“Microsoft revealed today [at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF)] that it will not support EFI booting for Windows Vista on its launch. The news will be a shock for owners of Intel Macs who had hoped they would be able to dual-boot between Windows Vista and OS X. Intel Macs only support booting via EFI,” Dan Warne reports for apcmag. “Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) is the modern and flexible successor to the 20-year-old PC BIOS. It is responsible for initialising hardware in the PC, and importantly, device drivers are stored in the EFI flash memory rather than being loaded by the operating system. It is a major change for the PC industry and both PC makers and Microsoft have been slow to make the switch. Because the Apple Intel Mac platform is entirely new, it does not have any legacy support concerns. It was hoped that 2006 would be the year PC makers would make the switch. Microsoft’s lack of Windows support is a huge blow to Intel’s hopes, and removes most of the incentive for PC makers to implement it in the short term.”

“That’s terrible news for Intel Mac users who have been hoping that they could dual-boot Windows and Mac OS X on their new Macs: not only are their processors not 64-bit (and thus will never be supported by Windows EFI booting) but Windows Vista won’t boot on EFI anyway,” Warne reports.

Full article and link to unedited recording of Microsoft’s revelations about Vista at IDF. (21.6MB, MP3)here.

“Apple Senior Software Architect Cameron Esfahani said that his understanding is that only 64-bit versions of Vista will support EFI. To this point, all of the Intel Macs have used 32-bit chips,” Ina Fried, reports for CNET News. “‘I don’t think so’ he said, when asked whether Inte Macs should easily run Vista. Esfahani was speaking at the Intel Developer Forum here–to a packed room despite the session being the last of the conference. In addition, while EFI has the prospects for supporting many older types of software and hardware, Apple has not included much of that “legacy” code in its EFI implementation. ‘Windows is a legacy OS,’ he said to laughter and applause from the crowd. ‘We don’t have legacy support.’”

Full article here.

“I’m not sure why Microsoft decided to drop EFI support after having promised up until now that it would be included in Vista. Intel, the creator of EFI, has really been pushing it and with support from both Apple and Microsoft, it wouldn’t be long before it completely replaced the BIOS. There’s no doubt that this announcement has Intel more than a little bit miffed. One would also think Microsoft would realize the great opportunity it has here to make inroads into the Mac market. Apple’s computer sales have been rising recently under the halo effect of the iPod so their marketshare is significant. That also means that a lot of new Mac users are recent Windows converts and I’m sure that many of them wouldn’t mind running both operating systems. In any case, it will be interesting to see how this turns out,” David Johnston writes for RealTechNews.

Full article here.

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