Re: [Micronet] Unanswered Questions From MacWorld for Microsoft

  To follow-up on Jon's initial questions about whether Apple's new
Intel-based Macs will be able to run Microsoft's Windows OSes, and Tom's
and Lucy's responses, below.

  There were two postings on the MacInTouch site today on this topic.
These musings represent nothing more than early speculation, but they're
nonetheless interesting.

Aron Roberts
Workstation Software Support Group

--
MacInTouch 2006-01-11
Notes and tips section
Dave Schroeder checked in with some answers to common questions:
...
Can we load Windows or Linux from standard PC distributions?
Can the new Intel iMac and MacBook Pro run both Windows XP and Mac OS X? I
would be great to have a native dual boot system. Can this be done without
hacks and be fully supported?
Yes and no.
What we will *definitely* see are "Virtual PC"-like programs that let you
run Windows alongside OS X (in a Window, or taking over the screen, etc.,
with a hotkey to flip back and forth, for example).
  It's important to note this will NOT be emulation: Windows will run at
the native speed of the underlying hardware. [But see Tom's message re
VMWare, which suggests that there may be some considerable overhead in
virtual machine environments that run Windows or other OSes, even when
hosted on an Intel processor box - Aron]
  vmware already has a version for Mac OS X in development, and Microsoft
may even make a version of Virtual PC. Then there are things like QEMU,
Xen, etc. The Darwin/Mac OS X version of WINE, DarWINE, has even been
working under betas of Mac OS X for Intel. Now that Intel Macs are
shipping, it will only be a matter of weeks/months before we have
several options for running Windows itself, and/or Windows applications
at the native speed of the underlying hardware.
  "Dual booting" might not be possible initially, because Windows XP
doesn't support EFI (the "next generation" of BIOS from Intel, which
Apple used on these machines), but Vista does, for example. And since
EFI is the future, it's only a matter of time before x86 OSes and
bootloaders start supporting it.
  But, in my opinion, dual booting is annoying anyway, and the really
interesting thing will be able to just run Windows and Mac OS X
side-by-side.
  Further, Phil Schiller reiterated that Apple isn't doing anything to
prevent people from installing other OSes, and Intel has communicated
that Apple isn't using proprietary Intel chipsets.
--
Henry Norr
Intel Switch Issues
http://www.macintouch.com/sf2006/day1.html
...
Windows Support
One big question I haven't been able to get a definitive answer to: will
the iMacs (and the MacBook Pro and forthcoming Intel-based Macs) run
Windows? At the Apple booth the best answer I could get was "Probably, but
we don't support that." At the Microsoft booth, even the Virtual PC
demonstrator said his team didn't know the answer, though they had
established that Virtual PC simply crashes on the Intel Macs.
If, in fact, Windows will run reliably on the Apple hardware, some
developer is sure to produce a dual-boot utility that would let users
choose between Microsoft and Apple operating systems - or maybe even some
software that enable them both to run simultaneously. If that happens, I
think it could bring a flood of new switchers to the Mac platform, because
it would remove most of the risk from the change. at the price of a
Windows license plus the utility software I'm envisioning, they'd be able
to try out the Mac, and stick to it where it excels, without losing access
to the games and specialized apps that aren't available for the Mac
platform.
So far Apple seems uninterested in promoting this approach, and, as a Mac
consultant pointed out to me on the show floor, the company certainly has
no interest in taking on the burden of support for Windows on its
machines. Without such support, corporate IT managers aren't likely to
adopt Intel-based Macs as a dual-OS platform. But if Windows actually runs
reasonably reliably on these machines - as well, say, as on an average PC
- I think the dual-boot option, even without official support from Apple,
would have a lot of appeal to many small businesses, home users, and
students.
Intel CEO Paul Otellini, who emerged from a cloud of smoke, wearing a
clean-room-style bunny suit and carrying a 12-inch semiconductor wafer,
during the keynote, said Intel had deployed 1,000 people to work on the
Apple transition. Some of them, according to Nathan Brookwood, an analyst
at Insight64 who's very knowledgeable about Intel, among other things,
actually designed the new machines' logic boards for Apple, and in doing
so they used standard Intel chipsets, from the new 945/955/975 Express
chipset family Intel announced last week. All of that should increase the
likelihood that Windows will boot and run reliably on the Intel-based
Macs, but it's no guarantee.
---------------------------------------------------------------
From:  	"Tom Holub" <tom@ls.berkeley.edu>
Subject:  	Re: [Micronet] Unanswered Questions From MacWorld for Microsoft
Date:  	Wed, January 11, 2006 18:01
To:  	"Jon Forrest" <forrest@ce.berkeley.edu>
Cc:  	micronet-list@lists.berkeley.edu
Jon Forrest wrote:
> I went to MacWorld yesterday. Very nice.
>
> But, for those departments or individuals
> who aren't willing to completely switch to MacOS,
> Microsoft should have been prepared to answer
> the following questions:
>
> 1) How can you boot Windows on an InteliMac?
> Since an InteliMac doesn't have a PC-style BIOS I can
> see how booting Windows might be a problem. Assuming
> Windows has drivers for the hardware, running Windows
> shouldn't be a big deal.
I'm sure it will be technically possible, but only as an unsupported hack.  I
doubt either Apple or Microsoft will ever want to support it.
> 2) Will Microsoft Virtual PC for the Mac be modified
> so that you can run Windows on top of MacOS on
> an InteliMac? This would be an interesting approach
> since the performance penalty of instruction emulation
> suffered by the current version of Virtual PC would
> disappear.
Emulation will still be pretty dang slow; vmware, for example, is pretty much
a dog even if you're running two Intel-based OSes.
-- 
Tom Holub (tom_holub@LS.Berkeley.EDU, 510-642-9069)
Director of Computing, College of Letters & Science
249 Campbell Hall
<http://LS.berkeley.edu/lscr/>
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