Dual boot Win XP on Intel Mac: official

[Msterbeau]

http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/

[The_Dark]

This has been coming for a long time. Mac has slowly been transforming to PC hardware for some time. First they started using IDE hard drives and optical drives. Then the PCI bus for expansion. Then standard DDR for memory. Then dropping MacOS for Unix (OSX is Unix with a Mac like GUI). Then Intel CPUs... what exactly makes it a Mac?

[Msterbeau]

What!!!! Blasphemy!!!!

Heheh... Kidding.

To the people who love them, it's the user experience. Apple makes (usually) excellent quality products that are tightly integrated between hardware and software... and it's easy to use. I know OS-X is Unix-ish... a development of NEXTstep.

I think the surprise here is that Apple chose to provide their own solution to doing this. They seemed quite ambivilant about the prospect of letting users run XP on Macs. Then again.. they've always been pretty good at playing the PR game..

[kellygrrrrrl]

Yep I saw them flyin piggy's.....

Wheresmypiggy just went flying by my window doing like 80 mph..... :laughing

[The_Dark]

Marc... Thats so much PR crap. Mac has historically had a nitch market in the Print Industry but they don't make any of the products that kept them in that nitch. Quark Express and PhotoShop. What thier hardware and OS gave to the mix was distributaed processing. Then Windows 2000 came out and it could do that too... and at the same time Photoshop for PC started to get some attention and Quark put out a version for Windows. Guesse what? Mac went from having 90% of the Print Industry to 70% in one year... the gap gets closer every year... not sure where it is exactly these days. I have not been in the print industry for a few years.

Another thing to consider is that if it were not for Microsoft making Excel for Macs.. Mac would have gone out of busniness a long time ago. Steve Jobs has admitted this in many interviews. Also, the really large bail out checks from MS have helped.

[n0Mad]

... what exactly makes it a Mac?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The stupid translucent colors and the Apple with a bite (byte?) out if it logo? :laughing

[Msterbeau]

Marc... Thats so much PR crap. Mac has historically had a nitch market in the Print Industry but they don't make any of the products that kept them in that nitch. Quark Express and PhotoShop. What thier hardware and OS gave to the mix was distributaed processing. Then Windows 2000 came out and it could do that too... and at the same time Photoshop for PC started to get some attention and Quark put out a version for Windows. Guesse what? Mac went from having 90% of the Print Industry to 70% in one year... the gap gets closer every year... not sure where it is exactly these days. I have not been in the print industry for a few years.

Another thing to consider is that if it were not for Microsoft making Excel for Macs.. Mac would have gone out of busniness a long time ago. Steve Jobs has admitted this in many interviews. Also, the really large bail out checks from MS have helped.

It's no PR crap. I'm in the design industry. I use both OS's daily and I find the Mac to be a better overall computer experience. Most of my peers agree. Their designs are both beautiful and very functional. They're very specific about the quality of hardware they use and it shows in the user ratings. Apple is almost always at the top. Usually by a lot... and this is on quality... not just subject stuff like useability.

Macs are currently around 4% - 5% of the market. It's been fairly steady for a few years now... I predict that will be up a couple points in a year. A design/CG board I'm on has shown there is huge demand for this move. Many who needed XP to run 3D software are already planning on switching so they only have to have one box. They also made the point that software developers, game companies, etc would likely switch to Apple hardware for the same reason. Everything in one box. The consumer market will be harder to predict... I'd think sales will take a healthy improvement here too....

Work beckons...