Apple’s Macs get wireless booting thanks to MacBook Air
The MacBook Air lacks an optical drive and is therefore one of the first laptops that is able to share the optical drive of another computer wirelessly. It is also able to boot wirelessly in this manner as well. Apple will be rolling out this feature to new Macs as well.
The MacBook Air is able to do everything using this wireless sharing method that it could using a built-in drive, including reinstalling the operating system.
It may not be necessary to buy the external drive that’s optional for the MacBook Air but not doing so makes things a little less convenient.
Just consider that the MacBook Air was a test-bed for the wireless booting/sharing technology but it won’t be the only one for long.
A post over at MacRumors indicates that this ability will be rolled out to other Macs in the OSX 10.5.2 update. Things will get even more interesting if this is true.
However many PCs you have around is, in theory, how many drives your Mac will have access to. That is cool, but is simply a novelty on the MacBook Air as I’d still want it to have its own dedicated drive.
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May 23rd, 2009
I know this has nothing to do with wireless and if I am the second person then I am sorry to take up some of your time.
Do you know that the Mac mini can boot up using the USB port and connected to an external SATA HHD. The one I am using is the 2.5 in one and it works beautifully. If the Macbooks and the Pros are using the SATA HDD, the firewire target mode is pretty useless and unnecessary anymore. But for the die hards I take back my words.