Macs that run Windows: The New Trojan Wars

20 years ago

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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