XP can be booted on the Intel Mac

So now I have a really good reason to buy a new Intel Powerbook: I will be able to boot Windows XP on it.

[from Windows XP-on-Mac contest declares winner]

A Macintosh enthusiast has apparently managed to load Windows XP on an Intel Mac, nabbing a nearly $14,000 prize.

For some days, there has been discussion that the person who goes by the handle “narf” had managed the technically challenging feat. Photos were posted on Flickr, and much debate ensued. However, narf’s method had to prove replicable before the contest was officially ended.

On Thursday, though, the contest ended, and a winner was declared.

“Contest has been won—updates to follow shortly,” reads a short message on the contest’s Web site.

The contest, which has been running since just after Apple Computer announced the first Intel-based Macs, collected donations from individuals and companies to raise the prize money.

Although both Macs and Windows PCs now use Intel chips, the task of loading Windows on the Intel Macs has proved more complicated, in part because both use different means of booting up. There had been hope that the next version of Windows would make things easier, but an Apple executive last week said booting Vista on Macs may not prove that easy, either.

Vista? Geez, that’s not until 2007 at the earliest. These guys will figure that out next year.

Suddenly nobody loves Raymond, particularly at Mic

If you were taking a poll among the digiterati right now, I think you’d find that Microsoft’s credibility would have fallen below the critical Richard Nixon stage, down into the 30% area or south of that. Amazing parallels with Bush and the lack of credibility there with Katrina and Iraq. In both cases, lots of management changes in the middle tiers — Michael Brown and the economist who predicted the cost of the war would be $200B or more were shown the door, but Rumsfeld and Chertoff are still in place — and correspondingly, Ballmer and other senior execs are still calling the shots. Shouldn’t they be sacked?

And Scoble is sounding more and more like Scott McClellan, the Bush Press Secretary. He was decidely testy about the hue-and-cry arising from the Vista and Office slippage and the apparently unsupported claims that 60% of Vista code needs to be rewritten, calling for not just a retraction, but the heads of the editors and reporters involved:

Whenever you see a story that says 60% of any OS is gonna be rewritten you should demand that the journalist who wrote that be immediately and publicly fired. Totally 100% incompetent. Did NOT do their homework.

There is NO WAY a major OS can be rewritten without breaking everything and certainly not in a short time frame. Such a rewrite would take a decade to make work right and I doubt it would even after that.

Scoble may be unexpectedly prescient: it may take a decade — from the time they started — before they get this OS out the door in working order. Thank god I am not a journalist, and no one can fire me for suggesting such a thing.