“It’s hard to believe that [the release of Boot Camp means that] Apple will just roll over and play dead at a time when it’s doing so well – especially as it recently got a public commitment from Microsoft that it would update the Mac version of Microsoft Office for the new Intel Macs and would continue to develop the Office suite for several years to come,” Cliff Joseph writes for Personal Computer World. “It does seem more likely that Boot Camp is a kind of Trojan horse designed to lure PC users over to the Mac camp.”
“Many PC users admire the elegant design of Mac hardware and the eye-catching graphical user interface of OSX, but still hold back from buying a Mac because they are committed to Windows or to specific Windows programs that may not be available on the Mac,” Joseph writes. “The ‘Macs can’t run Windows’ argument is a particular problem for Apple in the corporate market.”
“The Mac version of Microsoft Office is completely compatible with the Windows version of Office, so there’s no real reason business users can’t do their Excel number-crunching on a Mac (apart from the fact that Office for the Mac doesn’t include a version of the Access database),” Joseph writes.
“However, most large organisations simply won’t consider buying Macs because they don’t run Windows,” Joseph writes. “Well, now they do, and removing that all-important obstacle might just allow Apple to get its foot in the door of the 90 per cent of the market that is currently Microsoft’s private stomping ground.”
“Don’t get us wrong – we’re not suggesting that Apple is planning to topple Microsoft or even start courting large corporate clients,” Joseph writes. “Its focus at the moment is very much on the consumer market, where the success of the Ipod is making Apple look very trendy right now.”
“But don’t forget that Apple currently holds less than five per cent of the personal computer market,” Joseph writes. “If it can tempt just one million home users worldwide to swap their old PC for a new Mac – and maybe buy an Ipod at the same time – Apple could double its market share and profits without even having to think about the corporate market.”
Full article, including speculation about virtualization in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and, “Apple is swimming in cash at the moment, so it could buy Parallels out of petty cash; and then – hey presto – buy a Mac and you get two computers for the price of one,” here.
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Related article:
Apple ‘Get a Mac’ web page pushes Parallels Desktop instead of Apple’s own Boot Camp – June 18, 2006