Support for Multiple Operating Systems on Intel Macs

Now that Apple has moved to using Intel chips in all current Macintosh computers, this has opened up the potential of having several different Operating Systems (OS) on the same computer.

With the Apple OS choices of Leopard (10.5) and now Snow Leopard (10.6), Apple allows you to switch between the Mac OS and another OS (typically a version of Windows). The utility that Apple provides for this purpose is called BootCamp, and it allows you to partition your physical hard drive into separate Mac and other OS partitions.

Now you can install a legitimate copy of your choice of another operating system on that partition, and choose which OS you want to use on computer launch. This means you are either in the Mac OS, or in the other OS, but you choose one OS on restart.

There are also several third party programs that allow you to switch between operating systems without a required restart. (Parallels is only one example, and more are available) While this might be very useful in terms of productivity, it opens up a world of potential incompatibility situations.

Our X-Rite software programs will be identified as being compatible with a particular version of an operating system, but we will not offer official technical support for the many and varied combinations of third party OS switching platforms.