Bootcamp 2.1 has just been released in three Windowslicious flavors: Windows XP, Vista 32 bit, and Vista 64 bit. All three updates 'address issues and improve compatibility,' which is always a welcome thing.

Bootcamp, in case you aren't in the know, is Apple's utility that allows you to dual boot your Mac: one partition boots OS X and another boots Windows (it is a little creepy, but very cool).

Windows XP users take note: Bootcamp 2.1 should be installed before you apply Windows XP Service Pack 3.

Thanks, ben.

What madness is this, a post about installing Windows? Well, actually, the folks over at VMware's Team Fusion link to this handy Lifehacker guide to trimming down Windows XP to the bare essentials. Obviously this is of interest to anybody running Windows on a Mac, particularly on a portable with limited hard drive space. So if you should find yourself needing to tread on the dark side (whether in Boot Camp, Parallels or Fusion), it's worth a look. Besides, as I always say, the less Windows the better. It's just a shame you have to build it yourself on a machine running Windows with the Windows utility nLite and can't simply download a pre-built virtual machine.

It's not often that we get to do an advice column here, but let's see how this goes. An email arrived at the office just the other day...

Dear Aunt TUAW,

I work in the engineering college of a large private university, where I manage 6 Mac-based labs. I just tried to order myself a brand new Mac Pro to replacing my aging PowerMac G5 and was told by my dean that the college would no longer be buying Macs because they had absolutely no place in the engineering industry. He said that from this point forward, the college "would only be buying Windows computers, period!"

I know that he is wrong and that there are engineers that use Macs professionally and I can give a few examples to support that. If I am going to win this argument I'm going to need a lot of proof.

Signed,

Mac-lorn Admin

Dear Mac-lorn Admin,

Darling, didn't you realize the Mac Pro is a Windows machine, and a darned speedy one? Last time I checked, Boot Camp + Mac Pro = a Windows dream! The adult in us loves the reliability and UNIX backbone, but the kid in us loves the GUI and tasty frosting! Having a single machine that can do double or triple duty with Mac apps, BSD/Linux engineering power and Windows compatibility would be the envy of any right-minded academician.

Still, we know that logic isn't going to sway that mean ole dean of yours. TUAW readers, can you help Mac-lorn? Leave us your testimonials about using Macs in your professional lives -- particularly in engineering or in higher ed -- in the comments.

Love,

Auntie T.

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.

Now that many Intel Mac users have a Windows Boot Camp partition on their Macs, backing up or restoring that Boot Camp data becomes a bit challenging, as most backup utilities only copy the Mac partitions; if you want to create a bootable copy of your Windows installation it's even more difficult. That's where tools such as Winclone, or Mike Bombich's NetRestore, come in; they allow you to easily make a disk image of your Boot Camp partition, which you can then restore to a separate volume, save for archival purposes, etc.

Winclone can also be used to quickly deploy a Boot Camp image to a number of machines (e.g. in a lab). Mike reports that he recently used Winclone to successfully reimage the Windows side of 10 iMacs with only a few clicks, sending the image package and the install commands via Apple Remote Desktop. Comparing it to NetRestore, he likes Winclone better: "Using NetRestore requires a separate install of the ntfsprogs toolkit to add the NTFS restore tools. Winclone bundles the ntfsprogs tools and a Perl restore script in with the image, so it's portable -- just copy the image and run the script to restore the Windows boot environment."

Winclone is a free download from twocanoes software, and donations are requested. Macworld's Mac Gems blog has a thorough walkthrough of backup and restore of Boot Camp using Winclone.

[via Macworld]

Apple recently posted a Support Document on Boot Camp reminding users that Boot Camp is time-limited beta software which expires when Leopard ships. We previously reported on the speculation that Apple was planning to charge for Boot Camp. However, this support document states flatly: "The license to use Boot Camp Beta expires when Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is available to the public. To continue using Boot Camp at that time, upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard."

It's not clear that the Boot Camp beta would necessarily stop working with Tiger once Leopard ships, but it does seem that Apple is revoking any license to use it past that point. It's also not clear whether Apple might sell Tiger users a Boot Camp license separately from Leopard (à la iChat AV in Jaguar).

[via MacNN]

Rounding up on 9 months of Vista being on the market, Microsoft is of course at work on Service Pack 1 which is slated for an early 2008 release. At the official Windows Vista blog, Brandon LeBlanc has offered extensive details on what the focus of Service Pack 1 is, and while much of it is targeted at businesses and independent software vendors, an interesting section outlining some of the fundamentals mentions that support for the EFI booting standard is on its way (under the Introducing Windows Vista Service Pack 1 section; there aren't any anchors I can link in this extensive post, so you'll have to search for that title or simply 'EFI').

In their hype and marketing for Boot Camp, Apple makes a pretty big deal about Intel-based Macs supporting EFI while "Windows XP, and even Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS" (check the sidebar of the Boot Camp page). So what could it mean if Vista catches up to the EFI bandwagon? I'm not quite sure yet. It could likely make the Boot Camp engineers' lives a lot easier, and while I know less about virtualization software like Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion, they might be able to sleep better at night as well. Ultimately, if EFI support in Vista makes it easier for Apple to support running Windows on a Mac, this could likely yield even more sales from swtichers - especially those who need Vista for things like work or gaming. As to speculation on whether this could bring some of the wilder stuff like running Windows apps in Mac OS X without the need for the Windows OS or virtualization tools, I'll leave that to the tin foil hat enthusiasts in the audience.

Thanks Adam

Ever since Boot Camp was released it has been no surprise to find out that the Intel Macs also make for some of the best Windows machines too (well, if you can bring yourself to install it, that is). Anyway, Walt Mossberg, dean of tech writers, has gotten one of the new iMacs and for kicks installed Vista via Boot Camp. And sure enough, Uncle Walt says he tested it "using Vista's built-in Windows Experience Index, a rating system that goes from 1 to 5.9, with scores above 3.0 generally required for full, quick performance. My iMac scored a 5.0, the best score of any consumer Vista machine I have tested." This was apparently the 2.8GHz machine as he says it was the top-of-the-line model. I know some folks were disappointed with the new iMacs slightly anemic graphics cards, but it's good to know they can still rock Vista if called upon to do so.

[via MacVolPlace]

This week on Ask TUAW we cover questions about reading the Mac partition while running Windows in Boot Camp, remote management, printing posters, AGP video cards for G5s, problems with Flash and more!

As always, leave your questions for next week in the comments.

Attention folks who like a little Windows with their Macs, Apple has just updated the Boot Camp beta to 1.4. Boot Camp, you will recall, is Apple's utility that allows you to repartition your Mac's hard drive and dual boot Windows and OS X. New in this release (quoting Apple's website here):

• Support for the MacBook Pro's backlight keyboard
• Apple Remote Pairing
• Updated graphics drivers (Windows loves drivers)
• Improved Boot Camp driver install, improved international keyboard support
• and more!

Boot Camp 1.4 beta requires OS X 10.4.6 or later and the latest firmware for your Mac. It is free, and it is also a beta so be warned.

Thanks, Paul.

Let us count the ways that the Mac sysadmin community hearts Mike B: we relish his reliable and full-featured Carbon Copy Cloner, we depend absolutely upon his fast and simple NetRestore, we puzzle through his instructions for deploying dual-boot machines and for working with Active Directory. Most of all, we love that all this snazzy management goodness is free. Now, for everyone tired of telling dual-boot users "just hold down the option key," Mike has released a Boot Camp OS selector tool called (unsurprisingly) BootPicker. It's open source, free and delightfully slick.

What differentiates BootPicker from a simple option-boot, or from more elaborate tools like rEFIt, is its manageability and simplicity. Installed as a preference pane, BootPicker actually boots to Mac OS X every time and lets the user click a button for the OS they want (or, if administratively desired, reboots automatically to Mac OS X or Windows without user input). This gets around a couple of tricky problems; normally, setting a permanent boot OS requires an admin password, and a machine set to always boot in Windows is immune to the management oversight of tools like ARD or Workgroup Manager (you can manage both sides of the fence with LANrev or similar tools, but that can be a pain). By booting into Mac OS X first, there's an opportunity to change the preferences for BootPicker itself and modify the behavior for the next boot cycle.

There's a very solid Read Me for BootPicker that (unfortunately) is only included in the install distribution, so you'll have to download it to peruse the details. Mike includes a candid evaluation of the security risks involved with something like BootPicker, which runs as root before the normal login window is presented to the user; please use discretion and care if you decide to deploy it. Check it out, and take a moment to appreciate what Mr. Bombich has done to make our lives a little bit easier.

Sometimes virtualization can be aggravating. If you've found yourself with a Parallels virtual disk that turned out to be uncomfortably small for all your stuff, there's a way to expand your horizons -- increase the virtual drive size with the included Image Tool, then boot the virtual machine from a free GParted LiveCD image to bump up the Windows partition to the full size of the virtual disk. Easy as pie, right?

Well, unfortunately not anymore: Parallels has (temporarily, we hope) removed Image Tool from the 3.0 distribution and the older version of the tool will not work with the current disk image format. The resizing procedure has been confusing for users (and possibly eaten the VHDs of a few unlucky souls), so until Parallels comes up with a more integrated resizing solution, it's off the table. You can get around the missing utility by making a new (larger) blank disk image, then using a tool like Acronis MigrateEasy within Parallels to move from old HD to new; still, it's a pain in the keister.

Meanwhile, as I discovered when preparing to move my Boot Camp XP setup into a virtual machine, the otherwise excellent Parallels Transporter P2V (physical to virtual) conversion tool has a serious functional gap. Transporter, which is designed to help you create Parallels virtual machines from physical PCs or other virtual disk formats, works on just about any source machine except... you guessed it: a Boot Camp installation of Windows. Argh! I could capture the Boot Camp install as a restorable disk image with NetRestore or WinClone, but I really wanted to go virtual, as I am in the process of moving over to a new MacBook Pro (yay!) with a smaller internal drive (boo!). What to do, what to do?

In this case, it was the competition that came to the rescue, in the form of VMware's free Converter tool. VMware Converter, which does the same basic P2V tricks as Parallels Transporter, works just fine with a Boot Camp setup, thank you very much, and neatly whisked my one-third-full 40 GB XP partition into a folderful of virtual disk chunks; with Converter you can also easily expand or contract your target disk size, which is another approach to the resizing problem above.

From there I had what we refer to in Brooklyn as "lotsa optsh" -- continue on using the new virtual machine in VMware Fusion, or run back to Parallels Transporter to continue converting into a Parallels VM. In fact, to avoid installing a full VMware setup (I did fire up the new v4.1, just to kick the tires a little), there's a conversion method in Transporter that goes directly from the VMware virtual disk to a Parallels .hdd file, don't pass Go or collect $200. Transporter will even make the needed config changes to the resulting disk, open it up in a fresh virtual machine, and load the Parallels support tools and drivers for you, hands-free.

Well, Parallels, I suppose I can forgive the Boot Camp transfer situation, but let's not go down this twisty disk-y road again, mmmkay?

Last week we pointed to an interesting addition to Apple's Leopard Boot Camp page: support for faster switching between Windows and OS X using safe sleep in OS X and hibernation in Windows. Well apparently something has changed. As Mac Rumors notes, Apple's page itself has been altered and references to the faster switching have disappeared. Originally it the page included the following:

Leopard brings a quicker way to switch between Mac OS X and Windows: Just choose the new Apple menu item "Restart in Windows." Your Mac goes into "safe sleep" so that when you return, you'll be right where you were. It's much faster than restarting the computer each time. Likewise, a "Restart in Mac OS X" menu item in the Boot Camp System Tray in Windows makes for a faster return to Mac OS X. With Windows hibernation enabled, you can pick up where you left off.

Mac Rumors has a Google cache of the page that shows the original text. Now Apple's page is simply missing that section. I hope this returns in the final release, because it looked like a great feature.

[via The Apple Core]

Thanks to you TUAW readers, tips are rolling in on all the tiny and not-so-tiny features that Mac OS X Leopard will be bringing in October. One feature that is definitely not-so-tiny is something I'll dub 'fast switching' between Mac OS X and your Boot Camp Windows installation. While this isn't quite the built-in virtualization that some users were hoping for, it will minimize the startup, shutdown and boot times when switching between the two OSes. Detailed on Boot Camp's new features page, Apple has hooked their safe sleep feature into Boot Camp to allow Mac OS X to save all your open applications and windows, and then boot over into Windows. Once you're done in Windows, you can boot back over to Mac OS X and pick up where you left off - with all your open applications and documents put right back where you left them.

This is a great idea and an interesting compromise between making it a little too easy to run Windows on your Mac, and it also keeps Apple from stepping on the toes of virtualization products from companies like Parallels and VMware.

Thanks, Daniel

If you bought one of those brand-new MacBook Pros, you have our envy. You've also got a new version of Boot Camp beta waiting for you. Beta 1.3 adds support for the new MBPs, as well as:

• Upgraded graphics drivers
• Improved installer
• Localization fixes
• Updated Help section

Upgrading from a previous version of Boot Camp is pretty easy, but you should follow Apple's instructions closely. You'll need Mac OS 10.4.6 or later, the latest firmware updates and a spare 10GB (at least). Have fun!


Thanks, Patrick!