[Ham-Mac] MacOSG.com and Intel based iMac

[Steve - VA3SPH]

Dana you will get your iMac first because your in the US.  Canadian  
ones take longer because they have to add the "EH" to the end  
sentences in the instruction manuals. <hi hi.>

I see your way.... with an additional consideration.

The platform is expanding. Developers are coming to the platform  
because more and more people are using Macs.

Causes... iPod Halo effect, Apple now using Intel, UNIX people who  
like the UNIX but also want cool and easy iLife apps, a supported  
native MS Office on UNIX platform, tired of Windows viruses/ 
attacks... lots of other reason too for an expanding Mac platform I  
am sure.

This means in the future we won't have to run a Windows application.  
Maybe there will be a Macintosh application and I think this is  
perhaps what we all would ideally desire! Just look at some of the  
cool apps we have already.
cocoaModem, EchoMac, MacDoppler, etc... See http:// 
www.machamradio.com/ for a well rounded and growing list.

I would say future looks pretty bright for us mac-hams. We are going  
to have more software/hardware choices than we have ever had before.  
Bring on the new Mac applications!

A final thought as well.... Recall Apple has switched processors in  
the past (68k to PPC) and that was very smooth. Can't think of  
another commercial OS that has ever switched processors so  
gracefully. Apple knows that making things compatible with existing  
software as much as possible is very important. They seem to have  
accomplished this again. This time with Rosetta < http:// 
www.apple.com/rosetta/ >. This would not have been easy piece of OS  
software to write.

Not trying to paint Apple as perfect, they are not, but there seems a  
genuine effort to keep everything that isn't native on Intel working  
as good or better than on the best PPC G5.  I mean a dual processor  
in a laptop could not have done that with dual core G5 it way too hot  
and power hungry.  Dual G5 is fast just not power scale of this new  
Intel "yonah chip".

73

Steve - VA3SPH



On 12-Jan-06, at 7:49 PM, N1OFZ wrote:

> I also ordered a new Intel Mac (17" iMac) and I've been reading the  
> thread with some interest.  I also was interested in the dual boot  
> aspect but after some research I've come to some conclusions:
>
> - It will be possible to dual boot but not right away.  The new  
> machine will have EFI instead of the standard Wintel bios or the  
> venerable Apple Open Firmware.  32 bit XP will not work with EFI  
> nor does Microsoft have any plans to implement it, however the 64  
> bit version of XP does support EFI as will Vista.  Of course the  
> Core Duo chip in the new Mac's are 32 bit so 64 bit XP is out for  
> now.  Grub (one of the standard Linux boot loaders) supports EFI so  
> if we can get it installed and recognized by EFI it may be possible  
> to get both OS's on one drive.  To start this will probably involve  
> setting the drive up on a Linux box with grub and moving it back to  
> the Mac later.
>
> - Why do we want to dual boot?  After quite a bit of thought the  
> best of both worlds is going to be able to run Windows in an  
> emulator without the penalty of emulating the Intel processor.  The  
> best (early) bets are going to be VMWare and Wine.  I've run  
> Windows apps with Wine (under Linux) with pretty good success and  
> little if any speed penalty.  The advantage of this vs. dual boot  
> is that you never have to exit the OS X environment to run a  
> Windows app.  I've drawn the conclusion that if emulation does not  
> work well, it will be better to have a cheap dedicated Wintel PC  
> rather than having to get in and out of OS X each time.
>
> Now to throw out a question, anyone know what kind of audio chipset  
> these new machine have?  This is going to be very important.   
> Currently the majority of the apps I go back to Windows for are  
> sound card based applications.  If Apple has chosen a chipset that  
> does not have Windows drivers neither dual booting nor emulation is  
> going to solve the Windows issue.
>
> Anyone else see it this way?
>
> Dana  N1OFZ
>
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