XP Won't Run on Intel MacBook, iMac
With the announcement of the first Intel based Macs yesterday, many users have rejoiced in being able to dual-boot both Mac OS X and Windows. Unfortunately, this is not the case; due to Apple's use of the extensible firmware interface (EFI) …
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's first Intel Macs landed the same day news broke of a five-year Microsoft–Apple software agreement, closing a Macworld morning in which the move to x86 chips had many buyers assuming a Mac could now simply dual-boot Windows. The blocker is firmware, not silicon: the new Intel MacBook and iMac boot via EFI rather than the BIOS interface Windows XP expects, so sharing a processor architecture no longer means sharing a boot path.
Apple's own positioning is deliberately split — the company confirms it will not stop users from installing Windows, while denying that it plans to offer a Mac that runs Windows itself — leaving any dual-boot capability to someone other than Apple. Investors, for their part, treated the Intel switch as a milestone: Apple closed at $80.86, an echo of Intel's 8086.
First-order effects
- Buyers of yesterday's Intel MacBook and iMac get PC-compatible chips but cannot run XP out of the box, because EFI lacks the BIOS routines XP's installer depends on.
- Apple keeps full say over what boots on its hardware: it will not block Windows installs, but has denied it will build a Windows-capable Mac itself.
Second-order effects
- Independent developers now have a clear target — an EFI-to-BIOS compatibility layer — that would let XP run without Apple shipping anything, testing how far the company's hands-off pledge extends.
- Microsoft loses little near-term: the five-year agreement signed with Apple keeps Microsoft's Mac software business intact whether or not Windows ever boots on a Mac.
Third-order effects
- Identical processors do not mean interchangeable machines — the firmware layer becomes the real gate on which operating systems a device may run, moving platform control below the OS vendors.
- As EFI spreads beyond Macs, boot-firmware design becomes a competitive lever across the PC industry, since whoever defines the boot interface decides which rival systems are practical to install.
The trend: The x86 switch nominally converges Mac and PC hardware, pushing the actual lock-in contest up into the firmware and boot layer where Apple, not Microsoft or Intel, holds the keys.