Mac Boot Camp

*Shrug* they're arrogant bastards. They're Apple. What did you expect? In any case, it's nice that they're finally enabling you to dualboot Windows with their OS.

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EFI and BIOS Macs use an ultra-modern industry standard technology called EFI to handle booting. Sadly, Windows XP, and even the upcoming Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS. But with Boot Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries.

Well, they *are* stuck in the 1980's... Of course it could have been put more diplomatically, but it's still true (although I wouldn't call EFI "ultra-modern", especially since they're not actually using the newest version of it)

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Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it’ll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world. So be sure to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes.

Hehe, that one got a chuckle out of me. Sure it's silly and childish, but hey, what did anyone expect from them?

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Quote: Next, insert your Windows installation disc, restart and follow the Windows installation process. The only tricky part is selecting the C: drive manually. Be sure to get this right, or you could erase your Mac files accidentally. Remember, Apple Computer does not sell or support Microsoft Windows. Apparently Apple believes their users are too *stupid* for this.

They believe that they'll be flooded with support calls from people who deleted all their files. I don't blame them. They'll probably get a good handful of those anyway. I don't see what's so bad about this one. Remember, they are writing this to people who might not be used to the whole drive letter nonsense that Windows forces on us. Believe it or not, but not everyone are actually used to formatting/partitioning their harddrives on a weekly basis.

PC users can be "stupid" just as much.


We had to walk someone through today on how to uninstall software. We also got a nice "It's not words. It's just dots" comment when we asked him to tell us what was in the task manager process list.

I think it's pretty cool that they are doing this. It's actually funny how they hit on Windows like that. I thought Vista was going to support EFI too. They claim it wont.

EDIT: It's not called "Stuck in the '80's" Its called "Backwards compadability". Apple could learn a thing or two about that! Its this crazy thing where all the software/hardware works together from each new version of whatever it is. It where people don't have to upgrade from thier 9 version of a specific OS to thier 10 version just to use some new software.

Hmph! At least now we can cheer on Paul and Ringo as they take on the Apple beast!!! [grin] [1]

The Powermac G4 I got 4 years ago had a mouse with a single button, nearly no interresting software, and no real doc for developpers. They were bitching intel at this time. Now, they try to tell us that their intel architecture is far better than my PC architecture.

Windows on MacIntels is a very good idea: I don't need to learn how to program MacOSX - I just have to assume that MacIntel owner's can install Windows, and voilà.

Not sure it will boost the sales of iApple...

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Original post by lethalhamster I thought Vista was going to support EFI too. They claim it wont.

It'll most likely support both. There would be an awful lot of broken hardware if Vista didn't support the BIOS. Whether it'll actually kick hardware manufacturers into abandoning it is another story...

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Original post by lethalhamster It's not called "Stuck in the '80's" Its called "Backwards compadability". Apple could learn a thing or two about that! Its this crazy thing where all the software/hardware works together from each new version of whatever it is. It where people don't have to upgrade from thier 9 version of a specific OS to thier 10 version just to use some new software.

Well, there is something to be said for the way Apple forces their developers to keep up to date. I don't know if you read Raymond Chen's blog over at the MSDN, but every time (and I mean every time) he posts about design decisions made in Windows version to retain compatability, a large deal of posts come in asking why it wasn't just abandoned. There is of course the argument for old applications and unexpected behaviour, but by keeping the old in only perpetuates the problem of lazy developers still using the old ways and shunning the new.

i really wish they had used AMD as their processor and not Intel.

back to OP: i really didn't see anything wrong with excerpt. Mac is a different beast from Windows and talking to your users in a "3 year old" sort of way reduces irate customers who skimmed through vague or complicated instructions. Yes... that happens all the time.

[Edited by - Alpha_ProgDes on April 5, 2006 12:54:12 PM]

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Original post by Spoonbender Quote: Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it’ll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world. So be sure to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes. Hehe, that one got a chuckle out of me. Sure it's silly and childish, but hey, what did anyone expect from them?

You know, I don't see how this is bad. Its true, after all. I don't even find it worded in any way that can be offensive to anyone, its a fact.

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Original post by aidan_walsh Quote: Original post by Spoonbender Quote: Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it’ll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world. So be sure to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes. Hehe, that one got a chuckle out of me. Sure it's silly and childish, but hey, what did anyone expect from them? You know, I don't see how this is bad. Its true, after all. I don't even find it worded in any way that can be offensive to anyone, its a fact.

The word "plague", by any chance? The word "affect" is slightly more appropriate.

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Original post by benryves The word "plague", by any chance?

There's nothing wrong with "plauged" because it doesn't blame the problem on Windows. In fact, it goes as far as to suggest that apply Microsoft fixes is all that's needed to protect the machine (we all know it isn't).

This is documentation for non-technical users. It's written to their (false) notions. After all, how many millions of people (allegedly) believe that switching to Firefox makes them immune to browser-based attacks? How many of them would think that running Windows on a Mac would somehow be inherently safer?

It's a cheap shot, but isn't everything Apple publishes about Mac vs PC a cheap shot? Remember the "Intel chip" ad from earlier this year?

Somedays I think that Apple just encourages me with a nice little laptop so I stick my neck out recommending their machines, and then they shoot me in the back with these stupid little callouts on their product webpages.

Then again, it is marketdroid speak, and Windows XP is supposed to be secure, OS/2 is supposed to be revolutionary, the 3DO is supposed to be successful and the PSP's hardware failures are by design according to all of the marketdroid speak.

They make a nice package, give it a try. Just don't listen to their marketers -- they seriously need to find a new marketer because their website is just getting sadder and sadder. Then again, I'm not a marketing executive so maybe this crap actually works.

Edit: Shit, how didn't I find out about this thing before now? This is bizarre. It looks like a fun little toy, though I'm quite happy with my separate Windows and OS X boxen.

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EDIT: It's not called "Stuck in the '80's" Its called "Backwards compadability".

Nah, the EFI specs support a legacy BIOS module as well, so it can be backwards compatible. Admittedly, Apple chose to leave that out in the version they use, but that doesn't excuse Microsoft sticking with BIOS.

Nah, it's marketing strategy. How you gonna sell overpriced PCs if not with this kind of marketing? It's all same PC, only software (like BIOS) is different. It can only be sold to misinformed folks.

as for EFI, it is developed by Intel, and not by Apple, but of course article as usual is crafted to create impression in Apple advocates that it's some extremely useful invention by Apple (By definition, no Apple advocate can notice it is something created not by Apple). BIOS is mostly harmless legacy; they leaved out BIOS but took all the harmful legacy (x86 command set). Also, Microsoft will anyway have to support BIOS for long, so it's excuseable that they don't want to support two different things when one is enough. BIOS is the industry standard on x86 platform, whever you like it or not.

Speaking of brainwashing, one apple advocate i know honestly believes that apple invented MPEG4 (lol. wasn't it Motion Picture Experts Group), and all because of reading similar propaganda.

[Edited by - Dmytry on April 5, 2006 2:44:04 PM]

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Original post by Spoonbender Quote: EDIT: It's not called "Stuck in the '80's" Its called "Backwards compadability". Nah, the EFI specs support a legacy BIOS module as well, so it can be backwards compatible. Admittedly, Apple chose to leave that out in the version they use, but that doesn't excuse Microsoft sticking with BIOS.

I'm a firm believer in forcing upgrades on people. ICT is not a stable field and won't be for many years to come. Change will happen. Improvements in technologies, both hardware and software as well as peripheral advances such as in ergonomics and interface design, generally improve productivity. Sure, I could use WordStar on CP/M today, but I'd lose a lot of damned useful features that can be found in MS Word or Nisus Writer Express today.

Granted, there shouldn't be a need to upgrade every 18 months or so, but 4-5 years is ample time for a business to see a decent ROI on its IT spending. Upgrading software usually (although not always) results in better productivity too. If your legacy software is holding you back, _ditch it_. Bite the bloody bullet, because support costs aren't going to get any cheaper.

The switch from OS 9 to OS X was well worth it. It cleared a lot of cruft and effectively acted as a reset button for developers. Windows hasn't gone through such a phase yet. To be fair, Mac OS 9 was based on core design principles going back to 1984 and had APIs that looked it. Even Windows still has bits of Pascal API in there and has built up quite a lot of cruft. The endless delays with Windows Vista suggest to me that a clean slate approach may indeed be called for sooner rather than later.

As for BIOS: it's ancient, people. It should have been replaced _years_ ago. Apple's "Boot Camp" utility proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that EFI is a perfectly viable replacement and it's not all _that_ modern. (It was designed, by Intel, in the 1990s.)

If WinXP can be made to run on it on an EFI-based Macintel, what's stopping the traditional Wintel box industry?

What actually holds things back is x86 commands set. IMO. These days, with complex operating systems that has to have drivers in any case, legacy portions of BIOS do things only during boot time. Think about it, Apple replaced their different processor with x86 . And x86 is legacy that is as old as bios, and it is legacy on _runtime_ (and BIOS is mostly at boot time as these days operating systems absolutely must have drivers for all the hardware and do all the work themselves without using actually old parts of BIOS)
Apply indeed isn't really sticking with legacy things. Apple switched to legacy thing from perfectly valid new alternative. That's what this x86 intel macs is.

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Speaking about os X and os 9 , if i recall correctly os 9 did not even have protected memory or true multiprocessing (windows nt and windows 95 supported that already). So Apple had to totally change operating system, and they switched to BSD. Unixes are good, but are also way older than windows. I'm is using Linux BTW, but it pisses me off when people say how Windows is legacy implying that something unix-based isn't even older legacy.

[Edited by - Dmytry on April 5, 2006 2:05:18 PM]

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Original post by Dmytry Nah, it's marketing strategy. How you gonna sell overpriced PCs if not with this kind of marketing? It's all same PC, only software (like BIOS) is different. It can only be sold to misinformed folks. ...

There's a subtle point here that I think you're missing. User interfaces aren't defined solely by software. The interface does not end when the hardware begins. Apple knows this and they rarely, if ever, advertise raw specs. Even when they do mention specs, they usually use their older models for comparison, rather than those of their competitors.

Apple doesn't sell computers. They sell _good design_. They sell combinations of hardware and software that have been designed holistically to work seamlessly with each other. This is something Microsoft simply cannot compete against since they don't make the hardware. (Although it's clear that MS are trying to head that way.)

It also explains why even Sony find it difficult to out-design Apple: Sony don't make the OS, nor do they have much say about the Windows user experience, so you invariably end up with a cool-looking bit of hardware saddled with overdesigned widgets and utilities that plaster over the huge gap between said hardware and the Windows GUI. It never feels truly seamless.

The down-side is that most of Apple's gear tends towards the sealed-box end of the market. An iMac is essentially a sealed unit. You can add some RAM and, if you're feeling really dangerous, maybe swap the hard drive for a bigger model. But that's about it. The GPU isn't going to change throughout the lifetime of the machine.

And I don't care. I own both PCs and Macs. I've used pretty much every OS and GUI since CP/M and GEM. I'm not a rabid Macolyte, but neither am I particularly enamoured by Windows. Over the years, I've noticed that the best products tend to be sealed units. Designed holistically, with the software, quite rightly, seen merely as an extension of the physical hardware. After all, CPUs _are_ machines. Tools. For getting things done.

Yes, only when all units is merged into single sealed system you may have to press mouse button during boot to eject CD... or do it with command prompt lol. reference

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Original post by Dmytry What actually holds things back is x86 commands set. IMO. These days, with complex operating systems that has to have drivers in any case, legacy portions of BIOS do things only during boot time. Think about it, Apple replaced their different processor with x86 . And x86 is legacy that is as old as bios, and it is legacy on _runtime_ (and BIOS is mostly at boot time as these days operating systems absolutely must have drivers for all the hardware and do all the work themselves without using actually old parts of BIOS) Apply indeed isn't really sticking with legacy things. Apple switched to legacy thing from perfectly valid new alternative. That's what this x86 intel macs is.

It seems to work well enough for Apple's purposes. As for the instruction set: this is irrelevant. Few programmers need to write code in assembly language these days.

Most software spends most of its time shunting data around and performing relatively simple operations. I have no great love for Intel's shitty mnemonics, but their CPU designs have improved over the years. Gone is the old segmented addressing. MMX and its ilk have come in instead. And the Core Duo is pretty damned efficient. The Pentium IV series was a dead end, but they've learned their lesson and it looks like AMD are going to have some decent competition again soon.

It's also worth bearing in mind that modern x86 CPUs share very little with their predecessors architecturally. The x86 instruction set is more like an API now rather than a literal native tongue for the CPU; it's usually translated into microcode.

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Speaking about os X and os 9 , if i recall correctly os 9 did not even have protected memory or true multiprocessing (windows nt and windows 95 supported that already).

Actually, WIndows 95 didn't do protected memory very well either. That's why the old 9x codebase was thrown out with Windows 2000 & XP both based on the NT core.

But yes, OS 9 was certainly showing its age. Then again, it did date back to 1984. Windows' APIs have a lot of cruft in them too, but the API we know and hate today dates back to the early '90s.

Mark my words: Microsoft _will_ have to make a radical change to Windows at some point in the near term. Virtualisation technology gives them the magic bullet they'll need to pull it off: they can let people run legacy software by running older versions of Windows in a virtualisation environment, avoiding the need to write complex emulation and bridging software.

Come to think of it, it wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft decided to do an Apple and simply go with a UNIX-derived core in future. Mac owners don't usually realise that OS X is just a BSD UNIX clone with a fancy GUI. The GUI is all they see and Microsoft are well aware of that. (The Windows 2000 and Windows ME GUIs were the same, but running on very different cores, so MS have done this trick before.)

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So Apple had to totally change operating system, and they switched to BSD. Unixes are good, but are also way older than windows. I'm is using Linux BTW, but it pisses me off when people say how Windows is legacy implying that something unix-based isn't even older legacy.

Specifically, Apple switched to a BSD Mach Kernel architecture, which is _not_ 30 years old. UNIX isn't so much an OS as it is a blueprint for one. There are many UNIX flavours, but I doubt you'll find one that has retained much code from the original Bell Labs releases.

UNIX does _not_ define the user interface. Even CLI users have an array of shells to choose from. So one cannot truly compare Windows and UNIX directly. Windows is artificially tied to its GUI. UNIX is not.

There is another advantage of UNIX: it's a very mature architecture. It's proven and tested and has had many commercial (and Open Source) developers crawling all over it for some 30 years. Windows has only had Microsoft's employees looking after it.

When a technology has matured, the need to upgrade constantly reduces and eventually disappears. After all, we still use bricks and mortar to build our artificial caves. Neither technology has changed much since the Romans.

As a hobby OS programmer I have always preferred the 1980s way. Simple and direct IMO. I never liked how apple did it.