CZ said:
Don:
Hardware devices require drivers, so how well do the following work within
Vista on a Mac:
Screen resolution and color depth
Sleep mode
Sound
Networking via Ethernet port
USB v2.0 ports
What limitations/problems are you aware of?
Performance?
TIA
NOTE that everything I mention below was under various beta releases of
Vista, not the RTM, or under XP Pro w/SP2.
My experience with an Apple Intel iMac was with a Generation 1 machine. And
Vista was still in Beta when I used it.
As to Screen resolution and color depth: I got the highest resolution my
card (an ATI 7600 Pro) would provide (which was 1680x1050, on a 20" display.
On the built-in display, I got 1440x960, the rated resolution of the display
(17"). Color depth on either display was 32bits. The display had
absolutely no dead pixels out of the box, and all the time I owned it, no
pixel ever died. The display was clear and sharp, with no ghosting at all.
The machine ALWAYS slept properly, and the machine came out of sleep within
10 seconds, with the Desktop ready to use.
I got good sound, even superior sound, on two speakers. But I certainly
have no ear for such distinctions. If it sounds good to me, I like it. It
sounded good to me. In addition, I could have used a tos-link cable
leading to digital speakers. But I did not have digital speakers, so I
can't speak for them.
At the time, our house was using an Apple Airport base station with
Satellite service, and I connected to the house network via wireless (built
in the iMac). It always worked. With Beta 1 I had no connectivity in
Vista, and I had to download the driver from the Web on another machine
before I could get wireless working, but the Broadcom drivers were present
on Beta 2 and the Release Candidate, and wireless was up within 5 seconds
of the Desktop coming up.
USB ports: They were both USB 2.x ports. In addition, there were two USB
2.x ports on the provided Apple Pro Keyboard (I didn't like the keyboard,
and soon replaced it with one of my wireless Microsoft keyboards. It worked
just as it would on a PC.
Firewire: 2 Firewire 480 ports. Always worked well.
The machine had a mini-DVI connector on the back of display, to which I
connected a secondary 20" Apple Cinema Display. But the DVI-to-MiniDVI
adapter kept falling out when I turned the system unit even a small amount.
Using Boot Camp software, Vista installed as a dual-boot with OS X with no
trouble at all.
However, there were a few features which did not work under Vista:
1) The Apple Remote did not work in Vista. Apple did not provide a driver.
2) The Macintosh Drivers for Windows XP disk did not work under Vista, so I
had to install the drivers which were supplied manually by extracting the
drivers to a folder on my HD and starting the installers individually.
3) The CD-Eject key did not work at all during installation, since the Apple
keyboard driver cannot be installed until the installation of Vista was
finished. Once on the Vista Desktop, with the drivers installed, the
CD-Eject key worked well.
Because this key does not work in the XP installer, it is not possible to
use Upgrade media to install XP. It would be different with Vista, however,
since there is no need to eject the installation media once the Vista
installer starts.
4) The built-in iSight camera did not work, since the provided driver only
worked under XP. Nevertheless, Vista still recognized the camera, yet the
camera did not work.
I felt it necessary to download the ATI Catalyst Vista drivers (beta at the
time) for my card and install it, but soon rolled back to the Boot Camp
provided ATI drivers, since the ATI Catalyst beta was very shaky, and made
the machine unstable. By the way, the reason the Macintosh Drivers for XP
disk would not install the drivers was because each time the driver
installer came to the Catalyst Control Center, the installer crapped out,
and refused to run any more.
All-in-all, Vista, even in its beta state, ran well and stable on my Intel
iMac.
As to installing Vista as the exclusive OS, and removing OS X:
1) This was much simpler than people were making it to be.
2) It was not possible until the release of Beta 2 of Vista.
3) The Apple firmware updates necessary to dual-boot with XP or Vista
provide a BIOS emulator in the EFI chip on the motherboard. This means that
ANY Intel-based OS using a BIOS can be installed on an Apple Intel machine
as the exclusive OS.
4) It is now even possible to delete the EFI partition, and completely wipe
the HD, and start the Vista installer normally, as you would if you were
installing it on a totally wiped drive in a Wintel machine, since the Apple
Boot menu is in hardware, not software, as it is in Windows.
5) The necessary firmware updates have been installed at the factory on the
second generation Apple Intel PCs, so its not necessary to install OS X in
order to install them. However, it is necessary to run Boot Camp under OS
X, for ONE reason: To create the Macintosh Drivers for XP disk. Once it is
created, the HD can be completely wiped, and ANY Intel-based OS can be
installed normally (such as various distros of Linux, MSDOS, Windows, etc).
There is probably a good chance that with the release of Leopard, the
Macintosh Drivers Disk for Windows will include native drivers for Vista,
instead of having to make do with the XP drivers. They work, (most of
them), but it really is a lot of trouble to get them extracted and then
manually installed one by one when installing them in Vista. Its also
possible that the RTM of Vista broke one or more of them which worked
passably well in the Betas.
Anyway, I give the Apple Intel PCs high marks. As Apple says, "They just
work". But I would change that a bit:
"They just work (mostly), if you can find the right drivers." But of
course, the same is true in the Windows world. Its all about finding the
right drivers nowadays..
There is a caveat with running XP or Vista on an Apple Intel PC, however,
especially on the Intel iMacs, Mac Books, and the Mac Minis:
The Intel iMacs are NOT user-upgradeable, other than external devices and
memory. This means it is dangerous to change out the stock internal HD for
a larger one. Personally, I would take such a machine to an Apple
Authorized technician to have it done. Their hardrives are not easily
replaceable, since the case is very difficult to open. Unless a layman
knows what he is doing, he can easily screw it up, and void his warranty.
You have to pretty much take the machine apart to swap the HD out. I took
mine to the local CompUSA to have it done. They charged me a total of $35
(plus the HD) to change it to a larger one. Taking it to Apple directly
would probably have cost a minimum of $100+the HD, plus your time spent
waiting for it to be returned. Changing my stock 160GB SATA drive for a
300GB SATA II drive did cause the case to get warmer, however. But NOT "hot
to the touch". So I suggest that anyone order their machine with a larger
HD (Apple currently offers either a 160GB SATA drive, or a 250GB SATA HD in
the Intel iMacs.) Ask for the 250GB drive to be installed at the factory
rather than a 160 if you buy the low-end Intel iMac.
If you can afford it, purchase a top-of-the-line Mac Pro. They are truly
professional machines, easily upgradeable, and tough as nails. In addition,
they are beautiful, and its very easy to work on the interior hardware. The
HDs are easily replaceable, and have no cables to fill up the interior of
the case. Just snap them in, and snap them out if you want to change one
out. If you've ever seen the interior of a Mac Pro's heavy-duty case (no
thin-walled steel case, these: the cases are solid and have substance to
them, and easy to open and close, without getting cuts on your fingers from
sharp edges, as is common with PC cases), you will have to say, "Well done,
Apple!!!" They are like Ferraris in quality. I can easily say that they
are superbly engineered, at the very least. I would suspect that the case
walls are at least 1/8" thick.
Vista on a Mac Pro would be the best of the best of all Personal computer
environments.
I could go on and on about the Apple Mac Pro, but its getting rather late,
and I need sleep.
Hopefully, I have not drowned you with words..
