Apple announces Windows XP capability on their Intel Mac machines

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Following the onmac.net project's early attempts at getting Windows XP to boot on Intel Macs, Apple has announced Boot Camp, its own fully supported solution to the problem. Booting Windows on Intel Macs isn't entirely straightforward, as the machines use Intel's Extensible Firmware Interface instead of a BIOS, which Windows XP doesn't support. The onmac.net project successfully booted the OS on several Intel Macs, but there were still lingering problems, including a lack of drivers and missing functionality. Boot Camp features an easy-to-use installer with a non-destructive partition manager, and lets users burn a driver CD with the missing Windows drivers for their Macs. Once Windows is installed, the user can pick between Windows XP and MacOS X by holding down the option key at startup.

Boot Camp will be integrated in the next version of MacOS X, code-named Leopard, which is expected at the end of this year or perhaps in early 2007. In the meantime, Apple supplies a public beta of Boot Camp on its site, in the form of a hefty 83MB download with a set of detailed instructions (PDF). Users need a fully patched MacOS X 10.4.6 operating system, the latest firmware update for their Intel Mac, a Windows XP Home or Professional Service Pack 2 CD, a blank CD, and 10GB of free space. There is no mention of future Windows Vista compatibility on the Boot Camp page for the time being, although Apple could very well update the software for Vista once the new Microsoft OS is released in January 2007.
 
Well, Apple released a firmware update for the Intel Macs. So, you can install 98, ME, 2000, XP, Ubuntu or for that matter any x86 OS as the updated firmware includes support for BIOS.

Boot Camp is a tool which will be used more for their marketing campaign as people still don't associate Windows with Macs. With Boot Camp, the average joe gets a kind of cushion. The fact is, with the updated firmware you can install any OS without the need for Boot Camp.
 
Hmmm...
So, its great in a way that you can use XP and Mac both on Intels; but its crap in a way that you can't use Mac on AMDs... :ohyeah:
 
This is good news. But then windows has implemented linux support on their virtual os software, so Apple also has to get a pie of the Virtual OS market. :)
 
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