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Apple's Boot Camp 6 supports dual-booting with Windows 10
Apple began rolling out the latest version of its multi boot utility, Boot Camp 6, on Thursday. It supports newly-released Windows 10 (64-bit edition only) as well as USB 3, USB-C, Thunderbolt, SD and SDXC connections. Users will need to be running OS X Yosemite and have an authentic copy of Windows 10 installed on a separate partition. The update is still propagating, according to MacRumors, but should be available to Intel Mac owners shortly. That includes the 13- and 15-inch MBPs, 11- and 13-inch MBAs, MacBook, MacMini, and various iMacs. Users don't actually have to do anything to get the update, as it will download automatically if you're already running the latest rev of Boot Camp 5. [Image Credit: Getty Images]
Play It On A Mac: Outlast
In this weekly series I'll show you how to get your favorite Windows-exclusive PC games running on OS X. For more information on the programs used, check out the Play It On A Mac explainer. For suggestions and/or questions about any game, feel free to contact me on Twitter. Outlast is one of the scariest games I've ever played. It's a complete horror show from start to finish, and you rarely get a chance to stop and relax. Unfortunately for Mac gamers, Outlast hasn't made it to OS X in the time since its September 2013 debut on Steam, and with the newly-released "Whistleblower" add-on once again giving gamers a good scare, it's time for you to give it a go on your Mac. Here's how. CrossOver Outlast has a status of "Untested" on the official CrossOver compatibility list, so I gave it a spin myself. I managed to get it installed successfully under a generic bottle, but the game still refused to start up successfully. I'm guessing this is one of those games that will need some special attention and custom tweaks to be done in order to get it running in CrossOver, and unfortunately I'm not well-versed enough to make that happen. Parallels As usual, the install went fine with Parallels. After starting up the game using some modest Parallels settings it was clear that this game would require a little bit more "oomph" to produce a playable result. I changed things a bit and got it running well at about 15 to 20fps on "Very Low" settings. Definitely not ideal, but it is playable. Parallels 9 settings: CPUs: 6 (out of 8) Memory: 12GB (out of 16GB) Video memory: 1GB Performance: Faster Virtual Machine Power: Better Performance Boot Camp Wow, what a difference! The Boot Camp install of Outlast plays so much better than in a virtual machine, it's quite remarkable. Some games don't benefit that much from the switch between the virtual machine and a proper Boot Camp install, but this one definitely does. I was able to get 25 to 30fps on medium/high settings with little trouble. I'd advise turn off motion blur in the game's settings menu, and also enabling vertical sync, as the game has some pretty horrible screen tearing issues without it. Aside from that, it plays great in Boot Camp. Verdict If you're going to play this one on your Mac -- and you definitely should, because it's a fantastic game -- Boot Camp is definitely the best bet. Depending on your machine specs, you might find a Parallels version to be fine, but Outlast greatly benefits from the Boot Camp option.
Apple issues day-one EFI update for new iMacs to address Boot Camp issue
No sooner had Apple announced the 2013 iMacs than they also issued a day-one EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) update for the speedy new all-in-ones. The update is targeted at an issue that sometimes occurs when installing a Boot Camp partition with Windows 7 or Windows 8. The issue appears when an external optical drive (the devices have no internal optical drive) and a USB thumb drive are connected at the same time, causing the screen to go black. The update also ensures that the default boot drive for the system will be OS X after Windows 8 is installed. iMac (late 2013) EFI Update 2.1 can be downloaded from Apple's support pages, and requires that the Mac be running OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.4 or later.
Halo 'Bootcamp' project spotted on Korean ratings board
A listing for something called "Bootcamp" has surfaced over on the Korean ratings board GRB. Its description specifically calls out Halo 3 and classifies "Bootcamp" as a PC/Online game. In a comment to GameFront, Microsoft dismissed any association with Xbox One, which would suggest the new TV series in the works is ruled out. Microsoft also denied any connection with the Reclaimer saga started with Halo 4 in the same statement. Speculation is this could be a PC port of Halo 3, though Microsoft doesn't seem to be addressing that question either. We've reached out for comment.
OS X 10.8.3 update arrives with official Boot Camp support for Windows 8
We've some good news to share for Mountain Lion users: OS X 10.8.3 is now available for download. As you'd expect, the new software brings a number of fixes and enhancements, but in a delicious twist of irony, the most substantial may very well be for Windows users. That's because version 10.8.3 introduces official support for Boot Camp with Windows 8, and it also brings compatibility for Boot Camp on Macs with hard drives larger than 3TB. Meanwhile, OS X users will benefit from Safari 6.0.3 and the ability to redeem iTunes gift cards in the Mac App Store by using the built-in iSight camera. OS X 10.8.3 is also said to resolve an audio stutter issue for 2011 iMacs and correct any unresponsive plugins that Logic Pro users might've noticed. You'll find the complete list of improvements after the break, but while you read, you might wanna dig into that Apple menu and get downloading.
MacTech, Microsoft team up to offer Office for Mac support credential
Got Macs? Got Office? For support personnel who want to show the world that they know which end of a pivot table goes into a stylesheet and how to upgrade PowerPoint for full compatibility with Exchange Server 2013*, your opportunity has arrived. MacTech's upcoming seven-city BootCamp II tour, which provides a full day of seminars for people supporting the Mac in small to medium size business and other contexts, now has a frontloaded (and free) certification option for Microsoft's new Office for Mac Accredited Support Professional credential. For a half-day ahead of the BootCamp, attendees can learn all about Office installation, deployment, troubleshooting and much more. While the Office credential program, including the final evaluation and certificate, is free, MacTech BootCamp II itself is $299 for early-bird registrants, $499 for regular registration. The tour kicks off in Seattle in early March, so check to see when it's coming to your neck of the woods. If you do sign up, be sure to use our TUAW reader affinity link to make sure you get your special benefit! *Yes, those are nonsensical support challenges. Congratulations, you passed the first quiz.
How well can the MacBook Pro with Retina display handle Windows games?
After jumping the hurdles of our review gauntlet, the MacBook Pro with Retina display proved itself as a top-notch machine for the creative professionals it's geared towards, and anyone willing to pay a premium. Save for a brief bout with Diablo III, our time spent gaming on the hardware was limited. Ever since, we've wondered how the Kepler-toting, Ivy Bridge-packing laptop would handle one of our favorite graphics-intensive pastimes. Sure, Apple machines aren't exactly en vogue when it comes to playing video games, but Cupertino's ultra-high-resolution Mac simply begs to be put to the test. We loaded up Windows 7 on a MacBook Pro carrying an NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1 GB of VRAM, the stock 2.3GHz processor and 16GB of RAM (upgraded from the vanilla 8GB configuration) and put it through its paces to see how it performs.
Winclone tool for Boot Camp imaging comes back as paid app
Say the word "Winclone" to any Mac-centric IT person and you'll likely get a wistful sigh in return. The original Winclone utility, which provided a handy GUI wrapper around CLI tools such as the open-source NTFSprogs, did a spot-on job of backing up and restoring the Boot Camp partition of a dual-boot Mac. After Mike Bombich's NetRestore was EOL'ed, Winclone became a de facto standard; it made it into the workflows of enterprise desktop management systems like JAMF's Casper. (The NTFSprogs project, by the way, lives on as part of the NTFS-3G code and the commercial Tuxera NTFS driver for OS X.) Something so useful and free besides: it was bound to end, and so it did when the original developer of Winclone ceased work on it some years ago. Subsequent system updates broke the tool, and although third parties patched some of the underlying scripts to keep it limping along with Snow Leopard and Lion, it just wasn't all there. There are other tools, of course (like the open-source and powerful DeployStudio) but Winclone was so simple and straightforward. We missed it. I bring you good news, though, you toilers in cross-platform support land: Winclone is back, baby. New owner Tim Perfitt has revitalized the app and the twocanoes.com domain, and is now selling an updated and Lion-ready Winclone version 3 for a modest $19.99. Yes, it used to be free; yes, you could still muddle through with the hacked older versions -- but for anyone who's using Winclone in a professional environment, I strongly urge you to pony up for a license and support the resurrection of a vital Mac imaging tool. Hat tip to John Welch.
MacTech Boot Camp
"MacTech Boot Camp is specifically designed for those techs and consultants supporting home users, small office/home office, and small-to-medium sized businesses. This one-day, hotel-based, seminar is designed specifically to help you be the most successful consultant you can be. Learn. Network. Expand your horizons." We're a media sponsor for the MacTech events, and from what we have seen they are quite excellent. Plus, there's a special deal for TUAW readers here that'll save you US$200. To see what sessions and topics will be covered, check out this page. For a full schedule, look here. Did I mention lunch is included? Seriously, if you are a consultant for the clients mentioned above, these Boot Camp sessions are an excellent way to get up-to-date on what's going on with Apple technologies.
MacTech announces a full year of events
MacTech has been doing well with its annual Mac IT conference event (which I've attended the past two years here in Los Angeles), and the company recently announced that it is spreading out with some one-day MacTech InDepth events. But this morning, the company revealed that it's going even bigger than that. MacTech will be holding fifteen different events in 2012, all over the US, featuring the annual conference in October and a few more InDepth one-day events. MacTech is also holding a series of Boot Camp events designed specifically for IT engineers supporting smaller businesses and home users. You can see the full schedule below. As you can see, MacTech publisher Neil Ticktin will probably be a very busy guy. Some of the events are clustered around one city; Chicago in July, for example, and New York in April. But this is definitely a much more packed schedule for these MacTech events than we've ever seen before. If you run IT for any businesses or clients that use Macs, odds are there's something good going on near you. Feb 16, MacTech Boot Camp, Phoenix, AZ Mar 7, MacTech Boot Camp, Seattle, WA Mar 28, MacTech InDepth: Lion Server Administration, Austin, TX Apr 18, MacTech Boot Camp, New York, NY Apr 19, MacTech InDepth: Lion Server Administration, New York, NY May 17, MacTech InDepth: Network & WiFi Design & Troubleshooting, Boston, MA May 18, MacTech InDepth: Mobile Device Management, Boston, MA Jun 27, MacTech Boot Camp, Washington, DC Jul 18, MacTech InDepth: Network & WiFi Design & Troubleshooting, Chicago, IL Jul 19, MacTech InDepth: Mobile Device Management, Chicago, IL Aug 7, MacTech Boot Camp, San Diego, CA Sep 5, MacTech Boot Camp, Minneapolis, MN Oct 17-19, MacTech Conference, Los Angeles, CA Nov 7, MacTech InDepth: Network and WiFi Design and Troubleshooting, San Jose, CA Dec 5, MacTech Boot Camp, Miami, FL
Quark will host iPad publishing seminars
As noted by MacObserver, Quark is pushing the new App Studio feature of QuarkXPress 9.1 by offering designers two seminars to help them use this new publishing tool. App Studio lets designers create their own multimedia-rich iPad magazine app using the familiar interface of QuarkXpress. It includes a suite of tools that'll let you create the app, distribute it through the App Store and publish new content as issues that customers can buy or download for free. Quark will be holding two one-day training events in October that'll walk attendees through these new iPad tools. The first event will be held October 20 in Denver and the second will be held in London on October 26.
Windows 8 ain't fussy: runs on Macs, Surface, 128MB RAM, banana peel (videos)
Downloaders of the Windows 8 Developer Preview have been proving their mettle the best way they know how: by getting it to run on systems it was never really intended for. Brent and the folks at Codesnack win the Real Utility trophy for their successful Boot Camp installs. Josh Blake gets the Damn I Look Good By Candlelight trophy for making the OS run on the MS Surface in his living room. Meanwhile, Marcin Grygiel has awarded himself the I'm HARDCORE!!! title for somehow getting it to run on a PC with just 128MB. Treat yourself to some intimate video evidence after the break. [Thanks, Prashanth]
VMware Fusion 4 brings full Lion support, wants to make Windows act less like Windows
Leave it to VMware to put the spotlight back on Lion when this is, without a doubt, Windows 8's week. The company just announced Fusion 4, the latest version of its virtualization software, and, as you'd expect, it pledges to play nice with Apple's newly minted OS. In addition to fully supporting Lion features like Spotlight, though, it makes Windows look more like, well, a Mac. The software includes improved support for Expose and Spaces on the Windows side, and adds the ability to use Mission Control and launch Windows apps from Launchpad. Additionally, you can run Lion as a virtual machine within Snow Leopard and VMware makes vague claims about improved performance, 3D graphics and resource-hogging. It'll cost $50 through the end of the year, with the price jumping up to $80 in January. Fittingly enough, VMware picked up on the fact that Apple's moving away from optical drives, and instead chose to ship the software with a USB drive (you can also download it and do the whole drag-and-drop installation thing). Oh, and if you bought the last-gen version of the software on July 20th or later, you'll get the new version gratis. Lots of screen shots below, and full PR after the break.%Gallery-133556%
Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me run Windows on Mac
Dear Aunt TUAW, I am new to the Mac community, and there are some programs that are unsupported on the Mac and I know there are a few options to run Windows on a Mac. When I search online for the best options and answers to my questions (what is the best option, do I need a Windows license/disc, difference between emulators/virtual machines, Parallels vs Boot Camp vs VMware Fusion etc), most of the info is pretty old and outdated. Can you help me navigate jumping out of the Windows into the Apple Orchard? Lovingly with One Foot on Both Platforms, James Dear James, For any full Windows install, you definitely need a Windows license. A disc will certainly help you install, whether you go with Boot Camp (dual-boot) or Parallels/VMware Fusion/VirtualBox (run inside an virtualized PC). Auntie knows there are pluses and minuses to both these approaches which our noble commenters will surely dive into with both feet, but here's the abbreviated version. Boot Camp offers the fastest, fullest Windows-on-Apple hardware experience. You basically get a complete Windows install, but on a shiny Apple computer. For gaming, hardware-dependent apps and maximum available performance, it's the no-compromises option, but you do need to reboot to switch between Windows and OS X, so it may slow you down in that regard. The other main option is virtualization, creating a 'PC in a box' that runs in software under OS X. Both market leaders Parallels and VMware Fusion have some compromises in speed and peripheral integration, but they do so while running at the same time as OS X, with easy file access and other shared elements. The open-source and free VirtualBox may have a few more rough edges but it does do the job for intermittent use. Another solution is Crossover. Allowing you to run Windows apps inside OS X, it does not require a license or a Windows disc... but as Uncle Mike puts it, "60% of the time, it works every time." Not all Windows applications play nicely in Crossover's W32 API compatibility environment (based on the open-source Wine project), and those that do launch may be limited in their functionality. It pays to try out Crossover first, however, if your application is on the supported list -- it might be perfect for you. In the end, it all comes down to how integrated you need your Windows experience to be. If you don't do a lot of switching back and forth, dual-booting through Boot Camp may be your best solution. If you do, then virtual Windows helps integrate your apps better. Auntie's not a big Windows user, so she invites her more Win-ny nieces and nephews to jump in with suggestions. Hugs, Auntie T.
Apple issues Boot Camp Software Update 3.3 for Windows
In addition to today's iMac Graphic Firmware Update 3.0, Apple has released Boot Camp Software Update 3.3 for Windows. Boot Camp allows users to run Microsoft Windows natively on their Intel-based Macs. The update is recommended for all Boot Camp 3.2 users and contains critical bug fixes and hardware support. The update weighs in at 199.75 MB and requires Windows 7-32 bit or Windows 7-64bit and Boot Camp 3.2. A direct download link to the update is here.
Boot Camp in Lion requires Windows 7
Apple's latest version of OS X 10.7 Lion ships with Boot Camp 4 which, according to an Apple support document, only runs Windows 7. Previous versions of Windows like Vista and XP are no longer supported. There's no reason for this change, but Apple, like Microsoft, is likely increasing its focus on the newer OS and lessening it on legacy versions. Mac users that must run an older version of Windows will either have to keep Boot Camp 3 if they wish to upgrade to Lion or use a third-party virtualization solution from VMWare or Parallels. [Via Macworld]
Boot Camp update for Thunderbolt iMacs available
With new iMacs comes new software. Apple has released a Boot Camp update for Thunderbolt iMacs. The small update (the download is just 638 KB) can be found via Software Update or Apple's website and offers a specific fix. According to Apple, the update "...addresses issues with Japanese and Korean keyboards on early 2011 iMac." If you've been struggling with this issue, on the iMac you can't possibly have received yet, here's the update for you.
Ask TUAW Video Edition: Cloning Data
Douglas asks how to upgrade his hard drive and clone his Mac and Bootcamp data to the new one. We discuss new hard drives, enclosures, and cloning processes. Some resources for everyone: Carbon Copy Clone - More Info SuperDuper - More Info WinClone - Download Norton Ghost - More Info OWC - HD/Enclosure Upgrades Any questions, please leave them in the comments or email us! Read on for the video.
BootCamp updated for 2011 MacBook Pros
Apple has released Boot Camp 3.2 Update for MacBook Pro (early 2011). This update fixes issues with unexpected shutdowns as well as problems with Japanese and Korean keyboards. Of course, it's recommended for all users. You'll find it via Software Update if you've got the proper machine, or just download it here. Good luck, and let us know if BootCamp 3.2 solves or causes any trouble for you.
Mac OS X 10.6.6 introduces subtle changes to Boot Camp
MacNN cites two tips they received noting changes made to Boot Camp in Mac OS X 10.6.6. The first suggests that Apple has dropped support for Windows XP. When setting up a Windows partition, Boot Camp requests an "...authentic installation disc of Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional or Ultimate." XP isn't mentioned. Also, users are discouraged from using software from a Mac OS X install disc or another computer in an attempt to find drivers and the like. Instead, Boot Camp will prompt you to download "additional software designed specifically for each Mac" to get your keyboards, etc. working. Just as MacNN speculates, we agree that this measure is meant to ensure that users have the latest software, helping to eliminate future troubleshooting.
