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January 12, 2006
Windows on Intel Mac's
Looks like the new Intel-based Mac's will not be running XP, 2000 or other ancient operating system such as 9x'es. Betanews has a report explaining why.
If you don't have the time to check the link, I'll explain it in short here.
The new Intel-based Mac's use Intel's new BIOS specification, called EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface). Support for EFI exists in most recent Windows versions, such as 2003 x64, or the IA-64 Windows variants. On the other hand, x86 XP or other 2003 versions do not support EFI. Last of all, Mac's use the Intel Duo Core CPU, which is Pentium-M-based, and doesn't have EM64T, so it can't run in 64 bits mode. So, no Windows XP on Mac - yet.
However, Microsoft is planning to make their final release of Vista compatible with EFI on 32 bit, meaning you will be able to run Windows on Mac's. If all goes well (and there's a big "if" here) Vista will hit the market at the end of 2006.
Of course, until then Apple will have enough time to sell enough Intel-based Mac's and enthusiasts will have enough time to hack MacOS into running on standard x86 hardware. As a result, Apple's OS-market share will increase slightly. A brilliant move and it doesn't even look like they've built the new Mac's in such a way that makes them unable to run current versions of Windows.
It's no surprise that the Apple shares hit an all-time high on Wednesday, following the announcement of the new Intel-based Mac's.
Posted by Costin Raiu at January 12, 2006 12:07 PM