“It seems like every other blog, forum, or tech enthusiast site is talking about Apple’s new Boot Camp beta, which makes it extremely easy to dual-boot to Windows XP on Intel-based Macs. There are tons of opinion pieces about what this means for the industry, what it means for Apple or Microsoft, how it’s going to impact game developers—you name it. It seems as though more and more users are making the switch—the most vocal are the Windows users buying Macs for the first time (or the first time in years) now that they can easily run all their Windows apps. Less vocal, but definitely out there, are the Mac users making a Windows partition to gain access to that handful of programs their Windows-using buddies are always talking about,” Jason Cross writes for Extreme Tech.
“Whether you’re a Mac user delving into Windows XP or a Windows user trying out your first Mac, our guide will help you get started. We’ll try not to bog you down with too many little details; after all, exploring is half the fun,” Cross writes.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jeremy” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Thanks to being stuck with them at work, most Mac users are all too familiar with Windows; which is why we choose Macs for our own use. But, no matter, humor them for now. Remember, we’re in the very early stage of the “embrace” part of our “embrace and extinguish” journey. First job: get ’em on Macs and let ’em run Windows if that’s what they think they want to do right now. They’ll learn soon enough and naturally “extinguish” Windows all by themselves. Patience, grasshoppers. For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to embrace and a time to extinguish. Think about the end game and put on a happy face while reading Cross’s guide for switchers.
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Yes I’ll say it again, we will not succeed in getting Windows out of our lives my being over accomodating on Apple hardware.
BootCamp blows – I’m sorry, but that’s what I believe. Best case scenario out of BC is, we haven’t shot ourselves in the foot bad enough to bleed to death.
Could I possibly be wrong – Damn I hope so.
MDN Magic Word: (sshhhh… quiet, please) “distance”, as in I keep a great distance between Windows and me…
I think Boot Camp is great. It does what it does, quite well, even for a beta release.
Boot camp lets me run Swish, which is not available for OSX. In fact, nothing like it is available for OSX. I’ve written emails to developers begging for Mac versions of their software to let them know that we’re out there, but those requests always fall on deaf ears. (Hopefully as we gain market share, this may change.)
VPC doesn’t work on Intel Imacs. Parallels is beta. Boot Camp is reliable. It’s the only viable solution for me right now. I hate using Windows. I hate that when I’m using XP, I try to engage Expose so I can find a window on the desktop, and of course, it doesn’t work. I hate nearly everything about Windows. But I’m forced to use it sometimes. Nothing else I can do.
If you don’t like Boot Camp, fine. But saying it blows implies that it doesnt work. It does work, well. It just does something you don’t want it to do.
Kinda like me thinking Phish sucks. Of course they don’t suck. They are very good at what they do—they are great musicians. However, I find WHAT they do just terrible. I hate that noodling, meandering, boring music. So I just avoid that kind of music whenever possible.
In other words, if you don’t like Boot Camp, don’t use it. It’s only going to be around a few months anyway, until Leopard lets you run Windows apps natively or with a VPC-style non-rebooting kinda way.
m
And that, Mr. Peabody, is why YOU aren’t running Apple, ye of little faith….
The only people who need a switchers guide to XP are grandparents and kids in families where son/dad or daughter/mum has been sensible and started them off with a mac. Everyone else will have been cursed with Windows at some point in their education / work
Ok, I confess – Allowing Windows to run so well (some say better than on a traditional Windows box) on a Mac just makes me sick to my stomach – I can’t help it – what can I do.
I promise that when Macs can run most Windows apps without running Windows I will be positive, happy, and excited. Indeed, if that happens the game will pretty much be over for MSW.
You don’t know the history of crappy GUIs. I do.
These losers think they can switch Mac users to Windoze users. That is the best joke of the day.
Pretty good article for anyone that only uses just one OS and want to try the other. My experience has been that experienced MS Windows users become frustrated the first time they use OSX unless you are there to hold their hand. OSX is fun and a lot easier than Windows – but if you been trained on Windows, OSX can be frustrating for first time users. I don’t have much experience with people going backwards (i.e., OSX to M$).
The word-ads annoy me also.
The article writer’s heart is in the right place, but it all comes across as rather pointless.
I would like to think that there are Mac users out there who know nothing of Windows, but my guess is that we all have to deal with Windows at some point in our lives, and those of us who are lucky enough not to, are probably not going to be bothering to shell out hundreds of dollars to install it on our Macs.
I will sell my XP laptop and get a 17″ MacBook Pro for that one, XP only program I need for my business.
I don’t know if I will go with dual booting though. It is amazing how many anti malware, communication, printing and other support programs, not to mention the monolithic operating system I have to buy and support just to run that one program. On top of all that the program itself that I have to use is $2500.00.
Virtualization will allow me to run my XP program in complete isolation and use the Mac side for communication, printing et cetera.
The Mac side just works.
Most Mac users who will run Windows under BootCamp in order to fulfill some task that can only be done that way are like the sports-car driver who rents a pick-up to haul some trash. It gets that job done better than your daily driver, but that doesn’t mean you want one…
Heheheeh
I gotta say that MDN “take” made me laugh —
“For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to embrace and a time to extinguish.” ????
It all sounds so… demented! What are we, insane fanatics? Okay, well, don’t answer that one…
“My father always told me keep you friends close, and your enemies even closer.” – Michael Corleone
word=methods, as in there are many methods to SJ’s madness
I’d like to comment on your take. Relax a little, it is a wonderful computer company, not life itself.
This has probably been said somewhere already, but I think the road Apple is going to take is virtualization. I think something similar to Rosetta will be introduced in Leopard. Then, after awhile, maybe come next year’s WWDC, Apple announces that they’ve worked [into XCode] a relatively simple way for Windows developers to get their apps to run natively on the Mac (the reason they would wait is to obviously get enough people switched to make it worthwhile for the developers). This would create apps that are truly Universal. I don’t think the Windows users will be doing the “extinguishing” directly. I think they’re going to have the developers help them. Then, all Apple has to do is pull the rug out under their feet, drop the Windows OS, and show the people that the Windows software will run on Macs, without Windows.
A very clever strategy that I know Apple could pull off.
“I would like to think that there are Mac users out there who know nothing of Windows, but my guess is that we all have to deal with Windows at some point in our lives”
If you use a Mac, but have no experience with Windows, I can sum it up for you in one short sentence:
Its like using a really f!cked up Mac.
Here’s the plan. It’s quite simple.
1. Curious Windows user buys a Mac to dual boot.
2. Flips back and forth and is intrigued by OS X.
3. Virus, spyware or whatever Windows malware flavor of the month bogs down or kills Windows.
4. Reload Windows? Nope. OS X is more reliable.
5. Profit.
6. The DOJ grows a pair and indicts the upper management of MS for fraud and theft by deception.
Wait. Forget the last one. There is no step 6.
Mr. Peabody,
You are wrong. Time will prove it, too.
I’ve seen windows users get really frustrated when they try a mac for the first time. But it’s usually because they’re trying to do something through some completely insane, loopy, lengthy procedure that could have been done the mac way in like 2 seconds. But they just aren’t aware of the mac way to do it. Like, they’re in an app, and they have a finder window open elsewhere on the screen that’s in some deeply nested folder. In the app they choose File > Open. Then they start using the open dialog box to burrow down to find the file. But meanwhile the file is staring them in the face in the finder window. (The reason they don’t just double click the file may be because it’s default application is some other app.) But what they don’t realize is you could just grab the file from the finder and drop it on the Dock icon. OR, after the app’s open dialog is showing, they could drag the file from the finder to the open dialog box. Either would take about 2 seconds to accomplish. But instead they scroll and click 50 times inside a little dialog box, cursing Apple’s name.
It’s sad. But that’s been my experience with windows users. They just don’t know about the brazillion shortcuts that seasoned mac users live and breath.
Based on my work experience, the average Windows user runs ALL applications in full screen mode and all open folders, whether they contain 50 items or just one, are also at full screen. The poor unfortunate does not get to see the desktop once a folder or App is open. Very few of our users are actually aware of any shortcuts, CTRL/ALT/DELETE being the exception. Many believe that their word docs are stored in Word, have no idea of their actual location on the HD and continue to open documents by opening the App first and using the Recent Items menu option to launch the doc.
For me, Boot Camp is still not as convenient as running two separate computers in my office. Having to re-boot to switch OS is a bit inconvenient. However, I tried Parallels last night, and I was flabbergasted at how well Windows runs! Faster & more responsive than my 3.2 Ghz Compaq desktop! A few glitches here and there, but overall a good solution for those of us that have to work in Windoze from time to time.
“I’ve seen windows users get really frustrated when they try a mac for the first time. But it’s usually because they’re trying to do something through some completely insane, loopy, lengthy procedure that could have been done the mac way in like 2 seconds.”
SO TRUE!
When I came back to mac 4 years ago, it took me like 2 freakin’ weeks to deprogram myself. Example: it takes 6-8 clicks in XP or 2000 to eject a USB drive…