Apple Boot Camp In Short
Posted on April 8, 2006
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 66 views |
Boot Camp sure took the Mac world by storm the other day, generating hyperbole ranging from the maudlin “so what?” to the extremist “the sky is falling!”/”we’ve achieved Nirvana!”. (If you don’t know what Boot Camp is you’re absolutely not a Mac geek: it’s effectively a utility that allows the new Intel-based Macs to dual-boot Mac OS X or Windows XP).
I’ve read the Siracusa’s, I’ve read the Cringley’s, I’ve read every other thing about it from A to Z (that’s a zed yo). To round it all up in a single bite-sized portion:
Who cares about this? Really, almost no one, just the geeks and the developers. With our mis-proportioned presence on the web and our almost incestuous reading of each other’s blogs day in and day out it’s easy to forget that we are not The Whole World. We’re actually a very small part of it, even if we wittle that part down to just the computer users.
So who will run this? Developers and geeks, aka: almost no one. See above.
Well then who wins from this? The developers and the geeks. Developers can now develop for both platforms on one machine, which is great stuff. Geeks win because they like geeky stuff and this is about as geeky as it gets these days and those who work as professional geeks likely need to work in both platforms as it is (or more likely work in Windows, would rather be using a Mac, and would use a Mac at home).
Who else wins? Apple. As much as people like to think of Apple as a lifestyle company (or as a friend recently put it, a “platform” company) you can’t make money from a lifestyle or a platform, they’re abstract concepts and only the rich or easily-deceived pay for abstractions. Apple makes its money selling hardware. They sell computers, and a lot of them, and they sell iPods, and a hell of a lot more of those. Together those make Apple money.
If Apple sells a machine to a Mac user, they make money. Sell it to a Windows user, they make money. Sell it to an Amiga user looking to use one or the other, they make money. As long as Apple sells machines they stay a band of happy little cultists.
Anyone else? Let us not forget Microsoft. Microsoft is a software company. As much as the XBox is a hardware device, it costs Microsoft money every time a unit is sold (aka, they lead the loss hoping to make it up in market dominance with games and licensing revenue). They sell peripherals but that’s a niche market. Microsoft sells Windows XP, will sell Vista and really likes selling things like huge installs of Office.
If Apple sells a machine to a Mac user and that Mac user buys Windows, Microsoft makes money. It’s that simple. Does Microsoft worry that Macs now run XP? Nope, it just means an additional XP licesnse for them. Does HP worry? They ought to.
And at the end of the day who really wins from all of that? The users, even all the ones both Mac and Windows who never dual-boot a day in their lives. They get more software, pure and simple. Mac users will get Mac software, Windows users will get Windows software and the 2% that decide to dual-boot will get both.
The dual-boot market is, and will remain, a niche. Those who have a hard enough time getting their digital cameras working with their Macs or XP machines will not tomorrow start dual-booting and learning both operating systems. Mac users will not suddenly drink the XP/Vista kool-aid, nor will Windows users do lines of Apple Dust and switch over there. Instead where before the over-lapping Ven diagram contained Windows users, Mac users, and those who had two machines one running each, now that middle group might have one machine. That’s all.
At least for now, that is. Wait until Windows runs inside OS X not as a virtualization ala VirtualPC but as an app, ala X-11. And then after that when Windows is transparent and Windows apps run inside Mac OS seemingly natively…. Then we’re in for some interesting times, mark my words.
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