Apple successfully pulled of its switch from the PowerPC architecture to Intel’s latest and greatest, the “Core Duo” 2-in-one x86 processors. The new machines have been selling like crazy, and for good reason: they’re blazing fast and have a feature set that, for the price point, is unmatched in the personal computer industry.
Part of that feature set is their amazing new UNIX-based operating system, OS X. It’s stable, fast, secure, easy to use and it looks so good that it makes you want to lick it. For the first time, there is now a viable alternative to Microsoft Windows on the Intel platform. With rising security concerns about Windows, people are actually looking for alternatives.
Some pundits are saying that the availability of this alternative, together with the news that Microsoft’s next release of Windows will be delayed until 2007, will result in a significant blow to the Redmond giant’s market domination.
There is a catch, of course. OS X runs on Apple’s own hardware, only. At least, officially it runs only on Apple hardware. Unofficially, hackers have managed to circumvent the software protections that are supposed to prevent OS X from running on non-Apple hardware, and booted up OS X on their Dell, HP and generic PC systems. However, using hacked versions of OS X is probably illegal, its difficult to install, and users who do it will miss out on the frequent updates that Apple sends out.
Another catch for people considering a switch, even if they’re willing to buy new Apple hardware, is that they may have some applications that only run in Windows, and they’re not sure that they’ll be able to live without. For these people, Apple has just released a new product that allows users to boot up Windows on their Intel Mac. Its ingeniously named “Boot Camp“.
Boot Camp is free to download, and will be included as a standard feature with the next release of Mac OS X, due out this year.
Rumour has it that Windows runs faster on the new Macs than it does on currently available PCs. Long-time Windows users will now be able to upgrade to slick new Apple hardware, and dabble in OS X at their leisure, without the risk of not liking it and being stuck without crack, I mean, Windows.
John C. Dvorak today offered an insightful prediction on how this situation might develop in 2006:
So, is this how it will go in businesses across the country? I bet Apple does.
February – “We don’t do Macs. Windows only.”
March – “Windows runs faster on those new Intel Macs than on my pc?”
April – “Since we can run Windows on a Mac, let’s buy one and check it out.”
May – “It is faster! And this OS X stuff is interesting.”
June – “I just created some widgets that will really be useful for everyone. Since we have to replace all our pc’s anyway, let’s only get Macs.”
2007 – “Vista’s released? So? We don’t do Windows. Mac only.
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