Hack Your Mac

It happened, and in much less time than I would have ever guessed.

With a little tinkering, you can load Windows XP on a Mac with an Intel processor, then boot into either that operating system or the usual Mac OS X. With such a software transplant, Apple's Intel-based machines -- the iMac, the MacBook Pro and the Mac Mini, the last being the subject of my column yesterday -- can justifiably be called the compatible personal computers in the world.

The software you need to do this didn't come from Apple or Microsoft. It came from the winners of an online contest -- two people identified only as "Blanka and Narf." Their solution seems reasonably simple ... if you're the kind of person who happens to have an extra PC around, the right third-party disc burning software and a willingness to live without support for some Mac hardware within Windows.

First you create a custom copy of XP with the special boot-up files those two hackers cooked up; then repartition your Intel-based Mac's hard drive into Mac and Windows partitions; reinstall OS X; and load XP. I'm looking forward to trying this procedure out, and hopefully I'll have a report about it in next week's installment of this newsletter.

For the record, at first I had thought people would have XP running on an Intel-based Mac in no time, based on the early word from Apple:"Apple suggests you'll be able to install a copy of Windows alongside Mac OS X with moderate effort."

But when the iMac debuted in January and people discovered that its "EFI" bootup software wasn't compatible with Windows at all, I was a lot less optimistic: "Although the Intel Core Duo chip in the iMac will also soon grace many Windows laptops, other parts of this Apple's innards aren't compatible with Windows XP, at least for now." At that point, I figured that one emulation program or another would bring XP to OS X first.

Those efforts are still underway -- for instance, one called Q that simulates a complete Windows computer, and another called Darwine that lets individual Windows programs run right inside OS X. At some point, Microsoft may reveal its plans for bringing Virtual PC to Intel-based Macs as well. But in the meantime, Mac users looking for the option of running Windows don't have to wait any longer.

Copyright and Wrong

Last Wednesday and Thursday, representatives of consumer-electronics, computing and entertainment firms gathered at the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Washington for the Consumer Electronics Association's annual Entertainment and Technology Policy Summit. (Disclosure: I moderated one panel discussion Thursday morning.)

The most interesting part of this was the closing debate, which featured a lineup guaranteed to clash: Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture Association of America; Leslie Harris, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology; David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers' Association (a late replacement for Recording Industry Assocation of America chairman Mitch Bainwol); CEA chief Gary Shapiro; Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge; and Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Moderator (and veteran industry analyst) Gary Arlen dressed for the occasion by donning a referee's zebra-striped shirt.

The expected fireworks ensued. One side accused the other of polarizing things, at which point the other said, "No, you're the polarizer!" That was no surprise. (Lest anybody think I'm trying to say both sides are equally screwed up, I'm not. See my last year-in-review column for just a few of my thoughts on this subject.)