WinXP on a Mac, Hoax? 390
Brill writes "Ars Technica is reporting that a member of the 'WinXP on Mac' forums called narf2006 may have succeeded at the impossible. He's submitted his solution to get XP on an Intel Mac, for the $12,000 prize, but for now the only proof available is a blurry Flickr collection of photos that could be faked with virtual PC. His reputation on the forums however is strong, and he's already calling for testers." We've had people write in to say this has been announced a hoax on the contest page. The contest page is, of course, down due to bandwidth reasons. Engadget's conversation about this announcement has several theories on how this may have been faked. What's the verdict? Real or Fake?
Explain how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Explain how? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Explain how? (Score:5, Informative)
Or such is my understanding, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Re:Explain the fricken 12,000 bucks for this... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Explain the fricken 12,000 bucks for this... (Score:2)
Re:Explain the fricken 12,000 bucks for this... (Score:3, Funny)
But of course... As soon as the number of Macs running Windows to do real work outnumbers the number of Macs running Mac OS, can you imagine the reaction of the die hard Mac fanboys? Just that alone is worth $12,000 x 100. ;P (JOKE ALERT!!! JOKE ALERT!!! JOKE ALERT!!!)
Re:Explain the fricken 12,000 bucks for this... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not about buying mac hardware specifically to run windows, it's about the ability to dual boot mac osx and windows on the same laptop. Honestly, I'm at the point in my life where I need fewer computers, not more of them. Having a whole closet full of junky old PC's isn't worth the time and energy anymore, so I just have 2 laptops now, a powerbook and an old gateway. I'd gladly sell them both if I could buy one laptop that could run both OS's.
For what I do (audio programming and music production), emulation is not an acceptable solution due to obvious performance and hardware issues. Plus, there is so much good software available for both platforms, why limit yourself to just one?
Re:Explain the fricken 12,000 bucks for this... (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft
Re:Explain the fricken 12,000 bucks for this... (Score:2)
Re:Explain the fricken 12,000 bucks for this... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because WinXP boots just as nicely on a Walmart laptop. If people who own Mac hardware find themselves booting to Windows as often or more often than OSX, their next purchase may rationalize that the premium is just not worth it to run OSX.
The debate goes two ways - way one, I get to run both OSes, how wonderful is that? Way two, I run XP more and more, why buy Mac hardware?
It's only time that will tell us which is which...
Re:Explain the fricken 12,000 bucks for this... (Score:3, Insightful)
This seems doubtful to happen in any significant numbers. It isn't as if Intel Mac owners don't know about this option known as the "Windows PC", or the "cheap Walmart Laptop" that you mention. The systems have been available for just a bit more than two months now -
Re:Explain the fricken 12,000 bucks for this... (Score:5, Informative)
I think you have that backwards.
Apple has said they don't care if you want to by their hardware and boot XP on it, feel free. They're not doing anything to stop it, but they are also not doing anything to enable it.
What they are against is Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware.
- Tony
Re: they never said it would be impossible (Score:4, Insightful)
The parent message is referring to well-reported statements by Apple's Jobs and Schiller, who both said Apple would do nothing to prevent people from running Windows on Intel-based Macs. See this link: http://news.com.com/2100-1014_3-5733756-2.html [com.com]
As the article states, Schiller's words were, "That doesn't preclude someone from running it on a Mac. They probably will. We won't do anything to preclude that."
Re:"not needed" (Score:3, Interesting)
Not sure how PCs are designed, but I've done both electronic and mechanical design for embedded telco equipment, and the only tool that we used that only ran on windows was Outlook.
all the electronic design was Cadence's toolchain, Flowtherm for the thermal modling, I forget what the mechanical package was called, but I had a sun on my desk to run it on...
Even if this one isn't real... (Score:5, Interesting)
It appears that Amit Singh of IBM Almaden Research Center [ibm.com], of kernelthread.com [kernelthread.com] and author of Mac OS X Internals [osxbook.com], has devised a method to allow legacy, or BIOS-based, booting on Intel-based Macs [osxbook.com], which they're calling "BAMBIOS". This means operating systems that currently only support legacy booting, such as many Linux distributions that don't yet support EFI, or things like Windows XP and the forthcoming Windows Vista (the 32-bit version of which will lack EFI support [apcmag.com]), will now be able to run on Intel-based Macs without modification (and completely legally). There is also another solution from "narf2006", described here [arstechnica.com] and shown in this flickr set of photos [flickr.com]. narf2006's solution is awaiting verification by Colin for the $12,000 pot [onmac.net]. Time to get that MacBook Pro [apple.com] you've been waiting on for the best of both worlds, everyone...
So even if narf2006's solution isn't real, Amit's solution most certainly is, since he has a great deal of credibility. One way or another, we'll all be able to boot Windows directly on our Intel-based Macs.
This will be great news for people interested in Windows gaming on an Intel-based Mac (who really need the direct video access) and/or people who just want to do it NOW; however, a virtualization solution running under Mac OS X, such as VMware [vmware.com] or Parallels [parallels.com], will be the real holy grail for most users. Most people don't want/need/care about the highest graphics and I/O performance; just the ability to run Windows side-by-side with Mac OS X at a speed that is more than usable, and to also have some capability to seamlessly share things like clipboards and files between the environments (as a nice VM environment would most certainly do). Not to mention not having to reboot.
In any case, even dual booting will be a welcome capability. It remains to be seen how convoluted the process is...
Also, I just spoke with Colin Nederkoorn (the guy running the contest) moments ago, and narf2006's solution has NOT been submitted to him yet. He said that narf2006 said he's "cleaning it up" and will be submitting it "later this week". So, no one, including Colin, has actually seen this solution working yet. Also, he apparently hasn't been in communication with Amit on the BAMBIOS solution as yet...
Re:Even if this one isn't real... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Even if this one isn't real... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Even if this one isn't real... (RE: AC) (Score:3, Informative)
PRODAS [prodas.com] (Projectile Rocket and Ordinance Design and Analysis Software)
Don't know if you are trolling or serious, I am an aerospace engineer wrapping up my masters and I use this piece of software regularly to do 6DOF ballistics and trajectory modeling. There **are** no substitutes for a mac. Similar programs exist for radar modeling, etc. that have no Mac equivalent.
B
Re:Even if this one isn't real... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm an example of somebody who would want precisely that capability. I have a Mac and various Wintel PCs, and use the Mac for everything except my work (which currently revolves around Windows programming) and some occasional gaming. Being a programming contractor means that I need to travel a fair bit, and my old Windows laptop is showing signs of age, so I'll be in the market for a new one during the next few months. Practicality would appear to dictate another Windows-based machine, but I'd prefer an Apple with OS X otherwise, and could actually justify buying one if I could do my Windows development work on it.
Re:Even if this one isn't real... (Score:4, Insightful)
Running Windows in a VM would be perfect for checking out websites during development.
Re:Even if this one isn't real... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd personally be able to live with a VMWare-type setup under a host OS, but for me the host OS would have to be Windows just for work reasons.
Is it Real or fake?? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is it Real or fake?? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is it Real or fake?? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is it Real or fake?? (Score:3, Funny)
If I sorted the bits (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If I sorted the bits (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, part of the contest rules was that you had to be the first to post the instructions to the onmac.net forums. For the sake of transparency, it's a good idea.
Verification? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this so difficult?
Re:Verification? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Verification? (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed the dual-booting requirement sounds rather hard to achieve due to the GUID Partition Table (GPT) format required by EFI; Windows XP does not recognise this format, and I fear that even if narf2006 or someone else succeeds, the solution will be along the lines “hack X tells Windows that boot partition begi
Maybe interesting as an exercise... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Maybe interesting as an exercise... (Score:2, Informative)
That's great, but neither of those things are going to happen soon. darWINE needs a lot of work. VMWare/VirtualPC have made no announcement of OS X products. Unless someone has been secretly working on an OS X virtual machine product and is ready to release (it IS possible), we won't see that soon.
Re:Maybe interesting as an exercise... (Score:5, Funny)
Q [kberg.ch], an emulator based on QEMU [qemu.org] is already working on MacIntels. From their News [kberg.ch] page : As I understand it, virtualization IS planned in Q, and is already a reality in QEMU, albeit it is a closed-source add-on.
Re:Maybe interesting as an exercise... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll be sticking with OS X until VMWare does the decent thing.
Re:Maybe interesting as an exercise... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Maybe interesting as an exercise... (Score:4, Insightful)
The best way of comparing has always been to benchmark the particular job you have in mind, an then to remember that generalizations are not really valid.
Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you a bridge.
Re:Maybe interesting as an exercise... (Score:5, Funny)
Benchmarking isn't rocket science (Score:3, Insightful)
No fanboi it isn't. Comparing a Windows PC to a Sun Niagra based server would be complicated, comparing a PC from Apple running typical desktop loadsets under OS X to basically the same loadsets under Windows XP on the same hardware isn't complicated at all. Encode some video, run Microsoft Office through some timed task lists, script some compute intensive Photoshop transformations, etc. If one OS is faster at all of the tasks it is the clear
Re:Benchmarking isn't rocket science (Score:3, Insightful)
(Note I use Photoshop as the example because it's what everyone will try to prove is faster on one platform vs the other, but I imagine the code for the filters will be the same tuned assembler across both platforms - even if it's not, all you've proved is that they need to GET the tune
Re:Benchmarking isn't rocket science (Score:4, Insightful)
> the PC version used a better compiler. What are you trying to show exactly?
Exactly. The only differences should depend on the OS and it's supporting infrastructure. Compiler, libraries, memory management, disk throughput, etc. And those differences are likely to be highly variable. OS X might have UNIXy goodness (not sure how Darwin stands compared to a modern Linux or Solaris though) in it's favor while Microsoft probably has the advantage on compilier tech vs GCC. Some good benchmarks should be interesting to read through.
Re:Maybe interesting as an exercise... (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought Apple didn't care ? (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not dismissing the performance but the "succeeded at the impossible" from the blurb just doesn't sound "accurate" to me. It should be more difficult to run Intel MacOS X on a PC box than the opposite.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I thought Apple didn't care ? (Score:2)
Re:I thought Apple didn't care ? (Score:2)
Re:I thought Apple didn't care ? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I thought Apple didn't care ? (Score:2)
Re:I thought Apple didn't care ? (Score:3, Funny)
Vice Versa (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Vice Versa (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vice Versa (Score:2)
In fact, I'm considering doing it when I replace my iBook because Apple refuses to make a tablet (Grrr...).
Re:Vice Versa (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not hard to hoax (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Go to a Windows box. Take a screen shot.
2. Open the screenshot on your iMac. Display it full screen.
3. Take a picture.
I mean, he hasn't posted a video of him using the computer and his mousing syncing up with the screen, right? Just a blurry photo. So, that proves basically nothing. I'm not saying he absolutely didn't do it, just that a photo doesn't count for much.
Re:It's not hard to hoax (Score:2)
I do this all the time between LINUX, Solaris, Mac, Windows. I'm at one machine and need to do something screwy and GUI on another; VNC to the rescue. Takes about two minutes to set up, and in full-screen mode, easy to do with no photo alterations. And the mouse and keyboards work.
640x480 (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting thought there - VGA drivers arent installed now if it was a fresh install right?
"
PowerMacChris says:
oh-oh-owned!
Windows XP has a 640x480 resoulition on GUI install
Posted 3 days ago.
Paul Stamatiou Pro User says:
^ No. I've installed XP with 1280x1024.
Posted 2 days ago.
digitalpiracy says:
No he's right - you can set an option in the unattend.sif file so the resolution jumps to whatever you like once its installed the VGA drivers, but this section always runs at 640x480
Posted 2 days ago. "
People who are far more likely to succeed... (Score:2, Informative)
And here's the picture confirming ... (Score:5, Funny)
SCNR
Re:And here's the picture confirming ... (Score:3, Funny)
Another Case of Poor Slashdot Journalism (Score:2, Insightful)
OK, I just don't get it.. (Score:2)
It seems pretty damn apparent that people want a dual boot Windows/Mac... There's demand there, but no company wants to risk it
Re:OK, I just don't get it.. (Score:4, Insightful)
If almost all PC's have Windows, and almost all Macs run Windows apps, then you can just write a program for Windows, and there is no need to make a Mac specific port.
If there is no native Mac OS software, why get a Mac?
Sure, lots of developers would develop for the Mac out of love for the platform or whatever, but a lot of other devs would declare that just supporting Windows is sufficient for a very large percentage of their user base.
XP on Mac works in apples favour? (Score:3, Insightful)
A real fix, emulate BIOS to run XP an non-EFI unix (Score:4, Insightful)
No, what we really want is... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm becoming more and more a fan of virtualization; why deal with dual booting and configuring the disk when you can just run the client OS as a task in the main operating system. Also, if you trash your copy of Windows, just restore it from a snapshot or recreate it from a "good" image.
But, OTOH, kudos to him if he has in fact gotten it to work.
Fake... Next question (Score:3, Interesting)
What about Solaris x86 (Score:5, Interesting)
Is this really a first? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is this really a first? (Score:3, Informative)
A year or two later this was revised to CHRP - Common Hardware Reference Platform
Parent is correct. CHRP [wikipedia.org] was a successor of PReP [wikipedia.org]. PReP was quite flawed from Apple's perspective, and while CHRP was better, probably only few boxes actually complied with it. Some of those that did were Motorola's StarMax Pro 6000s, running 233 [everymac.com] or 266 [everymac.com] MHz G3s.
Those systems were announced [com.com] at mid-1997, but they never shipped, as Apple decided to kill the clones. Some [macslash.org] are
Hypothesis (Score:3, Funny)
However, since the current state of knowledge on this subject is thin, it is just as likely that the way to get Windows XP running on a Mac requires divine intervention. One could then describe a Mac running XP as "Intelligently Designed."
This is all well and good... (Score:4, Insightful)
I installed XP on my mac... (Score:4, Funny)
"His reputation on the forums" (Score:3, Funny)
What a sad state of affairs (Score:4, Insightful)
And as for why do this to begin with? How about because we can! Sheesh. Getting things that aren't supposed to work to work is part and parcel of being a true hacker. It's breaking the pigopolists' rules and doing things with hardware/software you bought that they never intended. Lighten up, guys. It's cool. If this is real, it's definitely a sick hack and we should salute him.
Re: Yes! (Score:3, Insightful)
And if he's faking, he won't be able to hide. Anybody know more details on narf2006?
That's like... (Score:3, Funny)
like buying a BMW and filling up at ARCO.
like renting out a Mansion for your cats.
Who cares about dual-booting? (Score:3, Insightful)
Give me basically a natively fast virtual machine. I don't ever want to boot my mac into Windows. Just let me run it like VPC on steroids when I have to, and you've got a sale.
update from colin and narf2006 (Score:3, Informative)
According to Intel documentation [intel.com], using a CSM that plugs into the EFI framework should allow for booting BIOS-based operating systems: So far (to me at least), it looks like narf2006 (and his accomplice, blanka) might have truly done it.
Re:obivous! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:obivous! (Score:5, Insightful)
OSX boots on PC. Win boots on PC. OSX boots on Mac. Should not Win boot on Mac?
Re:obivous! (Score:5, Interesting)
The only big difference is the TPM chip. Shoot, with all the people booting Mac OS X natively on random PC hardware, it shouldn't be a big logical leap to grasping the concept that booting WinXP (or any Windows for that matter) on a Macintel is only a matter of time.
You seem a little confused. The "TPM chip" as you put it has nothing to do with stopping other OS's from booting on macs, it is just a way to harder to make OS X boot on a machine without the right one. The reason it is hard to get WinXP booting on an Intel mac is because Windows utilizes BIOS to boot on all 32 bit systems. Apple did not include BIOS, opting for the more advanced EFI. Windows does support EFI, but only on 64 bit chips. Apple is using 32 bit chips. Hence, the Apple machines are hardware Windows does not support.
You are likely right that Windows will eventually boot on Macs, just because eventually Apple will move to 64 bit Intel chips, which Windows does support, or MS may implement the ability to boot from 32 bit EFI systems. Yes Apple uses mostly commodity hardware, but it is usually newer hardware and they often don't bother implementing 20 year old legacy features like PS/2 ports, floppy drives, BIOS, etc. As a result, it is entirely possible that Apple machines may stay ahead of the curve of Windows support and thus Windows users will have a hard time using Apple hardware. This is mostly because Apple has such a limited hardware set it needs to support, it can adapt much more quickly to new hardware.
As a final point, with the new virtualization features in the newest Intel chips, I don't see many people dual booting macs anyway. When you can run multiple OS's hosted on top of OS X, at nearly the same speed as a fresh boot (RAM notwithstanding) I suspect most users will prefer that route. I know I will.
Re:Let's ruin a mac (Score:2, Interesting)
You Sir, are why I don't hate Macs just Mac Users..
Re:I'd vote fake... (Score:5, Interesting)
This shot in particular (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This shot in particular (Score:4, Informative)
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:4, Informative)
I know a Mac is not for hardcore gamers but someone like me who wants to play the occasional game and not be tied into the pathetically small line-up for Mac games, dual-booting into Windows is a perfect solution.
But there's lots of other uses (most of which would work fine within a virtual machine), like company-supported apps that are not available for Windows.
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:2)
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realise you answered your own question don't you?
Anyway, whilst I don't like or run windows at home, I keep a spare 1GB partition with my old legal copy of win2k on it.
Why? Because I think two operating systems are better then one - and its not exactly like its hard work (or much overhead) to set up a dual boot these days.
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:4, Insightful)
For many people, those two things are reason enough to dual boot. It allows you to keep using your existing software, which makes the switch to Mac that much easier for people who have large libraries of Windows-only software.
Re:This looks to be...... (Score:5, Interesting)
The iMac G5 with built-in iSight camera is visually identical to the new Intel based iMacs.
Virtual PC 7 runs on the iMac G5 without a hitch (and allows full screen mode.)
You then need only take photos of your iMac G5 running windows-xp under virtual PC in full screen mode.
Better proof is images of this method on a MacBook Pro, because intel-based macs are unable to run virtual PC.
Additionally, faking images of a MacBook Pro running XP is also trivial, as you can simply get screen shots (from virtual pc on a G4 or G5 system.. or even off the web.) and display them full screen on your new Intel Mac.
In fact I can fake pictures of my powerbook running vista via a similar method, I can fake images of my powerbook running nintendo DS games with the same method.
The truth of this will come out once the method is tested to work or not work. Only then will the prize money be rewarded.
Re:This looks to be...... (Score:2)
Re:This looks to be...... (Score:2)
Re:This looks to be...... (Score:2)
If I took a photo of it, you'd notice it has no problems running full-screen, and video would prove it's most definitely not a static screenshot - and better still, Windows XP is no obstacle, and I could even have MacOS X for PowerPC, Linux, FreeBSD, RISC OS appearing in a similar manner with no problems whatsoever.
How?
VNC [sourceforge.net]. Easy!
Re:get a life people..... (Score:2, Interesting)
As a small developer that with about a 50/50 split in customers that run OSX and customers running Windows, having a single machine for support is a very attractive thing.
I have a life (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, you mean real life?
But seriously, and related to the first part of my post...
I would love to have a Mac for browsing, mail and multimedia editing, and to also dual-boot into XP for gaming. (Yes, I know WoW comes on Mac, but many games do not).
Re:Of course it's a fake (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What I don't get... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What I don't get... (Score:3, Interesting)
In my opinion, there are far better hardware configurations on which to run
Re:Photoshopped!....since you asked... (Score:3, Interesting)
Follow the line at the botton of the monitor and the line along the right hand side.
Now notice how the bottom left corner looks pulled away from the monitor also notice how the line at the bottom of the screen actually disappears under the blue windows screen (along with it attendant shadow) The same happens to the right hand side. the edge of the monitor and the shadow being cast over it also dissappears under the blue windows loading screen.
If you look at the blue win
Re:Photoshopped!....since you asked... (Score:3, Interesting)
If you look at the blue windows screen itself it has a ever so slight shadow on it (a darkening of the blue color) on the right hand side. However th