A bootloader for the rest of us
Chalk this one up to a colleague's complaining. One of my cohorts was the mostly-happy recipient of a shiny MacBook Pro today, and he was setting up Boot Camp (with the eventual intent of configuring Linux as well as OS X & Windows) and griping that he wanted to see the EFI bootloader on every restart. "What's wrong with holding down the option key?" we asked him. "Nah," he said, "I want it to ask me each time. I reboot so infrequently, chances are when I do it's because I'm switching OSes." Or something like that. I tend to tune out when people complain; it helps get through the IT day, if you know what I mean.
Well, I couldn't let the challenge sit unsolved, so here's one option for eliminating Option: the rEFIt project. This open-source alternative bootloader for Intel Macs will allow you to choose between your installed OSen at boot time, among other helpful features (and was mentioned in the comments to a TUAW post back in August). I'll get my colleague to install it and make sure it doesn't cause his MBP to detonate nearby cable modems or anything else antisocial.
