Apple warns of Boot Camp expiration

Some beta apps expire when they reach "final version" status but don't require payment. I hope Apple follows their lead.

Otherwise, this will be AMAZINGLY unpopular since Boot Camp is a widely used beta that has been on Macs (and in the public consciousness) since April of 2006 - over 1 1/2 years.

Another PR own-goal for Apple. This time, like a drug-dealer, they disseminate boot-camp for free, get you hooked and then, at a later date, hit you with a charge, namely purchasing Tiger, so that you can continue getting your fix. I don't believe that at any stage they made this implication of the use of their "beta" software clear. I smell a lawsuit...a possibly a legitimate one!

Sorry, its hard to call it bad press when they announced a long time ago that Boot Camp was going to be part of Leopard. Although it certainly would be nice if you weren't forced to pay $150 for a copy of Leopard just to run Windows on your Mac. Maybe its apple's way of trying to keep people from doing it?

What I'd like to know is what Apple means by 'expired'. Will all the Windows drivers stop working? Will you no longer be able to boot into windows? Or is it that they won't update any of their drivers, but you can still use it for as long as you like?

In the above post, I should have typed Leopard not Tiger! Additionally, Apple are running a new promotion where if you buy an iMac before 12th October, you get a reduction on the price of certain accessories bought at the same time! I hope nobody falls for this one. That is, buy an iMac without Leopard and get cheaper accessories BUT you'll have to buy Leopard additionally a day or a week later. Hmmm...12th of October...interesting date! This may also point to a clearing of inventory...minor updates to iMacs when Leopard arrives?

I knew the beta was supposed to expire, but I thought there was supposed to be something to take it's place in the form of a utility you could buy or something. It didn't realize that upgrading to Leopard was the only way to keep BootCamp v1.4 running.

Now all the crybabies are going to start whining and griping about how Apple is just blackmailing them into buying Leopard. I've already got Parallels 3.0 running, but I still occasionally boot into my BootCamp partition which runs faster.

Guess I'll have upgrade to Leopard sooner than expected. No gripes or bitchin', though, since it was pretty much expected if you read the BootCamp EULA.

You people are all worried about nothing honestly. People that have already install Windows on there mac will not be effected because boot camp has already done its work by dividing the drive and burning the driver disc. That is boot camps only purpose and after that, its only useful to merge the drive back again. Also, another note is that you could always reverse the clock on the computer if you need to use boot camp. It is not boot camp that is needed to run Windows, it was the EFI update. Boot Camp goal was to make it easy to partition and install drivers.

Apple should extend the October 31st date to January 15th. Here's what:

-Many users legitimately want to wait a short while before upgrading to a major OS. They might want to wait out any immediate bugs, wait for their IT person/department to ok the upgrade and schedule time, etc.

-Many corporate users might need to wait for new budget money to become available to do OS updates. One machine is cheap, but if you're talking a whole department with a Server license you're talking real money. So wait until January 1st rolls around to get your money, then order.

I think it's fine to drop support of Boot Camp in 10.4, as it was always presented as a beta that would expire with 10.5's announcement.

One good note about this announcement - Apple seems very secure about an October 10.5 release!

... as to whether expiration of BootCamp means you can't run it on a new drive or if you can't WinBoot at all with an existing "BootCamp'd" setup. If it's the latter, I'm a little pissed, but I'll be getting Leopard ASAP so it doesn't really matter to me. The former would make sense and only cause existing users a problem when they format a fresh startup disk

While I am not using BootCamp at this time, I think it would be a good idea to give users a couple months to upgrade to 10.5, as major system upgrades are sometimes problematic. It may force some users into a bad situation where they have to upgrade to access Boot Camp, but cannot because of a conflict with current software.

Usually these major conflicts are worked out in the first 30-60 days after a major release (unless the OS is Vista).

This announcement is nothing more than a reminder of what has been said from the beginning. Bootcamp is a beta program that the final version of will be in leopard. Anyone that expected any different was misleading themselves.