XP on an iMac Core Duo? Sort of.
I noticed OpenOSX.com released an Intel native version of their WinTel product and decided to give it a go. If you're just looking for a quick synopses, I'll save you a lot of time by saying it's terrible. A usable XP on Intel-Mac solution is not here yet.
The purchase process is convoluted. It involves placing an order, waiting for a download link, downloading an encrypted disk image and finally emailing the company to request a password for said image.
Ok, so the company must be worried about piracy. I'm not sure why they would be though. This is just a vaguely simplified version of Bochs. I say vaguely simplified as a kinder way to say that this is not an app that will get an Apple Design Award at WWDC. If PerversionTracker were still around, I'm guessing they'd get a 10.
To be fair, the company's tech support is responsive and polite. They promise a 2.0.1 update will be out soon with a 200-400% improvement. They have proper spelling and punctuation.
How slow is this product? I started an XP install 15 hours ago and it's not done. XP installs are known to be slow even on a real PC, but this is insane. Other users I've spoken with say that XP is completely unusable.
Bochs is a very portable emulator written in C. My guess is they complied for Intel and called it a day. That means we're emulating the Intel x86 ISA on an Intel x86 processor. What we need is a product that emulates a BIOS and the other bits of a PC inside of OS X. I'm told this is coming.
It's certainly not here yet.
Here's some pictures of the pain.
The purchase process is convoluted. It involves placing an order, waiting for a download link, downloading an encrypted disk image and finally emailing the company to request a password for said image.
Ok, so the company must be worried about piracy. I'm not sure why they would be though. This is just a vaguely simplified version of Bochs. I say vaguely simplified as a kinder way to say that this is not an app that will get an Apple Design Award at WWDC. If PerversionTracker were still around, I'm guessing they'd get a 10.
To be fair, the company's tech support is responsive and polite. They promise a 2.0.1 update will be out soon with a 200-400% improvement. They have proper spelling and punctuation.
How slow is this product? I started an XP install 15 hours ago and it's not done. XP installs are known to be slow even on a real PC, but this is insane. Other users I've spoken with say that XP is completely unusable.
Bochs is a very portable emulator written in C. My guess is they complied for Intel and called it a day. That means we're emulating the Intel x86 ISA on an Intel x86 processor. What we need is a product that emulates a BIOS and the other bits of a PC inside of OS X. I'm told this is coming.
It's certainly not here yet.
Here's some pictures of the pain.
posted by Mike McHargue @ 10:06:00 PM
3 Comments:
At 12:26 AM ,
Anonymous said...
why the hell don't you just use qemu and be done with it?
http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/
At 10:40 AM ,
Anonymous said...
That's a little misleading on their part. While it may be an Intel native binary, it's still emulating the x86 CPU (while running on the very same). So it's still an emulation, and not a virtual machine. I'm hoping QEMU updates to support CPU virtualization on MacOS X, that would provide near-native performance for people needing Windows, and there are plenty of free MacOS frontends for it.
At 12:37 PM ,
Anonymous said...
QEMU is not building on gcc 4 yet. The intel macs do not support gcc 3. Once QEMU is compiling, then a MacTel version will be possible. Word is that iEmulator is expected to ship an intel version in Feb, and it is based on QEMU.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home