Apple has released Boot Camp, a free download that lets you run Windows on an Intel-based Mac. The 83MB download is available as beta software, and Boot Camp will be included in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard later this year. We don't, however, expect to see Windows preinstalled on Macs anytime soon -- Apple makes it very clear that it will not support Windows. Interest in running Windows on a Mac has been evident ever since Steve Jobs announced the Intel-based iMac back in January, and it reached a crescendo last month with various contests for finding a hack to run Windows on an Intel Mac. Boot Camp, therefore, isn't the first time the world will see Windows running on a Mac, but it certainly makes the process much easier.
We installed Boot Camp on the iMac Core Duo; the software will also work with the Mac Mini and the MacBook Pro. Before we could run the program, we first had to update our iMac to Mac OS X 10.4.6, followed by a quick firmware update. We were then prompted to burn a disc of Windows drivers (for the iMac Core Duo's video and audio adapters, peripherals, wired and wireless networking adapters and so on), which are included in the Boot Camp download. After ejecting our newly minted driver disc, Boot Camp then asked us how we'd like to partition our iMac's 250GB hard drive. The default was a paltry 5GB for Windows; we upped it to an even 100GB, and then inserted a Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 disc. Note: You must supply your own copy of Windows; you can use either Home or Professional, but Apple's documentation states that it must include SP2. The Windows installation proceeded normally, the iMac restarted, and we were looking at the strange sight of the glossy white iMac framing the familiar XP Bliss wallpaper.
A quick scan of the Device Manager showed that we were a few drivers short of a full deck. We installed the contents of the driver disc that Boot Camp had us create, which filled in most, but not all, of the gaps. We were still missing a USB driver and a PCI driver, along with some unknowns. From our first pass with Windows on the iMac, however, the system appeared to be fully operational. We were able to connect to our LAN and the Internet, and even play a game of Minesweeper.
What Boot Camp doesn't let you do is run both operating systems at the same time: you must shut down one before booting to the other. Whichever OS you had running last will boot upon the next start-up. To prevent that from happening, simply hold down the Alt-Option key while the system powers on, and after a few seconds, you'll be presented with a grey start screen with two images of hard drives: choose the one on the left for Mac OS or the right-hand one for Windows.
Boot Camp also installs an icon labelled Startup Disk in the Control Panel in Windows and in the System Preferences window in Mac OS. This opens a window that lists the Mac OS and Windows XP partitions. Choose one to shut down the current OS you have running and boot to the other. Switching between the two operating systems proved fast and easy. Also, Windows appeared to be stable; it crashed only once when we were investigating DirectX settings -- not an unusual occurrence on any Windows-based system.
There's more to this than playing Minesweeper on a Mac, of course. Aside from the 'wow' factor, Boot Camp -- especially when it becomes a standard feature of the Mac OS -- should usher in a new era for the Mac platform. Although you'll need to buy a copy of Windows, your Mac will be able to run any software that its PC competitors can run, not to mention all the Apple programs that PCs can't run.
Performance tests
Surprising as the Boot Camp development might be, the performance results are decidedly unremarkable. Given the Intel processor and motherboard, the iMac Core Duo's performance when running Windows was pretty much where we expected compared to other Windows PCs'. On our Photoshop CS test, it trailed dual-core PCs from Dell and HP, but only by a small percentage. We didn't expect it to top either of these systems, given their more powerful Pentium D 900-series desktop processors. Compared to the same iMac Core Duo system running Mac OS X, the system showed a large but not unexpected jump in performance with Photoshop. Where the iMac Core Duo in Mac OS X took 6.5 minutes to complete the test, because it must use the Rosetta translation software, the same system running Windows XP Pro took less than 3 minutes.
Nor are we shocked by the iTunes, video-encoding and Doom 3 tests. As it was written with the Mac OS X in mind, iTunes has historically run slower on Windows PCs. The same holds true for the iMac hardware running Windows: the Windows partition on the iMac took 26 seconds longer to finish our test. Our Sorenson video-encoding test looks much better on the Windows partition than on the OS X side for the same reason that the Photoshop results skewed in favour of Windows: Sorenson runs natively under Windows XP and is emulated via Rosetta under OS X.
For those who are interested in such matters, the release of Boot Camp doesn't change our opinion of the iMac as a gaming system. No matter which OS you run, its weak ATI Radeon X1600 graphics chip, which shares memory with the system itself, isn't going to deliver high frame rates. The iMac Core Duo performed better under Windows than under OS X (25.9 frames per second versus an even less playable 16.2), but we still don't recommend it for serious 3D gaming.
System configurations
Apple iMac Core Duo (Mac OS X)
Macintosh OS 10.4.4; 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo; 1GB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 128MB ATI Radeon X1600 PCIe; 250GB Maxtor 7,200rpm Serial ATA hard drive
Apple iMac Core Duo (Windows XP Pro)
Windows XP Pro SP2; 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo; 1GB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 128MB ATI Radeon X1600 PCIe; 250GB Maxtor 7,200rpm Serial ATA hard drive
Apple iMac G5 2.10GHz
Macintosh OS 10.4; PowerPC G5 2.10GHz; 512MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 128MB ATI Radeon X600XT PCIe; 250GB Serial ATA hard drive
Dell XPS 400 (Viiv)
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005; 3.2GHz Intel Pentium D 940; Intel 945P chipset; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 533MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6800 (PCIe); two Maxtor 250GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA; integrated Intel (RAID 1)
HP Pavilion Media Center TV m7360n
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005; 2.8GHz Intel Pentium D 920; Intel 945G chipset; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6200 SE (PCIe); Maxtor 300GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA
Talkback
Why the hell would you want Xp on a mac? I thought you mac supporters were anti micro$oft? I think it's an insult to apple and what they are all about! If you want Xp then it would be cheaper just to get a pc wouldn't it? Or are you just showing off how cool you are running xp on a mac, well for your information it really sucks big time! Macheads that support this are true Numpties because you support uncle bill!
I believe your test were skew in the Dell favor for these reasons. 1st the video card for the Dell XPS 400 “Gaming machine” is a Gforce 6800 w/256 Mb of memory where the IMac has the ATI x1600 w/128Mb of memory. Also I don’t believe this to be shared memory due to the fact the system memory is DDR-2 667 MHz and the build in ATI video uses GDDR3 memory. I could be wrong! I think you should up the video ram in the Mac to 256Mb “it only $75 more”; and then have included another PC system with the same video card as the Mac to get a full range of systems for comparison. Also I think you need to point out the Dell Pentium D 940 is a Dual Core chip in it self with a large L2 cache, for some readers may have miss that point in your system configurations. Also I would have like to see how these systems compare to an AMD system with a similar configuration. Last but not lease, I think someone needs to look at that HP for it Doom3 test just sucks.
I agree with the dell favor remark, but i will also add the doom 3 test for maximum performance does favor the higher VRAM'd PC espeecially on the 4xAA and the 8xAF, it is not shared memory (It is dedicatter DDR3 video memory)
Also a test under More NORMAL (1024x786, 2xAA and 2xAF) and ECONOMY (800x600 no AA, no AF) settings would also show wheather or not it can be used for gaming.
As for the last thing, it runs better on XP than Mac OSX and it doesnt have ANY optimizations YET!
But then again time will tell...
To answer your question why run XP, I have used both operating systems extensively and quite frankly its pretty obvious that the basic OS of XP is far better than OSX. There are several monumental mistakes in OSX which make it a real pain to use and so I am now switching back after an interesting love affair with my apple OS. Yes OSX has nice 'bells and whistles' but they don't make up for mistakes made in the core areas.
Another reason to switch back is this, many websites simply do not run well on safari or firefox for that matter, and IE is no longer available for download for mac.
So there you have it!