A little friend showed up yesterday on Boot Camp-equipped Intel Macs and PCs with Apple apps (iTunes, Safari, QuickTime) installed -- an update to the updater that updates our updating. Apple Software Update 2.1.1 for Windows is out... there's no download page at Apple, so for now the only way to get your hands on it is via the existing Apple Software Update on your machine.

What does it do? Well, it improves security and overall reliability. Recommended for all users. Keeps your refrigerator smelling fresh and can be used as a dentrifice ... wait, no, sorry, wrong stuff. If you do install the update and you notice any changes, positive or negative, do let us know.

Thanks Adam!

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.

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

There are two kinds of virtualization products for the Mac: first, the kind that develop fast, release quick, and damn the torpedoes; second, the kind that bake in the goodness and hold off on a release until everything meets the exacting standards of an enterprise software vendor. Today we get to see the final result of the second approach, as VMware Fusion is officially shipping after an extensive beta release. (Still love ya, Parallels, don't ever change.)

Fusion is available for $60 (after a $20 rebate) and offers all the XP-running, virtual-appliance-library downloading, window integrating, 3D emulating features you'd expect. I'm planning to do a little bake-off between the agile rookie and the wily veteran, now that everyone's on a fully released & supported plateau, to see which of the two meets my needs best.

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.

Just 48 hours after its release, the public beta of Safari 3 for Windows has been downloaded 1 million times. That's pretty impressive. Too bad we don't know what percentage of those downloads went to hard core Windows users, curious Mac users (running Parallels, Boot Camp, etc.) or folks who frequently use both a Mac and a Windows machine (at home and at work, for example).

In any case, there are a lot of Windows users who got a piece of Apple goodness this week. We hope they like it.

Thanks, Jesse!

Reader ADM sent us a message and screenshot of his Windows XP PC (Wait a minute...or readers have Windows PC's?!?) running Safari 3 Public Beta. He reports:

"...Just downloaded and installed safari...Note the cleartype font smoothing in effect. It's fast but not stunningly fast, so far..."

If you've got a Windows box sitting around like ADM and you're willing to install the Safari Beta, tell us how it goes. What works and what doesn't? What do you like and what could use a little beta-development love? The comments are open.

Those ZoomSystems iPod vending machines that we once gently mocked are both more successful and more ubiquitous than we thought they'd be. Still, it seems they aren't flawless. Reader & iPod shopper Kristopher decided to give one of the machines at his local mall a try; unfortunately, as soon as he started using the touchscreen, a familiar error screen appeared, and then... well, you can see what's underneath the pretty surface.

Sure, lots of retail kiosk applications use XP, but c'mon -- for an iPod sales system, shouldn't Mac OS X be the first choice?

[That's a joke, in case our visitors from Digg are confused. While there are plenty of Point Of Sale systems for the Mac, I don't actually know of one that's intended for vending-machine deployment, and even a Mac Mini is a bit high-end for the build cost of vending machines. That aside, it's probably not the best call to go with XP for a vend setup either...]

The initial error was mine: I was running XP (in Boot Camp) before I got onboard, and forgot to reboot in Mac OS X (where my iTunes library of "hey kids, let's keep quiet while the other passengers sleep!" videos lives) prior to the flight. Once we reached cruising altitude, I fired up the MBP and quickly went to turn off my Airport card, as all good Americans must do... and what on Earth (or high above it) is that "Free Public WiFi" peer-to-peer network doing on a PLANE?? Someone is not paying attention!

I had seen these "Free Public WiFi" peer-to-peer networks around before, usually in airports, and had ignored them as malware honeypots; the truth is apparently a little less malicious but still pretty scary. It seems that our friends in Redmond have (since Jan 06) some strangeness in the wireless network management routines under XP; any WLAN that a Windows machine joins gets 'echoed' back out as an ad-hoc SSID if the machine can't find the previous connection (an implementation of RFC 3927).
David Maynor, of "MacBook WiFi Hack" fame, posted on the quirky fun back in January, as did Brian Krebs. The result of this 'feature' is that certain bogus SSIDs spread in viral fashion wherever large numbers of Windows laptops congregate. Machines may be joining the same ad-hoc network unintentionally, and a malicious user could attempt exploitation of those machines without warning.

Reason #2048 why I love my Mac: wireless security flaws in OS X are obscure, debatable and mostly academic, not readily visible in every airport and bus terminal.

jarpy has an interesting post up on installing Windows XP to an external USB hard drive without using Boot Camp to repartition his internal drive. This method makes use of the Open Source rEFIt utility which we've mentioned before. The process itself looks somewhat risky (e.g. jarpy disconnected his internal drive to avoid corrupting his OS X install) and playing around with third-party boot loaders is always potentially dangerous in my opinion. However, the payoff of a USB-bootable Windows drive is rather appealing, so it might be worth a look for some of you. Proceed at your own risk. If any of you decide to get this working, please share your experiences in the comments.

[Via Digg]

Man, the development team at Parallels must have a secret stash of Jolt. While they're not quite finished with the two big-ticket features for the next release (USB 2 and 3D acceleration support) they have a laundry list of other items rolling out with the latest beta build:

• Boot from BootCamp partition directly into Parallels Desktop for Mac (my personal favorite)
  
• Read/Write Boot Camp partition (if this supports NTFS, another big win)
  
• Parallels Transporter Beta - migrate a Windows PC image, VMWare or Microsoft Virtual PC VM to Parallels
• Drag and drop files/folders between Windows and Mac OS X
  
• Graphics performance improvements

and more. Once the Direct3D support comes along, this product will move from the "wicked excellent" category into the realm of "simply unstoppable."

Update 5:20pm EST: The Parallels support forum post detailing all the changes & linking to the download is here.

Thanks Kender!

Apple has issued an EFI Firmware Update 1.0 which "fixes several Boot Camp and start up issues on Mac Pro computers." We've been hearing about these problems for a little while now, so here's hoping this 1.8MB update can let Mac Pro + XP owners sleep a little better at night.

The updater requires Mac OS X 10.4.7 and is available here.

Thanks Robert

Boot Camp, Apple's software that allows Mac users to run Windows XP on a separate partition, has been updated to version 1.1.1. Specific in this release is support for Core 2 Duo Macs (Mac Pro and new iMac), though the Boot Camp page lists other updates, such as support for built-in iSight cameras and improved Apple keyboard support, that actually appeared in Boot Camp 1.1.

This release weighs in at 186MB, and is available from Apple's Boot Camp page.


Thanks Randy

Recently, I detailed the trying ordeal I endured while installing Windows XP on a MacBook via Boot Camp. While many of you shared your success stories, I've found at least one other IntelMac owner who had a less-than-pleasant experience. Julio Ojeda-Zapata at the Your Tech Weblog had a dog of a time getting XP to behave nicely on his Mac Pro. When Parallels resulted in "...numerous" kernel panics, he went to Boot Camp route, only to find that the Mac driver CD he was prompted to burn during the installation process wouldn't install (unsupported hardware).

Isn't it nice to see all this frustration and wasted time become a part of the Mac experience?

Parallels has released a 4th Beta of their much-hyped Workstation software for Intel-based Macs that allows OS virtualization (not just Windows) within Mac OS X. Improvements and fixes in this new beta include:

• Introduced full screen mode
• Introduced dual-monitor support
• Improved real CD/DVD support
• Improved, easier to use interface
• Better sound support, including a fix for Windows 2000 guest OS
• Networking kernel panics resolved
• Bridged networking issues fixed
• WiFi networking issues fixed
• Fixed some of the issues encountered when entering "Sleep" mode when a VM is running
• Many other minor bug fixes

Don't forget: in addition to running Windows XP within Mac OS X, one of the largest appeals of Parallels Workstation is that you can run a whole slew of other OSs from Windows 3.1 - 2003, any Linux distro, FreeBSD, Solaris, OS/2 and MS-DOS - all running inside a full-featured, secure environment within Mac OS X.