Another Roadblock in Dual-Booting Mac OS X & Vista

im sorry but that is one of the most opinionated and biased posting that i have read. Couldnt you have simply stated that Vista wont ship with EFI instead of adding in two cents.

Not only would it be ridiculous if Microsoft did in fact decide to limit a new OS to only new computers, but it would not even make sense. They would lose TONS of money to people who want to upgrade. Look at businesses and facilities that require IT solutions. Would you purchase a brand new infrastructure and a fleet of new computers for your ENTIRE corporation just so you can run vista?

The ideal solution would be dual support for both formats, but to believe that microsoft delayed vista with EFI support simply to avoid people from dualbooting it on their mac out of fear of a side by side comparison with OSX is ridiculous.

Look at the market share and the percentage of mac owners. Then look at the percentage of mac owners who own intel machines. THEN look at the percentage of those people who would desire dual booting both OS's/ AND FINALLY take into consideration how many of those people would actually be interested in doing a side by side comparison of the two. The minority of people is so small that i highly doubt microsoft would even care.

Thanks Stephen.. You pretty much wrote what I was thinking. Even if I had the choice to run OS X at work it would be pretty much useless, so there is very little support for enterprise databases on it.

I'm more looking forward to virtualization. Dual-booting is mainly for games which I have no interest in.

If there is no solution to run Windows apps by the time the intel PowerMacs come out than I will probably just pickup a used G5 PowerMac..

The truth is that dual boot capability would be devastating for Apple. Here's the scenario:

I boot to OS X to run Word and write up a report. Dang I need some financial data, but the best financial packages are in Windows. Boot over to Windows, run my financial app, get the data, transfer it (somehow). Boot back to OS X for Word, insert my financial data. Ahh, all done. Back to Windows to play some games.

After awhile, I am going to realize that All of the apps I use in OS X are in Windows, and Some of the Apps I use in Windows are NOT available in OS X. So why boot OS X at all? Just stay in Windows and do everything.

Bad bad thing for Apple. Better if they can get an Emulator, and have people stay in OS X.

Except for those games, that's a problem.

To Bren #13,

95% of all computer users use Windows, unfortunately. I work for a Fortune 20 company. I can use any computer I like at work as we have our own budget and support our own technologies. We have lots of Macs.

But... It is a fact of life that in the Enterprise it is a Windows world. Here are the issues the VPN they use works only on Windows, the Intranet in the company is IE friendly only, the expense and billing systems require IE running activeX only, comnpany required online training requires Windows use, company webcasts do not work on a Mac, luckily Lotus Notes has a Mac version but the Cisco CTA client to log onto the corporate LAN remotely requires Windows. The website I must regularly update will only work with MS Front Page, Windows again. Yes we run MS Mac version of Office. But there is no MS Visio and we get diagrams within the company using this. There is no MS Access and we have to use it sometimes. There is no MS Project. Get my point, it is NOT as easy as telling your boss Macs are better!

Many companies are entreached in M$ Windows, like it or not. In my group we must run Windows in some form to accomplish many things. So we use Virtual PC on our PowerBooks, and run Windows desktops next to our Mac desktops.

If Apple does not get Windows support back on their machines, they will simply lose many customers. We can not and will not buy any MacBooks until it supports Windows. That is the loss of 5 machines just in my group!

Apple has a real opportunity here, they should support the people trying to get Windows apps to run on OS X (maybe they are, but not saying). They can incease marketshare and have a real opportunity in the enterprise if they can run most Windows apps at full speed. If they can not and take to long, they will simply loss sales in the business area. Make no mistake, if you lose sales to big business, many times you also have lost the same people's home machine sale also, as so many people need to connect to their office from home!

As a current owner of 2 laptops: a Powerbook G4 15" and a compaq armada, somwtimes the professional needs both Mac and Windows. Tech companies thrive on standards and demand their employeed use windows to adhere to such standards. After nearly getting fired for being a mac evangelist and having my network privileges revoked, dual booting is essential fo those of us employed in windows world.

No matter how much I actively and vocallydisagree with my superiors' beliefs antics and courses of action in the matter, convincing one;s boss that OS X is a better, more secure, more versatile platform than Windoze is not as easy as simply telling them so.

At least I can find solace in the fact that about 70% of my colleagues own ipods......

van helsing> "If you want to run windows, get a PC. They are cheap. If you want to run Mac OS X, get a Mac. As simple as that."

My backpack is getting awfully heavily with two full laptops inside, and do I really need two of everything?

LD wrote: "Every single blog I have read about this has reported it absolutely incorrectly. Vista 32-bit will not support EFI. [...] 64-bit Vista will support EFI as EFI is the norm for new 64-bit CPUs."

I'm sorry but it is you who is wrong. At the IDF presentation that I was at yesterday (and an audio recording is available on the apcmag.com website) Microsoft announced that there would be NO EFI SUPPORT in Windows Vista client when it ships - either 32 or 64 bit.

The first time any EFI support will ship will be in Longhorn Server, and then a "future version" of Windows Client will be released with EFI compatibility (and THEN it will be only for 64-bit systems).

You're operating on old information/presumptions.

I want to play motherf'in games on my Mac which requires dual booting. There's no way you could play a game in VM since you need DirectX drivers

"How would you like to tell 100 million people that their current PC is not Vista compatible?"


hate to break the news to you pal... but there are a lot more than that who have pc's that wont run vista, and it has nothing to do with efi or bios. even in teh stripped down, no frills install... it is so fat and bloated, that it takes over an HOUR to install on a typical 2ghz p4. thats install alone... not updates, setup, etc. the thing is a sea cow that couldnt move quick to save its life. you almost HAVE to have a speedy machine to even consider it.

I have to agree with entry 1 - Sam and disagree with entry 9 - Van Helsing.
Dual booting is not a priority. We want emulation within OS X. So we can take advantage of OS X and just have windows for those apps we absolutely have to run.

Buying a PC is not always a realistic option. Those of us that have a mobile existence and a need to hook in to client environments have a need to run PC applications but don't want to have to carry around 2 machines. Up to now we have accepted the performance degradation of running VPC on a PowerBook G4 because OS X benefits outweigh the downside of a slower running windows.

We don't even necessarily need to be able to run Windows XP. Windows 2000 runs faster on VPC and typically most windows apps will run on either platform.