The MacBook Air's
idiosyncratic approach to peripheral access and software installation has raised an interesting question: how to do OS installs? My assumption had been that you'll need the
external DVD drive (or a
NetBoot/NetInstall infrastructure) to reinstall Leopard, should you be unfortunate enough to need to do that. Readers want to know for sure, however, whether or not they can install an OS via
Remote Disk -- some even want to know whether they can install XP into Boot Camp via the over-the-LAN disk mounting tool.
I felt kind of silly even asking this -- remember, XP installs start in
a bootstrap DOS environment a stripped-down XP preinstallation mode, which has as much awareness of Remote Disk as a Siberian yak does of the iPhone -- but I dutifully trooped back to the Apple booth to get a comment on this capability. Here's the scoop as they have it right now (and since the product's not shipping yet, specs are subject to change): You
can install Leopard via Remote Disk. The host app for RD creates a miniature NetBoot server via Bonjour, so if you've got a bootable OS X DVD in the host machine you can use that disk to boot your MacBook Air. As for Windows XP install disks... well, not so much. Apple reps would not say definitively that you can't do it, but as far as the three people I spoke with are aware, there's no support for booting XP over Remote Disk. If you've got to install XP in Boot Camp, it's an external drive for you (assuming you can get the machine to boot from a USB device). Otherwise, as pointed out in the comments, you can take an existing XP image and use
NetRestore or
Winclone to restore the Windows partition; however, since the MBA is new hardware on a different processor, you might need to do some work on the Windows config to achieve bootability. Another (admittedly Rube Goldberg) approach: use Parallels or VMware Fusion's support for accessing the Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine drive, and install Windows that way.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
tim said 10:17PM on 1-18-2008
Is this really that big a deal? Does anyone still use Boot Camp in this age of Fusion/Parallels?
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Rich Acosta said 10:24PM on 1-18-2008
I do.
While I do have Parallels installed for easy access to windows programs I must use (IE6/7, MS Access, etc), I do also play games every now and then, and in most cases, running those in Parallels doesn't work that well.
Kento Ito said 11:54PM on 1-18-2008
I use Parallel Desktop for running basic Windows application on my Mac Pro, but sometimes, I do need to use bootcamp to fully take advantage of the graphic powers in Windows (aka: Adobe OnLocation, Adobe Ultra)
I am planning to buy a Macbook Air to complement my growing collection of Apple products at my home (I have Macbook Pro and Macbook from my company that I work for, and my very own Mac Pro, along with Apple TV, iPhone, iPod touch (my friend bought one for me on X-mas, not knowing that I had an iPhone)
One day, I'll have Steve Jobs autograph my Macbook Air...
Jordan said 3:04PM on 1-21-2008
Running a virtual machine isn't always a perfect fix - I mean, yeah, the basic functionality is available, but for CPU-intensive tasks it's not exactly the same as natively running them.
Parallels, VMware Fusion, etc. are great for most stuff and very convenient, but they'll never completely replace an actual dual-boot setup.
Guest_9 said 7:26AM on 1-21-2008
I do use Boot Camp for whenever I want to play a game, but otherwise I use Fusion to access my boot Camp partition for when I am not using it to play games.
DJFriar said 10:46PM on 1-18-2008
I think on the MBA, Parallels isn't as nice of an option due to the 2GB limit. On my MBP, I run 3GB total, with 1GB set for Parallels, and both run excellent (2.33GHz C2D, pre SR).
That said, this would have been easy if the MBA had a Firewire port, as you could partition the disk using the Boot Disk software, then just install it remote via the Firewire connection.
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Designr said 10:50PM on 1-18-2008
I wonder...
http://www.newertech.com/products/products_univ_adptr.php
Ya think this would work with a bare DVD player?
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Danny Zumwalt said 10:58PM on 1-18-2008
I was going to ask if you could use Target Disk Mode on the Air to install an OS, but then I remembered there is no Firewire on the Air.. oops.
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Dave said 11:08PM on 1-18-2008
With Leopard's Disk Utility allowing non-destructive partitioning, I wonder if one could use a cloning utility to get Windows onto the machine for Boot Camp usage.
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/12/22/winclone-backup-your-boot-camp-partition/
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Bender Bending Rodriguez said 10:34AM on 1-19-2008
You could, but you'd also need to alter the MBR.
With the NetBoot installed, it should be easier to just alter it with some Terminal commands to initiate a Windows network installation.
I'm sure Erica Sadun will be on top of it within a few hours of getting a MBA. If not, then some other site will.
Big John said 11:10PM on 1-18-2008
Was I the only one that read this on the first day? This seems to be getting a lot of press (here and elsewhere) so I'm wondering if I'm hallucinating.
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Piotr Malecki said 11:44PM on 1-18-2008
The bigger question is:
Will Apple release the MacBook Air's "Remote Disk" software so that any Mac can use it?
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Big John said 12:02AM on 1-19-2008
What do you mean? Any Mac can use *another* Mac/PC's optical drive?
Doubtful.
Piotr Malecki said 12:06AM on 1-19-2008
But not remotely like the Remote Disk.
Andrew said 7:42AM on 1-19-2008
Would be nice for my Mac Mini without DVD-R and my AppleTV :)
jbelkin said 3:03AM on 1-19-2008
Um, yea. Aren't you overthinking this? Shouldn't nearly every USB optical drive show up? THe only reason for the specific Apple Air USB DVD drive is its thinness & portablibility for those people who absolutely have to have an optical drive with them but that for many if nor most, they can skirt by with using a remote drive at the office/home?
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Simon Arch said 4:02AM on 1-19-2008
I think the question is can it be done as-is, without involving an outboard optical drive. Not everyone who buys a MacBook Air will plump for the SuperDrive option, nor will they necessarily own (or indeed want to buy) an external DVD burner just for this application.
It's nice to know you can boot a Mac install DVD remotely though.
Mo said 4:13AM on 1-19-2008
XP (and W2K and NT) don't have a “bootstrap DOS environment”; the installer doesn't run under some anaemic 16-bit operating system with no drivers for anything. What you boot into when you boot of the CD is actually XP itself, it just lacks the GUI. Just because it's a character-mode UI doesn't mean it's anything remotely connected to DOS :)
Also, last I looked, Windows was installable across a network, though the technologies Microsoft uses are slightly different to Apple's. Whether you can make them interoperate or not is an entirely different matter…
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virusdoc said 7:45AM on 1-19-2008
Could one not make an image of the XP install disk on another computer, place that image in a usb disk, and then use the Option key during boot to access Startup Manager and instruct the Mac to boot using th XP ISO? I'm new to Mac OS, but just preordered a MBA and was hoping to install boot camp this way. If I can't, then I will need the external CDROM.
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virusdoc said 8:15AM on 1-19-2008
Here is a tutorial for doing essentially what I suggest.
http://lifehacker.com/338574/install-leopard-with-your-ipod
The tutorial is for installing Leopard from an iPod, but I can't think of any reason why the image you place on the external disk couldn't be that of XP, and the external USB disk could be any form factor in addition to an ipod. But this should work, assuming you first create your bootcamp partition and point the XP installer to it during the install.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, since as I said this is my first foray into Mac OS.