codyg1985’s Think Tank

I thought this day would never come, but sure enough, Apple has unveiled an official program called “Boot Camp” that will allow a Macintosh user to run Windows XP and Mac OS X alongside each other. Here is the words straight from the horse’s mouth:

More and more people are buying and loving Macs. To make this choice simply irresistible, Apple will include technology in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard, that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac. Called Boot Camp (for now), you can download a public beta today.

Bloggers everywhere have different interpretations of this new software. Some see this as the end of Mac OS X as a dominant OS or even the end of the Macintosh itself while some others see it as a way to ease the transition into OS X, which will kill Windows in the end.

I think Apple realizes that the OS is becoming less and less important. What matters most is what people do with their computers (and what devices those people choose to use with their computers). People will still use their iPod with a PC or a Mac, and people will still run World of Warcraft on a PC or on a Mac. The position of the computer, be it the PC or the Mac, is to allow the user to effectively perform tasks and use peripherals with their PC or Mac.

However, by allowing users to run Windows XP on a Mac, the Macintosh “experience” (no pun intended) is being treaded upon. Apple is all about elegance. The computer cases and the other hardware is simple to set up and use; simplicity is the name of the game. The same style is extended to the operating system with Mac OS X. The operating system is elegant, and the user interface is quite beautiful. Allowing the user to use Windows XP instead takes away some of that elegance. While the Boot Camp program itself is simple to use, Windows XP was not built to be simple and elegant. Windows XP (and previous incarnations) was built to support the greatest amount of programs and devices as possible, excluding, of course, Macintosh hardware. Windows XP was built to be user-friendly, but it was not built to be as simple and striking as Mac OS X.

Whether Boot Camp will increase the popularity of the Macintosh remains to be seen. Will it result in more sales? It is a bold move by Apple regardless of the outcome. It will be interesting to see how many Macintosh users will be running Windows a year from now.