For the past month or so, my life has been dominated by the hit game Skyrim. Because of this, I’m spending a lot of time booted into Windows on my iMac; sadly, the maker of the game, Bethesda, hasn’t released a Mac-native version of Skyrim. I’ve tried it in Parallels, VMware and Crossover, but none of them had the performance I’m looking for in a game. I don’t use Windows for anything other than playing a game, so I’ll find myself jumping back and forth pretty regularly. After the umpteenth time rebooting into Windows, I began to get tired of going into System Preferences or having to restart and hold down the Option key.
I did some research and found a load of websites that have a neat little AppleScript that will change the startup disc and restart the computer for you. This way I can double click that, then go refill my coffee, and when I get back I’m staring at Windows. I think I traced all the articles back to their original source at Mac Tricks & Tips.
I know there are a lot of other fellow Mac gamers out there who are going back and forth as I am, and there will be more once the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic (a big shout out to Alea Iacta Est, my longtime WoW and future TOR guild) starts, so I would like to share this AppleScript with all of you:
The first step you need to take is to go into your Utilities folder and launch the AppleScript application. Next, copy and paste the following lines into that window, changing “xxxxxxx” to your system password:
do shell script “bless -mount /Volumes/BOOTCAMP/ -legacy -setBoot -nextonly” password “xxxxxxx” with administrator privileges
tell application “Finder” to restart
Now click Compile. Once it is compiled, go up to File and choose Save As, select Application from the File Format drop-down menu and then click Save. You can name the AppleScript app whatever you want. You now have an easy way to get your machine to boot into the dark side, I mean Windows.
For all those anticipating the new Star Wars MMO, I can say it runs great in Boot Camp; I wasn’t happy with its performance in a virtual environment. Until Bioware answers the call of all their Mac fans, we’ll be stuck with a Windows environment for a while.