Boot Camp

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This entry was published at least two years ago (originally posted on April 6, 2006). Since that time the information may have become outdated or my beliefs may have changed (in general, assume a more open and liberal current viewpoint). A fuller disclaimer is available.

As part of an effort to streamline things while I’m in school, I’ve been working here and there on paring down the number of newsfeeds I subscribe to. One of the steps I took a couple weeks ago was removing the majority of my mac-specific site feeds (Macintouch, MacFixit, and various others), figuring that if any big news broke, chances are good that I’d hear about it from plenty of other places.

Boy was I right on that assumption. I can’t count the number of different places I’ve seen mention Boot Camp, and I’m only up to around noon yesterday in my newsreading. Crazy.

Boot Camp, on the off chance it hasn’t crossed your radar yet (not likely, but possible), is Apple’s just-released official methodology for setting your new Intel-based Mac up as a dual-boot Mac OS X/Windows XP system.

You’ve got to love the language they chose to use in their promo materials (emphasis mine)…

Developers can learn all about the sixth major release of Mac OS X this century at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, to be held August 7-11 in San Francisco.

Macs use an ultra-modern industry standard technology called EFI to handle booting. Sadly, Windows XP, and even the upcoming Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS. But with Boot Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries.

Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it’ll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world. So be sure to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes.

Heh. No, no snark there. None at all.

Of course, since this is an option only available for Intel-based Macs, it’s something I’m not able to take advantage off — my first generation dual 2.0Ghz G5 PowerMac just won’t cut it. Not that (still) being unable to run Windows natively on my Mac is really a crushing blow to me…as long as I can run my math class software under Virtual PC, I’m good to go.

In the meantime, PC world has a ‘first look’ at running Windows natively on Mactel hardware.

It works. Impressively well. With games, even. That’s our first impression of Windows XP running under Apple’s Boot Camp on our 20-inch iMac.

[…] Back in Windows, I got right down to business and installed a few games to put the graphics and sound support to the test. The quick and dirty verdict on performance? Most impressive. Doom 3 and Far Cry both ran smoothly with high-end graphics options turned on.

In both cases, I had to tweak visual settings manually, since the games automatically set themselves to very low settings. Far Cry, for example, autodetected very low settings, but it ran without a hitch when I bumped the resolution up to 1280 by 720, with all visual quality options set to “High.”

Our 20-inch iMac came with a 2.0-GHz Core Duo processor, 1GB of RAM, and an ATI Radeon X1600 graphics card with 128MB of GDDR3 memory. That’s roughly equivalent to a high-end laptop machine, and anecdotally the performance I obtained was about what I’d have expected from that type of PC.

iTunes “Roadblock, The” by Ridgway, Stan from the album Earphoria (1991, 4:40).

4 thoughts on “Boot Camp”

  2. Dangit… not three months ago, I was shopping around for a laptop, and I needed one that would run Windows because I needed to use Visual Studio to compile and run the projects I had to do for class. So I bought a cheapie Toshiba, as much as I whimpered and drooled at the MacBook Pro, because it did what I needed it to…

    …and now Apple goes and releases Boot Camp!

    Guess it’s back to saving up the dough – Apple turned down my loan application yesterday. ;)

  3. The “Talking Heads” vascillate between saying how great this for Apple and how Apple is copping out. What do you thin?

  4. I’m in the “good idea” camp. Getting Windows running on Intel-based Macs has been a common discussion thread ever since they first appeared, and not too long ago (before Boot Camp was released) there was a contest to hack a way to get WinXP running — the winners received $13,834 when they found a solution.

    Their solution, however, didn’t include drivers for quite a few things, from the video cards to some of the Mac-specific niceties (such as the keyboard-based CD Eject button), which is part of what Apple has corrected with Boot Camp.

    So it was bound to happen one way or another, and already had happened to a certain extent.

    For most people, this really isn’t going to mean much. For those who are interested in being able to dual-boot (for instance, people who can use a Mac for 98% of what they do, but have to have occasional access to a Windows machine for specific programs), this is a godsend.

    Mac pundit John Gruber has an excellent essay on the announcement, too. An exerpt:

    Boot Camp is not about world domination or a direct frontal assault on Microsoft’s Windows monopoly.1 No matter how cool Boot Camp is, it’s not even going to make sense to most people out there, let alone actually get them to buy a Mac. You try explaining “boot loaders” to your mom.

    But Boot Camp is inordinately appealing to the higher end of the market, the enthusiasts. Your typical civilian (i.e. non-enthusiast) has no need — or at least sees no need — for dual booting. They use email, they use a web browser, they want something useful to happen when they plug a digital camera into their USB port. Whichever OS comes on their computer is good enough for this.

    But there are all sorts of uses for Boot Camp for nerds. Any sort of Windows-only software, for example, is no longer an excuse not to buy a Mac. Like, say, games. And for many of these people (i.e. the enthusiast/nerd/”into computers” market) using Boot Camp is free because they already have Windows XP installation discs sitting around.

    All Apple needs to do to be spectacularly successful with its computer business in the next few years is to take just a few single digits of market share away from Windows. Whatever market share number you peg the Mac at — 2 percent, 5 percent, or anywhere in between — you must keep in mind that it (that is, the Mac user base) is not comprised of a random sample of just any 2-5 percent of computer users in general. It’s a very specific self-selecting segment of the market: people who care about their computers, and who are willing to pay more for something better.

    So even if Apple only has 2 percent of the total market today, it’s 2 percent from the best part of the market. And if they add another percentage point or two or three, that’s going to come from the juicy part of the market as well. (I’d wager a large sum that Apple’s share of the profits in the total PC industry are significantly higher than their share of units sales.)

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