Installing Windows on my Mac

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Tonight, I committed heresy – I installed Windows on my Mac.

Ironically (and this is where I need to eat a small amount of humble pie, having previously criticised the OS X interface – although I did also say that I don’t like the new Windows Vista Aero interface or KDE), when I bought my Intel-based Mac the intention was to run Windows but then I decided to give Mac OS X a spin and I quite like it. There is a big caveat though – most Mac users zealots will say that once you switch you’ll never want to go back and I don’t fall into that camp. I now run Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1, Windows Vista beta 2, Mac OS X 10.4.7 and SUSE Linux 10 on my various machines (some virtual, some physical) and each has it’s place. The fact that I can dual-boot between the two that I use for my desktop work is an added bonus.

Although Mac OS X, iLife 06, Microsoft Office 2004 for Macintosh and Microsoft Messenger for Mac provide enough features to cover at least 90% of my daily computing needs, I do still need to use Adobe Photoshop (and that’s not yet optmised for MacIntels) and Microsoft Money 2000(although I’m sure there’s something available for the Mac that I could use instead). I also have legacy (and partially complete) digital video that I edited using Windows Movie Maker 2.0 and I don’t have the time to re-edit it. For that reason, Windows will be on my Mac for a while.

I chose to use Apple Boot Camp (v1.0.2 Beta) – other methods of installing Windows XP on a MacIntel are available – and the rest of this post summarises my experiences of this (relatively straightforward) operation.

The first thing to note is that Boot Camp is currently beta software and although no indication is given of how long it will continue to work for, the licensing agreement does make it clear that use of the software is for a limited time only. It’s also unsupported.

The Boot Camp beta is provided in a disk image file called BootCamp102.dmg. This contains three files:

  • Boot Camp Beta Installation & Setup Guide.pdf
  • BootCampAssistant.pkg
  • Read Before You Install.app

The first of these files is an extremely readable, 17-page, document that describes the basic steps to install and configure Boot Camp; however there are some extra points highlighted below that might be useful.

Firstly, my brand new Mac didn’t have the latest firmware on it. Although Software Update said I was up-to-date from a software perspective, I also needed to download and install Mac mini (early 2006) Firmware Update 1.0.1. This successfully brought my firmware up from MM11.004B.B00 to MM11.0055.B03 but it’s also worth planning for less successful updates. Apple’s advice for dealing with failed firmware upgrades requires the Firmware Restoration CD v1.0. As this is supplied in an Apple disk image (.DMG) file, it’s probably worth burning a copy before attempting to upgrade the firmware on your Mac (unless you have another Mac available – .DMG files aren’t much help if you have blown up your Mac and need to download/burn a CD using another operating system).

Once all the prerequisites have been met, running the Boot Camp Assistant is straightforward enough, guiding the operator through the process of creating a Macintosh Drivers CD and creating a disk partition for Windows; however before Boot Camp would let me start the Windows XP installation it insisted on restarting the Mac (using the Power button), resulting in an unclean shutdown (which thankfully didn’t cause any major issues later).

The Windows XP installation is just like any other – although I noticed that it detected my external hard disk (I don’t remember any previous Windows installations recognising USB-attached drives but I may be wrong – I’ve done so many over the years that I probably don’t notice any more). I followed Apple’s advice and installed Windows on the third partition on my internal hard disk (C:) and formatted the disk using NTFS. One downside of the installation is that because the drivers for the Marvell Yukon 88E8053 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller are not present within the Windows media, there was no network available during installation to join a domain – not a problem as I could install in workgroup mode and join the domain later.

Windows XP installation on an Intel Mac Mini

After installing the Macintosh drivers and software (with one reboot required part-way through), everything was looking good; however beware that there are three unrecognised devices shown in Device Manager:

  • USB Human Interface Device (USB\VID_05AC&PID_8240\5&12F9C752&0&2).
  • PCI Device (PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27A3&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_03\3&B1BFB68&0&38).
  • Unknown Device (ACPI\IFX0101\1).

Apple does point out that certain devices are not supported under Windows XP and for the Mac Mini that includes the Apple Remote – I suspect that’s the USB device. At the time of writing, Craig Hart’s PCI and AGP vendors, devices and subsystems identification file doesn’t recognise the PCI device although the vendor class is Intel. The ACPI device is a mystery.

I also found that the headphone socket doesn’t mute the internal speakers when running Windows (it’s fine with Mac OS X) but I can live with that.

Having installed Windows there was some basic housekeeping to be done: join my Active Directory domain (to pick up group policy for Windows updates); install anti-virus software; label the Windows partition to give it a sensible name; and set the default operating system to be Mac OS X. Finally, I installed MacDrive v6.1.4 to allow read/write access from Windows to the external hard disk that holds my data files and is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journalled) (I previously found the 4GB file size limit with FAT32 to be too restrictive).

So that’s it. After months of talking about it, I finally have Windows running on a Mac – albeit not the Media Center Edition, and without the use of my remote control.

(My digital) life is good.

Warning – buy your upgrades when you buy your Mac

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

A few weeks back, I bought a Mac Mini. Because I wanted it shipped immediately (and because the upgrade prices sounded a bit steep), I stuck with the standard 80GB hard disk and 512MB of RAM and now I’m finding performance to be a little sluggish – I suspect that’s due to a lack of memory.

When I ordered the Mac, the cost of specifying 2x1GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM SODIMMs instead of 2x256MB was £210.01. Likewise, to take the SATA hard disk from 80GB to 120GB would cost £89.99. Those are (very) high prices for standard PC components but nothing compared to the quote I just had from the Apple Store for 2GB of RAM (with “free” installation) – over £420! Mac:Upgrades can do a similar deal (but not while I wait) for around £325 but when I look at the memory prices using the Crucial Memory Advisor Tool to I get two options that will work for me, each at a much lower price:

  1. I could drop one of my 256MB SODIMMS and replace it with a 1GB module, giving me a total of 1.25GB for just £98.69.
  2. Alternatively, I could take out all of the existing memory and add a 2GB kit (2x1GB of matched memory) for £186.81.

…so, I guess there will be bits of MacIntel all over my desk in a few days time…

Crucial recommend the matched pair option for reasons of performance (Apple say it allows memory interleaving), and if I’m going to open up my Mac (which looks to be a delicate operation) then I’d rather only do it once – that means option 2, which is only a few pounds less than the original upgrade would have been (although I will have 512MB of spare memory afterwards).

In all, for the sake of my warranty (and sanity), it looks as if the best option would have been to specify extra RAM at the time of purchase, but I guess if I do wreck the machine in the process of upgrading, the cost of replacing it is not much more than Apple would charge me for 2GB of RAM!

Rumour has it that the new Intel Core 2 Duo processors are socket compatible with my Core Duo (and quad core chips should be available by the end of the year) so a return to the operating table for a processor upgrade is a distinct possibility for the future.

The week when my digital life was on hold

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Last week I wrote about the arrival of my new Mac Mini, along with claims that “[my] digital life starts here”. Thankfully, unlike a chunk of my computing resource, my physical life doesn’t rely on Apple Support.

I was experiencing problems maintaining a steady Ethernet connection, initially whilst downloading OS X updates from Apple and then whilst copying data from a Windows XP PC. After a random time the connection would drop, with receive errors shown in the OS X Network Utility. The only way to break this cycle was to restart the computer after which time the network was once again available.

I spent almost two hours on the phone to Apple support staff, who were generally helpful, but seemed to be relying on scripted support sequences and an internal knowledge base. It seemed that all Apple really wanted to do was rule out the Apple hardware and point the blame on something else on the network. Sure enough, I couldn’t replicate the problem on a direct crossover cable (100Mbps full duplex), or via a 10Mbps half duplex hub, 100Mbps full duplex switch – just via a 100Mbps half duplex hub but crucially, the other devices on the network were all able to communicate with each other via the same hub with no errors at all. Only the Mac had a problem.

I finally snapped and said I wanted to return my shiny aluminium paperweight when the support analyst suggested I checked the firewall settings on the PC from where I was trying to copy data (I pointed out that if there was a firewall issue then no data at all would be copied – not several hundred megabytes before crashing and in any case the problem existed downloading updates from Apple’s website too).

After being advised to take my Mac to a hardware specialist 30 miles away (to see if there were any problems communicating with another Mac), I decided to rebuild it from the operating system install disks. The 14 Mac updates that took so long to install before (now 13 as one was a permanent BIOS update) were applied with just one error. It seemed that the problem was with the operating system as installed in the factory (presumably not a DVD installation, but performed using disk duplication software). Unfortunately, although it seems to take a lot longer before crashing now, the problem is still there when I connect via the hub, so I’ve added a switch just for the Mac (everything else is as it was before).

One thing I should say is that the guys who responded to my call for help on the Apple discussion forums were really helpful (I guess switching from Windows to OS X is something which Mac users would like to encourage).

So, now I’m up and running and my digital life can start. Just as well, because my new Fujitsu-Siemens S20-1W monitor turned up yesterday – 20.1″ of widescreen vision, at a resolution of 1680×1050, in a brushed aluminium case (no plastic here) and almost £200 less expensive than the Apple equivalent (I got it from Dabs.com for £365).

Fujitsu-Siemens S20-1W

Mac 101 and Switch 101

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Last week I took delivery of my new Apple Macintosh. I’m still having some teething problems (more on that when I get a resolution to my networking issues) but right now the Mac is at home and I’m in a hotel in London, surfing and blogging from my Windows Vista notebook. Anyway, I just came across the Mac 101 and Switch 101 sections of the Apple website which are really cool resources for those who are getting used to a Mac for the first time (either as new computer users or switching from Windows respectively). Useful stuff.

I particularly like the Switch 101 tag line – “Lose Ctrl. Gain Command.”

Apparently, my digital life starts here

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

A few years ago, I bought one of the original Apple iMac G3s. I tried to love it, but I found the operating system too difficult to live with and eventually I sold it to my mate Stuart (after it had sat idle for a year or so).

iMac G3

Nowadays, Macs are based on standard PC hardware and BSD Unix, so I decided to get myself a Mac Mini for all my digital media work (the Intel Core Duo 1.66GHz model), although I do intend to dual boot OS X and Windows XP (mostly out of idle curiosity)… and one day I might manage to install Linux on it too.

Apple’s UK distribution centre is only about 25 miles away from my house and although there is no next day shipping option, the guys at the Apple Store told me that they would assign my order a priority for fast dispatch (hoping that it would arrive next day). Priority! Pah! No such thing; however was dispatched within 24 hours and the man from UPS delivered it yesterday afternoon (still a day before Apple’s official estimate, but I had really wanted to get my hands on it before the weekend). Unfortunately, work got in the way of me playing with my new toy and I couldn’t do anything with it until yesterday evening.

Once I’d opened the outer packaging, I just had to take a picture of it all still boxed up (when was the last time you saw any other PC arrive in such attractive packaging?) – according to the printing on the back of the box “your digital life starts here”.

My new Mac. Still in the box. Look at all that gorgeous packaging

Once unboxed, setting everything up was really simple – after just a few questions (language, country/region, keyboard layout and a few other options) I was up and running; however the OS X software update utility told me that there were 14 updates to apply.

It all looked simple enough, but the Mac kept losing its Ethernet connection each time I tried to download and install all of the available updates (not even caching them, so it had to start the entire list of downloads again each time). After various restarts (to kick the Ethernet connection back into life) and resorting to installing updates a few at a time I’ve nearly got it working. I’m trying hard to be objective about OS X (I will try and live with it for a while before I install Windows XP on the Mac) but this initial experience has soured things slightly.

Still, it is a very attractive PC, and once I’ve transferred the data from my old PC I will have liberated quite a lot of desk space. Just enough to fill with a nice widescreen LCD monitor I think…

Forum evangelism

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

This example forum post history was stolen from James O’Neill. Given the comments I get whenever I write about Macs (like the prospect buying a Mac and installing an operating system that’s not OS X on it), it seemed kind of relevant:

A: I’m thinking of getting a new computer.
B: I’ve got a Mac, you should get one too.
C: Macs are pretty, but Windows is more flexible.
D: Windoze is evil man. Look at all the money M$ makes. You should get Linux [gives list of distributions].
B: Linux is hard. My granny can use a Mac, and she’s been dead for 10 years.
D: If she can’t build a kernel she shouldn’t have a computer, tree hugger.
C: Have you looked at Windows XP-Dead Grandparent Edition? It’s got lots of features [lists them. All of them].
E: Yeah, but that’s the problem XP DGE is so bloated. It’s been downhill since Windows 3.0, and we didn’t get viruses in those days.
D: And those features are just a cover for Micro$oft to steal your brain.
C: [Gives feature by feature justification, explains 15 years of changes in viruses. Denies brain stealing rumour. Misses meal].
A: None of you have given me a reason to choose one OS over another.
F-Z: WE DON’T CARE!
K: Why do you need a computer? In my day we did everything in the darkroom – computers are just cheating.
J: Hey, I’m new here and I’m not sure if this is the right place – does anyone have a recipe for pancakes?
L: Grab yourself a 3174 and run it green screen to an OS/390 host. If you’re short of cash then AS/400s are going for about £129 on eBay. Those fancy Mac things are really based on RS6000 technology anyway. Apple steal everything just like M$.
X: Nah – OS/390 hasn’t cut it since they renamed it Z/OS…

Sound familiar to anyone?

Running another operating system on a Mac

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Since Apple switched to using Intel processors for certain Macintosh models, I’ve been excited by the possibility of running Windows on a Mac. Some say its sacrilege. I say it’s sensible. I love the Apple hardware, but am not a fan of the software, which (in my opinion) is proprietary and expensive. I also know Windows very well (including how to keep it secure). Ideally, I’d have a Mac Mini, dual-booting a major Linux distribution and Windows XP.

There have been various reports of people who have managed to write an EFI boot loader for Windows on a “MacIntel”, as well as reports of those who have turned their systems into an unbootable and unsupported heap of PC components in the process; but Apple provided me with a nice birthday present earlier this month by announcing Boot Camp – software to allow dual-booting of OS X and Windows XP, including driver support.

I’m not quite ready to switch yet – Boot Camp is still a beta and the final release will be included in the next version of OS X (meaning I’ll have to shell out another wad of cash to upgrade to OS X Leopard before I can use a release version of the Boot Camp technology). I’m also wary of first generation MacIntel hardware and would like to see support for Windows XP Media Center Edition, so guess I’ll be watching this space for a little longer.

In the meantime, these links provide really useful information on the progress of Windows on a Mac:

For Mac users who fancy using Linux, there are some PowerPC Linux distros (like Yellow Dog Linux) and if you’re not convinced as to why you might want to use them (after all, isn’t OS X just another Unix operating system anyway?) I recommend Giles Turnbull’s article entitled why install Linux on your Mac? Then there’s the Mactel-Linux project to adapt Linux to MacIntel hardware as well as reports that Red Hat plan to include Intel-based Mac support in Fedora and a variety of sites claiming to have other distros working too. Whilst it sounds a bit of a mess (chain-loading LILO via NTLDR), there’s also a triple-boot solution (OS X/XP/Linux) using Boot Camp (from the OnMac guys).

Finally, for those who want to play this the other way around and run OS X on a PC, there’s the OSx86 project.

Apple will not stop Intel Macs from running other operating systems

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I’ve just read in today’s Windows IT Pro magazine network WinInfo Daily Update that Intel-based Macs will be able to run Windows (which presumably means they can also run Linux, or any other x86 operating system). I probably will buy a Mac Mini then (once they go to Intel too)… maybe I could find a way to turn it into a media centre PC (I could just use Front Row I guess) – a very nice set top box that would be…

I do think that Apple are missing a trick though by restricting OS X to Apple hardware. Surely software margins are much higher than (even Apple’s premium-priced) hardware margins.

Apple launches Intel Macs (and new iPod accessories)

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

So, Apple finally launched the new Intel-based iMacs yesterday. These use Intel Core Duo processors (formerly codenamed Yonah), which I think means they are still 32-bit, at a time when the rest of the PC world is finally starting to wake up to 64-bit technologies. Still, at least it’s a step in the right direction (and dual core should whip up performance nicely, although I do doubt Apple’s claims of a doubling in performance simply by going dual core, unless each core is also much faster than the old PowerPC processor).

Of more interest to me are new iPod accessories – like the iPod Radio Remote. Shame it needs an iPod Nano or Video and I’ve only got a Mini.

Windows on a Mac?

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Ever since Apple announced last year that they will switch to using Intel processors, the industry has been alive with speculation as to which Mac model will switch first. My view is a bit different – Apple make fantastic-looking PCs, and if they have Intel hardware I ought to be able to run a version of Windows on one. Or, perhaps I could run Mac OS X in a Virtual PC on Windows (probably not, as I guess it will look for an Apple trusted platform module)?

On the way to work today, I was listening to episode 36 of the This Week in Tech podcast (incidentally, one of my favourite podcasts – even if it is a little US-centric) which briefly discusses the possibility of a new emulator for Windows applications on a Mac (not like Wine for Linux, which is API-based – you will need a copy of Windows in order to make this work, in a similar manner to running Linux applications on Solaris using BrandZ), so maybe I really can have the best of both worlds.

All I need to know now is, with the industry finally starting the push to 64-bit technology, will the new Intel Macs use cheap 32-bit processors (an early report from ThinkSecret suggested 3.6GHz Pentium 4s), or some new 64-bit dual-core beast? With CES taking place this week (Intel has already made some major announcements about its brand, identity and technology direction) and MacWorld next week (surely there must be some news there about Intel Macs), maybe we’ll get an answer soon.