MacRumors reports in passing that the new Intel Macintoshes are using EFI (Official page, wikipedia).
This is great news for Mac users like me who were worried from the early developer Macs that they would use BIOS, which would be a big step down from Open Firmware we were used to. It also puts a small hurdle for those trying to install Windows on their Intel-based Macintoshes (for dual boot) and an interesting challenge for those trying to “port†Mac OS X for Intel to generic PCs.
N.B. Check out the new Intel on Macintosh ads. Widescreen is a nice touch, Apple.
Slashdot seems to be following me like the plague. This article mentions that you can’t install Windows because of EFI (something I guess immediately).
Note the article implies that installing Windows on the Mac was difficult on purpose, but the issue here is simply that all Windows PCs come with crappy BIOS and not the next-generation EFI so you can’t boot the Windows install CD-ROM. That’s not a big problem.