To be fair, the only reason Dell and HP cannot run both OSX and Windows is that Apple rightful does not want this to happen. So, it seems unfair to somehow fault the Dell's of the world.

"[...] For one thing, the Mac installed base will grow because of Boot Camp, which means even more potential buyers for Mac software."

See, here's where the theory falls down.

More people will buy Macs because they can run Windows and this will create potential buyers for Mac software? If they're running Windows, then they can't use Mac software.

You need more Macs running Mac OS X, not more Macs running Windows.

Huh? Every Mac sold has Mac OS X running on it. If Apple ships 1 million more Macs per year, that means 1 million more people with access to OS X.

How do you know which OS many of those new Mac users will be running? I can't imagine developers will say "Well, that's 1 million more Windows machines out there."

And how do you know Apple won't enable virtualization in Leopard, thus allowing you to switch between OS's without restarting?

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Guest wrote:
"[...] For one thing, the Mac installed base will grow because of Boot Camp, which means even more potential buyers for Mac software."

See, here's where the theory falls down.

More people will buy Macs because they can run Windows and this will create potential buyers for Mac software? If they're running Windows, then they can't use Mac software.

You need more Macs running Mac OS X, not more Macs running Windows.

Re-read the article!
"And I imagine that many switchers will realize that the Mac versions of software also available for Windows-like Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite-run better on the Mac, with less chance of viral infection or spyware."

You don't buy a Mac to run Windows - you buy it because it CAN run Windows. If I had the ability, as a Windows user, to ensure that my computing experience would be virus-free, I'd sure as Hades try it. Apple is betting that I'll like it. To wit - more Mac software will be sold.

<i>I predict that Boot Camp will contribute to significant growth in Mac unit sales and Mac market share in the coming months.</i>

That says it right there. More UNIT sales.

Not more adoption of Mac OS X. Eventually M$ will drop the Mac version of OfficeMac and then what? That's right most people will be spending most of their time in Windows.

Next comes Adobe releasing a Windows version of their Creative Suit a year ahead of the Mac version and there goes some more Mac's going to Windows full time.

Of course why bothering developing a Mac version of a game with all the bothersome Universal BS? Just make the Mac users boot Windows to run the games.

Oh it's all over for Mac OS X, Mac users will get used to Windows by hook or by crook. You'll see.

What Apple could do to save Mac OS X is allow it to run Windows apps without Windows. Apple has access to Windows API's so it shouldn't be a problem.

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Guest wrote:
Next comes Adobe releasing a Windows version of their Creative Suit a year ahead of the Mac version and there goes some more Mac's going to Windows full time.

So Adobe, who makes millions of dollars from Mac users, decides to tell these customers: "You have to spend $100 on Windows to run our new Software."

This leads to millions of Mac users deciding that CS2 is 'good enough' and they just decide to not upgrade their Adobe products. So Adobe loses out on Millions of dollars in upgrade-money.

It works the same way for Microsoft Office.

SO, can you explain why any of these companies would willingly abandon millions of dollars for no reason? Just...walk away from a source of revenue and get nothing in return for that? Perhaps they're idiots? Or perhaps you need to spend more time thinking this over?

"[...] More people will buy Macs because they can run Windows and this will create potential buyers for Mac software? If they're running Windows, then they can't use Mac software. [...]"

See, here's where the theory falls down.

People don't by a Mac to run Windows; they will buy a Mac to run Mac OS X. Some of them, though, will buy Macs capable of running Windows where they wouldn't have otherwise because they are insecure and want to make sure that they don't lose their current software investment and that they aren't cut off from "the rest of the world". But they can and will use Mac OS X when they can and eventually they will probably use it exclusively.

Think of the situation when Mac OS X was first released. Classic was a very important option then, because people had a lot of Mac OS 9 software. Who uses Classic now? A few, but not many. But it was the security blanket that Mac OS 9 users needed at the time. Similarly with Boot Camp, no sensible person would buy a Mac just to run WIndows just as no sensible person bought Mac OS X in 2001 only to run Classic apps.

In agreement with the post above...

It has been mentioned before, but how many of Adobe's customers would consider it acceptable tech support for Adobe to tell them, "just boot into Windows"?

Think of the software (and hardware peripherals) companies that have all but fallen off the face of the earth from using the "just run it under Classic" approach. (I'm looking at you, UMAX!) Even the juggernaut Quark is just now scrambling to catch up to the ground it lost to InDesign... much due to InDesign being OS X-native years before Quark.

Also, regarding UNIT SALES, there will be that many more Macs that can participate in the business world, now that Boot Camp is available. Individuals can now legitimately request a Mac (especially notebooks) for their next computer. They can still run their employer's proprietary software while at the office, but have a malware-free computing experience when using standard-fare software like Office or Creative Suite.

The only way I was able to switch to a Mac was the availability of VPC - I have to demo a Win only app in my business.

With the MacBook or MacBook Pro I now have a choice of Boot Camp or Parallels, both of which will be far faster than VPC. (Personally I prefer Parallels in theory as it doesn't require a restart.)

For those that need to run a Win only app Boot Camp and Parallels opens the door to buy a Mac. The customer MAY have wanted to try a Mac in the past, but the Win requirement blocked the purchase. Not anymore, and that's a good thing for Apple.

In terms of software houses dropping Mac versions because of the availability of Boot Camp - I doubt that will happen. The Mac users would just move to a different product in many cases, or tell the vendor that they will stick with what they have. If Macs are an important market for a vendor today they will only be more so in the future as the Mac base grows.

I just got a Mac Mini Core Duo and installed Parallels Desktop on it. I boot up Windows XP in that in a 1024x768 virtual screen. I can go full screen at the click of a button and switch back with a key press. I also have Ubuntu Linux on another VM. It's great for developers and power users. I'd love to help them out with making it work for non-geeks. If it could be bundled with an XP Installer and install so that you would just flip systems by a command key, it would be pretty freakin awesome for everyone. Except gamers... But we shouldn't be held hostage by people who waste their time with such trivialities.

Bosco,

Install Virtue and you can switch between them with a keystroke.

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Anonymous wrote:
"[...] For one thing, the Mac installed base will grow because of Boot Camp, which means even more potential buyers for Mac software."

See, here's where the theory falls down.

Actually, I think I did a very nice job of explaining why Bob is right in my column appropriately named "Boot Camp Means More Mac Users."

Quoth Small White Car:

"So Adobe, who makes millions of dollars from Mac users, decides to tell these customers: "You have to spend $100 on Windows to run our new Software."

This leads to millions of Mac users deciding that CS2 is 'good enough' and they just decide to not upgrade their Adobe products. So Adobe loses out on Millions of dollars in upgrade-money."

Except, that Adobe doesn't offer cross-platform upgrades (at least at this time). If I want to upgrade from Photoshop CS1 to CS2, I have to shell out something a little under $200. If I want to cross over from Photoshop Mac to Photoshop Windows (or the other way around) I have to shell out something more like $500. And I would also have to pay out around $300 more for a retail copy of XP to run it on.

Unless Adobe & Microsoft suddenly offer their software real cheap to Mac OS refugees, this just ain't gonna happen. Adobe would just lose their Mac base to other graphics packages; perhaps even GIMP.

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Anonymous wrote:

Except, that Adobe doesn't offer cross-platform upgrades (at least at this time).

Ohh, I hadn't even considered that! Thanks for pointing that out, it just proves my point even more!

There seems to be a failure amongst some analysts to understand why anyone develops on the Mac at all, and why those same people will continue to do so going forward.

Even if the Vista APIs play catch-up enough to allow the porting of Comic Life, Delicious Library, CoverFlow, TextMate, the Omni apps, and all the other things Windows and Linux users would like ported, it will be many years before firms could go Vista only.

Cross-platform developers are in another position; many of them barely utilise OS X, and try to minimise the forking of the code-base from their WIndows version. (And then wonder why their applications are less popular on the Mac!).Some of them may decide it's worth taking the hit.

I don't think Adobe will be one of them. Mac users occupy a larger than average part of their customer base. They don't use Adobe software in isolation but as part of a wider workflow; switching out of their workflow to use a different OS for one application is a no-no. Of course, since Adobe and Macromedia merged, you might spend more of your time in Adobe apps, but you still want them to play well with everything else. And Apple's app integration is still smoother. (I work on Windows machines so I'm reminded every day).

Equally, consider how Adobe have reversed their decision over Premier, and the Beta of Lightroom. I think they have realised that rather than customers switching to Windows to run Premier, they lost customers to Final Cut. The long-term consequences of this are kind of obvious (Premier today, Photoshop tomorrow). So there is an argument for supporting OS X development simply to deny oxygen to rivals.

(I think the big issue for Adobe is that so much of their value on Windows is based around technologies that are 'core' on OS X but absent on Windows - PDF, video and graphic effects - that it is difficult for their engineers to get a lot of value out of porting).

IMO, the major difference between OS X and XP is what is driving the development of the OS APIs. The main driver for OS X is as a platform to support Apple's own applications. Microsoft don't (yet) have a pro video editing suite, so core video APIs are a lot lower down their feature list - the main driver for them is third-party rather than their own developers. It's for this reason alone that I think Dvorak is wrong.

People at work remain amazed by what a Mac Mini can do, considering it's specs are under a 1/4 of the required specs for Vista. I don't think it's because Apple's developers are better (MS has some very clever people too) but they are able to optimise their platform.

I think Apple has nothing to worry about but has a lot to gain by being the only computer company that can run dual operating systems natively. OSX is getting better and better and on the horizen is Leopard. More new features and more speed and being a Windows user at work I can see the speed difference between my iMac dualcore versus the Dell PC's at work. The Mac is much faster at starting up and shutting down and the apps are more responsive when running multiple apps at one time. The is a win situation for Apple with Boot camp and I haven't seen any developers out there say otherwise or say they're going to stop development on OSX software.

I've been a Mac user from the just about the beginning. I recently became a realtor, and if you know the real estate business Macs are pretty rare. The firm that I work for has a grand total of two Macs (out of hundreds of computers) in the marketing and print dept. There is real estate software that will never see the light of day on Mac OS X. These companies will NEVER port these programs.
I was disliking the idea of buying a windows laptop, so boot camp will keep me buying an Mac. I will use Windows as little as possible and do the rest in Mac OSX. The timing was perfect for me, I will be getting a Macbook Pro instead of some crummy Dell most of my co-workers are using.

I agree with Bob, on his review of Boot Camp. Having Windows XP (and perhaps Vista..) on a second partition is a good idea on Apple's part. Yes it DOES bring more customers to the platform. For example if you can run more than one OS on a computer, then isn't this a good idea? And also for Window users, now they CAN run windows on a 'award winning designed' computer rather than a dull unit!

Sam D
http://www.dsoundz.co.uk