To print: Click here or Select File and then Print from your browser's menu

This story was printed from silicon.com, located at http://www.silicon.com/

Story URL: http://software.silicon.com/os/0,39024651,39158029,00.htm

Minority Report: XP on a Mac - a wise move?
Apple shocks yet again

By Seb Janacek

Published: Wednesday 12 April 2006

Enabling Windows XP to run on a Mac may be Steve Jobs' boldest move yet. But, asks Seb Janacek, what is Apple hoping to achieve - and will it be successful?

Apple's announcement that Intel-powered Macs can now run Windows XP via a technology called Boot Camp caused a considerable shock last week. This is partially to do with the fact that the rumour sites didn't get a sniff of it but mostly because the 5 April announcement sounded like a belated April Fool's joke. In many ways, it still does.

In a nutshell, Boot Camp allows users of Intel-powered Macs to boot Windows XP natively in place of the incumbent OS X operating system at start-up. Apple is currently calling the technology a public beta and adds that it neither has an interest in selling or supporting Windows.

Websites and competitions to get XP running on an Intel Mac have been around since the machines first became available. One competition even awarded a prize of around £13,000 just a few days before Boot Camp was announced.

The Boot Camp technology will be integrated directly in the next version of OS X - 10.5 Leopard - due out in late 2006 or early 2007. Speculation online is that by this point the software will provide true virtualisation capabilities, allowing both operating systems to be run concurrently without needing to reboot.

The Boot Camp news was arguably more of a surprise than the Intel announcement last June, though neither could have been predicted as being likely developments for the highly secretive company.

The modern Mac is built from components designed and built by third-party manufacturers and the move to Intel processors made the differentiation between Apple kit and those of rival hardware vendors more difficult to determine. The stamp of Apple on its kit is the industrial design, while the real soul of the company's computers is the operating system.

The Windows OS has long been derided in Cupertino and by the company's fan base, while the litigious history between the two companies over the look and feel of the Windows OS is part of IT folklore. To put something so derided by both the corporation and its user base at the heart of a Mac is an extraordinary move.

On one hand it seems a typical piece of Steve Jobs bravado - cocky and confident. It says: 'Use XP if you really want to, we think it's crap, inelegant and you'll end up riddled with viruses, just like with your Wintel PCs. Isn't there a better way?' The company is clearly betting that by using these two operating systems side by side, most users will wake up to the superiority of OS X.

On the other hand, the move is the antithesis of the design ethos the Apple CEO has been expounding in all his time at the company. A simple pure vision of computing - hardware tied to operating system.

It's clear from reactions in the blogosphere that many traditional Mac users are outraged by the move for precisely that reason. On the other hand, there are a lot of Mac users who also recognise that this is a bold move for the company, with little risk and a lot of new customers to gain.

There are dangers involved, however, most significantly from developers producing third-party software for the Mac platform.

A few years back they were asked to make the necessary changes to their existing and new software to allow applications to run on OS X rather than OS 9. And last June they were told they would have to recompile their software in order to run to maximum effectiveness on the Intel platform, despite the Rosetta emulation software.

Even Jobs has acknowledged that for some developers, the recompiling of software for Intel Macs would be far from trivial.

Now that Mac users are capable of running Windows, developers may give lower priority to Mac versions of applications.

How Apple manages the relationship between its key developer partners will be key.

So why offer Boot Camp at all? At its core it's about winning hearts and minds in the battle for market share. The much-derided Switch campaign - remember those adverts of Windows users who had switched to Mac? - may not have been as successful as Apple hoped but the company has made significant inroads into attracting new customers through the so-called iPod halo effect by converting PC users into Mac users on the back of positive experiences with the iPod

The Boot Camp technology is the Switch campaign on steroids.

It's not really doubted that the move will help the company sell a lot of Macs. The question is where the company will be aiming its sights.

silicon.com's CIO Jury has ruled that XP on a Mac is not for business, largely due to higher hardware costs and support issues.

One juror predicted that XP on a Mac would only appeal to "computer hobbyists", those with a genuine interest in how technology is built, how it works and with how users interact with it.

This may be exactly the market sector that Apple has identified as being ripe for conversion.

Simply offering XP on a Mac is not likely to spark a mass migration of general users to the Mac. After all, 'native booting' and 'virtualisation' are not the easiest phrases to work into a marketing brief.

However, the hobbyists are likely to be the company's prize - a market that has a genuine interest in good technology rather than the average home user who wants a PC that runs Office and can access the web and email.

It's also a market sector that's close to its own traditional loyal customer base, which sustained the company during its fallow years.

Apple has a minority share of the industry (between three and five per cent according to most estimates) but it only needs to increase that by a few percentage points to make hugely significant differences to its revenue.

This is a bold move for the company and one which will be lauded for its business acumen if not for its dedication to its design principles.

If nothing else, it reinforces the fact that Apple is one of those very few companies that can completely surprise you, time and time again, no matter how long you've followed its activities.