Run XP on an Intel Mac, Win Money
A guy named Colin from Houston is holding a contest for someone to come up with a way to dual-boot Windows XP on an Apple MacBook Pro. Donations to the site have brought the prize money to over $4,000 so far. Colin apparently has a MacBook Pro on the way and told his boss that it would replace his IBM desktop. While it is a rather lofty goal considering XP is made for a BIOS which is dramatically different from the EFI-based OS X for Intel architecture. However, he’s got a lot of support as you can see Delicious Monster having donated $1,000 already. I’m all for this, I can definitely see myself owning a MacBook in the not so distant future and running XP would be great. With the X1600 GPU, gaming on the MacBook would be feasible.
My MacBook is shipping on the 15th of February. I told my boss that this would replace my IBM desktop and I could boot Windows XP on it. I am still confident it can be done. I am pledging $100 of my own money and offering anyone else who would like the instructions on how to Dual boot these two operating systems the ability to donate some of their money into the pot as a reward for the person / group that can make dual-booting Mac OS X and Windows XP happen on an Intel Mac. Good Luck,
Colin
On his personal site, Colin has a post listing why he wants the system to be dual-boot, i.e. reasons he needs XP and OS X.
Reasons I need OS X:
Presentations - Keynote is miles ahead of powerpoint. I can copy and paste from illustrator, drop in pdfs and the transitions are gorgeous. We have received many WOWs from customers when using Keynote
PDFs - I generate reports where I have Excel files embedded in Word Documents. In windows, the colors in the embedded excel file dont print. In my Mac in Office 2004…
Continue Reading at Colin’s Site
Update: This thing has gotten huge! I’ve donated as well, my name should be on that page shortly.
More importantly though, can you instal OS X on a PC? Now that would be more to my liking!
Yes.
:) why didn’t you win a Bloggie mate?
Guess I didn’t get enough votes. It really comes down to a popularity contest. :-(
IMHO running Windows on a mac is pure blasphemy! On the other hand $4000 is a nice amount of cash to sell your soul to the dark side for ;)
see, things like this make me wish i’d gone to college for computer science, and not english.
i really hope someone cracks this one, because if they do, i’ll have run out of excuses not to buy one ;)
Yeah it’s such a popularity contest. In some of the categories I see exactly the same names that I’ve seen on the list for 2005 and even 2004. I nominated BinaryBonsai for design because his design is great and because of his contributions to the community with K2 and Kubrick, but he got left off and there’s a site on there that hasn’t actually changed design since being shortlisted for a 2005 design award. Then again, blogging (and the internet in general) has a tendency to be extremely cliquey, so I’m hardly surprised.
Yeah it’s such a popularity contest. In some of the categories I see exactly the same names that I’ve seen on the list for 2005 and even 2004. I nominated BinaryBonsai for design because his design is great and because of his contributions to the community with K2 and Kubrick, but he got left off and there’s a site on there that hasn’t actually changed design since being shortlisted for a 2005 design award. Then again, blogging (and the internet in general) has a tendency to be extremely cliquey, so I’m hardly surprised.
(Why is my comment not showing up?)
Comment Moderation George :-)
Oh right. Feel free to moderate away the duplicate as well as this comment then. (Hate leaving a mess.)
Been a while since I’ve commented, but I’ve been on vacation.
I was under the impression that the current versions on XP aren’t compatible with the hardware ties that Apple is using (EFI rather than BIOS) and that while Windows Vista 64-bit supports EFI, Apple doesn’t have a 64-bit Intel Mac yet.
That being said, anything is possible these days. I just won’t hold my breath.
It would just make your mac feel dirty and abused to be running windows. Why buy a nice looking laptop complete with a nice looking operating system and then put windows on your nice looking laptop when buying a Dell would have been far cheaper in the first place?!
If you trully are a Mac user, or otherwise like there being choices in the OS world, running Windows natively on the Mac is not a good idea. As a Mac user, who does sometimes use Virtual PC, sure I can see an occasional use for doing so.
If I was a developer, however, say Adobe, who makes software for a profit, and currently has to support two operating systems, one of which I currently have to overhaul for a new processor, why would I develop for the Mac if I could just tell people to run Windows on their Macs in order to run my applications?
Sure, Mac users would grumble, but users who need those applications would have no choice but to oblige. The idea is not to have to rely on Windows at all. If everybody can boot into Windows on a Mac, Apple developers may very well discover it is not worth their while to develop for the Mac OS anymore.
Not smart at all. I hope those trying to boot Windows natively fail.
That’s a nice point Terrin, but when I want to relax with my (prospective) MacBook Pro and play some Battlefield 2, I’m going to need Windows. You can set everything aside - games aren’t a Mac thing. One or two of the “big” games such as World of Warcraft also get released for OS X but it will be a long time until the Call of Duty and Half-Life 2’s of the future are simultaneously released for Windows and Apple operating systems.
Paul:
I understand that gamers want to play video games on their Macs which largely only run on Windows. However, if my forecast is correct, Blizzard may decide it is not cost productive to develop for the Mac if people can just boot up in Windows. As an avid Mac user, that would upset me because I love playing Diablo on my Mac, and love being able to have my other Mac programs operating while doing so.
I bought a Mac knowing I would not get the latest video games. I am cool with that because all the applications I really need to use do run on the Mac. That might not continue to be the case if people can boot Windows on their Mac and doing so is reliable.
I also have another theory. Microsoft does not want people to be able to natively boot Windows on a Mac. If they could, many Windows users may very well buy a Mac, and find out they really do not need Windows. This is a guess, but I suspect Apple and Microsoft made a deal in which Microsoft would develop Office for the Mac, if Apple gave up something in return, for example not natively allowing Windows support on the new Macs.
Otherwise, the deal made no sense. Microsoft was already making a good profit on Office for the Mac, its best year ever. Moreover, Microsoft has been developing Office for the Mac for many years now without a contract. In fact, I believe it was last year, Microsoft made the point that the two were working together and did not need a contract to continue the relationship. What other developer who is making a profit, needs a contract to continue developing something? Also, the timing of the announcement was peculiar.
interesting question on the why would a developer continue to develop on the mac when they now have to develop for another processor.
Howabout this for an answer:
Its simple to do.
Now that is a misleading statement I grant you, its only simple if you designed your app well in the first place, some simple examples are MODO, and Cinema 4D/BodyPaint 3D. 2 3D applicaitons which both were able to get successful ports working in a couple days. Of course their code is very OS inspecific, as a god applciation should be. Thyey both use their own interface systems rather then relying on the OS, and their code is designed to be easy to edit, which is why they also can release more updates in a much shorter period of time with 12 or less programmers then adobe or microsoft could for apps like office and photoshop.
Maxon was also able to get a succesful port of Cinema 4D running on XP 64 as a 64 bit app in a mere two weeks for release, fortunately they had a hardcore test team to do that.
They now are at the point where they are supporting linux as well, and are ouputting PowerMac OSX, Mactel OSX, Windows xp32, Windows Xp 64, And various linux distro’s in 32 and with little effort in porting form their original windows 32 and powermac 32 of just over a year ago. Its all in how you design your program.
Moodog:
I am not sure those applications are good examples. Many OSX programs like Office, and various Adobe programs, were designed for OS 9. These developers probably designed the programs well. They just did not anticipate Apple would move to OSX, and then Intel. Adobe and Microsoft programs are much more complicated then the ones you mention. Those probably were originally written in Coco, which Office and Adobe programs were not. For instance, Mathematica was alledgedly recompiled to work on Intel Macs in a matter of hours. However, it was orignally written in Coco.
The point is if Adobe and Microsoft are spending months and months developing for OSX, which is the case, why bother if Macs will boot into Windows. Cinema is not a make it or break it application for Apple. Photoshop and the Office suite are.
Well I’m not sure about Modo, as it is a newer applicaiton you might be right, they’ve only been around for a year and a half or two. Cinema 4D however has been around since 1997 on the mac when it made its move from Amiga. And its definitely not written in Coco, these Are C++ apps originally written in coderwarrir and had to be changed over to the Xcode compiler. When it first came out they had clean compiles within days before they even had a system to test them on.
Well Make or Break I guess depends on the industry, Since Discreet now owns maya, the other major 3D applicaiton for macs, which is traditionally a Windows only company, and major competitor of apps like shake, motion, and FCP, it may become the only major player, and they are no where near a Universal Binary because mayas is very awekward to code, being originally written for PC and linux based systems, and relying heavily on OS functions for interface.
now that mac’s have access to identical graphics cards as the regular windows machine, they’ll have little reason not to compare in realtime 3d capabilities, but what fgood will that be if the 3D apps don’t work.
Adobe needs to rework photoshop Its also another reason we still have no linux photoshop to date despite the huge demand for it.
You miss my overall point, which is if a Mac user can easily access Windows with no noticable performace hit why would the developer spend tons of money developing for Macs when it can just force that user to use Windows?
Adobe is a business. It releases products, and kills products, when it either can justify the cost or not justify the cost of development. Adobe would love it if Macs users stopped using Macs and switched to Windows. Half the work, same pay off.
My point is even more likely with video game developers who make a game and often are done with it. Game developers may very well just say hey if you want to run the game just start up in Windows.