R. David Lankes

It’s official, as a college professor who also programs, I have the best job in America:

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bestjobs/?cnn=yes

It’s true. Apple announced Boot Camp that allows you to dual boot your Intel base Mac to dual boot to either Mac OS or Windows XP. And it works. I can now boot as a Mac or Windows. And the Windows boot is a real boot. Very very fast, no emulation.

Now before you jump into this (you know, like I did) you should be warned it’s not quite fool proof. The first time I did it I managed to corrupt the Mac partition (it was VERY disturbing to only be able to boot my new Mac laptop into Windows). I think the problem was doing a partition format as part of the Windows install (just choose the Quick Format option). So, make sure you do a good back up before you try this trick. Anyway, the second try worked like a charm and now I can play Star Wars Republic Commando with no problems.

A few notes for the curious:

• This is a dual boot, so you can’t run Mac and Windows simultaneously
• You can access the Windows partition when you are booted in MacOS, but not the other way around
• As part of the process you don’t have to reformat your drive and Boot Camp burns a CD with all the hardware drivers for your Mac hardware
• This only works on the new Intel based Macs

This is very cool, but back up before you procede.