BBC NEWS | Technology | Windows on Macs provokes a stir
Windows on the Mac? Is it really a Mac then?
The announcement by Apple that they will officially support dual booting Windows and Mac OS on the MacTel boxes with the introduction of a beta of the Boot Camp tool, and that it will be even tighter integrated in the next version of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, has the Macintosh related web-sites buzzing.
I think it’s a natural step by Apple, especially considering that the hackers already had accomplished the dual-boot challenge. I must admit that I’m surprised, but it only shows how pragmatic a company Apple is these days, and the shareholders are celebrating the revived interest in APPL.
Being a regular frequenter of Macintosh related web-sites, I can tell you that this was a feature that was requested by a lot of people.
What do I think about it? Well, choice is great for customers, and the Apple hardware is the only one on the market that supports all three mainstream operating systems, Linux, Windows and Mac OS.
Apple really have a lot of options these days:
- Stop developing Mac OS, and still have two choices of Operating System
- Selling off the computer division must be a lot easier now
- Making Mac OS available as a commercial alternative to Windows
And there’s many more that I just can’t think of right now.
It will, as always, be interesting to see what Apple will do, it’s quite clear that they’re hedging their bets. For now it sounds like support for Mac OS from Apple is as strong as ever, and that the next version, 10.5 Leopard is on track, and according to the rumours it will be impressive, including a complete rewrite of Finder. 10.4 Tiger already delivers on many of the features Microsoft has been promising for Vista, even the ones that has been de-scoped for the first release.