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Bunk Camp - Apple Gets It Wrong?
An anonymous reader writes "CNET.com.au has posted a commentary that attempts to cut away the hype surrounding Boot Camp. From the article: 'Boot Camp will do little to coax Windows XP users into switching to Mac OS X. For this to happen, Apple needs to either license out OS X to all users -- not just Mac owners -- or support a true Mac virtualisation application.'"
That article was written by someone who hasn't been using a Mac lately. Phrases like "I doubt it" and "my Windows machine" are a dead giveaway. Let's hear from someone who knows what he's talking about.
This sig, aah-ah, is comin' like a ghost-sig...
Apple don't need to get people to switch to Mac OS X; they need to get them to buy Apple's computers.
0 52.html for a discussion
Supporting Windows makes it easier for people to decide to try a Mac, because they don't have to worry about losing familiar applications like regedt32 and minesweeper. Apple hopes that they will then discover that they don't need Windows after all.
See http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000
Apple isn't in the OS X business, they are in the computer hardware business. If somebody buys an Apple instead of a Dell so they can run an occasional Mac application, Boot Camp is a success.
Of course, many people want to see Windows market share decrease, but that's their agenda, not Apple's.
It seems to me that if you play PC games a lot, you'll be booting into Windows more and more as time goes on, since what incentive is there to port PC games to OS X if you can run the PC version so easily on the Mac via BootCamp?
If BootCamp takes off, I predict the already small Mac-native games market will wither even further.
RR
The major premise of the article is rather flawed; Boot Camp wasn't about "luring" in Windows users. Most of those users don't have a choice (e.g. work restrictions) or don't realize that an OS doesn't have to be unstable and/or vulnerable; they think that it's "just the way it is".
What Boot Camp does is remove the barrier to adoption. There are a number of Windows users who would like to switch, but need access to Software X or don't want to give up Game Y, and don't want to maintain two separate computers for those tasks. Now, they don't have to. Sure, rebooting is a pain, but for someone who wants to, say, use their MacBook Pro as a windows machine at work, and as a mac at home, well, they can do that easily enough.
Sure, Virtualization would be better, and I've heard (rumors, rumors, mind you) that it's coming. But Boot Camp, by removing the barrier to switching, is a very good transition state, and an acceptable end state, if Apple chose to leave it at that.
The blue Shimatta1 needs food, badly.
Let's remember some of the other things that CNET (the .com.com.com people) thought were "sure things" back in the day -- portals, push (think Pointcast), the Thin Client, etc. For people who only cover tech they're remarkably clueless of the world outside of wintel (and, more often than not, inside of it as well).
My sig is too lon
Agreed... with boot camp out now I'm considering getting a Mac as my next machine.
I also dis-agree that this would make the mac game library smaller. Sure for a while you'll have Mac users booting into Windows for games and windows users running their OS on Mac hardware. But the reason we don't see games on Mac is because the OS's user base is so much smaller then windows. The only thing it would take to get more games onto OSX is more users... and stuff like this can only help to increase the user base. If the market has a choice of OSs and they lean towards OSX software when they have a choice of getting it for either. Games will follow because they just go to the lowest common denominator. Heck just look at the console market, PS2 gets EVERYTHING simply because it has the biggest userbase, it's certainly not the best in any other category.
Collector's Edition
Apple wasn't trying to woo over millions of Windows users to the Mac platform with Boot Camp. Apple's release of Boot Camp serves three purposes for them:
All in all, this move is a VERY intelligent one from Apple. They waited until people had the new Macs in their hands and got a feel for the performance of the hardware/OS combo, and then provided an extra feature. Now with the media buzz and the savvy user community, 10.5 may be a very significant draw for those who don't want to deal with Vista.
Just my 2 cents.Can I get a refund if I buy a Macbook and decide not to run OSX on it?
#19845
You forgot to include people who buy a PC in that category. That's most of the copies of windows, and the overwhelming majority of those are legit.