[Ben]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4880022.stm

Yep, Intel Mac's will now be able to officially dual-boot into Windows. Support will fully come in OS 10.5 Leopard due around the same time as Vista, but beta versions of 'Boot Camp' are already circulating.

Unofficially, dual-booting has been possible for a few weeks now but not exactly straightforward due to Intel Mac's booting via EFI and not the ancient BIOS still employed in the Windows world. This move by Apple, however, brings full Windows support with all the Mac's drivers now ready to work in Windows.

For switchers it's fantastic news. No longer is a complete 'switch' to OS X necessary, and even when all of ones stuff is migrated over it still makes it possible to get the best of both worlds when it comes to playing unsupported games etc. There are dangers, of course, that application development for OS X will slow down, but if Mac uptake is increased on this news, as expected, then OS X market share could actually grow resulting in a complete opposite!

Perhaps the Mac's premium pricetag will finally be justifiable to many. By not opening up OS X to the generic PC world, Apple now retails the only computers capable of running both the worlds most popular desktop OS's.

Finally. An Apple to get excited about.

[miffed]

Can't help thinking a Mac that can run windows is like buying a Ferrari with a towbar and extended mirrors :)

Still haven't got mine yet :mad: - The wife is proving harder work than normal

[Ben]

I got my replacement today... unfortunately the first batch of Intel mini's (and some of the Intel iMacs and MacBook Pros too) had some irritating airport issues and, to add to that, mine completely died taking my WoW CD 4 with it!

This new one suffers none of the Airport (Wireless Lan) issues that the other one did, and I'm extremely happy :D Even though I'd only had OS X for 2 days I missed it one hell of a lot. Personally I'd never install Windows on this Mac, but I can more than understand the attraction for others who perhaps only have one computer and need to run the odd Windows program.

Now I'm just waiting for Firefox to make their main download a Universal Binary... Safari, well, it sucks.

[chaslam]

Now I'm just waiting for Firefox to make their main download a Universal Binary... Safari, well, it sucks.

Oh I think you get used to it. Thats what I thoughtwhen I first got my mac, but after a week or 2 of using lots of different browsers, like firefox, opera and IE, I went back to safari.

[Hands0n]

Interestingly enough my Mac pal (who has just bought an Intel 64 laptop, hee hee) could not access his brand new Linksys router with Safari and had to load up Firefox to do so. Not that the Linksys was doing anything special - just that Safari seemed not to be able to cope!

Good to see that none of the Windoze software problems/incompatibilities have crossed the water to Mac-land ................... or have they not?

I'm just loading OSX up on my home-build AMD64-based PC. Welllllllllllll Apple started it!