Issues with mac? Good info here

I don't run a mac, but I ran across this article in my morning news:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/APPLE_WINDOWS_HACK?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=BUSINESS

Its about a prize of cash rewards for making windows xp run on a apple..

Now I don't have the mentioned download site, but I'm sure with a little searching you can find it

i do hope this helps..not really a technical person

Virtual PC has always run windows on a Mac, although I'm not sure about XP.

With Intel processors, VPC should run like lighting. I'm wondering what all the fuss is about.
Is it because VPC might not be needed any more ?

I'm all for it either way. But personally I'd rather be able to dual boot into OS X on PC hardware! ( much cheaper! )

The idea was (the prize has been won already, btw) to make WinXP *boot* on one of the new Intel-based MACs.

No VPC. Just a technical challenge.

You are right in saying that the new Intel Macs should run VPC much faster (the PPC family, up to G4, had the ability to switch byte order on the fly, G5 design removed the feature, so Intel virtualization was much slower).

VPC will still be needed, though, because it allows you to host Windows as a sort of *application* inside OSX, so switching back and forth, and exchanging data would be easier than having to reboot.

Apple has also stated that they will be do their best to hamper ports of OSX to non-Apple hardware, btw.

I hoped this might even make it easier for those fighting with the mac version to run the windows version

its one more option, at least.

I find this kind of insulting ... "fighting with the mac version"??? Where did you get that idea?

There are performance issues with all versions of SL depending mostly on how new your hardware is, but SL runs extremely well on the Mac as long as you have a fairly recent machine.

Many of the more serious SL players use Macs exclusively and many folks at Linden Labs do as well. It's likely that once they get the bugs out of the IntelMac version of SL that it will be the benchmark that Windows users can only hope to achieve.

I use SL on a low-power Mac (iBook G4, April 2005 version with 768MB) and a well-powered Mac (iMac G5 17", last PPC iMac with 1.5 GB).

While the first one is slow and has poor graphics (graphic card is only 32MB after all) the latter works very well. Both are quite stable (had random crashes with 1.8 IIRC, but that was cured pretty soon by a LL patch).

If the problem is raw speed, virtualization of a different architecture may only hurt more (especially because Windows itself is not exactly "svelte" as an OS).

Stability does not seem to be an issue with Mac anyway, so, again, would make very little sense to use XP-in-OSX and expect any improvement.

The reason I have a Mac is so I don't have to run Windows.

I wasn't saying the mac is bad..I wasn't saying windows is best. You can 'fight with the mac' and 'wight with the windows.' there is no distinction besised OS...

and whos to say the best version will be on mac? The majority of home pc users use windows..LL is going for the biggest crowd...

But thats a debate and not what I intended. I can see now why many don't want to be helpful..

In order to be helpful, you should contribute informations you have a bit of first hand knowledge of, or at the very least resist the temptation of just sending a link about articles you didn't really read (or understand) because a few words in those seemed cogent to a specific topic.

You did warn us that "you are not a technical person" in the very first post. Good.

But really, if you don't own a Mac, have no experience of how SL works (or fails) on the two architectures, don't know anything about virtualization, don't know the Mac "culture" (most if not all the people using Macs have been exposed to both "worlds", precisely because, as you state, Windows is more widespread, and so their choice is a conscious one) and did not even really understand what the original article was about, how can you hope to be "helpful"?

Thank you. You said it so well. As for booting XP on an Intel Mac, one would only need to do so for those programs that aren't available on the Mac platform. Running SL on Windows XP booting on an Intel Mac would be unnecessary.

[edit]
I guess I should add the link ...
http://joyoftech.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/802.html

Found It!! Here's the link to the video of Windows XP Pro booting & running on a Mac. Not the speediest thing yet, but it IS possible. Why they'd do it? Damned if I know!!

Leo Laporte's Blog & Video

The reason for the dual booting seemed to be a business owner wanted to run mac programming, but some software for his business only ran on windows and he didn't want to have to reboot or run 2 computers.

Jonas, please stop talking of thing you obviously don't know anything about. Your preceding sentence makes no sense at all.

"DUAL BOOTING" means the ability to boot in one of a set of different OSes (example, Linux & WinXP). This is usually accomplished by a specific sw called "boot manager", such us the venerable Lilo. This allows you to choose which OS will be started by showing a menu at boot time, where the user can pick what he prefers.

"he didn't want to have to reboot" and "dual booting" don't mix. With "dual booting" when you need to switch to a different OS you have to... reboot.

So this "business owner" would best be served by some kind of virtualization product like VirtualPC allowing you to run an instance of WinXP as a "guest application" of OSX.

The viceversa is not possible (Intel architecture could'nt efficiently mimic PPC) but it si possible to host Linux inside Windows or viceversa, and different versions of Windows inside Windows.

If you want to learn more, google for "wmware", "virtual pc", "lilo", "grub", "guest pc", "bochs".

The point is, in laymens terms, that he probably wanted to run mac while still running certian programs that only accept windows..

Pardon my ingorance and attempts at learning..

They wanted to do it for two reasons:
1) It was a contest (you could win 12000$ I think).
2) To see if it was technically possible.

Even if this may make little or no sense to most of us, there is a sort of ongoing tradition to try porting OS to the most diverse architectures possible, even when, like in the case of attempting to port Linux to the iPod, the end result is more a curiosity than having any practical value.

See: Slashdot thread on the contest

1. True- it was up to $13000 last time I heard.
2. Technically possible it is.

Yea, seen Linux on the iPod. Also read about using Linux on an Xbox.

I prefer the "performance" stuff myself. Case mods, water-cooling, vapor phase-change cooling, etc. The coolest one I've seen done was submerging the motherboard/CPU/Video card into vegetable oil. It ran!! The temperatures stayed as low, if not lower, than if was turned off. A Bit extreme but was fun to watch the video!

I was told that VPC will NOT run on the Intel-based MACs.

The current version of VPC will most assuredly *not* work on Intel MACs. Due to the nature of the beast, an Universal Binary version would be absurd to say the least (the entire program is trying to emulate an Intel machine inside a PPC one...).

A future version of VPC (assuming Microsoft will want to go there), developed specifically for Intel MACs is of course possible, but will need a complete rewrite, whose internals will be more similar to VMWare than the current VPC ones.

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/default.aspx?pid=macIntelQA

Q. What does the announcement about Intel-based Macs mean for Virtual PC for Mac?

A. Virtual PC for Mac Version 7 is still the best emulation solution for users who have PowerPC-based Macs, but it does not run on Intel-based Macs. We are working with Apple to determine the feasibility of developing Virtual PC for Mac for Intel-based Macs. Virtual PC for Mac is highly dependent on the operating system and hardware and will require additional development to run on Intel-based Macs.

VPC for mac emulates an intel compatible processor, yes... but thats only a minor difference in change to the new machines. MS already has VPC for Windows that doesnt do processor emulation from PPC. Having it as a UB wouldnt be absurd, it could be made to tell if it needs to emulate a processor in the PPC portion of the code, and not in the intel. There is code dedicated to each in the UB builds.

as of yet, Windows XP isnt useful for games and things like SL, on intel Macs. The firmware is slightly different on mac video cards, and standard Windows drivers for them dont work. Thye have the intel GMA950 on the Mac mini working fully now, but i havent seen any drivers that work on the X1600s yet, so graphhically, XP on intel macs runs very badly.

This is very true. Given time it might happen, but I'm not holding my breath. The games aspect would be sweet just so the Mac users can enjoy some of the big name games without waiting a year or more.

For now it's more of a "look what I can do!" thing and not something you'd do to get the best of both.

How often should you change the oil?