Apple supports Windows; Sun rises in West

It's the announcement you never thought you'd read: Apple officially supports the use of the Windows operating system on the Mac. The Boot Camp product, available as a free download from the Apple web site, creates a second partition for Windows and allows the system to be boot up under either sytem. The public beta of Boot Camp is available immediately as a download at www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp, and is preview software licensed for use on a trial basis for a limited time. The final version of Boot Camp will be available as a feature in the upcoming Mac OS X version 10.5 “Leopard.” Apple does not provide support for installing or running Boot Camp and does not sell or support Microsoft Windows software. Apple welcomes user feedback on Boot Camp at bootcamp@apple.com. Of course, the wags are already having a lot of fun with this - check out this little video on You Tube. But by voiding the twenty-year holy war between the Mac platform and the Windows OS with its enormous software base, this move should remove a major barrier to purchase and enable Apple to increase its market share greatly. At least most analysts are seeing it this way. But there's another view as well. Freelance writer Ian Betteridge, who often devotes ink to the Mac, suggests that those who want Windows as their primary OS will still find that they do better, both in terms of cost and performance, to buy a PC built for Windows. He concludes For home and business users who want a Mac and who occasionally need to run Windows, this is a great solution. But I doubt it will make much difference to businesses or education. Tags: nptech, bootcamp,