Apple’s Boot Camp is first step towards Mac OS X Leopard’s inevitable support for virtualization
Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - 11:03 AM EST"Clearly, Boot Camp is cool... but it's a trial balloon: Apple is wading into the Windows ocean, one step at a time. Boot Camp does one big thing: it lets you reboot your Intel Mac into the Windows environment," Gavin Shearer writes for gavinshearer.com. "If you wanted to be a bit snarky, you could even say that Apple's announcement is ho-hum, because Boot Camp does nothing fundamentally different than the hack 'narf' and 'blanka' published about two weeks ago (and received about $13K for their trouble). The difference, of course, is that this isn't a solution from two guys named 'narf' and 'blanka'. This is, instead, from Apple, which changes things substantially."
"Where is this going? Well, Apple candidly admits that Boot Camp is a prelude of Things To Come: "To make this choice simply irresistible, Apple will include technology in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard, that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac. Called Boot Camp (for now), you can download a public beta today." Of course, the final form of 'letting you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac' is yet to be announced. My bet is that the reboot-to-use-Windows strategy is just a temporary solution, one that gives guys like Keith and Will the ability to buy a new iMac and still play their PC games. But rebooting sucks, and so it's not a good solution for the mass market. Virtualization is what's needed, but Leopard - and its inevitable support for virtualization - isn't out yet. So for today, you reboot. Tomorrow, it'll be, well, more Apple-like," Shearer writes.
"Boot Camp is basically nine months of free marketing for Apple. Between now and January (when Leopard finally comes out) the public is going to hear nothing except 'Macs can run Windows!' from the popular press, the blogosphere, and their geek friends. And guess what? By the time Christmas rolls around, a lot of those people who are in the market for a new PC are (finally) going to consider an Apple computer instead of one from HP, Dell, Toshiba or Sony," Shearer writes. "So if I'm a consumer, and I see a Sony laptop for $2000 that runs Windows alongside an Apple laptop for $2000 that runs Windows and Mac OS X, well, which is the better value? The Mac is. No question. It's the no-compromise choice. In one fell swoop, Apple has just captured all of the value of its rival PC makers, while continuing to provide the same great stuff (iLife, OS X) that comes with their own machines. If I were Sony, or Toshiba, or HP, I'd be freaking out right now."
Full article here.
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different calculations if you factor in the cost of windows.... not that i know 1 person that has actually bought it unless it came with there machine