DigitalSandbox

I wanted to write about this last week while all the broo-ha-ha was hot and heavy, but I didn’t have any time. In case you are living in a cave and haven’t heard, there were two major developments in the Apple camp last week.

The first came Wednesday with that announcement that Windows XP booting on a Mac is possible. But you say, “I know this. This is ancient history, in internet terms anyway.” And you are right, but this announcement wasn’t some hack requiring some sort of techinical aptitude. This announcement came from Apple itself. As I posted that day, Hell had frozen over and Apple released Boot Camp which “officially” sanctioned the running of Winodws on an Intel-based Mac.

You can read my initial thoughts in the matter in this post, but basically I think this is a good thing. I consider myself pretty tech-savvy and I work on either platform about equally well. That said, I definitely prefer the Mac experience. (A lot of people can’t really understand that phrase, but it is the truth. There is something fundamentally different about working on a Mac as opposed to Windows. They both get the job done and both actually perform quite well, but the Mac is somehow more satisfying and feels more transparent.) Personally, I have about as close to zero need to run Windows as you can get. So the ability to dual-boot is cool more from an academic standpoint to me. Of course, I realize that for some people this is not academic and is a very real need. So this ability is great for them.

About the only thing I would like to be able to do in Windows is test websites in IE. Having to reboot just to check how a website renders is far from ideal. So I was looking forward to the day that we could run Windows at native speed in a virtual machine without rebooting. It turns out I didn’t have to wait long. The very next day the Parallels Workstation 2.1 Beta was released to much rejoicing.

Now a user can choose which ever method works best for them. If you are running programs that will make extensive use of the video card and other internal hardware (3D modeling/rendering and, yes, games) then Boot camp is for you. If you just need to run the occasional Windows program and it doesn’t require a lot of video processing then say hello to Parallels Worstation. Of course you could also load up a version of each, but that will eat up your hard drive space since you will need two complete installs of Windows XP with enough room to store your programs as well.

Of course, the “pundits” are out in force about what this move means for Apple. Opinions abound on whether or not this will increase marketshare for Apple or if this is the beginning of the end for Mac OS. My opinion is that this will increase marketshare for Apple, but not alot. I think that most of the people that will use these solution already have a Mac and a PC, because they had to to get things done. There will be in influx of those that wanted to try out a Mac but were held back by a large collection of Windows software they they didn’t want to replace right away. But by and large, the general consumer won’t really think about it. I like what John Gruber (who’s blog feed should be in your newsreader already) said best.

All Apple needs to do to be spectacularly successful with its computer business in the next few years is to take just a few single digits of market share away from Windows. Whatever market share number you peg the Mac at ? 2 percent, 5 percent, or anywhere in between ? you must keep in mind that it (that is, the Mac user base) is not comprised of a random sample of just any 2-5 percent of computer users in general. It?s a very specific self-selecting segment of the market: people who care about their computers, and who are willing to pay more for something better.

So basically, this is the beginning of very good things for Apple. With the ability to run OS X, many *nix, and now Windows programs the Mac has become something of an ultimate system. One single computer can replace as many as three seperate systems and you can switch between the three pretty painlessly. The worst case scenario is a reboot, which if you are going to be doing enough work in that environment is not a huge deal. Most people will be able to use the virtualization for everything they want to do. Apple is making a very strong case for itself in the coming months and years.

Things are going to get really interesting soon. I know that I can’t wait to get my MacBook Pro this fall.