“For anyone who’s familiar with the old Mac versus Microsoft saga, it’s slightly surreal to hear the Windows start-up jingle on a Macintosh computer,” Jonathan Parkyn reports for Computeract!ve. “Boot Camp [is] a small Apple-developed software utility that effectively allows us to run Windows XP on Intel-powered Macs. Boot Camp is only a public Beta, which means that it’s free to download but is more of a work in progress than a finished product. That said, it’s surprisingly easy to set up and use and, during our tests, it didn’t demonstrate any of the glitches you might expect from software that’s still in development. The idea is frighteningly simple. Once you’ve set it up, just hold down the Alt key as you switch your computer on and you get the choice between either booting to Apple’s own [Mac OS X] operating system or to Windows.”
MacDailyNews Note: Techinically, it’s the “Option” key you hold down – Parkyn gives away his “Windowsness” by calling it the “Alt” key, but whatever – he’ll be a Mac user soon enough.
Parkyn continues, “It’s a shame you can’t have both running at the same time, but having the choice between the two systems basically offers the best of both worlds. Apple’s operating system is easy to use and comes with great programs like the iLife 06 suite of photo-editing, video-editing and music-making tools. Windows XP, on the other hand, has lots more software available for it, games in particular. For those migrating from a Windows PC to a Mac it’s also handy to have your old system available as you make the transition.”
Parkyn reports, “In our labs, we ran some performance tests and found that the iMac running Windows actually outpaced several similarly specified PCs. And what’s more, you’ve got Windows running on a great-looking computer – whether than be a Mac Mini, iMac or MacBook.”
Full article here.
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Install Boot Camp and start a frantic search for malware zappers.
Or, don’t and relax.
Boot Camp and the upcoming one click access to Windows in Leopard is a puzzling turn of events from the immune world of Mac.
Why or why would anyone install Windows on their Mac? Games? If that’s why, go away.
The Option ket does have ‘alt’ on it, too.
Good thing they got this review out so soon after Boot Camp’s unveiling.
If you are a big gamer wanting to run Windows on your Mac, you get all the evil diseases you deserve.
The guy doesn’t seem to be a Windows fanboy. (good)
Giant Pipe to Disaster: What’s so bad about installing Windows on a Mac so you can play PC games??
I don’t get it.
I have to use Windows for some work-related stuff unfortunately, but Boot Camp is so easy and runs so smoothly on my Intel iMac. Not a single problem—and it’s BETA, how crazy is that?
I use Parallels for simple things that I don’t want reboot for, but otherwise, I use Boot Camp quite a bit.
And so the great migration begins. One by one the objections drop.
As MDN says: Welcome Home
Giant Pipe to Disaster: I love my Macs — but there are a couple of pieces of software I need to use that are PC only — so now I don’t need to have two computers — especially when I travel. (Think online trading — options & FX)
Just because you don’t see the need/advantage of being able to boot Windoze on a Mac — doesn’t mean that there isn’t one for a lot of people. You’re trapped in a narrow rut of tiny thinking!
“”It’s a shame you can’t have both running at the same time,”
Umm, you can with Parallels Workstation and it works great for any Windows app that doesn’t require 3D acceleration. I use it all of the time.
I have the MacBook Pro and use BootCamp and Parallels. I do cross-platform development and use Parallels for testing stuff. I use BootCamp for Windows only apps that I must run from time to time. I used to never play games on my PCs because I didn’t like the way some installs could whack my system on Windows (registry hell). BootCamp is great because I can still sandbox Windows. I use Apple’s Disk Utility to archive Windows on a regular basis, and I’ve set it up so that I can only read my Mac HFSx volume from Windows.
What I’m getting at is that My Mac volume is as safe as if I didn’t have Windows installed. As a Windows PC, there’s the added safety of knowing that you can always reboot into the Mac OS if things go wrong.
Why would anyone install Windows on their Mac?
I own a small business that has about ten Macs and one PC(for a mission critical Windows program). Tried running VPC – slow and crashed alot. Have been waiting for something like Bootcamp to allow more employees to access the one Windows program. Perfect for us.
Also the acct payable and acct receivable employees both have iBooks with Quickbooks Pro installed, but we have to manually reconcile the two accts since there’s no online web-based network edition for Macs. This is a big problem, and I have been fighting off the PC oriented book-keepers for many years on this. Being able to boot up in Windows for this is great, because I have an excuse to order new Macbooks and get to keep my office Mac-centered but still can let them network the windows version of QB in the near future.
You can run both Windows XP and Mac OS X at once:
http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/
Parallels only virtualizes one core, but performance is fantastic if you’ve got the RAM. It’s quite a deal at $39.95.
there’s no key on my mac keyboard labelled anything remotely resembling ‘option’ but there is one that says ‘alt’ (yes i know it’s one and the same thing but if MDN are so anally retentive and pedantic to this degree, why not me?)
MW : years
OK, where is the source for XP on a Mac questions.
You know, Boot Camp or parallels questions.
How to sandbox XP using Boot Camp questions.
How well does XP use peripherals when using Parallels questions.
I smell a real need here.
The game’s afoot!
I think this is a difference in th US and other keyboards. I have an alt key too but the pics I’ve seen online from the US of the new MacBook have an option key there instead. Why do we not have the correct option key too?
iGo Now–
Just . . . just cuz.
“Boot Camp is only a public Beta, which means that it’s free to download but is more of a work in progress than a finished product. That said, it’s surprisingly easy to set up and use and, during our tests, it didn’t demonstrate any of the glitches you might expect from software that’s still in development.”
A Windows user who expects “glitches” from public Betas? Considering what MSFT has to offer for public Betas, Parkyn has a very forgiving definition of the word “glitch”.
Boot camp really kills uptime.
Abe,
Uptime is not really an important concept unless you are talking about servers offering services 24/7.