Skip to Content

Flipside gets you to Windows and back without changing a thing

by Cory Bohon Jun 17th 2008 at 3:30PM

While you can use utilities like BootPicker or rEFIt to quickly select a Boot Camp partition at startup, Flipside hopes to take the pain out of booting into Windows (no, it doesn't make Windows pretty, simple, or virus free -- that's for version 2.0). Flipside automatically finds your Windows partition on your Mac and boots you into it -- all without changing your startup disk settings. If you're in a hurry to reboot into Windows, then you can have Flipside force-quit your open Mac applications and instantly reboot (not recommended, but could be handy).

This tool is definitely useful if you find yourself booting into Windows regularly. Best part of this application? It's free -- however, donations are accepted. You can download it today from Barraford Software.

View Tags

Related Stories

Categories

OS Software

While you can use utilities like BootPicker or rEFIt to quickly select a Boot Camp partition at startup, Flipside hopes to take the pain...
 

Add a Comment

Sign in »
*0 / 3000 Character Maximum

25 Comments

Filter by:
Dave

I don't really see how this is any more efficient than what's already built into OS X. One could use Command-Control-Eject to reboot and hold Option to select the startup volume for that one boot.

June 18 2008 at 12:46 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Skoalbandit

been using bootchamp. Being able to boot with out entering a password just a little easier. I like it!

June 17 2008 at 6:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ken Sykora

Can't you already do this with boot-camp? When you start up all you have to do is hold down the option key, and you're presented with which OS you want to boot into.

June 17 2008 at 5:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
tuaw.20.robvan269

Bootchamp:
http://www.kainjow.com/kaintek/wp-content/themes/wpknjw/pop.php?project=bootchamp

Also covered in macosxhints:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070717081026402

Works for me.

June 17 2008 at 5:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
J. Roman

This is hardly revolutionary. I've had an AppleScript that does this for me (activated through QuickSilver) for ages.

do shell script "bless -mount /Volumes/Windows HD -legacy -setBoot -nextonly" with administrator privileges
tell application "Finder" to restart

That sets my Windows partition (which happens to be mounted at /Volumes/Windows HD) to be the default disk on the next book only (requiring my admin password to do so), then asks Finder to politely reboot. See? Not that hard.

June 17 2008 at 5:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to J. Roman's comment
Daniel Tull

Yup, I've been using the AppleScript with the AppleScript menu item (as I have a few AppleScripts, and I appear to be one of the only people who don't care all that much for Quicksilver).

As it's only for the one boot, just hitting restart in Windows boots me back into Mac OS X.

June 17 2008 at 6:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
J. Roman

@Daniel Tull

Yessir, that's exactly what I do (just reboot from Windows to get back into OS X). I'm surprised that these utilities seem to be mystifying people so much.

June 17 2008 at 6:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Levi Figueira

I still don't understand why Apple doesn't allow me to HIBERNATE my OSX to reboot to Windows and vice-versa, allowing me to go into Windows for a quick game fix and boot back to OSX for more productivity 10m later...

... like I did on my desktop x86 between linux and windows... :(

June 17 2008 at 4:47 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Levi Figueira's comment
pnarse

What we really need is the true GPU virtualization support that nVidia were talking about a while back.

This would mean that even a virtual machine has full access to the 3D card, not the slow cumbersome kludge that's currently used.

June 17 2008 at 5:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Levi Figueira

To be honest, what I really want is to see the gaming studios drop DirectX in favor of OpenGL and release their games on all platforms on launch... I'd rather hibernate and boot in Windows, with no other apps open, than running a virtual machine while I have everything else open, eating my resources!

But hey: I'm the guy that doesn't like Coda just because it tries to get everything under one umbrella... I like my stuff well separated ^^,

But I'd love to be able to run a game at full resolution and speed under a VM... But I think Cider/CrossOver/Wine (emulators) will do that better than a virtual machine...

Bottom line is that it would be a LOOTTT easier to have Apple allow us true hibernate>reboot in windows like they planned and announced during the beta phase of Leopard, than waiting for VMs and Emulators to provide better support for the next-generation DirectX....


Just my 0.02... :)

June 17 2008 at 5:38 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kyle

I don't see the need for anything like this; rEFIt has a place for those with more complex booting options, but this just seems to do the same thing as holding the Alt key on boot and choosing from the pretty icons.

June 17 2008 at 4:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Kyle's comment
Ed

Well, for me, I'm busy. So often, I restart and get on with something else, or go and get something to eat. Without soething like Flipside, I have to hang around for another minute or so while the computer restarts or have to mess around in the system preferences (and then have the same issue in Windows when going back to OS X).

Thanks for this, I almost considered learning cocoa to write it myself :)

June 17 2008 at 9:19 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
dropinthestream

I've been using a similar app for a while now - called "BootChamp", you just run it, enter your admin pass and you can walk away while it boots into windows :-)

http://www.kainjow.com/

June 17 2008 at 4:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
zephyr

doesn't work for me..

errors out with "No mount point for /Volumes/NONAME"

Back to regular bootcamp booting I guess.

June 17 2008 at 4:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to zephyr's comment
Chris

Same error here. Damn, was really hoping for this one to work. Anyone know of a fix/solution or another program that will do the job?

June 17 2008 at 4:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chad Barraford

Hey Zephyr,
I am the developer of Flipside, and I saw your comment. I would like to understand why it failed for you. Can you please email me from the website (www.projectappletree.org) so I can help you figure out what the issue is? Maybe fix a bug in the app.

June 17 2008 at 5:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jash Sayani

Well I dont know about Flipside but other apps of theirs are pretty useful. Like the SimplePrint Suite..

June 17 2008 at 4:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Hot Apps on TUAW

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.