Comments on: How the XP-on-Mac prize was won

Colin Nederkoorn, the man behind the contest to get XP up and running on Intel Macs, talks about finding a winner.

[kelmon]

Just Need Drivers Now

Well, my heartiest congratulations to the guys responsible and
to the competition in general. It seems to have done a bang-up
job of delivering a solution and I hope that the coming weeks
and months will refine the process to making it as simple as
possible, assuming that it can be simplified anymore.

However, as has been noted in the article, the problem now is
one of drivers. I'm glad to hear that XP can be booted on an
Intel Mac but the lack of hardware video acceleration means that
it's far from the product that most people are hoping for. I'm
not certain where the drivers necessary to complete the process
are going to come from (I presume that the Linux community
has faced the same problem) but I'm hoping that these issues
will be resolved by the time that I buy my Intel Mac in about 6-
months.

I confess that I was beginning to have my doubts that this would
be done but I love being proven wrong in this.

[chabig83]

2 Guys do what Microsoft can't

Just last week Microsoft said that Vista wouldn't boot on EFI
machines. Yet here, 2 guys figure out how to modify Windows XP to
boot on Apple's EFI-based machine. It kind of makes you wonder
what kind of programmer's Microsoft has...

[rfelgueiras]

Honestly?

To be fair, it probably wasn't so much that MS couldn't, but that
it just didn't. MS has had many opportunities to re-write old
code but decide not to for various reason. They have alot of
really bright people working there. Also, if you notice, When it
was reported that Vista wasn't going to run or EFI systems, they
said this of the 32 bit version. They also said that the 64 bit
version would.

I'm all for nocking Microsoft, but it needs to be for the right
reasons. Congrats to the two guys who accomplished this, but
realistically neither Apple nor Microsoft were actually attempting
this, nor did they say it was an impossible task.

Re: 2 Guys do what Microsoft can't

As I posted recently in a different forum (about Microsoft)...

"Never in the field of software development has so little been
produced by so many"

Apologies to Winston Churchill

[PaulM]

I Would Swap in a Heartbeat

Apple - are you listening? I much prefer Apple's desktop and laptop hardware, and there are many things about Apple software that I would love. The problem is I have so much legacy Windows work that I could not contemplate leaving it all behind. But give me a simple and stable way to dual boot a Mac, to include WinXP, and still support all my current hardware such as printers, external hard drives etc, and I would be down to the nearest Apple store in a heartbeat. Jobs, you are so paranoid about Microsoft that you may be missing a huge market potential.

[jeromatron]

Motivation for Virtual PC

When the Intel based Macs came out, Microsoft hesitated to say
whether or not there would even be an Intel version of Virtual
PC.

Now that there is a semi-simple way to run Windows on a Mac, I
think it would be motivation for MS to get going. People will
want to dual boot and they will be sitting with a shelved product
that could be making a lot of money by allowing people to run
Windows *inside* Mac OS X. They would make the money from
Virtual PC *and* the OS license.

I don't see them hesitating very much longer.

[SeizeCTRL]

Crazy Idea

What if MS decided to sell a version of XP designed for Macs using this technique? Incorporate it into one step just like loading XP on a PC. Might increase the number of Macs sold. I don't know if I would want XP on my Mac. I think it's more I want OSX on my PC :)

[Randy MacMillan]

Next Challenge?

Multi-boot machines are certainly be great for some people. But
I'm more interested in a multi-os machine that doesn't sacrifice
speed and performance. The PC emulators came close, maybe now
that light in the tunnel isn't a train coming at me....

[JFDMit]

Forget PCs

Maybe the next challenge should be something totally different. I'm thinking of offering a cash prize to the first person to port Linux to his own pacemaker. That would take both technical savvy and nerves of steel.

[baswwe]

pirated software

Does he have a valid license key? How did they get around the protection? or will his machine no longer work after 30 days due to WPA?

[tadpohl]

Duh Windows Piracy

Windows XP Pro Corp edition is not crippled like the other versions of windows. Enter a key and you are done.

[NRU235]

Fast OS Switching...

If Apple developed a more user-friendly way to switch between OS's, I would toss out my PC and buy a PowerMac. (When the new Conroe chipped PowerMac's are launched of course)

I know from my experience in the protected streaming media business, that every MAC user is angery over not being able to play media protected by Windows DRM. The ability to switch OS's, on the fly, would alleviate this blockage.

and of course, I would still have Windows for my gaming needs.

[Earl Benser]

Useless complaint.....

If you want XP in addition to OS X, buy a cheap PC, XP included,
and network it via VNC. Now you can run both machines from the
Mac easier than from a partitioned hard drive. I know, I run four
PC's at the moment, plus five Mac;s from my main G4, via ARD and
VNC. Works great! And no XP compromising my Mac's.