Scobleizer - Latest Comments in The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

A. Ukkonen — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 19:41:39 -0000

I honestly do not understand what the fasination is with running Windows on the Macbook Pro especially with those who would want to run Vista exclusively on it.

If you want to run Vista, get a Dell or something equally boring.

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

J. Random Poster — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 02:36:13 -0000

Whether it runs windows is not the big question, it's a footnote. It will run Virtual PC, just like the last round of Macs did. If somebody gets it to boot MS windows, then you save a couple of hundred bucks and use somebody's OEM pack from a remainder bin instead of forking over to the Evil Empire for a copy of VPC.

What I want to know, is whether it will run BeOS and VMWare.

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

Diego Barros — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 01:19:35 -0000

Robert: OK, thanks for the info. Didn't (obviously) know. Cheers.

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

scobleizer — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 01:12:43 -0000

Diego: Channel 9 owns a Mac. My brother-in-law works on the Mac team and I regularly get to pay with Macs (like every other week). I'm well versed on them (I used to be a Mac evangelist back before it was cool to be one).

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

Diego Barros — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 01:00:18 -0000

Robert: Seriously though, I just think it would make for very interesting blogging if you were to get a Mac and give it a try. Of course, to blog about it.

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

scobleizer — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 00:48:02 -0000

Diego: because I have lots of software that runs on Windows. Plus, believe it or not, I like Windows Vista better than OSX. Anyway, what does it hurt to have another OS on your hard drive?

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

Diego Barros — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 23:49:09 -0000

Being a heavy user of both OS X and Windows... why on earth would I want to run Windows on that machine? What a waste!

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

Jason McIntosh — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 17:25:23 -0000

A couple of other notes here:
For hardware, the Mac stuff, though in some ways proprietary still has "open" standards with firewire. The iSight, to my understanding, is a more standard firewire device.

The mouse should be similar in that aspect. The keyboard, well, that's questionable, but I'd imagine mostly standard, minus the backlighting. However, that could probably be ignored as an unknown device. Depends on how they've implemented it.

Altogether, Vista should run on one of these fine. Some things probably won't work - i.e. the backlight, but most things should work fine - the display, network (broadcom if I remember correctly... it's a public chipset though), wireless cards, etc. etc.

Additionally, on Virtual PC, VMware is working on a version of their software for OS X - so that's always an option. Additionally, Xen virtualization and other technologies should allow the option of running windows regardless.

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

John C. Welch — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 10:15:48 -0000

Apple has repeatedly said they'll be neutral, neither helping nor hindering Windows running on the Intel Macs.

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

trondk — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 06:16:51 -0000

Phil Schiller at Apple says Macbook pro can run windows.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id...

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

Ricky — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 04:29:15 -0000

Chris nails it.

Gates originally offered partnersip to Jobs (I forgot the details, but it was something to do with Gates asking Jobs to make the GUI a multi-platform OS (ironically the term 'open' meant something different at the time) and thus Apple would essentially become a software business together with Microsoft (Gates tried to convince Jobs that hardware would become commodified) but Jobs felt that Gates was wrong and that "staying hardware" would make Apple big and Microsoft small.

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

scobleizer — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 02:23:26 -0000

Christopher: I'm definitely considering an Apple machine to run Windows Vista on. We have employees who have already purchased them. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

Here's one response from a guy who has done a lot of homework on this issue:

++++++++++++++
I read on your blog that you're trying to find out whether the new Macs will boot Windows. I've spent a fair bit of time looking into this and talking with Steve Makofsky over in Windows Incubation (another Mac enthusiast) about it. Here's what I've learned:

As Engadget reported, Windows XP won't boot; however, they omitted some details. Apparently Apple has chosen not to implement CMS, which would enable legacy operating systems to boot. As their article states, 32-bit Windows XP doesn't support EFI. You can read more about EFI and CMS at the following sites:
http://www.microsoft.com/wh...
http://www.intel.com/techno...

Even if Windows Vista does implement EFI, or if some inspired hacker comes up with a way to add CMS to Apple's firmware, there's still the problem that the new MacBooks come with some Apple-specific hardware such as the keyboard backlight, the one-button trackpad, and the embedded iSight camera. Until Apple implements Windows drivers for their hardware, these won't work. (It's possible that other hardware, such as the fans, battery, ExpressCard/34, and network controller are part of a standard Intel chipset that would already have drivers, at least in Vista. Or they might also require new drivers. Without more details from Apple about the hardware, we can't know.)

Microsoft's MacBU is working on an updated Virtual PC for the Intel Macs. No date promised yet though. See http://www.microsoft.com/pr...

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

Christopher Coulter — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 01:44:56 -0000

Running Windows, like it or not, is a selling point. As lots of corporates, and lots of people like me, that would love having a dual machine, need not give up anything. But that's still a small minority of the market. Most mainstream types aren't OS specific, it's what their apps run on, and most things run on Windows. But then having Final Draft, FCP, Motion and all on a dual Vista and OSX machine? Downright heavenly. Darned shame that the two companies have to war, if they'd partnership, both could win.

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

eric — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 01:22:58 -0000

#10. Thank you very much. The last thing on my mind was will it run windows? Why the hell would I care about that? There is no reason.

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

scobleizer — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 01:22:21 -0000

Dave: the question is when will Apple get a Media Center or a Tablet PC. I didn't realize Apple had those already.

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

met — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 22:53:00 -0000

John: Blogging for apple? What could an apple blogger write about? They are hush about anything and everything until they release a product.

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

Dave — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 22:51:12 -0000

The Big Question for Vista: will it catch up with Mac OS X?

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

timh — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 21:51:39 -0000

i wonder if the iweb blog product produces partial feeds as well!

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

Eric D. Burdo — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 21:50:51 -0000

I have heard (via http://www.osx86project.org/ ) that xp 64 will also work on the new MacTel. Something about the MacTel doesn't use a BIOS, but EFI. And XP 64 and Vista will work with EFI, but no other Window OSs will...

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

Adam — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 21:13:49 -0000

You know what's funny? The .mac blog doesn't even render properly in Safari -- or at least I have a horizontal scrollbar showing that the page width is about 3000 pixels wide.

Very poor...

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

Innocent Bystander — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 20:33:53 -0000

http://darwine.opendarwin.o...

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

jim — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 20:31:26 -0000

Why BOTHER installing windows.....when you'll be able to soon run windows apps within OS X in the near future. X86 runs fast on X86 - you guys are missing the big picture.

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

john — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 20:27:27 -0000

I bet you wished that you blogged for apple instead of msft.

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

Carlos — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 19:49:59 -0000

Robert,

It's funny, when you wrote "Engadget is reporting that the new Mac will only run Vista", I thought to myself, what about OSX?!

Then I thought about it. You mean that it won't run any Microsoft OS older than Vista.

Made me do a double-take.

Re: The big question for new Mac: will it run Windows?

WillF — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 19:36:51 -0000

How does the .mac team write so fast? (Every post was made at 9:00 AM) And no comments? Fauxblog I say.