Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Appendix D: Running Win-
dows on MacBook Air
Despite your best efforts to live a Windows-free existence, you may find that Windows just keeps rearing its big
old head. It might be data that you can't work with because your MacBook Air doesn't have the right application,
or it might be just a favorite game that has no Mac version and that you're loath to give up. Whatever the reason,
if you find that you can't get Windows out of your life, why not bring Windows into your MacBook Air? As you
see in this appendix, there are several ways that you can run Windows on your MacBook Air and get the best of
both worlds.
Dual-Boot or Virtualization (or Both!)?
When you run Windows on a MacBook Air, Windows itself doesn't “know” that it's operating on Mac hardware.
It sees an Intel processor, and all the other hardware components in your MacBook Air — memory, hard drive,
video card, optical drive, and so on — aren't fundamentally different from the same components on a pure Win-
dows PC. However, Windows (like any operating system) does insist that it have complete control over the com-
puter. Before you decide how to go forward, you should know how the Mac's operating system (OS X) relin-
quishes control (or
appears
to relinquish control) because this defines how you use Windows and whether OS X
and Windows can share data. You can dual-boot, go the virtualization route, or even do both.
Dual-boot.
To
dual-boot
your MacBook Air means to configure it with two different operating systems — OS
X and Windows — running on separate sections (called
partitions
) on your MacBook Air's hard drive. When you
start your MacBook Air, you have a choice to boot into either OS X or into Windows. If you choose to boot into
OS X, your MacBook Air runs exactly as it does now. If you choose to boot into Windows, for all intents and
purposes your MacBook Air turns into a Windows PC. That is, you see the Windows desktop, Windows has con-
trol of the hardware, and OS X is nowhere in sight. You use Apple's Boot Camp software (which comes with OS
10.5 and later) to set up a dual-boot configuration with Windows.
Virtualization.
This method refers to running Windows on your MacBook Air in a
virtual machine
: a soft-
ware environment that simulates a physical computer. In this scenario, you boot into OS X as usual, and then you
run Windows essentially as an application in its own window. This virtual machine is configured in such a way
that Windows is fooled into thinking that it's controlling an actual PC. Several virtualization applications are
available, including the following:
•
Parallels Desktop (
www.parallels.com
)
•
VMware Fusion (
www.vmware.com/mac
)
•
VirtualBox (
www.virtualbox.org
)
•
Q (
www.kju-app.org
)
•
iEmulator (
www.iemulator.com
)
