Flipside gets you to Windows and back without changing a thing
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.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
caleb said 3:52PM on 6-17-2008
I was amazed to find that Apple didn't include something like this with Boot Camp. Does Flipside include an equivalent app for the Windows side to get you back to your Mac?
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Skibble said 3:55PM on 6-17-2008
If you install the Boot Camp drivers under Windows you get a little icon in the taskbar to 'Restart in OS X', so yes (although I don't know what the point of this app is when the alt key exists, but still...).
caleb said 4:03PM on 6-17-2008
I use the alt key myself, but I hate it only slightly less that setting the startup disk.
Joe Andersen said 3:58PM on 6-17-2008
If only it could hibernate the mac/windows machines between flips - that should lead to nice fast switches and let us leave programs open while we jump from one os to the other...
version 1.1 maybe?
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caleb said 4:05PM on 6-17-2008
I think that would be beyond the scope of this app but would be an awesome addition to Boot Camp 3.
Joshua Ochs said 4:58PM on 6-17-2008
That was originally planned for Leopard I believe, but was pulled early on. There are a lot of concerns regarding filesystem integrity (what happens if Windows modifies the Mac drive and directory structure while it's hibernating?), and until those are solved you won't see that.
Here's hoping some much smarter minds than mine are working on it. :)
w00t said 5:13PM on 6-17-2008
Unless the file systems are entirely isolated (which is more of a pain than rebooting because you have to keep putting files on USB sticks) this could cause major problems.
It'd be way too easy to corrupt something that's in use by the hibernated OS.
Adam said 4:12PM on 6-17-2008
So can I use this to boot into a Linux partition as well? I refuse to pollute my Mac with a Windows partition, but I've got Linux set up in an alternate partition, and this would be a jewel if it worked for that.
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Jash Sayani said 4:15PM on 6-17-2008
Well I dont know about Flipside but other apps of theirs are pretty useful. Like the SimplePrint Suite..
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zephyr said 4:24PM on 6-17-2008
doesn't work for me..
errors out with "No mount point for /Volumes/NONAME"
Back to regular bootcamp booting I guess.
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Chris said 4:42PM on 6-17-2008
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?
Chad said 5:57PM on 6-17-2008
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.
dropinthestream said 6:19PM on 6-17-2008
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/
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Kyle said 5:22PM on 6-17-2008
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.
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Ed said 9:19PM on 6-17-2008
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 :)
Levi Figueira said 4:47PM on 6-17-2008
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... :(
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w00t said 5:16PM on 6-17-2008
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.
Levi Figueira said 5:38PM on 6-17-2008
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... :)
J. Roman said 5:55PM on 6-17-2008
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.
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Daniel Tull said 6:34PM on 6-17-2008
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.