Well, over the past 36 hours, I have read a lot of analysis on Apple’s newest announcement, Boot Camp. Not owning a McBook (hat tip to Clint for the term), I have yet to play around with it myself, but the reports I’ve read have so far consistantly been good. Considering my own need to test websites in IE, my first reaction was “sweet!,” though, with the recent hacked version, I wasn’t suprised at all.
However, no matter how much I love the idea, I hate the idea of having to re-boot every time I need it.1 I’ve already thought through the idea buying a Mac just to run Windows, which seems kind of silly. Khoi Vinh also voiced these concerns in his excellent post on the topic.
There has been a lot of debate on the question of why, and what does this mean. Some of the common answers are:
- To eak out a few more points of market share by getting a few fence-sitters to switch
- A full frontal assault on MicroSoft (i.e., who would want a PC that can only boot one OS)
- To take over the world
With the exception of Khoi’s, all of the reviews and analysis I have read have missed a couple things on Apple’s Boot Camp page that particularly cought my attention:
Wow, you catch that attitude?? There’s something bigger going on here. There’s a mental game afoot.
Well, while staying up way too late tonight (again) catching up with my RSS, I ran into the best analysis I have seen yet on the always excellent Daring Fireball:
Apple is confident that most Windows users who give Mac OS X a shot are going to prefer it — again, much in the same way that most long-time Mac users preferred Mac OS X to the old Mac OS.
…everything about Boot Camp is calibrated to position Windows-on-Mac as the next Classic-style ghetto — a compatibility layer that you might need but that you wish you didn’t.
That pretty much sums it up. DF’s analysis covers everything from the wording on Apple’s page to their bastardization of the Windows logo.
I can’t really say anything better than he did, so go read it for yourself. And let me know what you think.
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