Apple: ‘Don’t expect Mactels to run Vista’
Intel Macs are unlikely to be able to run Windows Vista, according to an Apple engineer speaking on Thursday.
One of the big obstacles is that although both the Macintosh OS and Windows now use Intel chips, the two operating systems have different ways of booting up.
Mac fans have held out considerable hope that the next version of Windows would be easier to load on Macs than Windows XP, because like Mac OS X, Vista will use Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) to aid the boot process. Older versions of Windows have used Basic Input Output System (Bios).
However, Apple senior software architect Cameron Esfahani said 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.
And then there’s the official announcement from Microsoft:
Microsoft revealed today 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.
So now Bill sees OS X as a real threat?
Somewhere Dvorak is crying…….
(cheap shot, sorry)
The true test will be if M$ releases virtual PC for intel macs.
I agree Steve–Microsoft is obsessed with backwards compatibility; its their best attribute and flaw. Microsoft gets a lot of flac for it sadly. I mean everyone always tells me how Mac OS X is great and all but Apple only has to deal with a small amount of hardware.. Microsoft goes out of its way to get certain programs to run and hardware configurations to work… But eh, what can you do? Start over? >_>
(I tried the leaked version of MacOS X–its pretty nice; ran on a old P4 i845 chipset)
It’s kind of ironic that a 32 bit operating system considers a 64 bit operating system “legacy.” And keeping in mind that OS/X is BSD, from the 1970s or so…
I normally avoid all pre-built machines, but if I ever get a laptop, I’ll probably run Linux on a Mac laptop just to see all the nearby mac addicts go into convulsions.
I wonder how hard it would be for someone to make a Virtual PC equivalent. I would think it would be much easier than doing it on the PPC platform, and there are two or three minor-league competitors to VPC now. I imagine someone will be able to write something similar if Microsoft drops the ball on Virtual PC.
Intel Macsters will probalby be able to circumvent this limitation by getting Linux on their Macintel (I assume Linux will be ported this platform rather quickly) and running Windows Vista using Xen or maybe VMware Server.
If memory serves me right, Vista should run on Xen without the need for patching, which means it will run on the Mac at full or near-full speed. I just wonder if MacOS could be cajoled into running within a Xen partition, too.
Macs won’t run Vista, sure.
BUT EXPECTING PCS MADE IN CHINA THAT CAN RUN OSX IN THE NEAR FUTURE.
Just because a mac won’t run it doesn’t mean that a PC can’t run it.
In other words.. MS see’s no need for their OS to work on Mac hardware until apple goes 64 bit, or Microsoft is working with Apple and Dvorak is correct and in the next few years Microsoft and Apple will announce: Vista for Mac or Windows for Mac or…. available only through Apple.
Difference between PC and Mac versions:
PC: buy many places, works on a lot of hardware… Various OEMs pre-install,
MAC- Apple logo various places, crippled to work with limited selection of hardware as choosen by Apple, only available through apple on their machines, iTunes and FairPlay DRM intergrated into OS. Claim by Apple of “Its been trapped inside boring little boxes doing boring little tasks, now just like Intel, Windows is free to do so much more on a Mac than it ever has on a PC”
I almost forgot, you DON’T need VISTA. Ask the ppl who still run Win2000
Is anybody a programmer or hacker out there? Listen up!
There is *NO* way they will stop Vista (or any other X86 OS) running on the MACs (and visa-versa) because of boot code or method. NO WAY!
The boot program/loader on any modern computers job is to get the 1st part of the operating system loaded (usually from disk), and then GET OUT OF THE WAY, NEVER TO BE USED AGAIN. After that, all programs run from RAM, which if you have the right “permissions”, you can read/write over your hearts content.
Someone can easily write a program that sits somewhere in memory, that completely overwrites the MAC OS with WINDOWS bytes, and then hands control over to windows.
I’m not saying that there aren’t things like timers and I/O busses on the MAC’s that will work right away (someone will have to code these low level parts that is hardware specific and windows needs), but it surely, by all technical common sense, it the boot loader is *not* going to be the problem.
Remember all these virtual PC programs have boot bios’s completely emulated, It isn’t hard by any means.
Good.
Lou,
if you are still reading this thread. I would like to thank you for your insight that hackers will port it all eventually. often just to say they can. The machine I’m using right now is an eMachine T3256 that is dual booting SuSE Linux and OS Tiger. Nary a Windows OS in sight. Anybody interested in Linux can find a world of info on the web. Anybody interested in porting Mac’s OS to a PC can get a good walkthrough from the “hack.5” vidcast, one of the early episodes I believe.
Jason — now, you’ve set my wife off researching already this morning. She was the 1st in the family to switch to a Mac — ab’t 16 months ago — and she’s dual booting Yellow Dog Linux and Tiger and is really loyal to Yellow Dog folks.
Thanks for the info.
Why would Microsoft be worried about OSX?!? Not running Vista on the MacIntel machines means that the only OS to run on that hardware will be OSX.
If Microsoft was afraid then I would guess that they would try to dominate that hardware platform as well