Mac-boots-Windows contest won

The $13,000 prize for whoever gets Windows XP to dual-boot on an Intel-based Mac has been won, according to the website created to promote the competition. At this stage it’s not clear who’s going to walk off with the cash, or whether their code will make it to a wider audience.

The contest was started last month by Colin Nederkoorn to prove to his boss that replacing an IBM desktop PC with a MacBook Pro made sense because the machine would run Windows XP natively as well as Mac OS X.

Apple has said in the past it will do nothing to prevent Mac owners from running Windows on x86-based Macs – it appears more keen on preventing Mac OS X being run on generic x86 hardware. However, the new Macs’ boot process uses Intel’s Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) system rather than a standard PC BIOS, and that has hampered attempts to boot XP on the machines.

Read more: reghardware.co.uk