No EFI for Vista

[Matt T]

This is so typical of Microsoft. They continue to use older technology and simply slap an (arguably) prettier face on it. Forget about the Intel Mac's - this is simply Microsoft deliberately holding people back from the future. We've all waited nearly 6 years for Vista - the very least Microsoft could do it use technology that isn't two decades old. It's pathetic.

And can someone please clear something up for me; is it just the Longhorn Server that won't support 32-bit machines, or Vista as a whole?

If anything, MS wants Windows on Mac's, that then increases their market share to PC and Mac users, making them more money.

Exactly what I was going to say. :yes:

[KeR]

I am baffled, what is really going on at Microsoft...a huge amount of features that were to be in Vista have been removed.

[Liquid]

And I care why ? Vista sucks anyways. I can assure you vista will cause people to move to mac. Apples move to intel doesn't exactly help Vista in anyway either. I personally made about 20 people switch to OS X in the past week or so. Is this huge, yes, yes it is. Why is this huge to me? Thats 20 people that are stuck in the s**t hole know as Windows. They can do everything on a mac that they can do on a PC, but in a more productive, less stressful enviroment. Now this is just indivdual users. I have made two small businesses switch aswell. So far, they love it. One is even buying me a MacBook Pro, which should be here soon. So what do I say to Microsoft killing the EFI support? Idiots, instead of slacking, start working. I know developers on the Vista team that agree Vista is crap, also Paul Thurrot, which I had a mini interview with while playing COD2 on 360, agreed that Vista is complete s**t from the ground up.

/end rant.

Sorry about that, a bit offtopic but I am totally chocked at Microsoft lately, it's constant cut this, cut that, take to much time and get no where crap. What has Vista done for Windows? Nothing! It's just XP with some pretty graphics and a side bar, and oh ya, that annoying, CAN I OPEN CONTROL PANEL, PERMIT, ALLOW, crap! ITS CONTROL PANEL, YOUR OWN APP!!!, JESUS CHRIST!111! Not to mention you can disable that, which, well, can be disabled with a batch script. Doesn't that render that pointless? If CMD is enabled, a batch can run... That service can be disabled, now a virus or malicous software can run. Wow nice and secure Microsoft (Y).

[KoL Veteran]

They keep removing things from Vista :no:

Like someone posted in the frontpage I want to see a list of all the features that Vista was going to have and the actual features that it will have.

[aristotle-dude]

This is definitely political. They want to push WMP 11 and are afraid that dual booting macs would take away from potential market share in music sales as people would have access to a fast native version of iTunes in OS X and games through booting into windows.

I know of several people who would have bought macbooks and only booted into Vista to play games.

There is still hope of an OS X port of cedga for games and darwine X86 for applications. You could always run apps in a virtual environment. Here's hoping for VMware on OSX soon.

[Michael_C]

this is pretty depressing how they can't get it to work.....i mean it didnt take that long for tiger to do it..

I guess you missed this part:

It is responsible for initialising hardware in the PC, and importantly, device drivers are stored in the EFI flash memory rather than being loaded by the operating system. It is a major change for the PC industry and both PC makers and Microsoft have been slow to make the switch. Because the Apple Intel Mac platform is entirely new, it does not have any legacy support concerns.

[the_dark_son]

I had written a blog entry for the story but I am more dissapointed in both comapnies. Also Microsoft is not all to blame as OS X also uses a custom implementation of EFI and Im sure they are being less than forthcoming for details.

[aristotle-dude]

I guess you missed this part:

I guess you missed the part where Apple switched from Bios to EFI between 10.4.3 (intel transition kits with bios) and 10.4.4 (Intel Core Duos with EFI)? Apple was able to quickly switch over.

They could have included drivers and bootloader for both and installed the appropriate on during installation.

[Rudy]

I guess you missed the part where Apple switched from Bios to EFI between 10.4.3 (intel transition kits with bios) and 10.4.4 (Intel Core Duos with EFI)? Apple was able to quickly switch over.

They could have included drivers and bootloader for both and installed the appropriate on during installation.

haha that's exactly what i was going to say :p

[l77Il7H]

wow, this blows!

[yodat]

Besides dual booting OSX, EFI have numerous advantages for users (PC users) such as faster booting, system independent drivers, etc.

MS simply will launch a feature incomplete OS just not to slip the 2006 release date without this one & some others.

This is just disappointing :(

IMO all fundamental features like EFI, WinFS should be in inital release; not to come with a service pack later.

Service packs should be just for bugfixes, improve stability & maintenance...

[Liquid]

Besides dual booting OSX, EFI have numerous advantages for users (PC users) such as faster booting, system independent drivers, etc.

MS simply will launch a feature incomplete OS just not to slip the 2006 release date without this one & some others.

This is just disappointing :(

IMO all fundamental features like EFI, WinFS should be in inital release; not to come with a service pack later.

Service packs should be just for bugfixes, improve stability & maintenance...

Service Packs shouldn't have to exsist.

[.Neo]

They have a point, do any of you have a PC with EFI? I doubt it. It's useless right now.

All Intel Macs ship with EFI.

Typically Microsoft just keep on scrapping features!

[TogaForComfort]

Not sure how EFI works, but could some kind of bootloader be made for the intel macs? I think this would be quite an undertaking but would it be possible?

[.Neo]

I had written a blog entry for the story but I am more dissapointed in both comapnies. Also Microsoft is not all to blame as OS X also uses a custom implementation of EFI and Im sure they are being less than forthcoming for details.

What has Apple to do with the fact Windows Vista won't boot natively on any EFI system?

[Fourjays Veteran]

People are forgetting one thing in the "OSX has it, why not Windows?" argument. That OSX is designed to run on a fairly minimal amount of hardware, where as Windows is designed to run on every possible configuration of computer... old or new.

I was quite looking forward to this EFI stuff, although I know little about it.

[Matt T]

Service Packs shouldn't have to exsist.

Just like 10.x.x updates shouldn't exist?

[tiagosilva29]

They'll only support EFI in about a year... Typical.

Not surprised with the Mac issue too.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

People are forgetting one thing in the "OSX has it, why not Windows?" argument. That OSX is designed to run on a fairly minimal amount of hardware, where as Windows is designed to run on every possible configuration of computer... old or new.

I was quite looking forward to this EFI stuff, although I know little about it.

Yes, but to support a wide range of hardware, you normally have to support things, not remove support for them. :p

there is nothing stopping Windows from supporting EFI and classical BIOS, this just means Vista wont run on native, EFI only (no CSM) systems.

[The Grasshopper]

is anyone getting these error messages? its driving me nuts!

when i click on a post on the home page it redirects me to this:

IPB WARNING [2] Invalid argument supplied for foreach() (Line: 3525 of /sources/ipsclass.php)

then nothing.

so i have to go to the message boards and this is at the header:

IPB WARNING [2] Invalid argument supplied for foreach() (Line: 3525 of /sources/ipsclass.php)

IPB WARNING [2] Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/neowin/public_html/forum/init.php:269) (Line: 445 of /sources/classes/class_display.php)

IPB WARNING [2] Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/neowin/public_html/forum/init.php:269) (Line: 446 of /sources/classes/class_display.php)

IPB WARNING [2] Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/neowin/public_html/forum/init.php:269) (Line: 447 of /sources/classes/class_display.php)

[Martyn]

This sucks :(

[Syphonic]

Bizarre. I'm sure MS know what they're doing though, or maybe my faith is misplaced?

[ichi]

People are forgetting one thing in the "OSX has it, why not Windows?" argument. That OSX is designed to run on a fairly minimal amount of hardware, where as Windows is designed to run on every possible configuration of computer... old or new.

I was quite looking forward to this EFI stuff, although I know little about it.

Then forget about OSX and talk about Linux, which runs on far more hardware architectures than Windows and supports EFI.

Running on more hardware is certainly not the reason why they're dropping this feature.

[.Ark]

Call me crazy, but I think this is all politics.

I think this has something to do with the Intel Macs and the fact that many people were going to purchase them only because they could run both OS X and Windows.

Does anybody else feel like this is just a stab at Apple from MS? It seems so... Before, MS had every intention to do it, then the craze set in that people would be able to run Vista on their shiny new Intel Macs, and now MS isn't going to support it...

Strange, very strange.

Exactly what I was thinking! The people who were waiting since a long time to get an Intel Mac was so that they can dual boot.. if they did not care so much, they could have gotten an iBook or a Powerbook. They want Windows and they know it. This will hurt Apple's business a little bit imo...

[Sagittarius Veteran]

I don't know if anyone mentioned this already, but I believe Vista, and XP64, and possibly Server 2003 already or will natively support booting with EFI on 64-bit chips. The problem is that the Mac implementation boots with a 32-bit chip, so it isn't as much as Vista scrapping or not having features as it is that the Mac isn't using 64-bit chips.