A leopard can change its spots

Adam Myers — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 21:40:36 +0000

“More and more people are buying and loving Macs. To make this choice simply irresistible, Apple will include technology in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard, that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac. Called Boot Camp (for now), you can download a public beta today”

Significant? The ability to boot Windows makes Mac hardware more relevant, not less. They will go from selling 5 million boxes a year to selling 10 or 12 million. Apple is betting that most of those people will use OS X more and more, and Windows less and less. After all, the Intel Macs come chock full of very nice software (iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, etc) which still have no equal in the Windows world.

Area of concern? IBM killed OS/2 by making it extremely easy to run Windows applications under it. As a direct result of that, no one bothered developing applications for the OS/2 platform; the rest is history. Apple is walking a very fine line here, and as most of us know, history has a way of repeating itself.

How in the TECH » Apple

A leopard can change its spots