Bootcamp: Apple adds Windows XP support to Intel Macs, AAPL up 10%

Apple today dropped a bombshell on the Mac community by announcing a new Apple-supported bootloader called Boot Camp. For those who have Intel Macs, this software will allow boot support for Windows XP. Although Apple Intel Macs use EFI, the latest firmware update adds support for OSes that require BIOS compatibility. In traditional Mac fashion, Boot Camp makes it easy for users to partition their hard drives and install Windows XP, and provides a menu to choose between the different OSes at bootup.

For those wishing to try out this software, just remember Boot Camp is still in beta. A few users have reported serious problems with the install. Also, for those who wish to write to the Windows partition from within Mac OS X, FAT32 should be used as the file format, since OS X has full FAT32 read/write support. NTFS is not recommend because OS X can only read NTFS and not write to it.

The investors loved the news, and drove AAPL up 9.87% to US$67.21.

10.4.6 adds functionality, speeds up Aperture

Apple's OS X 10.4.6 update was released yesterday, and some of the upgrades include new support for Nikon D200 .NEF and Canon 30D .CR2 RAW files, as well as a fix for the EXIF bug for exported TIFF files from Aperture.

In addition, with 10.4.6, Aperture 1.0.1 is now much more responsive. For example, just viewing heavily adjusted 8 MP images on my iMac G5 2.0 through Aperture's loupe was quite a laggy process. Although some of the lag is still there in 10.4.6, it is greatly reduced compared to 10.4.5.

This is a nice improvement for Aperture that will tide us over until the full Aperture 1.1 update arrives this month.