March 16th, 2006
Hackers Win Contest; Windows XP Installed on Intel Mac
By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
As we reported in late January, Colin Nederkoorn started a contest, purportedly because he told his boss that the Intel Mac would replace his IBM desktop and he could boot Windows XP on it. Well, hackers dubbed “narf2006″ and “blanka” have managed to do solve his problem.
The solution was sent to Nederkoorn and his testers, who verified it on Wednesday. It’s a complicated endeavor, however, including formatting a Mac system and creating a custom Windows XP SP2 installation disc, which could potentially violate Microsoft’s copyright.
Even if Windows is successfully installed, there are still a number of limitations. Windows drivers for Apple’s hardware are currently nonexistent, rendering the iSight and Apple Remote inoperable. In addition, graphics support is basic, meaning no games will run.
“There is no chance you could play a game using this solution, aside from minesweeper,” Nederkoorn wrote in a blog posting. “It looks like a fix for this may be a ways off yet.” Source: BetaNews
We Say: Nearly $14,000 is on its way to “narf2006″ and “blanka”. Since XP does not work with the Extensible Firmware Interface, it was obvious this was going to be a hack and not a clean solution. With Vista no longer supporting it either, at least initially, Windows-on-Mac fans are going to have to live with these type of solutions.
David Johnston says:
Since XP doesn’t support the new EFI, I’d suspect this means they’ll also get Vista working on Macs after all. It’ll just take a bit of hacking.
March 17th, 2006 at 12:18 am
Justin says:
A MacBook Pro is now a possibility for me! I was hoping they would figure out how to do this, because I love MacOSX, but I have to have a Windows machine, now I can have both in one machine. Time to start saving up my money.
March 17th, 2006 at 9:18 am
» Apple Releases Boot Camp for Intel Macs » Blog Archive Alice Hill’s Real Tech News - Independent Tech says:
[…] Guess what? Apple just released software to let the Intel based Macs run Windows. Michael had already posted about the homebrew contest where they tried to do it, well, this patch will be free and on a trial basis, the final version will included in the Leopard release of Mac OS X. Apple today introduced Boot Camp, public beta software that enables Intel-based Macs to run Windows XP. Available as a download beginning today, Boot Camp allows users with a Microsoft Windows XP installation disc to install Windows XP on an Intel-based Mac, and once installation is complete, users can restart their computer to run either Mac OS X or Windows XP. Boot Camp will be a feature in “Leopard,” Apple’s next major release of Mac OS X, that will be previewed at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in August. […]
December 30th, 2006 at 12:42 am