How the MacBook Air's wireless boot feature works

Friday, January 18th

The MacBook Air's form factor may be what's drawing oohs and aahs, but software and firmware innovations that Apple developed for the machine are the real attention grabbers.

As previously confirmed with Apple, the MacBook Air is the first Mac to support wireless network booting (netboot). This functionality works in conjunction with the "Remote Disc" feature, allowing the MacBook Air to boot from, for instance, Mac OS X Install discs that are inserted in other computers' optical drives. This revolutionary capability was accomplished, firstly, via some major refinements to the system's EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface). Robust wireless support had to be added, especially with regard to using secured WiFi networks.

The second part of the wireless booting magic is the Remote Disc software that must be installed on the Mac or PC that harbors a bootable optical disc. This software actually includes a NetBoot server -- it serves the netboot volume (optical disc) in a fashion that is different from previous netboot mechanisms and allows remote booting.

This newfound wireless booting capability does not exist on Macs other than the MacBook Air, though it's possible that an EFI update from Apple could add the function to Intel-based systems.

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