Archives for April, 2006

To the surprise of pretty much everyone, including the rumor sites, Apple has announced public beta testing of Apple Boot Camp their official solution for installing Windows XP on Intel Macs. This is a dual-boot solution so you have to restart to choose which OS you will use, you can’t use them both simultaneously.

That said, Boot Camp seems to be well designed and very easy to use. It offers to non-destructively re-partition the hard drive to make room for XP and to burn a CD with all the appropriate Windows drivers; quite a difference from the unofficial open source solution announced just a few weeks ago.

Some auxiliary hardware devices are not yet supported, they are documented on Apple’s site. But it appears all the essentials are supported, including the video chip which was a crucial missing piece in the unofficial package.

Firmware Update Required

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A little late for their 30th birthday but Apple has a present for us today, and its a big one; they’ve just released the 10.4.6 update to Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger”. Per usual its available via Software Update in the apple menu or, to minimize possible problems, as the ever so convenient Combo Updater download. There are separate downloads for PowerPC and Intel Macs and for the consumer and Server versions of Mac OS X. Better have high-speed Net access because this update weighs in at around 140 - 190MB, about 1/5th of a full CD. Here are links to the consumer combo updater pages:

• Mac OS X 10.4.6 PowerPC Combo Updater (140mb)
• Mac OS X 10.4.6 PowerPC Combo Updater Page (190mb)

There are a of fixes and improvements in there, you can find some of the details here:

• About the Mac OS X 10.4.6 Update

NOTE: If you use iSync to synchronize data between your various Macs, phones, etc. then you should perform a ful sync before instaling this update (so sayeth the About docs.)

As usual, for minimal problems its a good idea to verify that your hard drive is in good shape. In 10.4 you can now verify the startup disk via the First Aid tab of the Disk Utility application which lives in /Applications/Utilities, but if any problems are found you will have to boot from your 10.4 installation disk to actually correct them.

Apple also suggests that you eject and disconnect external hard drives and other non-essential Firewire and USB devices before performing any system update.

I am just starting the process of updating my machines but if any problems appear I will post my experiences here. Feel free to wait a day or two for the dust to settle.