Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Hacks, Cult of Mac, Blogging
Why no Windows on Macintel? $12,000
It's an interesting and logical theory. You know that contest to see who can get
Windows to run on an Intel-based Macs? According to the OSx86
project, that very contest is the reason we aren't all dual-booting right now. One argument for open source is that
collaboration breeds potentially better, or at least faster results than working in isolation. So this contest has
stopped the information sharing, and developers are guarding their tricks so they can win the money. Now obviously we're
all looking forward to Q or Virtual PC just doing
everything in emulation. I want something like Wine, so I can use Exposé to see Outlook and IE6 alongside all my
Mac apps, not virtualized inside some other OS window... But that's just me. And I tend to agree that we aren't
installing Windows on Macintels because, in part, people are working alone. I still don't see what's to stop someone
with real money (like a software company) from ignoring the $12,000 and developing a tool to install Windows on a Mac.
I guess this will all be a moot point once the first person has done it. As long as the method and/or tool is available
online I'm all for it. [Via digg, photo via Flickr]
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
michael said 12:03AM on 2-23-2006
Screw running Windows on a MacIntel. I want to run a Macintosh on a Wintel because the Wintel laptops are far superior to the portable turds produced by Apple.
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Derek said 12:07AM on 2-23-2006
My God. It's been barely a month since the announcement. I wouldn't expect any Windows on Mac solutions until mid or late summer. Linux doesn't work on the Macintels well yet.
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Velvet Nightmare said 12:20AM on 2-23-2006
@ #1 - Clearly you don't get out much, we already have XP running under Linux through VMWare.
As far as creating software to force an install, do let me know when you find someone that knows how to block requests from the EFI.
The time will come. Vista 5308 was released today, and is said to be "feature complete", meaning it has the EFI needed to preform an install.
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Chris said 1:04AM on 2-23-2006
Yeah Michael, I have one of those "far superior" Wintel laptops provided to me by my employer, with which I have the "joy" of working far too many hours of my week. Put that thing next to a PowerBook (or MacBook Pro (ugh, the name, the name...)) and tell me honestly which is the real turd. Wake up.
It's the ignorance that's most disturbing.
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Silviu said 2:19AM on 2-23-2006
Man, of course you can't diss the book on TUAW! What were you thinking? It may be the shittiest product ever, but fanboys will defend it to the death.
I'm not saying Macbooks are bad, I like them, but it is not your baby so don't be so sensitive.
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Jamar said 2:45AM on 2-23-2006
#4, never been to Japan have you? If you did, you would think far differently. I sould definitely rather be running Mac OS X on a laptop that could take a beating (Panasonic Let's Note/Toughbook) or maybe a laptop that was made for entertainment (any VAIO from Japan), as well as extending AppleCare coverage to cover drops, fire, and water damage (This is the only thing holding me to Sony Japan, I would switch to Apple for good if AppleCare covered those, since I'm accident-prone)
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Rich said 3:34AM on 2-23-2006
Why would anybody want to run an inferior operating system on a Mac? Vista is crawling slowly towards it's commercial release and all (or most of) the new features trumpeted by Microsoft have been part of OS X for the past 2 to 5 years at least.
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Mac Diva said 3:50AM on 2-23-2006
Isn't something missing from this entry? The fact that one can't hack OS X to run on a Windows-compatible computer without breaking the law might have something to do with why a successful hack hasn't occurred. Perhaps people with good sense have better, and legal, things to do with their time. Twelve thousand dollars will not even begin to cover the legal expenses if Apple takes a hacker to court.
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Ian Betteridge said 5:23AM on 2-23-2006
Mac Diva, there's clearly something missing from your ability to read. The competition is to get Windows running ON A MAC, not Mac OS X running on standard Intel-based boxes. And FYI, you can already run OS X on an standard Intel box anyway...
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Flamsmark said 5:47AM on 2-23-2006
@ #6: nowhere near all of vista's features are in OSX. I don't see OSX implementing draconian DRM or requiring 'trusted' computing modules. besides, OSX doesn't have all the different versions that vista has. :p
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Conrad Quilty-Harper said 6:27AM on 2-23-2006
The thing is, it's quite likely that emulation or virtualization will ignore GPU acceleration.
That's why a lot of people are so excited about dual booting - full speed Windows games are only a 30 second boot away!
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Jacob B said 7:32AM on 2-23-2006
People are missing a big point in all this Windows on a MBP - Windows Vista will be able to boot from it no problems as it has support for the hardware built in.
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Paul said 7:38AM on 2-23-2006
FWIW, it's probably a safe assumption to say that even if Dual-Booting Windows IS an option, that there still won't be GPU acceleration (so no Vista?) Assuming that MacIntels are the same in this regard as their PPC predecessors, but Macs requre GPUs with Mac-compatible firmware rather than the standard Windows ones. Now, am I correct in remembering that the main difference there is little- vs big-endianness? If so, then I'd imagine the cards in the MacIntels are little endian (as are Intel CPUs), making it likely that they have Windows firmware.
Is my logic way messed up on this one?
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Bob said 8:06AM on 2-23-2006
Just a couple of thoughts here.
1) Why would a commercial software company expend money getting Windows XP (soon to be the previous version of the Windows empire) to run on Apple hardware when vista will be out in about six months?
2) The reason some folks would like to run windows on a Mac is because they are already in a position where they have to have a windows computer to do their job. I work in a shop that has an in-house-built application that only runs on Windows. I need windows to do that task. Rather than having two computers in my house (so I can work from home), I'd like to have a single computer that I can use to run both OSes.
3) I have many friends who were Mac users in the late 80s and 90s who basically through their jobs were forced to go Windows (They couldn't justify two computers). These same friends have told me over the years they would be thrilled to go back to the Mac, but they can't justify buying hardware that won't run Windows too. This will resolve that objection.
My guess is once folks can really run Windows on intel Macs, Apple is going to sell quite a few computers to people who otherwise would have just gotten a Dell. There's no longer a risk to buying Apple hardware... because if you decide you don't like OS X or if a certain game or application isn't available to you on the Mac side -- you can just boot into Windows and run what you need to run.
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NNTPgrip said 2:04PM on 2-23-2006
I don't know what all the fuss is about. Run windows in a Virtual PC. GPU acceleration? I wouldn't hold my breath, I seem to remember that the "same" card in a Mac versus PC has a different video bios. Good luck downloading the "detonator" drivers for your card in windows and have it work. Specific support for the mac BIOS'd nvidia or ati card/chip must be included in the driver set for it to work.
The first thing we will see when this happens is the VESA driver being ripped from 2003 into XP for high-resolution 2D support at least.
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Mac Diva said 5:30PM on 2-23-2006
Ian, I may have made a typo late last night, but my point remains the same. The activity is not just irrational, but illegal. People who want to run Windows should buy a Windows-compatible computer. Some of them are really cheap. People who want to run OS X should buy a Mac. One of them is really cheap.
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TLD said 3:12AM on 2-25-2006
Mac Diva -
Not trying to be on the offense here, but I don't understand how making Windows (or Linux, or OS/2 or even a graphing calculator OS) run on a Mac is illegal. Once you own the hardware, there is no limit to what you can do to customize it. Since the only tie Apple has to your machine would be the hardware, there is really no way for them to take legal action.
I *could* buy a Ferrari and drop in a Toyota engine (maybe I want to save gas), and Ferrari can't stop me. Now, maybe Windows has a clause in its license preventing its use on Apple hardware. I have no idea if such a thing exists (why do they care if you bought it whether its run on a car or refrigerator), but if so, then Microsoft's legal team would be called into action. Apple's legal team could go back to sending C+D's to blogs and such.
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Joe said 1:23AM on 3-16-2006
Right now, we're all sold this false bill of goods by Steve Jobs that MacIntel is better than anything from Apple we've ever seen. Yet, Classic apps won't run anymore on the new machines, current Power PC apps actually run much slower on the MacIntel machines using the Rosetta emulator. And now we're told that the new native MacIntel apps won't appear in at least a year or 2. Since none of these exist yet, we don't know if they'll even work that well! Apple followers must be an incredibly faithful bunch if they'll swallow the bait that Jobs and his boys are feeding them. Seems like that's a step backward, not forward.
If Apple wants to switch to Intel, why didn't they just produce an Operating system that could run on any Intel clone or Dell machine? It'd make a lot of sense. Apple performs this dance called the switch-a-roo, with its mystic incantations and rituals. It seems like some multi-million dollar waste of time and a money. If the distinction between Intel and Macs has become so blurred then why bother even having 2 different operating systems? Why not just merge the 2? Take the best of Apple, combine it with Windows, load it up on yer Intel machine. Or, if people want this illusion that things are different, why not just have a dual boot machine? I think Wintel machines have had this option for years. You can put windows 98 and 2000 on the same machine. Works great. An Intel machine with OSx and Windows 98, 2000, XP or Vista sounds fine to me. It'd be any end-user's dream.
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