Here here!
In an excellent strategic move Apple has release Boot Camp to public beta testing, officially supporting Windows on the new Intel Mac hardware. While I realize this probably horrifies many died-in-the-wool Mac evangelists, it’s a good move for Apple and it looks like the analysts agree, as reported by the Wall Street Journal:
Roger Kay, an analyst at research and consulting firm Endpoint Technologies Associates Inc., said enabling Windows to run on Macs could also give Apple a better shot at winning customers in big companies, where proprietary Windows-only applications have all but ruled out any meaningful switch to Macs. “Apple has largely been fenced out of those accounts for sometime,” Mr. Kay says.
Dual-booting Intel Mac’s with Windows is a key selling point to corporate America. It eliminates a barrier to entry by making the hardware reusable. In other words, companies now have the option of using the hardware for Windows, thus making the purchase of a Mac-based system perfectly viable.
On the other hand, rebooting is very last century. An even more elegant solution is anticipated by the market — An updated VirtualPC or a possible entry by VMWare. Both solutions would support running Windows and OS/X applications side-by-side at native speeds.
Update: it appears that Parallels has beaten Microsoft and VMWare to the punch. It’s worth noting that with Boot Camp, Apple might be in the running too. John Gruber observes that “it’s a safe bet that Apple plans to include something like this with Mac OS X 10.5, for free.”
