Running Windows on a Mac via Boot Camp

Shortly after Apple introduced the Intel Macs, many people starting wondering, "If a Mac has an Intel processor, can it also run Windows?" Clever people immediately started hacking Intel Macs and were able to get Windows running on them, albeit not easily. Not too long after the Intel Mac introduction, Apple released its Boot Camp software. This takes away almost all the complexity of installing and running Windows on a Mac that was inherent in the hacked approaches. Using Boot Camp, you can quickly and easily transform a Mac into a Windows PC (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Is this a Mac or a Windows PC? Can't tell, can you! (It's a Mac running Windows via Boot Camp.)

The amazing thing about running Windows on a Mac via Boot Camp is that it performs almost identically to a Windows PC. There are a few minor differences (mostly differences in the Mac and Windows keyboards), but for the most part, Windows running on a Mac using Boot Camp is identical to Windows running on PC hardware. The performance of a Mac running Windows is excellent and will be better than a lot of PC hardware that's out there.

The pros and cons of the Boot Camp method are easy to describe.

The primary pro (and it's a big one!) is that you can run Windows on a Mac just like running it on a Windows PC. Most Windows hardware (Mac hardware with Windows drivers, too) will work fine with Windows running on a Mac. The performance of most Windows applications you run on a Mac will be excellent. (Some Windows applications that require specialized hardware, such as high-end games or audio/video applications, might not run at all or might not perform well on a Mac.)

The con (and it's also a big one) is that you can't run Windows and the Mac OS on the same Mac at the same time. Although there are ways to share data between the Windows and Mac environments (you'll learn about these later in the book), you can't easily switch between Windows and Mac applications. So, if you frequently run applications under each OS, you'll be restarting your Mac often because that's how you switch between environments. This can get old.

If you run Windows applications only occasionally or you want to use some Windows hardware that requires specific support, using Boot Camp might be the Windows path for you.

Because Boot Camp is free software, there's no cost for you to try it. When you're ready, jump to Part I and get to it.