Yesterday, before Apple’s announcement and release of Boot Camp, John Kheit was “trying to make some sense of Apple’s joining BAPCo, a Windows benchmarking group” in an article for The Mac Observer that has quickly been proved quite prescient.
“I’m not of the mind, like some, that believe Apple joined BAPCo just so it could benchmark the Windows support that is rumored to be built into OS X 10.5 through some sort of virtualization. Nor am I on the same page with my favorite pundit bad ass, cranky geek John C. Dvorak, in his thought exercise that Apple could abandon OS X and sell Windows. But I do think there is another option, namely, that there is some likelihood that Apple will start selling Windows boxes in addition to Macs. Perhaps not much of a likelihood (say a 5-10% chance). The idea is that, in addition to selling Macs that run OS X, Apple would sell Macs with Windows pre-loaded and a bunch of nice drivers to make it all work well,” Kheit wrote.
MacDailyNews Note: Well, that didn’t happen quite as Kheit outlined, but Boot Camp effectively allows users with an Intel-based Mac and a Windows XP disk to arrive at the same place.
Kheit wrote, “Such a move would let Apple fit into the purchasing calculus of a lot more IT departments. Further, Apple might reason that this will not cut into their sales of Macs or adoption of OS X. In fact, it would increase adoption rates… So the questions are, how bad does Apple want to get back what is rightfully theirs, i.e., the desktop? And how “out there” is it willing to go to get it back? How much is it worth to Apple to get a back door right onto the desktops of corporate America (and world-wide for that matter)? I’d say the potential rewards might make such a move worth a shot. With many requisitioning Macs running Windows, you know a fair number of users would take the opportunity to start using Mac OS X right in the heart of the corporate world. At first they would dual boot in secret, and with time, many of them would start using Mac OS X regularly… The brilliance of this risky move would be that Apple actually buddies up to Microsoft. After all, Apple would be selling a fair number of Windows licenses for Microsoft. Getting up nice and close to its ‘partner’ waiting for its chance to sink the dagger deep. And all the sudden, when there are enough Macs out there, with enough ‘soldiers’ laying in wait, there may come a time when Apple flips out the hatch and starts licensing OS X to others.”
Full article, an interesting read given what we know today, here.
MacDailyNews Take: Kudos to Kheit for exploring these ideas a day before Apple revealed Boot Camp.
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Related articles:
Boot Camp: Apple’s Trojan horse into the enterprise market? – April 05, 2006
How to run Microsoft Windows XP on an Intel-based Macintosh with Boot Camp – April 05, 2006
Apple’s ‘Boot Camp’ a watershed, could dramatically expand Mac market share – April 05, 2006
Apple’s ‘Boot Camp’ is bad news for Windows-only PC box assemblers – April 05, 2006
Dude, you got a Dell? What are you, stupid? Only Apple Macs run both Mac OS X and Windows! – April 05, 2006
Reuters: Apple’s new ‘Boot Camp’ could draw millions of new Mac buyers – April 05, 2006
Apple shares surge over 6-percent in early trading on ‘Boot Camp’ news – April 05, 2006
Apple introduces Boot Camp: public beta software enables Intel-based Macs to run Windows XP – April 05, 2006
All it really does is target that gray area of people who need to use mac and windows, except instead of having two comps you only need one (mac).
More hardware sales for Apple, and not really a loss of customers to either apple or microsoft. Win-Win for both I think.
This may make it possible for my next computer to be a mac!!! I recently became a realtor and there are no macs to speak of in real estate(although in my office the marketing and printing departments have a few). It is one of the negatives of being in this business. I (am) was considering a sony vaio. Or another idea was if business is good this year I could get a macbook later as well. But the idea of carrying around two laptops or just a windows laptop may be more annoying then a dual booting machine.
Mac most of the time, windows when I have to would be much better for me. I hope it works at least pretty good.
<<And now the world can drag their Windows “insecurity blanket” along with them while they explore the better personal computing world that we Mac users already enjoy.>>
I’m lovin’ it!
plus I will look less like a idiot after years of pestering my uncle and a friend of mine to buy macs (it took 5 years and three windows computers to get my uncle to switch) and I go out and buy a windows laptop.
This keeps me a apple customer!!! Plus if it works good for me maybe more realtors in my office will get them. Most of them hate computers because most of them think that windows are the only choice
One advantage of this move that I see is that many windoze users have invested lots of money in software and they can now slowly transition to a mac rather than have to replace tons of software all at once. I know lots of windoze users pirate their software, or buy the cheapest crap available, but there are those that have spent lots on Photoshop, Office, etc. Now they can plan to purchase mac versions over the next year or two and gradually make the shift.
Apple is systematically removing all the barriors and excuses to switching. No more performance excuses. No more “lack of software” excuses. No more “too expensive” excuses. No more “lack of games” excuses. It’s brilliant.
MSM, If some IT guy dared to strip the OS X partition out of a dual boot Mac that I had ordered to work in a corporate environment, I would rip his lungs out.
Sincerely,
-T