Reengineering the Windows boot experience - Building Windows 8

[Avi Greenbury]

Ric Moore wrote:
> On 09/27/2011 12:27 AM, Fred A. Miller wrote:
> > This answers some questions about BIOS based boxen and 'Bloze 8.
> >
> > Fred
> >
> > Windows 8 will also enter the market in a time when the industry is
> > shifting to the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) for
> > BIOS on all new client systems. We will continue to support the
> > legacy BIOS interface, but machines using the UEFI interface will
> > have significantly richer capabilities. For instance, UEFI systems
> > can render rich graphical experiences in native resolution via the
> > Graphic Output Protocol (GOP) driver. With UEFI, the OS can finally
> > communicate with boot firmware in a standard way; this work is
> > strongly supported by standards work in UEFI and the TCG (Trusted
> > Computing Group). This enables such features as secure boot, where
> > the OS and firmware cooperate in creating a secure handoff
> > mechanism. It also enables a seamless visual experience from the
> > time you hit the power button – one experience owned by two
> > distinct components.
> >
> > http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/20/reengineering-the-windows-boot-experience.aspx
> 
> 
> See? MicroSoft has again done what it has been so good at in the
> past, ...steal ideas from Apple.

Are you genuinely advocating replacing the BIOS with something other
than UEFI purely to avoid having to have any sort of consistency with
Apple products? That's bonkers.

The fact that Apple have been using UEFI for a while is not a reason to
not use it; it's a reason *to* use it because it means somebody else
has already gone through the initial implementation and found all (or
most) of the problems, and that there's some degree of standardisation.

> I also imagine that for those "richer capabilities", some hardware
> vendors could find themselves left out in the cold. And since
> "Members of the UEFI forum include Apple, IBM and BIOS giant Phoenix
> Technologies as well as Microsoft. ®" then we can guess just what
> players will be left alive. Got shares in AMD or nVidia? I'd expect
> to see them embrace Linux as their last stronghold for customers.

Nobody's going to not switch to UEFI if it becomes reasonable to;
BIOSes are, in general, rubbish. The closest they appear to have had to
development since about 1986 is the addition of support for USB devices.
Machines frequently spend longer in the BIOS than booting the kernel.

-- 
Avi