PC Mag wag: Is Boot Camp the end of Apple?

20 years ago

“Today Apple sanctioned a dual-boot Mac/Windows OS Mac, and gives end users the tools to create such a set up. Is this the beginning of the end of Apple? Perhaps, but as all this unfolds, I feel a little bit like Apple’s being consumed, via its own choice, by the Borg,” Lance Ulanoff writes for PC Magazine. “With today’s Bootcamp [sic] announcement, we have Apple giving in to an obvious demand. But company reps also made it dead-clear that while they’ve built this utility and made it super-simple to use, Apple has no interest in selling or supporting Windows. Right. They do not want Mac Mini [sic] users calling them up saying, ‘Windows isn’t running very smoothly on my Mac Mini [sic].’ That’s understandable. Why should Apple’s support techs get tied up in a Windows mess?”

“So Apple is simply acting as an enabler, stopping end users from jury-rigging a dual-boot system. But they’re not selling Windows. Until, well, they are. As the Borg were fond of saying, resistance is futile and, in truth, I think Apple has little interest in resisting. Two years from now, end users will probably have the option of buying OSX [sic] Macs or Windows Macs. This second official step in supporting the Windows OS (make no mistake, adopting the Intel CPU was the first) is a seeding phase,” Ulanoff writes. “Bootcamp [sic] marks the beginning of the end for Apple as the renegade for the design set and the beginning of Apple as a dominant player in the global desktop PC game. It will become absorbed. Remember, you heard it here first.”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: First of all, it’s “Boot Camp” (for now), not “Bootcamp.” And it’s “Mac mini,” not “Mac Mini.” And it’s “Mac OS X,” not “OSX.” With those messes cleaned up, let’s look at the rest of Ulanoff’s mess. Apple has not poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Mac OS X in order to dump it in favor of an inferior copy of its own Mac operating system. Ulanoff is nuts if he thinks Steve Jobs wants his life’s work to end running Bill Gates’ Windows. Ulanoff seems to have no sense of the history between Apple and Microsoft, Jobs and Gates. Ulanoff’s ideas go against everything we know about Jobs. Apple has a 30+ year record of resisting.

We believe that Steve Jobs intends to take back the personal computing world from the mediocre (and worse) mess that Microsoft has created. PCs are not meant to be frustrating time-wasters. PCs are meant to allow the user to create things: paintings, spreadsheets, email messages, movies, calculations, poetry, and more. The Mac does it all better than Windows. It’s really no contest, as most of you reading this already know. 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. If allowing Windows onto the Mac (temporarily, until people wake up) is what it’s going to take, then so be it. It’s time to put up or shut up. It’s Mac vs. Windows. Give them both a try. Go on, we dare you. We’re exceedingly confident – based on experience – that the vast majority who do try both Mac and Windows will pick the superior operating system and software platform. We bet that Apple is exceedingly confident, too.

You want to know what’s really going to happen? Windows-only users will finally find out the truth. Mac OS X won’t be an unknown or secret to them. They’ll experience the difference for themselves. Windows will be booted up less and less and Mac OS X will become for them what it already is for us: home. And then they’ll tell their friends and family members and coworkers and random people on the street. Remember, you heard it here first. How you like them Apples, Lance?

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