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XP on a Mac

partition20060405.gifApple launched a missile at Redmond today by releasing software called Boot Camp that allows its super sexy new Intel-based hardware to run Windows XP. For some reason we thought it was going to be the other way around. We imagined the first bomb would be Apple releasing a version of OS X that played on standard Wintel computers which shows how much we know. Is Apple a hardware company or a software company? Boot Camp would seem to imply that they're first and foremost a hardware company.

Now, we know that you switched to a Power Book a few years back and aren't exactly mashing your fists into the keyboard for wanting of Microsoft software to run on it. You've got plenty of options for all your daily tasks. The guy who doesn't have options is the lowly gamer, though. Game playing computer users and their little wants and desires pretty much drive both the software and hardware industries, as we see it. Look, you don't really need two 64 bit processors, a gig and a half of RAM and a water-cooled video card to send an email or write up a blog post. You do need those things to do a lot of 3D graphics-type stuff like gamers do, though. More importantly, the size of the market for games to run under Windows vs the size of the market for games to run under OS X has dictated that Mac users are going to have to wait for popular games to be ported to their operating system and hardware which could be years or never. But you're a gamer and you dig sexy computers so, man, those Macs do look good. What to do, what to do... Boot Camp. A lot of gamers are going to buy Macs and run Windows XP on them and what that means to Redmond's bottom line remains to be seen. Microsoft doesn't sell hardware, after all, so will they even care whether you run XP on a Mac Book, a Dell or your mom's old 486? You still gotta buy XP or Vista or whatever either way. It's also an admission from Apple that there is a reason to run XP on Mac computers, so there's that to consider. Well, we started with "Apple launched a missile at Redmond today," but maybe that's not where we ended up.

Initial reviews of Apple hardware running Boot Camp and Windows XP are surprisingly good. Bloggers and commentors run amok here, here, everywhere.

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By Dan in on April 5, 2006 3:48 PM

Comments [rss]

  • In addition to the gaming community there's a whole segement of the computing population that has been bitterly tethered to PCs - the architectural design community. Because AutoCAD is PC only and the industry standard, almost all West Coast AEC offices are PC only, yet I don't know an architect or planner worth his designer glasses that doesn't drool over Macs. This is the missing link for them.

  • This should be a lot faster than Virtual PC since there is no emulation and no virtual hardware layer.

    There is no cutting and pasting between OS environments like there is Virtual PC and you can't run both at the same time like Virtual PC but it is very fast and it should rule for games.

    Virtual PC is PowerPC only and BootCamp is Intel only so they are apples and oranges.

    I would want to make sure that viruses from the Windows partition could not hose the Mac OSX partition.

    If I had an Dual core iMac it would rule to see HalfLife 2 run on it. But then again I have the game on Xbox. It is strange how an Xbox can be a Mac users best friend.

  • How does it make OS X worse? If you (like me) don't want to run Windows, you don't run Boot Camp. If you do want to run Windows, now you have the option. It seems like a non-issue for Mac partisans and a win for cross-platform users to me.

    (What I'd really like to know is how much better this is than Virtual PC.)

  • Jeremy M Barker

    I can see how this tool has important development applications, etc., but frankly I look at it as Apple making a good product worse. OSX works way better than Windows XP, which I struggle with daily at work, and I'm happy to escape it at the end of the day.

  • Let me rephrase that: I am already a Mac user, and my 3 1/2 old G4 PowerBook is ready to be replaced.

    But they've made the new Mac even more attractive. So they've not gained a sale so much as made a current customer 'happy'.

    It's not that I want to dual-boot but it's a sure-nuff nice feature to have.

  • Well, we started with "Apple launched a missile at Redmond today," but maybe that's not where we ended up.

    Maybe not, Apple is not going to knock over Microsoft. What they have done is make buying a Mac a great deal more attractive to me.

  • I wouldn’t say that Apple attacked Microsoft at all. They released a partition tool and boot loaded for Mac OSX that lets you partition your HD and install Windows in the new partition. This is exactly the kind of tool that I used when I installed Linux on my old Windows 2000 machine.

    However you need to have a copy of Windows XP and Microsoft would like to sell it to you. This does sort of kill a future Universal version of Virtual PC for Mac. Actually if Microsoft wanted to take advantage of this they could make a special bundle of Bootcamp and Windows XP or make the windows partition from Bootcamp accessible via the Virtual PC emulation environment. I have been using Virtual PC on my PowerPC G4 based iBook and it has been usable but not that peppy. I like being able to run Windows XP on my Mac but I rarely see a reason to do so.

    This is going to suck for Mac game developers. For me I just fire up my Gamecube or Xbox if I want to play a game.

    The novelty of dual booting will wear off soon and the real reason to buy a Mac is to run Mac OSX and not have to put up with all the crap that you have to deal with on Windows.

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