The whole tech world yesterday (at least the parts I care to keep track of) where talking about "boot camp". No, not some military institution, the announcement by Apple of a boot loader that permits running either Windows or the Mac OS on Apple hardware.
This floored me. I never expected to see this announcement from them. I was barely shocked at all to hear that they were switching from PowerPC to Intel, and I fully expected that some people at that point would find a way to run Windows on the thing, but I never thought Apple themselves would endorse it.
At that point the questions really started.
1. How did they do it? Did they just steal the work done by the hackers going after the $13,000 bounty? Did they make Intel give them a reference BIOS? Did they create their own BIOS internally?
At this point, I would lean toward the latter. There is no way they would go use some hackers piecemeal code, and I'm not sure they would have even ran this by Intel. Bootloaders are not really that difficult, especially if you know the hardware and specification, and Apple would definitely have guys that fit both of those criteria. I'm sure the day the developers got an x86 board on their desk (about 5 years ago depending on what you read -- different topic) they threw together a BIOS and booted XP on the thing, just to prove it could be done. I would have.
2. Why? Apple has been notorious about protecting their overall system solution by keeping their hardware and software tightly coupled and under wraps. Are they now simply wanting to be a hardware company?
I think this answer may be the trickiest and the most interesting. It is possible they simply want to pick up hardware sales from the "switcher" market. Those people who are interested in Apple, but still have reasons to continue using Windows, and don't really want to have different machines for each. It turns out I fall squarely into this market. I really want an Apple machine at home, and I think I would wear out the iLife suite I would use it so much. However, I still need Windows for some tasks at this point, and I refuse to have multiple machines. This is truly sly, because over time I'm sure I would find replacement apps on the Apple, and grow tired of rebooting, slowing fazing Windows out entirely.
This is where the discussion gets really interesting. There has been much discussion that even if Windows XP were possible on the Apple, Vista will not be. Do a google search if you want to learn why or how, I'm not up to doing the research right now. However, if that is true, there is basically planned obsolescence for the Windows solution. If they get the people right now, when Vista comes out they won't be able to transition to it on the current hardware. However, the latest shiny new OS (leopard or greater) from Apple will absolutely run on it. Thus promoting users to simply abandon Windows at that point.
Overall, I really like how polished this solution looks from Apple. It's already very nice in beta, and will just get better when it is embedded into Leopard. Simple resizing of partitions should have been in Windows from day 1, but never was natively. Everything in typical Apple style just works and looks very polished.
I did see today an announcement of someone with some virtualization software to run Windows inside Mac OS. That is the only way to make this better. Let me quick jump over to run a Windows task without rebooting. I'll be watching this to see how it pans out.
Update: Check out Thaddeus's blog for another perspective on all of this.
5 years ago
3 comments:
Hehe... I bet everyone who is interested in PCs or Macs is asking the same questions. Personally, I believe Apple were planning this all along, and were guarding this secret like nothing before.
I also think that someone who buys Apple hardware just to run Windows XP is making a mistake. Upgrading Mac hardware is difficult and expensive, and there is never as wide a selection as PCs get. I also suspect that Windows XP won't run as good on Apple hardware, and will be troubled by driver problems and software incompatibilities - because Apple would want people to switch over to OS X. This might seem like a good idea, but there's a good chance this will backfire.
Releasing OS X to run on standard PCs and run WinXP applications natively - now THAT would be something I'd buy.
I appreciate that insight, Thaddeus. But I think that if you are right, it's actually bad news for everyone, becuase it might indicate that Apple wants to be a hardware company, and is planning to stop developing the MacOS sometime in the future. That's sad, because we have many hardware companies, and not too many companies who can make a good OS, one that is both rock-solid and a pleasure to use.
I'm glad to see the discussion on this, I'm still curious to find out Apple's exact intention also.
I have to agree with Thaddeus that I believe Apple will make everything work as smoothly as possible. They are in the business of making their hardware just plain work, and they will want to maintain that image with the people trying to make the switch.
That said, B.Z. has a point that Apple is letting go of some of their tight control by doing this. The rough edges of XP will still be there, and now people can associate those problems with their Apple hardware. Once they load up their XP installation with spyware, it will be more than just a spinning beach ball that they'll be associating with this newfangled Apple hardware they just bought.
I'm still confused by it all, but waiting to be a happy switcher when Leopard comes out and I get some spare cash to buy the hardware.
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