I still remember the first time I watched Apple's first and probably most popular ad for the nano. It was freakishly thin, and incredibly drool-worthy, and it remains to this day, despite a new avatar being launched yesterday. Watch the original ad here.

Now watch this and this!

:-)

The Times of India, Mumbai - April 10, 2006
by Me Inc.

Owning an Apple Macintosh computer is much like owning a Harley-Davidson – a statement of identity for a generation of users that defines who you are, more than what you actually do with it. Beyond doubt, Macs have traditionally had sleeker hardware designs, a far superior operating system and built-in software, and virtually no exposure to viruses and spyware. What they also had, something that plonking a couple of thousand dollars on the latest Dell machine couldn’t ever get you, was street cred.

Of course, practicality suggests otherwise. Street cred counts for zilch if your favorite Windows-based game/business application (insert cant-do-without-application here) has no equivalent/port for the Mac OS X operating system, and you’re with left with little more than a classy white elephant. Even the solution suggested by Monsieurs narf and blanka, essentially a series of complicated hacks to the Windows XP install disc, were not for the faint-of-heart.

Until now. On Wednesday, Apple announced the public beta release of ‘Boot Camp’, software that will allow users to boot and run Microsoft's Windows XP software (without forsaking the Mac OSX) natively on their Intel-based Macs – the new Mac Mini, the Intel based iMac and the MacBook Pro notebook. Much of what Boot Camp is will be released in the next version of Mac OS X, codenamed “Leopard”, due early next year. Now we’re not the sort to want to wait that long, are we? In what is one of the first few documented tests of the Boot Camp software anywhere, I set about installing Steve Ballmer’s baby (Windows XP) on one of Steve Job’s babies – a brand spanking new 2.0 GHz MacBook Pro.

Getting Boot Camp (beta) from the Apple site was the easy part, although at 83 MB, it may take time to download, depending on your connection. It’s got to be said, I’m a Mac newbie in most respects, having followed the technology for years, but only seriously having worked on the Mac OS X with the MacBook Pro. Weaned on Microsoft Windows and Linux, each step hereafter was fraught with uncertainty and the thrill of walking down a path you’ve never seen before. Kind of a “If Yan can cook, so can you” situation, if you get my drift.

Luckily, the MacBook Pro met BootCamp’s recommended operating system requirements, but the firmware required to be updated – a quick trip to Apple’s Support Downloads site fixed that(a very loud, un-Mac-like system beep is normal at the start of this process). With the invaluable Boot Camp Installation guide in hand, I installed the downloaded file (pretty much point-click) and started it up. Boot Camp got down to business immediately, directing me to burn a Macintosh drivers CD – this CD is required to install the software and drivers required for running Windows XP on Macintosh hardware. Push in a blank CD into the MacBook Pro's sleek slot loading drive and a minute or so later, the CD is ready.

Next, the Boot Camp Assistant let me resize (drag the slider) the Macintosh hard disk to make space for Windows XP – a dedicated partition, if you will - I chose a breezy 10 GB to allow for some games and application software. This part of the process is really a Good Thing™ - abstracting most users from the elbow grease of partitioning their hard disks is smart. Once this is done, you’ll need to pop in your copy of Windows XP (which includes Service Pack 2, a strict requirement from Apple), and restart. XP's familiar, ugly-DOS-blue-pixelated installation process started normally, and the Boot Camp manual provided intelligent directions about how to tell XP which partition (C drive) to use and how to format that partition. Remember, if you choose FAT instead of NTFS for your partition format, you'll be able to write files to the XP partition while you're running Mac OS X.

The Windows XP install process proceeds as expected and, save for a blue screen during the final stages of installation (a quick reboot fixed that, though the installer started right from the beginning again!) , was smooth and strangely like any other Windows XP install I’d performed in the past. Once XP was installed, I held down the Mac Option key while rebooting and used the bootloader to hop to and fro between Win XP and OS X.

Booting into Windows XP on the MacBook Pro, I popped in the CD that Boot Camp had burnt for me earlier, and one by one, drivers were installed for the graphics card, network (wired/wireless), audio, Bluetooth and display – what doesn’t work is the Apple Remote, the built in iSight Camera, MacBook Pro's hard disk sudden motion sensor, and the keyboard ambient light sensor. Right, so I had a dual-boot Mac OSX/Win XP MacBook Pro waiting to be taken through its paces, and personally to answer the million dollar question – just how good is Windows on a Mac?

Quite impressive, if my initial experience is anything to go by. Doom 3 ran smoothly with high-end graphics options turned on, and while I didn’t get a chance to test heavy photo-editing programs like Photoshop (a mainstay for Macs), graphics intensive games and processor intensive applications like ripping a DVD seemed to take full advantage of the MacBook Pro’s dual core processors and abundant graphics memory. Notably, Windows on the Intel-based MacBook Pro works like a charm, and if it weren’t for the slicker-looking hardware, I'd think I was working on a standard Windows PC with a wide-screen monitor, which is exactly what you'd I (and you) would want from a usable dual-boot system. All in all, Boot Camp works really well, so much so that for either XP or OS X, an Apple computer may be the only computer you may need.

Apple may just have gotten the last word in yet, as the Boot Camp beta site is not without attitude and a healthy dose of irreverence. Sample this - "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."

Apple Boot Camp (beta): http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/publicbeta.html

(c) The Times of India, Bennett and Coleman, etc etc



( Photographic evidence behind the cut )

A TOI-style introduction to podcasting, featured in the Mumbai Times of India (Sunday, 11th Sep) Review section, page 3 and Delhi Times of India (Monday, 12th Sep) Page 13. Alternatively, find it here.


As usual, comments/feedback?

Folks

Yours truly is in the Mumbai Times of India, Page 31. PDF-version available here. Alternatively, browse to http://epaperdaily.timesofindia.com/ - login with an indiatimes ID and select Times of India - Mumbai edition. Page 31 - "Why are they blogging?"

Feedback, comments?

If you've tired of flying around the pale blue dot we call home, try G!Maps on the Moon!

Definitive, scientific proof of what we've suspected all along - the moon is made of cheese! Try zooming in at maximum level, and you'll see what I mean ;-)

After months of lurking in these parts, something snapped, and well... like it or not, I'm here!





gromhellscream, this one is for you! Your friend's page has been an amazing read for some time now...