“I am experiencing the computer equivalent of an out-of-body experience. In front of me is Apple’s sleek new MacBook Pro laptop computer. And on the screen is a familiar sight in an unfamiliar setting: the rolling green hill and the blue sky spotted with clouds (and dotted with icons) that is the unmistakable Windows XP desktop. It’s like Pepsi in a Coke bottle, DeLay as a Democrat, Johnny Damon in a Yankee uniform (oops, forget that last one). Though it had previously been possible to run Windows on a Macintosh via pokey simulation software, this time Windows runs “native” (i.e., directly, just like with Dell and the rest) on the Intel chips that Apple has been switching to this year. Depending on how I start it up, this MacBook can retain the identity of a Mac running the Tiger OS, or become a Windows box in Mac clothing. It’s making me dizzy,” Steven Levy writes for Newsweek. “Even more disorienting, the software utility that allows me to go into the twilight zone of “it’s a Mac, it’s not a Mac” was created by Apple itself, the anti-Windows company.”
“Apple may be sending a not so subtle message that a direct comparison of the competing systems will leave no doubts concerning which is superior—or safer. When describing the precautions one must take when using Windows, Apple’s attitude is similar to a hotel concierge providing an insistent guest with directions to a nightclub in a thoroughly disreputable neighborhood. ‘When you load Windows you’re taking on the risk that entails,’ Apple senior VP Phil Schiller warns, citing the epidemiological woes of the Microsoft world. ‘There are a lot more security threats than the Mac has ever seen.’ Microsoft’s response to Boot Camp is telling. You would think there would be celebrating in Redmond—after all, customers who try it must bring their own $199 full-install version of Windows XP to the party. But aside from a welcome statement attributed to a Windows apparatchik, Microsoft execs are refusing to go on the record about this historic development—an indication that this disruptive development may be anything but welcome,” Levy writes. “Ultimately, Apple isn’t about supporting Windows—it’s about trying to steal customers from Windows.”
Advertisements:
• Apple’s brand new iPod Hi-Fi speaker system. Home stereo. Reinvented. Available now for $349 with free shipping.
• Apple’s new Mac mini. Intel Core, up to 4 times faster. Starting at just $599. Free shipping.
• MacBook Pro. The first Mac notebook built upon Intel Core Duo with iLife ’06, Front Row and built-in iSight. Starting at $1999. Free shipping.
• iMac. Twice as amazing — Intel Core Duo, iLife ’06, Front Row media experience, Apple Remote, built-in iSight. Starting at $1299. Free shipping.
• iPod Radio Remote. Listen to FM radio on your iPod and control everything with a convenient wired remote. Just $49.
• iPod. 15,000 songs. 25,000 photos. 150 hours of video. The new iPod. 30GB and 60GB models start at just $299. Free shipping.
• Connect iPod to your television set with the iPod AV Cable. Just $19.
Related articles:
Analyst: Apple’s Boot Camp may bring ‘significant benefits’ beginning in 2006 holiday quarter – April 07, 2006
Apple reseller: Boot Camp could sway a ‘huge percentage’ of PC users to go to the Mac – April 07, 2006
The Motley Fool: Apple ‘may be the next Dell’ – April 07, 2006
Macs that run Windows will calm potential switchers’ irrational fears – April 06, 2006
Analyst: Apple’s Boot Camp all about selling more Mac hardware – April 06, 2006
Analyst: With Boot Camp, Apple has removed another barrier to switching – April 06, 2006
Analyst: Apple Boot Camp could be an opportunity for Mac market share gains – April 06, 2006
Enderle: Apple’s Boot Camp allowing Windows on Mac ‘could change PC landscape as we know it’ – April 06, 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
Reuters: Apple’s new ‘Boot Camp’ could draw millions of new Mac buyers – April 05, 2006
First post? Maybe?
Finally someone gets what Apple is trying to do. Finally someone understands the genius that is Apple. Not like those other “journalists” that say this is the beginning of the end for the Mac OS.
MDN Magc Word: “Stop”. Stop using Windows!
First Post, and Windows sucks
I don’t think Apple is necessarily “stealing”, now; I would call it “creatively taking back what was rightfully theirs”
MW: Windows is for squares
When the iPod was first Mac-only, it was a boutique product with a limited market. The original goal was to help drive Mac sales, and it failed.
Now that it works just as well on Windows, it’s closing in on 50 million units.
The lesson: Respect Windows users as legitimate customers and sell to them directly rather than telling htem they’re stupid and fruitlessly trying to switch them. That’s where the money is.
Even Steve refers to 5% market share as a “glass ceiling.” And that’s exactly the share the iPod would have, had it stayed Mac-only.
Apple wants access to the other 95% of the market. The OS and the hardware are becoming decoupled. Now that Apple know’s what its like to have double-digit share in a product category, they want the same for their hardware.
OS X will always be a single-digit OS, and Apple is broadening its reach to something beyind that constraint.
Not the first post and WinBlows.
The OS and the hardware are becoming decoupled.
Its the OS, Stupid.
“Finally someone gets what Apple is trying to do.”
Actually this is a pretty good article too.:
http://tinyurl.com/o64vb
But seriously folks®
What was Billy thinking to leave MSFT to ‘The Sales Guy’?
The Steve was just choppin’ at the bit when that happened. Now AAPL is going to get revenge in a massive way.
Yes, as I and a few others predicted, Intel Macs do WinBlows. The next release will of course be a virtual, proper solution so WinBlows can’t throw a spanner in the hole®.
Rock on Steve!
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”raspberry” style=”border:0;” />
“OS X will always be a single-digit OS, and Apple is broadening its reach to something beyind that constraint.”
You just contradicted yourself all within the same sentence. This Windows on a Mac thing isn’t intended as a long term solution for people. The idea is to WEEN them off Windows.
I think you are totally wrong. I could easily see 10% marketshare within the next 3-4 years.
… One more thing®:
To all those WinBlows switchers: Sorry you arrived late to the party, welcome.
I hope this isn’t another OS/2 scenario where the superior OS lost…
You just contradicted yourself all within the same sentence.
No I didn’t, so let me clarify for you.
OS X will always be a single-digit OS.
But if you decouple the hardware from the OS, then the OS no longer has to be a single-digit player in the market.
10% share for OS X in a few years…well, maybe in a best-case scenario, but I doubt that does it for Steve. His sights are set higher, and Macs that can only run OS X won’t take him there.
“Regular” PCs are much cheaper, people will continue to buy them. You either stay with Windows or switch to a Mac, Joe A. Citizen will not spend the extra money on a Mac and dual boot. It’s not going to happen. This will fail. A few Mac fantics will do it but that’s it. I love my Macs but I have NO interest in doing Windows on a Mac. NONE.
People can already try Macs in stores or at friends houses. They don’t need to buy them. This won’t help Mac sales much at all. It’s rediculous to think otherwise…
These are truly exciting times.
ishufflemyfeet–
Wow, you are really blind, aren’t you? Apple isn’t going for the other 95%. They’re going for a piece of it.
If only 5% come to our side, Apple will have succeeded in a major way.
We’ve all seen the AAPL stock value shoot up on news of Boot Camp. What I would like to see is a sales chart to see what effect the news had on actual Mac sales this week. I just coincidentally purchased a new MacBook Pro last Wednesday and got home to discover the news of Boot Camp. The timing of the release is interesting in that it coincides with decent stocks of new Macs and MacBook Pros being available. I had been looking at a new laptop to replace my 12″ G4 800MHz PowerBook (still quite nice by the way) over the past 6 weeks and it has only been in the last week that the Apple stores had every model in stock. Before it was, “we’ll be getting a new shipment in this week…” Perhaps Apple is expecting a nice spike of hardware sales with this announcement and delayed Boot Camp just long enough for the products to fill the pipeline.
am experiencing the computer equivalent of an out-of-body experience. In front of me is Apple’s sleek new MacBook Pro laptop computer
—
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink…
Windows users realizing OS X is going to take a miracle
I don’t believe for even a single heartbeat that the Mac OS is forever fated to be a single digit OS. Here’s the core of why:
The need to implement the legacy compatibility for Windows is the single biggest reason they will remain unsecure. OS X made a substantially clean break from OS 9.
There will always be MAC only applications that due to the tight integration of the app and the OS..and an intelligent sense of design…it will draw people to the OS. Have you seriously tried to make something with Windows Moviemaker? They are prepping a Garage Band style app in Redmond…but you can bet it will be overdone (or on the other side, stupidly simplistic like their BOB experiment a few years ago).
I suspect that with fast (or even FASTER) hardware, a better OS (safer too), and unique to the OS apps that OS X will grow in the next 3 years to well above 10%. There is simply no good reason why not.
First toast! Cheers!
Actually, Apple probably wants the top 10% of the Wintel market.
In the USA, that’s about 9.5% of the world – so my theory is that Apple probably wants about 15% of the US market by the close of 2008.
If you want to tie that into numbers, one would imagine that it would require Apple to sell around 7.5 million units in the USA up from the 2.5 million they shipped in 2005. If they could pull of a less extreme version of the same trick in the rest of the world, they could be looking at around 12 million CPUs for the calendar year 2008 or – to give you an idea of scale – roughly what Lenovo shipped globally in 2005.
The difference is that Apple’s 12 million CPUs will probably generate around $14.5 billion in sales and around $3.3 billion in gross profit, whereas Lenovo will – by that time – be involved in a death match with Dell chasing the lowest bid for every contract.
Who it is that will mostly be using Boot Camp is us. The existing Mac owners. We are the ones with the Macs, afterall. A few switchers will be in evidence, but not highly visible to the masses, initially. Just look at the longevity of the press coverage regarding Boot Camp. It lasted a few days and now it’s quiet. Mostly the average PC user simply won’t care because they don’t have a Mac and they already have do have Windows. As more Macs are sold over the years however, that will change.
But the groundwork is now solid for significant long term growth. This is no feet-of-clay proposition.
“No I didn’t, so let me clarify for you.”
No, if you are saying that the only way that OSX gets over 10% market share is if people buy Macs FOR windows then you are wrong. Your theory is that Windows will be a primary solution for Macs going forward. That isn’t the strategy. Removing OSX from the equation remvoes the advantage of even having a Mac in the first place (pretty boxes are nice but arent a decisive advantage). Windows on a Mac is just a temporary solution to ween people off windows and get them familiar with OSX.
OSX could easily become a 10% share within a few years once people realize they have a choice, and removing fears by allowing Windows to run on a Mac they will see that.
“Just look at the longevity of the press coverage regarding Boot Camp. It lasted a few days and now it’s quiet.”
Yes and the very market that you say Apple is going for are the very ones that have heard this news and it is now positioned squarely in the back of their mind, and they will think of it when it comes time to buy a new computer. The ones Apple wants are the smart buyers who will appreciate a better product but were afraid to take the leap without a safety net. This is their safety net.
The smart buyers have gotten a huge amount of info in the past week about this. Just because the press has died down a bit don’t think that it hasnt already made a huge impact on people who actually read and are knowledgable.
It seems that Apple needs to incorpoate fully functional virtualization into Leopard then advertise a “safe computing” strategy of using OS X for all the virus-attracting apps like e-mail, web browser, etc. and only use other OSs for very specialized apps. I have a Mac-using friend who intends to do just that – he will use Windows for a CAD app and the Mac for everything else. Once the world realizes how “safe computing” with OS X works, the purchase of Mac hardware will be a no-brainer. Lets hope Apple gives us full virtualization and not a reboot solution.
Boot Camp is actually quite impressive. It is not the end all but I am still amazed at how Apple is able to crank out these beautiful applications. What was the last beautiful application released by M$… anyone? If they actually can pull of true virtualization in Leopard and support Windows and Linux on the same machine, I would bow and do homage to Apple (I do that anyway but you know what I mean).