Suppose a computer company announced that it was making available a beta release of a dual-booting tool. Your reaction would be: (a) Oh wow! (b) It will change the face of computing! Or (c) Huh?
It can be safely guessed that somewhere between 95 and 99 of all computer users would go with “Huh?”
Yet when Apple announced on April 5 that it was releasing a beta of “Boot Camp,” a tool to allow users of Macs with Intel processors, it made worldwide headlines everywhere from The New York Times (on the front page, no less) and Wall Street Journal down to the smallest blog. Theories were flowing freely ranging hand from the assertion that Apple might eventually move to Windows all the way to the exact opposite: that this is a key step toward the resurgence of the Mac platform. There is such a thing as over-analysis -- and this looks to be a case of just that.
In the immortal words of Joe Friday, “Just the facts, ‘mam”:
• Dual booting has been largely a geek thing, and is likely to remain so. So is beta testing. Boot Camp is unlikely to loom large in the marketplace until it is incorporated into the next version of the Mac OS, expected some time next year. Even then, it is hard to see it as a mainstream product.
• That said, the traditional advice tech writers give on choosing between Mac and Windows is that for most common tasks, Macs are generally easier to use and a good choice for individuals and small business that don’t have IT departments to support them. BUT if you use specialized applications that are Windows-only or are a hard core gamer, you need to go with a Windows PC. Clearly, Boot Camp does change that equation dramatically.
• Edgar Allen Poe was right -- the best way to hide something is right in plain sight. At MacWorld in January, Microsoft and Apple announced an agreement under which Microsoft would continue to make Mac versions of Office and -- little noticed at the time -- Apple would not obstruct efforts to run Windows on Intel Macs. Apple also has lined up commitments from a long list of key software vendors that they would continue to produce Mac versions of their software. Accordingly, for at least the next release cycle or two of applications crucial to the Mac market there should not be any retreat from the Mac platform.
• There are, however, some applications for which a Mac version will never make sense. Apple’s current market share is around 5 percent. Even were the share to double, Windows PCs will outnumber Macs about 9-1. If you are making software that is a small niche product to begin with, you are unlikely to recover the cost of creating a version to be a niche of a niche. And if you are a big company (e.g., Microsoft, whose Access database and FrontPage web site tool are Windows only), titles that are unlikely to be popular with Mac users are unlikely to be profitable. Thus, a Windows-on-Mac solution does expand the range of software available to Mac users.
• The idea that someone would purchase a Mac with the intention of using it as a Windows machine seems silly. Apple isn’t going to undersell Dell. There might be a few people who love Apple’s designs so much, they would want an iMac or MacBook as their Windows computer. But let’s face it, if cool design was such a big deal in the marketplace, Mac’s market share wouldn’t be in single digits, would it?
The Bottom Line: Apple wants to sell Macs. Microsoft wants to sell Windows. Anything that accomplishes both is likely to be agreeable to both sides. At this point, making anything more of the situation than that is reaching.
