“As well as the transition to Intel chips has gone, a few issues remain. Chief among them is the arrival of Boot Camp, beta software from Apple that lets Intel-based Mac owners install and run Windows on their machines. Apple plans to integrate Boot Camp into OS X 10.5, but has been mum on the details,” Jim Dalrymple writes for Macworld.
“Boot Camp isn’t the only avenue for Intel-based Mac owners to run Windows on their computer. Parallels has released Parallels Desktop, a virtualization software that allows users to simultaneously run OS X and Windows (something Boot Camp can’t do),” Dalrymple writes.
Dalrymple writes, “The ability to easily run Windows on Intel-based Mac hardware poses a dilemma for some developers. If users can switch over to a Windows environment on their Macs, software makers worry that they could be squeezed out in favor of Windows-native offerings.”
Dalrymple writes, “Analysts believe Mac developers have little reason to worry. For one thing, it doesn’t make economic sense to buy a Mac to specifically run Windows. And analysts also contend that Mac OS X is ahead of Windows as an operating system. ‘Apple is very willing to entertain the comparison [between the Mac and Windows] because they clearly believe they will come out favorably in that comparison,’ said Van Baker, vice president of research at IT-research firm Gartner. ‘I’m inclined to agree with them—OS X is fast and stable. Most of the features we are going to see in [Windows] Vista have been in OS X for quite some time.'”
Dalrymple writes, “Regardless of how Boot Camp is implemented in Mac OS X Leopard, developers like [John Casasanta of Inventive Software] aren’t going anywhere. ‘We are Mac only and that’s it,’ said Casasanta. ‘There is plenty of business to be had in this market. From a business point of view and from the point of view of what I love doing there are a lot of avenues to prosper as a Macintosh developer.'”
Full article here.
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Related MacDailyNews articles:
Mac developers see ‘smooth ride’ in transition to Intel-based Macs – August 25, 2005
Will developers stop writing Mac applications if Apple ‘Macintel’ computers can run Windows? – June 08, 2005
UBS analysts: Mac users ‘unlikely to witness a significant difference’ as Apple transitions to Intel
