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Next Pentium chips may help run Windows on Macs

updated 03:15 pm EDT, Thu June 16, 2005

Windows on Macs

Whether or not users will be able to .

by MacNN Staff

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Ighal

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06/16, 03:58pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
First post? well...

C'mon guys, it is OBVIOUS that Windows will be able to run on Intel-Macs and OS X on regular PC's. I can bet a lot of money right now that at least 6 month after the IntelMac release both things are going to be possible with or without software or hardware help. (a dongle, a dongle dumper or a hack or a crack).

bobolicious
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Joined: Aug 2002

0

06/16, 04:07pm | report spam | close Reply |
this trojan horse...

...may lure pc users to the light side...

ronjamin
Baninated

Joined: May 2002

0

06/16, 04:12pm | report spam | close Reply |
What About Disk Format?

Some may not know that Win2000 & XP generally like to run using a Windows format called NTFS formatting and sometimes an older format called FAT-32.

What are the implications of running WinXP on a Mac then?

I would expect that Win would run in a disk partition, or on a disk image formatted for NTFS.

Kazrog
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Joined: Dec 2002

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06/16, 04:22pm | report spam | close Reply |
WINE

All they need to do is port WINE to OS X and we can run Windows apps inside OS X at full speed. It's going to rock!!!

Voch
Mac Elite

Joined: Apr 2001

0

06/16, 04:36pm | report spam | close Reply |
Well...

I'm looking forward to the possibility of a, say, Virtual PC 8.0, running on an Intel-based Mac. I just hope it doesn't kill the Mac gaming industry ("why make an Intel Mac game when they can just run Windows?").

resuna
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Joined: Jan 2005

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06/16, 04:46pm | report spam | close Reply |
OS X supports FAT32

You can already read and write a shared FAT32 drive from OSX.

climacs
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Joined: Sep 2001

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06/16, 06:08pm | report spam | close Reply |
the end of X vs. Win?

so would this spell the end of OS X vs. Windows? replaced by OS X, or Windows, or both?

one could have both on the same machine, you don't need to swap out hardware and get mac versions of your favorite applications and games

that would inevitably help Apple at Microsoft's expense...

Cf
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Joined: Jan 2002

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06/16, 07:02pm | report spam | close Reply |
just curious

nobody has mentioned anything about the possibility of increased viruses/spyware on the mac thanks to this venture in any of the articles or responses i have read so far.

resuna
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Joined: Jan 2005

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06/16, 07:09pm | report spam | close Reply |
Which possibility?

"nobody has mentioned anything about the possibility of increased viruses/spyware on the mac thanks to this venture in any of the articles or responses i have read so far."

If you are running Windows, you are susceptible to weaknesses in Windows that increase your exposure to infection. The fact that you're also running Mac OS X doesn't reduce this risk.

Rainy Day
Grizzled Veteran

Joined: Nov 2001

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06/16, 07:14pm | report spam | close Reply |
DarWINE; no Malware

No malware for MacOS X; only Windoze. It's not the processor (nor marketshare), but the poor engineering work of M$ which is responsible for malware vulnerabilities. Windoze app's running under Virtual PC on a Mac are vulnerable too. But MacOS X Intel apps will be as robust as they are now on a PPC.

Regarding WINE, there's already the DarWINE project:

http://darwine.opendarwin.org/

Their home page has this to say about the MacIntel: "It means that Wine will be able to work on Mac OS X/x86 as well [as] it does on linux, with a limited effort. You might notice that there is already some code to support Mac OS X/x86 in the Wine's source code, but it is untested."

Zak Nilsson
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Joined: Mar 1999

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06/16, 10:59pm | report spam | close Reply |
This would be good:

I'd ultimately like to be able to run Windows on a Mactel box inside a window, like VPC - but obviously natively. I'd rather not dual boot. For games you could just set the Windows environment to full screen.

LouZer
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Joined: Nov 2000

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06/16, 11:36pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: malware

Yes, we all know Apple doesn't produce anything with security holes. Certainly nothing that could, say, auto-download and install a dashboard widget. Nor something that would allow a running program to grab root privilege by just waiting for any other task to get root privilege and just piggy-back on that and use it to grant itself root privilege (oh, this is still possible in OS X). Or how Safari could be used to automatically download a disk image, would then auto-mount it and launch a program right on your machine! It only took apple months to fix that, and that fix consisted of adding warning messages that you were about to launch a program.

But then why do you need malware or viruses for OS X when Apple does a good job itself. With unfinished options and buggy code, trying to get things to work without issue is difficult at best. And what about data loss? No problem. Just install OS X.3 and turn on File Vault. Or create a sparse image in 10.4 and copy files to it. Or install 10.3 with firewire drives connected. Or install iTunes 4.0 and watch your hard drive get erased.

Need we go on?

ApeInTheShell
Senior User

Joined: Nov 2002

0

06/17, 12:33am | report spam | close Reply |
Pssh

1) Lacie was responsible to update their drivers to support Mac OS X 10.3 and they did not. Apple has a list of devices that will work automatically with its operating system out of the box. 2) Apple has now become a direct competitor to Microsoft. People will either choose Mac OS X or Windows. Users will find out that the old applications and games they used on Windows are nothing compared to the new ones coming out for Mac OS X. Thus, no need for dual booting. Personally, I still do not want to run Windows. 3) Hardware design is still a factor in the switch to Mac OS X. Even the iMac G4 was wanted by all.

resuna
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Joined: Jan 2005

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06/17, 09:14am | report spam | close Reply |
LouZer...

"Yes, we all know Apple doesn't produce anything with security holes. Certainly nothing that could, say, auto-download and install a dashboard widget."

There's three major differences between this and Windows.

1. You can unconditionally turn all potential attacks of this nature off by turning off "open safe files after download" in Safari. Apple SHOULD ship that disabled by default, but Microsoft doesn't even give you the option in IE.

2. Apple's response is incomplete, but it WAS quick. Microsoft has left worse holes than this open for months after they'd been publicly exposed and exploited by viruses... this one didn't get anything worse than an annoying demo.

3. In the worst case, assuming you have "open safe files" turned on *and* you click "yes" by reflex, you still have to open Dashboard and launch the widget, it didn't automatically execute even after installation. Internet explorer is still configured to launch AND execute native code components.

The difference between Dashboard and ActiveX is like the difference between visiting a sick friend in a hospital and running into an Ebola ward and snogging the patients.

Similarly, there's no need for an application to wait to get "root" on Windows, most users run with Admin privileges all the time because it's too inconvenient not to. The "sudo" hole is a hole in a layer of protection Windows doesn't even try to provide.

This is like noticing that someone can sneak in behind a customer at a bank, and comparing that to a bank that just leaves money bags lying around in the lobby.

There is no such thing as perfect security, but Microsoft deliberately designs software in ways that make it impossible to even begin to lock it down without the system becoming too hard for most users to put up with.

mgpalma
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Joined: Sep 2000

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06/17, 09:32am | report spam | close Reply |
LouZer

I was goint to write a response, but resuna did a good job.

LouZer - proving that the stupidity vector is alive and well.

my .03

JoeEgo
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Joined: Jan 2000

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06/17, 08:22pm | report spam | close Reply |
Overspeculation

Nobody knows for sure (or can say in public) what the hardware configuration "Mactels" will be when shipped. The developer machines are 1-off customs and will be returned to Apple.

Just because Apple says they will not do anything to stop a person from running Windows does not automatically mean that Windows will just install on a Mac. It may even be worse than driver issues. Apple's shipping computers might use a custom chip or two that will not let it run/install Windows normally. But Apple still will not be actively precluding Windows. You could still have hackers & tweakers doing it on a small scale.

Until we start seeing real, shipping hardware from Apple then this is all meaningless talk.

technohedz
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Joined: Jul 2000

0

06/18, 09:27pm | report spam | close Reply |
what the ? is

Does anyone really believe Apple is going to stop people from installing Windows on a mac? M$ might "IF chip SERIAL number == range sold to apple 'we're monopolists so you can't install windows on this machine". Of course that loses a sale of an operating system to a growing (yes, that's what Apple computers are doing) hardware segment; who traditionally pays rather than pirates.

M$ makes something like 1/3 of its revenue just from sales of Office. I think they just NEED windows in order to sell their stuff. So who would prevent it?

Perhaps every single one of the linux distros will lock out apple machines to only run linux...not!

So seriously, what's the issue.. Oh wait it's the reporting. It's 'overspeculation' to reason that shipping Macs won't run Windows when the hardware will essentially be the same. Even if there are apple specific components, these are to enable Mac OS X functionality or security and not to replace anything else. If you're getting one chip from intel, why not get a whole bunch more? No matter how sour the intel/M$ relationship is, it's not like M$ is going to cripple windows to not run on intel hardware.

So...let's just say we dispose of the first part of this story or even posts as idle speculation. That means the real news is 'hey, you might be able to run windows through 'virtualization' OK. And? We can do that now. Hardware wise. No. At native speeds No. Did we really think we weren't going to see close to native when intel was the processor. No!

So what's the issue.. Oh, we can run a hardware native OS simultaneously w/ real partitions on the drive.... and we would in any way want to possibly do this why?????? 'scriptkiddie101 script erase everything on all drives'.. That would be bad enough...at the same time w/o a sandbox? Yeah....I want that.

like we want to polute our system w/ a NTFS partitioning schemes when we already will have HFS+(journaled, case sensitive,) EXTREME w/ access controls and new and improved metadata 2.0! ?

It's about the OS. It helps switchers. I don't want to even virtualize carbon apps (not classic) from lazy devs (even apple). You guys have fun going out and buying more pc games AND a copy of windows and maintaining it.

The coolest thing is that w/ the new macs proposed in this article, we'll be able to burn a dl dvd in mac os x by the time windows has started, autoupdated, restarted, updated virus defs, restarted, and finally come up. Cool.. Apple rox.

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