Apple announced a public beta for a new utility called Boot Camp, allowing users of Intel-based macs (iMac, Mac Mini, MacBook Pro) to easily install and run Windows XP.

Holy Shit

After the contest to hack the EFI of the Intel Macs to run Windows, I didn’t think this was far off, but I certainly did not expect it to come from Apple.

Casey first alerted me to this, and my initial impulse was to reply, “why the hell would I want to dual boot?” The answers are slim, with the highest on the list being “because you can,” shortly followed by “could I play Half-life 2 or Counter-Strike: Source?” That’d be rather impressive… But certainly not productive. One of the reasons I bought the MacBook was to abandon Windows.

Anything requiring me to turn off my current Mac OS where everything pretty much “just works” and switch to Windows without access to running my OS X programs will be disruptive, and running Windows without official support from either Apple or Microsoft promises a rough experience.

the Apple Remote Control (IR), Apple Wireless (Bluetooth) keyboard or mouse, Apple USB Modem, MacBook Pro’s sudden motion sensor, MacBook Pro’s ambient light sensor, and built-in iSight camera will not function correctly when running Windows.

However, if I could just install some Windows libraries and then run programs compiled for windows without the full OS, and do so natively while remaining in OS X, then I’d be happy. Hopefully some day soon we’ll see that instead.

But I’m a glutton for punishment, and will at least try Bootcamp it to see what happens. Apple offers some details on requirements and issues one might expect.

Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it’ll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world. So be sure to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes.

After I backup my Mac.

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Update:
So!

Today I ran Boot Camp, which had me burn a CD with hardware drivers, set the partition size for Windows (5GB default), and mere minutes later, I was rebooting to a Windows install CD.

Note: They’re not kidding when they say you need a Windows XP disk with Service Pack 2. I started with an MSDN disk handy containing that, XP Home, and something else accessible via boot-menu. Sadly, that menu was unusable as the laptop keyboard was not even initialized during the emulated boot process. So don’t bother attempting this unless you’ve got the XP CD proper: the one that you’d get at the store, with your PC, burned ISO to a bootable disk, whatever. And your legal XP license key. That you acquired legally. Microsoft is happy you want to deface your Mac, as long as you pay them for the priviledge.

Anyway, I got a “real” XP disk, and let Windows install. It was… a windows install. Nothing special there. So it puts files on the disk, boots off those files, and I’m looking at the default Windows background wallpaper. Without the hardware drivers, the resolution isn’t perfect and the color depth is off, but it’s certainly Windows. I inserted the disk containing the previous mentioned drivers and the auto-run installer kicked in. Approving the driver updates led to another reboot, and finally that damned Windows startup sound and I’m looking at Windows in 1440×900.

Pretty easy, and very creepy.
(In fact, I’m typing this update in Firefox, in Windows. On a Mac.)

Then, the time spent in “Windows Update.” While that ran I installed Gaim so I would feel so disconnected while operating in Windows. After some long downloads and a reboot, the updates were complete.

First fun thing – Half-Life 2 CDs. Pop disk 1 in, auto-runs… and lets me know I’ve got embarassingly little space available to install it’s content. A quick look at my mess reminds me I failed to give the Windows partition anything more than the default 5GB, which might sound like a lot… (have you looked at how much space your new windows install takes up?), but really 5GB isn’t if you want to dump a few modern games on your drive. No obvious way to resize my partition.

So I start over in Boot Camp with a 15GB Windows partition for round 2.

2 hours later…

Half-Life 2 CDs! (I’m still anxious to try Counter-Strike) At this point we’re still just Windows on a computer, nothing exciting while I swap CDs. Since HL2 runs with Valve’s Steam app, I’ve got to wait a while for it to decode/authorize/download updates. So I let that run.

While that’s downloading, I pull out my Doom3 CDs. Again some disc swapping, and Doom’s done! And Steam is still downloading and applying updates. While it does that, let’s just see how Doom runs…

I can’t make Doom 3 slow.

Nice. I’ve not used a machine that ran Doom well until my MacBook.

Looks like Counter-Strike: Source is 99% patched now, so I’ll end this post with this:

• Boot Camp was simple and quick, and had I allowed for more space the first time, I wouldn’t have had to repeat my steps. Majority of time consumed was basic waiting on the Windows install.
• I’ve never had a machine that ran Windows this well. It’s almost a shame I’ll only use it to play few games. Most of my time I’ll be back in OS X doing everything else.