Apple warns users of impending Boot Camp expiration

80 Comments

“Apple has begun warning users that its beta Boot Camp software for running Windows on an Intel-based Mac will expire at the end of October,” MacNN reports.

Apple “last week posted a technical support document indicating that some versions of the beta software have already expired and that the latest version will expire when Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard ships in October,” MacNN reports.

Full article here.

80 Comments

  4. So we are gonna be forced to upgrade to Leopard version 1.0 which is sure to be ridden with initial bugs?

    That sucks..

    I usually like to wait at least a couple of months before upgrading OS to make sure bugs are worked out, yet I rely on boot camp for accessing my Windows/IE ONLY real estate/MLS websites..

    Reply

  7. From what I’ve heard so far, Leopard is not even close to being ready..

    I sure hope Apple doesn’t declare Gold Master on a bug infested build..

    I’d happily wait for these kinks to be worked out, especially if I’m gonna lose Boot Camp beta on Tiger.

    Reply

  10. Geez what’s with the complaining. Boot Camp is a beta…it was always called a beta. Donna don’t you think the Leopard version 1.0 as you call it will be at least as good as Boot Camp. That’s what it’s sort of born from

    Reply

  11. Peter,

    The only reason I use Boot Camp is because I have to. I’m a real estate agent and all of the work related websites I need to access on a daily basis do not work on any Mac browser, so I must use Windows. I’ve been complaining for years, but it does me no good as I am the only Mac agent in my office. No one in the IS dept. seems to care that I’m not supported..

    Apart from my real estate websites, I use OSX for everything else. Of course I’ve planned on upgrading to Leopard, but not on day one. I want to make sure things are running smooth first and they rarely do on version 1.0 of a new OS.

    Reply

  21. In all fairness, it’s not Apple’s fault that some people have chosen to “rely” on boot camp, despite its beta status, and up-front warning that it will expire when Leopard is released. Apple stated that from day 1.

    But I’m almost positive there will be a backlash over this, filled with whining and disinformation.

    If you need Windows/IE for certain things, and you don’t want to immediately upgrade to Leopard, then I’d suggest looking into other options, like Parallels or VMWare. They’re both reasonably priced, work with your existing Boot Camp drive partition, and have trial versions you can download to determine which to purchase.

    But please don’t complain about this like you had no idea it was gonna happen. We’ve known about this for months.

    Reply

  22. Yes Donna, I understand that some segments of the populace are still tethered to the Windows mess. But why would you force yourself to having to reboot constantly to change between platforms, especially when so little of what you use your computer for is Windows-centric.

    Why not go with a much simpler and elegant solution like Parallels or Fusion?

    Reply

  24. Seems from the article that the expirations will be of the assistant, and that BC will continue to run.

    This is actually a good sign that Leo is on the way for October.

    The seeds aren’t all that bad. Not GM, but not bad.

    I wonder if Tiger users will be cut off as a means to drive them to 10.5. It’s perfectly acceptable beta->release behavior, though annoying. I have my doubts, though.

    And there are other alternatives. That plus the fact that the Win drivers are easy to come by and have no version expiration, AFAIK.

    Reply

  27. October 26th is indeed the most likely day for Leopard to go on sale because it is on the last Friday of the month, and Apple has often held off to the last possible Friday when it promises to release OS software for any given month.

    Reply

  28. makemineamac,

    What do you mean it works? It will load yes, but nothing is displayed right. Look at the size of the user name log in field, isn’t it tiny for you?

    And like I said, I can still log in, but nothing works right. I get a fixed size pop up window for the main MLS page and no option to re-size or scroll, yet I can’t see all of the info. It also will not allow me change data or use any of the functions that I can when I log in with IE on XP.

    Reply

  36. I have no direct experience with Boot Camp, as I don’t yet have my Intel Mac (and the pencil-heads in the procurement office won’t allow us to buy new Macs). But I find it interesting that people have come to rely on Apple’s “beta” product when other released products (e.g. Vista) give people major grief.

    I seem to recall speculation that, while Boot Camp will be bundled with Leopard, it will also be offered as a low-cost standalone product. I don’t know if that’s still in the works. That aside, I would expect both VmWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop will work off that installed Boot Camp partition.

    Reply

  39. Okay, so which is better, Parallels or Fusion. And what about Viruses on my Mac side?

    Better yet, Can anyone explain to me why this site won’t work on my Mac?

    I’ve tried to argue with IS, but I always get beaten down because I don’t really know enough about this to put up a good argument. My husbnd says they are just lazy, but can anyone tell me what would it require to get this working on a Mac, and would it really be the huge expense that IS says it would be?

    Thanks in advance.

    Reply

  40. Loru, I agree with Donna, I want Leopard just as much as the next person, but i want to wait a month for the bugs to get worked out.

    If everyone would use Leopard immediately, wouldn’t any bugs be worked out more quickly?

    MW- true. Riiight!

    Reply

  42. Why bother with BOOTCAMP when one can run Windows software in Mac OS X?????

    That’s right kiddies, I’m running 10.5 right now!!!

    You DO have to install Windows though, but it’s a resource file instead of a full blown running OS.

    Of course you have the choice:

    1: Mac OS X with Windows software, no Windows.

    2: Mac OS X and Windows side by side.

    3: Mac OS X dual boot.

    4: Linux still can’t come to the party.

    Reply

  43. Oh yea!!

    EFI has recently gotten a update, which means when 10.5 is installed “FAST USER SWITCHING” will also apply to multiple operating systems.

    Meaning Windows and OS X.

    Linux still can’t come to the party, but a hack can easily be done.

    Apple is deathly afraid of Linux. Because the same threat of M$ is Apple’s as well.

    Free.

    Reply

  44. @ Donna: Parallels has been out longer than VMWare Fusion, but it seems I read that VMWare’s “Unity” is a bit better than Parallel’s “Coherence”, both of which help Windows apps behave more like native OS X apps– at least as far as having Windows apps intermingled with OS X apps on one desktop.

    You can read more about them here: http://www.macworld.com/2007/07/reviews/parallels3/index.php
    http://www.macworld.com/2007/09/reviews/vmwarefusion/index.php

    Don’t forget, Google is your friend!

    Reply

  45. When they mean discontinue Boot camp, they mean you will no longer be able to use the program that installs windows on a mac. But computers that already have it installed will still be able to dual boot, right?

    Reply

  46. Not sure what the issue is. It’s not like your Windows installation is going to stop working – all BootCamp does is create the partition and provide a drivers install disk. These will all remain after the beta expires. All this means is that you won’t be able to create any new Windows installations with Bootcamp after the beta expires.

    Reply

  47. The ONLY thing I use Bootcamp for is the exam-taking software my school insists on using, which will not work with Parallels or similar; my plan had been to wait on upgrading to Leopard after finals in December… I guess that’s no longer an option.

    Reply

  48. Well thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I will be looking into parallels or fusion..

    In the meantime, If anyone can provide some insight as to technical reasons why I can’t get to the site I use on my Mac, I’d love to hear it..

    I’t be great if I had some ammo to go to my IS dept with.. Ultimately, all I want is to able to do all of my work on my Mac without having to use XP.

    Thanks again.

    Reply

  51. MacCrazy is on crack. Leopard does not have Windows support built in. Apple has said as much publicly. Apple advertises Parallels and VMWare as Windows solutions along with Bootcamp. They are different solutions.

    Run Parallels/Bootcamp when you want to run Windows or other OSes when you are running Mac OS X. You may use Bootcamp to reboot into Windows, but only a few versions are supported. Since most versions of Vista do not support VM licensing, then Bootcamp is your only choice there.

    I’m running Leopard now. It’s got some bugs in the developer version. Some bug, like the lack of headphone support and scroll bars that resize several times a second seem deliberate to prevent piracy.

    Other than that it’s pretty stable. Leopard is not Apple’s Vista in any stretch. There aren’t that many OMG features, most of the updates are improvements in user flow, clearer interfaces and huge updates under the hood. Things like app and user migration are improved. Upgrading from Tiger to Leopard was flawless for me and all I had to do is make some changes in httpd.conf since Apache is now version 2.2 and stores that file in a different location. Now Leopard is my primary machine.

    Time machine “just works”. It makes you wonder why all other backup software is so ridiculously complicated.

    Where Vista (and XP) bothers the user about every crazy thing, Leopard’s policy is “don’t ask don’t tell” most of the time. For instance, you have to go the the Time Machine pref (or console I imagine) pane to find out if it failed. However, if you yank your USB key or firewire drive before ejecting in the Finder it’ll nasty-gram you.

    Faster? Than what? I’d need a slower machine to tell you if I notice. It’s not slower.

    Reply

  52. First the glossy-only iMacs and MacBooks.
    Then iMovie Junior.
    Then the iBrick.
    Now Boot Camp might be DOA at the end of the month?

    I don’t know what Applesoft is planning next, but I bet we’re a lot closer to the iRevolt among us long and loyal Apple customers.

    Reply

  54. Donna,

    Some web developers insist upon using Microsoft specific tools that only work with Internet Explorer and/or Windows. The most prominent of these is ActiveX, but there are others. When developers do this instead of using the established web standards you end up with sites that don’t work properly with other browsers or operating systems. The MLS system needs to be rewritten, but that likely won’t happen because the Realtor lobby is deathly afraid of losing control of it. (which of course is a separate issue from your question)

    Reply

  55. I seem to remember somewhere on the  Website that Boot Camp will be available for Tiger as a paid for download, possibly a Serial Number scheme?

    There is of course an easy solution that I’m suprised nobody has mentioned yet…

    …go 100% OS X and stick with the tried, tested, reliable Tiger. Sure, there are a few bugs remaining, but overall Tiger is the best OS i have used to date.

    I’m surprised that  haven’t announced the release date yet.

    Reply

  56. “…Apple “last week posted a technical support document indicating that some versions of the beta software have already expired and that the latest version will expire when Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard ships in October,”

    Confused, Reality Check and Shawn,

    If what you are saying is correct, then what does the above quote mean when they say some versions have already expired?

    Seems a bit misleading.

    Reply

  57. Donna,
    I work for an MLS that uses IE specific applications, as far as they tell us there are things that are programmed for use with active x controls and with .Net that will only work with IE. We have plenty of members that request something that will run on something other than IE, not ever Safari or Firefox work on windows, let alone on Mac. The agents I have seen using Macs are using Parallels or Fusion with pretty good success and no need to reboot. Good Luck!

    Reply

  58. Donna, I second Alan’s recommendation – try a trial of Crossover Mac, which runs some Windows software, including IE6 quite well. Must less memory and storage intensive. You do need an Intel Mac, though:
    http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

    My niece went to Mac, and the only thing she missed was her Quicken on Windows (more capability than the Mac version)- she tried and subsequently bought Crossover Mac and is a happy camper. You don’t have to boot into Windows or even install Windows – it’s pretty cool, but it doesn’t work for a lot of important apps. It does, however, run IE 6 quite well, I have tested that myself.

    Reply

  59. Donna, I don’t know what the site is supposed to look like but the login screen looks usable (and normal size) to me in both Safari and Opera. I haven’t counted lately, but my last count showed more than 12 browsers available for Mac. More than one allow IE mimicking and some have other creative features. But I think the other suggestions here might help and I would be very interested in your getting MLS working. I hope you complain on a regular basis to them. Their keep-my-job-I’m-Microsoft-certified-so-Microsoft-is-best excuses for not having it run on a Mac make my stomach turn. One such excuse is that they can’t guarantee a secure environment on the Mac. Good luck finding a work around!

    Reply

  60. I AM NOT ON CRACK!!

    10.5 DOES indeed run Windows apps without Windows being visible. But it has to be installed.

    LISTEN HERE!!

    Apple is making sure one has to run Mac OS X in order to run Windows.

    That’s the reason “bootcamp” is being phased into 10.5.

    Windows is to be the “lesser OS” under 10.5.

    1: Install Mac OS X.

    2: It will ask if you want to install Windows.

    3: You stick a Windows cd in.

    4: Mac OS X does everything.

    5: You reboot, you got Windows apps running in Mac OS X or.

    6: You have a choice to switch between the two OS’s using fast user switching. or

    7; You have the choice to boot Windows solely, but you can’t get rid of Mac OS X. It will be a choice and not a pernament option.

    this way Mac’s won’t be PC’s.

    the whole purpose of this is to allow Windows losers to be able to keep their investment in software as they switch completely over to OS X.5.

    Windows will be “sandboxed” by Mac OS X, even if you boot Windows and it appears to be only Windows, it still will be Mac OS X underneath insulating Windows from the internet.

    This is going to be the new campaign. Mac’s run Windows SAFER than PC’s

    BANK ON IT!!

    Reply

  61. @Donna,

    Darkness is pretty much correct. It sounds like it’s not your Mac per se, as much as it is the web developers didn’t optimized the MLS stuff to work on anything but IE… which is dumb. Basically, the only thing that can be done about this problem is have them reprogram the site… but that’ll require ’em to do work, so it’ll prob not happen easily, if at all. You’ll prob have to get some sorta petition going to let ’em know a LOT of ppl don’t wanna use crappy IE… that’s the real security hole! That’s prob about the only thing you’ll be able to do on your end to resolve this issue… i mean, IE, who still uses that crappy arse browser?!?

    don’t take no for an answer… really push the issue, it’s ridiculous to expect someone to have to bounce around browsers just to view your site. Any good web designer/programmer knows you only have about a 2 sec window of opp to keep someone interested in a site… if it doesn’t load quickly enuff or properly or is hard to navigate, ppl will move on, never looking back. Unfortunately, y’all need MLS so they kinda gotcha on that aspect. Good luck on trying to change and inform the ignorant!

    Reply

  64. “…Apple “last week posted a technical support document indicating that some versions of the beta software have already expired and that the latest version will expire when Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard ships in October,” “

    If Boot Camp is going to continue to run as some say, then why does the above quote say that some versions have already expired? It’s a bit mis-leading..

    Reply

  66. You don’t have a problem. As others have pointed out, your Bootcamp partition won’t stop working. You just won’t be able to create new partitions. That’s not such a big deal and, in fact, it’s quite reasonable for Apple to do this.

    Reply

  67. Wow, Thank you all for the help..

    Sorry about my double post, I didn’t realize there were two pages of comments here.

    Anyway, thanks to Darkness for that explanation and Alan, I am going to try IE6 as you suggested.

    Thanks a bunch.

    Reply

  68. It used to be that you could go 3-6 months between Apple assraping it’s customers, so that the bleeding had time to heal.

    Now it happens every few days to a week max. How many fanboys are starting to get tired of the relentless pounding?

    Reply

  69. MDN. Why don’t you put a second page link at the top of the first page? This will allow the user to go straight to the active part of the discussion, rather than scrolling down to the bottom of the first page to click the link. Or tell me why not. Thanks. Ron.

    Reply

  70. Boot Camp Beta was just that, beta. They warn you the user even before you install it that it WILL EXPIRE. They inform you that this will be a feature in Leopard 10.5. So Donna you have nothing to complain about and if you are using Boot Camp then you could create a separate partition to install leopard and setup Boot Camp.
    Then run Boot Camp when you need it but still be able to go to Tiger for your OSX needs if you are so scared about Leopard. So you’ll have the best of 3 worlds, Tiger, Leopard, and Boot Camp.
    Sure it will be a little work involved getting it going but then you are not forced to use leopard as your main OSX system should there be incompatibilities. Problem solved.

    Reply

  71. Donna, it isn’t anything that you or your Mac are or are not doing, its the way the site is developed. As a consumer of on online printing services I’ve dropped more than because their sites require IE, and of course as a consumer I have the luxury of simply dropping their service from my bookmarks, but this kind of came to a head when I finally found a service that would let me send unlimited file sized in just about any format I could think of, then I started having problems, then I request tech support and got the dreaded item #1 – Must be using IE. Long story short I dropped them and three months later I got an email saying that their service had better Safari compatiblity – and it did and does.

    This doesn’t help you, but just be aware that the contractors hired to develop the site are the culprits, and being MS “partners” they may be doing it wittingly or not. My real-world experience with MS “partners” is that it can go either way, but the point is that web sites really should not be manufacturer [MS] exclusive.

    For whatever it’s worth, when I was buying a home I noticed problems with some of the sites that our agent recommended to us, so I wonder if there isn’t some precedent for finding out who the actual site developers are and bringing your issue to their attention, since it may potentially affect some of you clients as well, and the clients of other agents in your agency.

    Just thinking out loud. (Bottom line it’s the people that develop the site.)

    Reply

  75. Donna,

    More than likely it is a configuration that they are not doing when they write the code for the website. I am not exactly sure what it is, but I do know that in all of the software programs that I have used to create web pages, it has been an easy setting that I just turn on to make it compatilble with browsers other than IE.

    Reply

  76. @ iMaki – I hope you like sex and traveling, because you should do both right now !!! and kick the preverbal bucket whilst doing it !!!

    … Oops, sorry, was that was a tad unsentimental of me?

    MacCrazy – our little looney friend with a penchant for tin foil apparel on his head, we know who you are … DUDE !!!

    next!

    Reply

  78. @Donna,

    I looked at the code presented in the link you posted. Several things come to mind.

    1) The programmer has ‘borrowed’ source code from an open source web site. This code is offered free of charge. That is not an automatic mark of either quality or otherwise, but it does indicate that the programmer was too lazy to adapt it himeself.

    2) The programmer has added an additional copyright notice which would appear to be deceptive practice. Also not a good sign.

    3) The web page uses both PHP and Java as its programming language. These both present the generated HTML code differently to Internet Explorer which regularly departs from international standards as supported by W3C (the accepted Internet standard)

    4) Some of the font sizes in the code are rediculously small and it would appear that Safari and other browsers attempt to render them correctly as coded. Internet Explorer on the other hand cannot cope and so ignores it. This is an example of a defect in Internet Explorer accidentally helping the user. It is likely that a future fix of IE by M$ will result in this page misbehaving as it does in other browsers.

    I am happy to advise further if required so please feel free to email me directly and I will see what I can do.

    While both VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop provide good solutions for running Windows, it would be much better if the underlying problem could be fixed so you did not have to run Windows at all.

    Good luck anyway.

    PS. The browser ‘Opera’ in its latest version will allow itself to be configured to mimic IE but I am not sure that this would extend to miming IE bugs which is what you have here.

    Regards

    G

    Reply

  79. Donna,

    Hard to answer your “why does it not work question” without full access to the software and looking at it both on the Windows and OS X sides. Having said that, what it looks to me is that the software these Homescape folks are using is a Java applet.

    Just like any application (or applet in this case) there are bugs. IN this case, what they are saying to you is, there may be bugs in OS X but that is not our problem because we fully tested it in IE for Windows and we are not seeing any issues there. Also, we told you that we only support IE for Windows, so we don’t know/acknowledge any other issues you may be having outside of anything you can see in IE for Windows.

    I would suggest an alternative to a scenario others mentioned. Instead of getting a spoofer for Safari that tells the world that it is IE, get a spoofer for IE that tells the world that it is Firefox. If my suspicion is right, you will get the same result in IE that you get in Safari (the small login window) and then you can sit back and watch in glee how the IT department goes bonkers trying to figure out why you are getting this issue…as long as you don’t tell them (or they figure out) the spoofer…

    For this to be more effective you might even want to do it with a true Windows box, otherwise they’ll say “well this does not happen with any of our other Windows machines, it must be that Boot Camp crap you are running.”

    Another thing you might want to do probably before the spoofing thing is to install the Java software directly from Sun and tell IE to use that instead of its built-in Java support. This will also very likely produce the same result in IE that you are getting on the Safari. Why?

    Because I’m betting your IT staff does not install Sun’s implementation of Java and only relies on Microsoft’s implementation of Java. Other OSes use Sun’s Java implementation because it is the only one available for them.

    If you replace Microsoft’s version with Sun’s version, you should be in a more Apples to Apples environment.

    Sun’s Java: http://www.java.com:80/en/download/manual.jsp
    Spoofing: http://whatsmyuseragent.com/SwitchingUserAgents.asp#IE

    In the meantime, as others have mentioned, Parallels or VMWare will give you a full IE implementation without having to shutdown and reboot like Boot Camp makes you do.

    Hope some of this helps and remember, by simply running two OSes on your computer like you do right now, you already know more than your IT guys do. If you don’t think so, ask them how many OSes do they know how to use?

    To top it off, by going through some of the steps above you’ll be even more technically ahead than they are…not that you want to be, but it will still be something to be proud of.

    Reply

  80. Or you can work with fenman who is a lot more technical about the issues.

    In particular, I’m sure that pointing to your IT staff (tell the CIO not his/her croonies) that the code they are using could bring them into legal trouble will probably get a quick response out of them.

    If the CIO ignores you, tell the CFO, nothing scares a CFO more than watching their hard earned money go down the drain because of legal issues.

    Reply

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