now there are limited options for VM under Intel machines. Q is the best at the moment, and Parallel's solution should see the light of day soon, MS VPC might turn up one day, and hopefully, Apple will do something with 10.5.

The boss has stated that he's ready to junk all the PC's providing we can get VM to work seemlessley on Intel based Macs, but as yet we cannot, be it problems with the emulation software, or the OS itself. But we're getting closer as the days go by.

mattbeef

exactly why they have done it is the above reason. Think about schools or collages rather.

room full of macs, boot windows for the majority of people and then just a reboot for those who need to use photoshop and all the other stuff that people use macs for. one machine 2 environments, some might argue a sysadmins dream?

Markus

Matt,
Education is a very good example. Very limited budget so if they can have one machine that will dual boot XP and OS X then it saves them money.

Sys admins will like it because the hardware base for mac and pc installs will be identical.

Markus

Amazing what comes up at times like these!

Just had an email from my g/f, her aunt and uncle need a new computer. They are currently PC based. I'm a little out of touch of the PC side of things, as I've not built a PC for quite some time, plus I do loathe supporting the bloody things, had to disinfect her dad's pc, which her brother had been downloading stuff on, grrr, three hours later of scanning and trashing all kinds of trojans/viruses/malware/etc it was clean, not what I wanted to do at the weekend, anyway, I digress...
Her aunt needs a new machine, I'm now thinking intel mac, maybe even a mac mini, plus, of course, Boot Camp.

This allows them to use their existing software, on a nice new machine, of which I know the exact hardware specifics, and that it's not got some horrible bloody weird make modem card or other **** that'll bring the system down due to a wierd driver being needed.
It also allows them to experience the joys of OS X, which I will point out to them, and encourage them to actually use as a primary OS.

KiwiGTI

Because the only reason I have a PC at home is to play games. Why have a huge silver tower and wires everywhere when I can replace it with a sleek iMac, that will outperform my current PC and match or beat new ones. (The Register has an interesting article and links to benchmark tests) I earn my living from Windows and it is such a pleasant experience to use my Mac when I get home.

A £150 Dell would mean I'd given up on life.

mattbeef

I made my dad get a mac because i told him he has no choice the bonus is that i can now use boot camp if he really really cant get on with a mac

ozzy

But you can get small, sleek PC's ... and they don't need to cost £500. If you like the iLifestyle thing with Mac's then I agree, they are great design. Value for money I'm not convinced about though.

Personally I like to avoid any sort of computer once I get home as I've spent all day sat in front of them.

Markus, how many PC's are in your office? Clients I deal with are in the 000's, so I'd be convinced if the corporates took an interest and it wasn't something for a smaller niche market.

Mind you most Corporates IT plans are driven by licensing costs than techie solutions

Markus

We've got about 10 - 15 PC's dotted about, and once a nice stable VM solution for Intel macs is released and allows us to do what we currently do with the PC's then they will be replaced with Macs.