Multi-booting Mac Intel Developer Machines

ytsejam-ppc writes "Ross Carlson over at Jasbone.com has a great article up on how to install multiple operating systems on the new Intel based developer edition Macs. His particular setup triple-booted Mac OS X 10.4.1 (Intel), CentOS 4 and Windows XP. Just makes me drool."

And?

[Midnight Thunder]

Given these aren't production machines, this does not mean too much, especially given that these have a BIOS. There have been many suggestions that production Intel based Macs won't be using the BIOS.

This is nice...

[daveschroeder]

...and this is easy since the Developer Transition Platform is just running a generic Intel motherboard, generic Intel video chipset, an Intel Pentium 4 660 processor with HT, and a standard Intel BIOS (NOT a Phoenix BIOS as has been incorrectly reported elsewhere), but what will really be great is when someone makes a Virtual PC- or vmware-like product (perhaps even one of those products themselves) that is a virtual machine that runs under Mac OS X that allows running essentially any x86 OS at near-full speed, side by side with Mac OS X, without having to reboot.

Since it will be running on x86 hardware, processor instructions do not have to be emulated: they can run natively at near-full speed of the underlying hardware.

Further, though Apple will do nothing [appleintelfaq.com] to stop users from installing Windows on production Intel-based Macintosh systems, it's likely that the production systems will evolve beyond the generic hardware that makes the Developer Transition Platform. Apple itself has said, "Don't assume that what you see in the transition boxes represents what will be present in the final product." [appleintelfaq.com] This means there may be additional specialized hardware for which Windows drivers and specialized support profiles will not be maintained by Apple. Of course, this isn't stopping anyone from making them, and Intel has said that Intel-based Macs will use commodity Intel processors, chipsets, and other support components [appleintelfaq.com], but it might not be quite as seamless as just popping in a Windows CD and installing (though it very well could be).

Let's also not forget that the production machines may not be [appleintelfaq.com] - and likely will not be - using BIOS, rendering useless any such conventional PC multi-boot configurations. (But even with EFI [intel.com] or Open Firmware [openfirmware.org], there's no reason Apple couldn't maintain a robust multi-boot system.)

The point is that a virtual machine product could offer a supported configuration for x86 OSes, including Windows, Linux variants, etc., without the headache and hassle of rebooting into another OS. Sure, dual/multi-booting has benefits, and certainly this will be possible on even the production hardware, but most users would likely prefer a Virtual PC-like environment for running x86 OSes/applications without rebooting.

On this topic, one wonders if Microsoft will be the entity that releases this first. After all, they've already got Virtual PC for Mac, and Virtual PC for Windows (and Microsoft Virtual Server) is exactly this type of virtual machine product, albeit for Windows. On one hand, you can argue that for Microsoft, it's just another copy of Windows sold, so why should they care? But on the other hand, if they make a first-class VM product for Mac OS X that runs Windows (and other x86 OSes) seamlessly at near-full speed of the native hardware, it definitely assists in the sales of more machines designed primarily to run Mac OS X, which could be a poor strategic choice...

But even if Microsoft doesn't do it, let's hope someone like EMC does with vmware.

For more general information, see http://appleintelfaq.com/ [appleintelfaq.com].

Re:Yes

[OverlordQ]

How is this a troll/flamebait? It's a logical comment, the number of us normal users who have or have access to the Developer Mac boxen is next to nil.

Old news...

[hongree]

see... [thinksecret.com] unrelated news: see... [overheardintheuk.com]

Re:now for the real question

[rsborg]

Which OS runs phtoshop faster?

Jeebus, this is a no-brainer. Obviously windows... the OSX code is all running under rosetta, unless someone has a nifty CS3 beta or something lying around. What would be more interesting is if someone who writes a cross platform win/mac software could test speed of their app across the two platforms after compiling for intel on OSX...

Re:now for the real question

[FLAGGR]

None of the OSX code is running in Roseta. Old PPC binaries for apps that haven't been ported yet is running in Roseta. Photoshop I would have to imagine will work on the release date, or near it.

Apple will be going with Pentium M

[green pizza]

No see that would at least make sense...
You know, go with the Pentium4 ... the perfect choice for your nextgen desktop and laptops...
The fact that any sane person rather see a PentiumM over a 4 doesn't stop Apple from their random rampage into techtown...
If I wanted a p4 box I'd buy a p4 box and throw Gentoo on it and avoid the whole "pay Steve money" issue... oh wait, that's what I did...

Huh?
Word on the street says Apple's Intel-powered machines will use Pentium M based CPUs, not Pentium 4.
Intel has stated several times that Pentium 4 doesn't have a whole lot of life left in it, and their roadmaps show enhanced and muli-core Pentium M systems as the future. Plus of all of the Intel benefits Steve Jobs mentioned, most don't even apply to the Pentium 4 (performance per watt, bright future, etc).
I don't know why Apple is using the P4 for their developer systems, maybe because their Intel builds for the past 3 years used P4 rather than P3, Athlon, or PentiumM.

Re:I thought this wasn't going to be able to happe

[FLAGGR]

No, its what they told us WOULD be possible.

Re:This is nice but...

[Nasarius]

You, sir, are retarded. XEON processors have no special 64-bit extensions beyond what the regular 64-bit Pentium 4 has.

Oh my, this must be embarassing for you:

Intel's first processor to actively implement the EM64T technology is the processor codenamed Nocona, and is being sold as Intel's latest multiprocessor Xeon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EM64T [wikipedia.org]

Re:The benefits are obvious

[FLAGGR]

Um, the GPL doesn't restrict the end user more, it restricts (if thats what you want to call it) people developing and extending the software.

The article (in case it goes away)

[Anonymous Coward]

July 21, 2005 Multibooting Intel based Macs - A Step-by-step How to Guide Disclaimer: We have read the NDA from Apple and do not see that this violates it. If we are wrong however someone please let us know and we'll happily remove the following. It is NOT or intention to violate this NDA or to make anyone upset. We are only trying to help others in the community by benefiting from the work we have done

By Ross Carlson [mailto] and Joel Wampler [mailto]

Quick Guide [slashdot.org] | Full Guide [slashdot.org] | Install OS X [slashdot.org] | Install Windows XP [slashdot.org] | Install CentOS Linux [slashdot.org] | Drivers [slashdot.org]

In this guide we'll take you through installing multiple operating systems on the Intel based Developer Macintosh machine. This guide was put together by Ross Carlson [mailto] and Joel Wampler [mailto] to hopefully get you through building a machine that can run every major operating system currently available. This guide takes about 2 hours total. Let's get started...

First there are a few things that you'll need:

• Decide what OSes you'll install
• Mac OS X Intel disk (the one that came with the Intel Mac)
• Windows XP SP2 CD (if you want XP - we tested with a already SP2'ed disc)
• Windows XP CD Key (obviously, just being safe...)
• CentOS 4 [centos.org] CD's (or your favorite distro - we got kernel panic's every time we tried Fedora Core 4 and CentOS worked great)
• CD Ejection Device (otherwise known as a paper clip - just in case...)

Notes:

• You're going to need a Linux install so you can use it's boot loader for your OS selection menu.
• We had major issues with Fedora Core 4. At first we thought it was an issue with HyperThreading support, and we did a "linux ht=off" at boot. This worked once but never again?!? Joel was also too lazy to make some Slackware CD's with SATA support so we just went with CentOS since we had it handy.
• Keep the CD Ejection Device handy - Apple thought it was a good idea to remove the button from the DVD drive so the only way to eject a disc if you need to is with the OS or the CD Ejection Device. So if you can't boot into an OS and you want to remove the CD you'll need that...

Quick Guide: - Return to Top [slashdot.org]
If you're like us and hate reading through pages of crap to get things done here is the quick version of what you'll need to do. We'll explain this step-by-step down below.

• Boot from the Mac OS X Install DVD
• Use the Disk Utility within the Installer to delete ALL partitions
• Use the drop down and select 3 partitions (if you're doing OSX/Windows/Linux) - YOU REALLY ONLY NEED A MAX OF 3!
• Change the size of the partitions as you desire (make sure to leave room for all your OSes)
• Set the first and third partition to "free space" - DO NOT FORMAT THEM!
• Set the second partition to Mac Journeled - name it "OS X" (or what you want)
• Write the partiton table
• Exit the Disk Utility
• Install OS X on the partition you created above (if you have more than 1 disk you did something wrong!)
• Once OS X is installed and working put in the Windows XP CD and reboot
• At boot make sure to hit a key so the machine boots from the XP CD
• Create an NTFS partition on the first empty partition - you'll see the other two - ignore them. The partition you'll create will be called "E:", don't worry...
• Exit the XP installer (AFTER you've created the partition - DO NOT proceed with setup).
• Restart XP Setup (remember to press enter on reboot)
• Now the first partition will be called C: - in

Re:Yes...

[daveschroeder]

Hehe. ;-)

For others who might really not know what it is, this is EFI:

http://www.intel.com/technology/efi/ [intel.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Firmware_I nterface [wikipedia.org]

Re:This is nice but...

[allanw]

He said: beyond what the regular 64-bit pentium4 has. Both chips implement em64t the same way.

But will it be possible with production hardware?

[Sv-Manowar]

Obviously as developer platforms, these boxes bear no real similarity to the Intel based macs that will eventually go into production, but I'm hopeful that the ability to boot Windows on Intel macs may remain even through to production hardware. Obviously there may be issues regarding whatever bios-replacement Apple chooses to use on their hardware, but I'm sure they're also aware of the potential for dual booting macs between Windows and OS X. Whether this is something they want to embrace with their new platform (and I seem to recall Phil Schiller stating that there was no reason Windows couldn't run on an x86 mac) or whether it's something that they consider would 'taint' the Macintosh user experience remains to be seen.

This boot setup must be a dream for some people out there with a gaming rush who would love to be able to get the best of both worlds (although the mac mini has its logical place here) . I only hope this flexibility doesn't get wiped out in production hardware..

Re:But will it run Linux...

[artem69]

From the source [apple.com]:

Macintosh computers that use an Intel microprocessor do not use Open Firmware. Although many parts of the IO registry are present and work as expected, information that is provided by Open Firmware on a PowerPC Macintosh (such as a complete device tree) is not available in the IO registry on a Macintosh that uses an Intel microprocessor.

tpm: say hello to my little friend...

[Anonymous Coward]

per the article: Other Device: There is also one of the Trusted Computing chips on the board - Windows Update will install the driver for that... sse3 and tpm are the reasons that mac os x/x86 will not run on anything other than apple devkits right now. apple's ATSServer is not compiled for i386 - with good reason: so that the 'rosetta' ppc translator is required. oah750 is 'rosetta', which has hooks to run correctly only through the presence of said TPM. executing ppc binaries manually results in a segfault. no tpm, no rosetta, no mac os x.

Re:torrent link for eveyone else

[archer75]

That particlar torrent is bundled with a trojan.

Re:Yes...

[tricorn]

What I haven't seen is any reason why EFI is better than Open Firmware (better for everyone else, that is - obviously, it is better for Intel since they can control it). The Wikipedia article says that EFI mandates the use of FAT (and, presumably, the ancient creaky ought-to-be-obsolete DOS partitioning format).

Linux already can boot under OF (e.g. the PPC version of Linux), making that work under an x86 version of OF should be trivial. Loading a BIOS emulator under OF to boot Windows should also be fairly easy to do. Writing a bootstrap loader that implements OF, for old machines that want to boot an OS that only boots under OF, should also be feasible (see e.g. the OpenBIOS project [slashdot.org].

Re:MS laughs last...

[ZorinLynx]

>Currently, on every Mac sold, MS gets the revenue for a copy of Office.

Uhh, the version of Office that comes with MacOS X, last I checked, was a time-limited trial, and not a fully copy. You still have to purchase a full copy if you want Office. So this statement is false.

Microsoft Office is very much optional on the MacOS X platform.

-Z

Re:Yes...

[Drakino]

(and, presumably, the ancient creaky ought-to-be-obsolete DOS partitioning format).

No actually. It uses GUID Partition Table (GPT). http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/GPT_F AQ.mspx [microsoft.com] is a good link to what GPT is, and also how different versions of Windows supports GPT today. If Apple goes with EFI (strongly hinted at by Apple devs) and GPT, Windows XP 32 will not boot off this solution, however, 64 bit versions will. Given that most of Intels chips will be 64 bit by the time Apple ships consumer products, it looks like this should be fine.

Dual booting doesn't interest me though, as it's a bunch of wasted time. Instead, I'm more interested in an OS X Apple Intel box that can run DarWine.

Re:This is nice but...

[daveschroeder]

First of all, shipping Intel-based machines probably won't even be using the Pentium 4; but:

http://appleintelfaq.com/#7 [appleintelfaq.com]

What about 64-bit computing?

Apple has not forgotten about 64-bit computing, or x86-64. However, Apple is trying to make the initial phase of the transition as simple as possible. 64-bit is a requirement for systems utilizing more than 4GB of RAM, which will be a necessity for some applications in the future, and is currently possible on today's Apple systems; Apple knows 64-bit capability is a requirement.

http://www.macworld.com/2005/06/features/intelfaq/ [macworld.com]

Does this mean Apple's abandoning its commitment to a 64-bit architecture?

We don't have any specifics yet, but it seems highly unlikely to us that Apple would turn its back on 64-bit chips. Intel offers 64-bit chips and it's almost impossible to conceive that Apple would move backward in this area.

"Don't assume that what you see in the transition boxes represents what will be present in the final product." -Dean Reece, Apple [appleintelfaq.com]

Re:Yes

[HairyCanary]

If you wanted one, you could buy it for 1500 bucks. It costs 500 bucks to get into the developer program so you're eligible to buy one in the first place, and a thousand bucks for the machine itself. I've thought about it...

Re:Yes

[jbravo556]

You can't 'BUY' one. For $1500, you get a year's select developer membership and you get to 'Lease' the machine. You'll have to return it by the end of 2006.