boot-camp posts

Filed under: Gaming, Humor, Software, Odds and ends, Developer

Bioshock for Mac on October 7th

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Sep 24th, 2009

I can personally attest to Bioshock being a terrific game, but the problem is that probably, many of you can as well. Let's be honest -- it actually came out for PC and consoles a full two years ago. At this point, a Mac port is probably useless, but it's coming out anyway. Feral Interactive has announced that they'll be releasing the port on October 7th of this year, so those of you Mac diehards who refuse to play games on any other platforms can finally get your fix. The game will be released for $49.95 in the US, and can be preordered on Feral's store right now. Or, you know, you can run out to Best Buy, pick up a copy for $20 and run it in Boot Camp, it's up to you.

If you are going for the Mac version, however, you should know that the game doesn't support the Intel GMA integrated video cards, so you'll need a dedicated video card in your Mac to play it. Bioshock is a great game, as I've said, and if you really stretch it out, it might give you a good six months of free time entertainment -- just in time for you to pick up the Mac port of Hellgate: London, a game released in December of 2007. Oh wait.

Tags: bioshock, boot-camp, consoles, false, feral-interactive, games, gaming, hellgate-london, humor, integrated-video, intel-gma, late, mac, mac-diehards, pc, porting, two-years, videogames

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software, Odds and ends

Warhammer Online coming to the Mac

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Jul 31st, 2009

More good news for MMO players on the Mac: Warhammer Online has joined the ranks of EVE and of course World of Warcraft by announcing the release of a Mac-compatible client. Most of you already interested were probably playing with Boot Camp, but that hasn't stopped Mythic from working on a Mac client. It's in beta now (and free to current players, with a free trial available for those who haven't stepped inside the MMO yet), and they're aiming for a release in the Fall. And how nice is this: Mac players will get two titles of their own, as well as an exclusive in-game trophy.

Unfortunately, the client doesn't run truly natively -- Mythic is owned by EA, so, you guessed it, Transgaming's Cider is behind this port, too. Cider isn't always the best way to run games (native would be the way we'd like to see it), but many of the problems we've seen with the technology are a few years old now, so hopefully it's gotten better (and that's likely what this beta is all about) -- hopefully they can work out all the kinks before the official release in the Fall.

Warhammer Online is an excellent MMO, especially notable for its heavy PvP elements and its innovative Public Quests and Tome of Knowledge feature (kind of like achivements, but even more in-depth). It's a little late coming to our platform, but it's good to finally see another big game take on Mac support.

Tags: boot-camp, cider, ea, eve-online, mac, mmo, mythic, port, tome-of-knowledge, transgaming, warhammer-online, world-of-warcraft

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Hardware, Software, Odds and ends, Apple

New MacBook Pro benchmarked within Boot Camp

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Nov 19th, 2008

Finally, someone with more money that I have (I want a new MacBook Pro, but haven't yet convinced myself to shell out the dough to replace my old yet trusty G4 12" Powerbook) has put the new MBP and those shiny graphics chips to the test, and drummed up some real benchmarking numbers in Boot Camp. It turns out to be PC World, strangely enough. And the verdict? Well, it's not quite so great.

The good news is that the MacBook Pro is faster than ever, and graphics have significantly improved. And trust us, any improvement over the old chips is a step in the right direction.

The bad news is that in a practical situation (like playing the Crysis demo, which is actually about a year old at this point), a MacBook Pro in Boot Camp at the highest settings isn't actually playable, and the 15 fps you might squeeze out of it on a good day still can't compare to the 50 fps you can get out of even average video cards in a Windows PC. If the graphics are turned down, it's a different story -- we've seen a new MBP run games well in Boot Camp already, so it'll play, but Apple still has a ways to go to be competitive with brand new games.

But let's keep this all in perspective -- it's very good news when you compare the new MacBook Pros to the old ones. Apple is at least realizing that 3D performance needs an upgrade in their units. Maybe next time around they can bring some software updates into the mix as well, and we can start to see some real competition in high-end performance.

Tags: 3d-performance, benchmarking, boot-camp, chips, cpumark, crysis, games, gaming, graphics, macbook-pro, mpb

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Hardware, Software, MacBook

Putting the MacBook through the paces with Warhammer Online

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Oct 16th, 2008

Since the new MacBooks were released earlier this week, everyone's been talking a good bit about gaming on the thing, but our friend (and TUAW alum) C.K. Sample III decided to actually load up a game and make the new Nvidia chips put up or shut up. And as you can see above, put up they did: he loaded up XP in Boot Camp, installed Warhammer Online (not a small task, with a 13GB install and all the patching it took about two hours), and entered the Age of Reckoning with all the graphics turned up. The verdict: it worked. And pretty well -- while there was a tiny bit of slowdown on the highest settings (and YouTube compression makes it look worse than it is), the game was clearly playable and actually looked really good. The trackpad wasn't too easy to use, but you already know that for any substantial games, you've got to plug a mouse in anyway.

This was the 9400M running in the new MacBook, with the 2.4 GHz processor and 2GB of RAM. You have to think the MBP would run even better, too. Seems like Apple's done it -- even on the low end machines, gamers should have no problem (assuming they're willing to load up Boot Camp and deal with a permissions error or two) running even the latest PC games. Now if we could only convince game companies to all make Mac-specific versions...

Tags: 9400M, boot-camp, featured, graphics, macbook, nvidia, pc-games, pc-gaming, warhammer-online, windows

Filed under: OS, Freeware

Winclone: Backup your Boot Camp partition

by Mat Lu (RSS feed) on Dec 22nd, 2007

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]

Tags: Boot Camp, Boot-Camp, BootCamp, Winclone

Filed under: Software, Apple, Beta Beat

Apple emails Boot Camp users

by Dave Caolo (RSS feed) on Nov 28th, 2007

I used the original Boot Camp beta last year just to see it work. I applied the subsequent updates, but haven't tinkered with it since.

Today, I received an email from Apple that reads, in part:

"...With the introduction of Leopard, the Boot Camp Beta program has ended. The Boot Camp Beta software will expire on December 31, and Apple won't offer further updates of Boot Camp Beta for Mac OS X Tiger."

There's your warning, Tiger users. The Boot Camp beta expires December 31st. Upgrade to Leopard or run unsupported. You don't want that, of course. Windows needs all the support it can get.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

Tags: beta, boot-camp, leopard, software, tiger

24 hours of Leopard: Boot Camp

by Lisa Hoover (RSS feed) on Oct 26th, 2007

Features: Boot Camp

What it does: Atten-HUT! No more whinin' about how yer Mac won't run Windows without kickin' it around the block a few times. Leopard now comes with Boot Camp so you can tell your machine whether to come to the party dressed in its Leopard or Windows togs. (You, Soldier, better be wearin' yer camo!)

Stop yer complainin' that yer drivers won't work right, neither. Our fine Admirals up at the Cupertino H-Q got ya covered. The Leopard DVD comes with everythin' you need -- if ya think you've got what it takes to handle it.

Already running Boot Camp Beta? Well, ain't you special? Leopard walks you through the upgrade and gives you the new drivers that ya need.

Who will use it: Soldiers who alternate OS X and Windows Vista or XP. Too much dual-bootin' goodness for ya? Toughen up! Get used to it. This is Leopard, ya big lug. Now drop and give me 20!

Tags: 24-hrs-of-leopard, boot-camp, drivers, dual-boot, windows

Filed under: Leopard

Boot Camp beta pages gone from Apple.com

by Michael Rose (RSS feed) on Oct 24th, 2007

It's not a surprise; the Boot Camp beta support pages are now gone from apple.com/bootcamp, and that link is now redirecting to the feature page for Boot Camp in Leopard. While the beta is technically expiring on Friday, that shouldn't cause any problems for existing Boot Camp setups (and MacNN points out you can still download the beta if you need it).

In case you pick up a copy of Leopard but aren't ready to install it on all your machines yet, you can still leverage the release drivers for BC; according to Apple's page, upgrading your existing Boot Camp install is as simple as installing the new Windows drivers directly from the 10.5 DVD.

via Ars Technica

Tags: boot-camp

Tip of the Day

Use Spotlight as a reference tool. Type any word in the Spotlight box and one of the top entries will be a definition. Click on it, and it will bring up the dictionary application to check the word in either the dictionary, thesaurus, Apple database, or Wikipedia.

Learn More

TUAW flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

Featured Galleries

TUAW bloggers (30 days)

#	Blogger	Posts	Cmts
1	Steven Sande	44	3
2	Dave Caolo	38	4
3	Mel Martin	32	0
4	Mike Schramm	31	0
5	Michael Rose	19	27
6	Victor Agreda, Jr.	17	6
7	Josh Carr	17	24
8	TJ Luoma	15	27
9	Erica Sadun	12	1
10	Joachim Bean	12	3
11	Sang Tang	12	0
12	Ken Ray	11	2
13	Aron Trimble	9	3
14	David Winograd	9	4
15	Chris Rawson	8	0
16	Megan Lavey	7	9
17	John Burke	6	3
18	Brett Terpstra	4	5
19	Casey Johnston	4	0
20	Lauren Hirsch	4	0

More Apple Analysis

AAPL on BloggingStocks The Apple category feed from BloggingStocks.com
AAPL Quote, News & Summary The AAPL financials page from AOL Money and Finance
iPhone analysis from BloggingStocks iPhone tag feed from BloggingStocks
Macintosh news and reviews on Download Squad The Macintosh category feed from Download Squad

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)