I just got a good deal on a Macbook, and was wondering if anyone had suggestions on which program to use to get XP and OSX on my Mac. I have only heard of parallels, and boot camp.
Dual Boot for Intel Mac?
- Thread starter Shaman
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Why would you want to sully your beautiful Mac?
Sorry, I have no idea how Boot Camp works. I don't even know if it's something that comes with the Mac.
Sorry, I have no idea how Boot Camp works. I don't even know if it's something that comes with the Mac.
To dual boot you need Boot Camp. Parallels lets you run windows apps from inside osx. I think you can use VM Ware or virtual pc.
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I believe Rosetta lets you run Windows application on a Mac.
Boot Camp does not come with a Mac?
Boot Camp does not come with a Mac?
Rosetta is the application layer that allows for Power PC-based OSX software apps to run on the Intel Mac. Those apps *may* run a bit slower on the Intel mac as the Rosetta software is a translation layer between the PPC based progam and the OS itself.
Crossover lets a limited amount of Windows (Win32) apps run on top of the Mac (or Linux). Neat stuff. But can be tricky.
Parallels or VMWare Fusion (I vote for VMWare fusion) lets you run a complete Windows installation, in a window, from within the Mac. Pretty much guaranteeing the Win32 application(s) you need to run, will run without having to reboot the computer just to run them.
Boot Camp is essentialy a disk repartitioning tool kit that shrinks your OSX partition down to a reasonable size, then allows you to run Windows natively (on the bare metal) in it's own partition of the hard drive. The problem is that you have to reboot in & out of OSX everytime you want to do something Windows related. While this is great for games, it's a pain to reboot so often.
After using both these products, I strongly suggest VM Fusion. Parallels 3 has a NASTY habit of chewing up virtual disk files. Moved to VM Fusion and it's been rock solid. A friend of mine has a MacBook and had Parallels on it. He ran 4 instances of Linux on it at the same time. Problem is, Parallels not only ruined the 4 virtual disks for all the Linux installations, it hosed the entire partition table for the hard disk. He bought VM Fusion and tossed his copy of Parallels.
The only caveat I see with VM Fusion is using USB devices on the virtual machine as I've seen BSOD's on the VM with these. Hopefully VMWare will iron this out in short order. Good thing to note is that even with many BSOD's on the VM, there was no file corruption of the VM itself.
Good luck!
Crossover lets a limited amount of Windows (Win32) apps run on top of the Mac (or Linux). Neat stuff. But can be tricky.
Parallels or VMWare Fusion (I vote for VMWare fusion) lets you run a complete Windows installation, in a window, from within the Mac. Pretty much guaranteeing the Win32 application(s) you need to run, will run without having to reboot the computer just to run them.
Boot Camp is essentialy a disk repartitioning tool kit that shrinks your OSX partition down to a reasonable size, then allows you to run Windows natively (on the bare metal) in it's own partition of the hard drive. The problem is that you have to reboot in & out of OSX everytime you want to do something Windows related. While this is great for games, it's a pain to reboot so often.
After using both these products, I strongly suggest VM Fusion. Parallels 3 has a NASTY habit of chewing up virtual disk files. Moved to VM Fusion and it's been rock solid. A friend of mine has a MacBook and had Parallels on it. He ran 4 instances of Linux on it at the same time. Problem is, Parallels not only ruined the 4 virtual disks for all the Linux installations, it hosed the entire partition table for the hard disk. He bought VM Fusion and tossed his copy of Parallels.
The only caveat I see with VM Fusion is using USB devices on the virtual machine as I've seen BSOD's on the VM with these. Hopefully VMWare will iron this out in short order. Good thing to note is that even with many BSOD's on the VM, there was no file corruption of the VM itself.
Good luck!
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Hmm, thanks for the explanation. Not that I plan on running PC software or anything.
So Rosetta "kicks in" all by itself as soon as open (or attempt to open) a PC application on my Mac? I presume it doesn't work for any kind of software?
I've had a partitioned HD on my old iMac to run both, OS9 and OS X. Never again will I do such a heroic thing.
So Rosetta "kicks in" all by itself as soon as open (or attempt to open) a PC application on my Mac? I presume it doesn't work for any kind of software?
I've had a partitioned HD on my old iMac to run both, OS9 and OS X. Never again will I do such a heroic thing.
Yes, Rosetta is a shim-layer thing where it works in the background and you never know it's there. Quite slick.
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I'm curious, is there any way to know if Rosetta will work with a particular PC software other than by trial and error?
Rosetta won't work with PC software at all it's only a translation layer to make PPC OSX oftware work on Intel OSX machines.
In order to run Windows apps from the Mac desktop w/o the virtual machine or boot camp thing is WINE. Crossover sells a product that works quite well. WINE is the open source version (free) and Crossover sells the product...essentially a pretty GUI to make installing & running the Win32 software easier.
For example, I tested Crossover 6.0 on an Intel mac 10.4.9 running IE 6 just fine. We need IE for a few internal apps. It was nice to end-run the "you gotta buy a windows license if you run a VM or boot camp" requirement. Essentially WINE is an interpretive layer that sits between the Win32 application and the host OS. It's analogous to Rosetta, but they are completely different sets of code.
I think Crossover has a trial period so you can kick the tires on it.
In order to run Windows apps from the Mac desktop w/o the virtual machine or boot camp thing is WINE. Crossover sells a product that works quite well. WINE is the open source version (free) and Crossover sells the product...essentially a pretty GUI to make installing & running the Win32 software easier.
For example, I tested Crossover 6.0 on an Intel mac 10.4.9 running IE 6 just fine. We need IE for a few internal apps. It was nice to end-run the "you gotta buy a windows license if you run a VM or boot camp" requirement. Essentially WINE is an interpretive layer that sits between the Win32 application and the host OS. It's analogous to Rosetta, but they are completely different sets of code.
I think Crossover has a trial period so you can kick the tires on it.
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My head hurts!
LOL
Dual boot? It is no longer the 1990s. Virtual machines (e.g. VMWare Fusion or Parallels) is the way to go. This is not niche technology, many corporations use virtualization as a standard operating environment.
-T
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I used the term dual boot because I was ingnorant on the best way to refer to it as, and being that boot camp, the most widely known software is something you have to boot out of, then technically it is still dual boot. I bought the Mac to use OSX, but I need Xp for a lot of things, as I have the software for XP and don’t want to buy two of them, but things like Final Cut Pro and other platform specific programs can’t be run on a WIN based machine, so I decided that I needed to get a smaller 13” laptop, then retire the 15” for desktop duty.
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