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Will Windows on the Mac make or break the Mac OS’s future?
Tuesday, April 11, 2006 / Apple Culture, OS
One of the most repeated quotes of Steve Jobs is: “It’s better to be a pirate than join the navy.” With Apple’s announcement that it’s going to facilitate installing Windows for Intel Mac owners, I can only wonder if Apple has “joined the navy.” This decision could potentially propel the Mac towards Dell-like sales, but could also wreak havoc in a growing Mac application market. The reality will most likely be somewhere in between, but not even Apple knows for sure what the outcome will be.
Boot Camp is the name of Apple’s public beta program that allows users to dual boot their Intel-based Macs. The software works in conjunction with updated firmware for each Intel Mac, and it comes with most of the drivers to allow Windows XP to run the Mac hardware. Boot Camp was released less than a month after the completion of a public contest to see who could get a Mac to boot both OS X and Windows XP. What is unclear is whether Apple had planned to release the beta before the contest had been won, but what is clear is that Apple wants to control that experience. Boot Camp is slated to be part of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and appears to have been in the works long before the success of the dual boot contest. Regardless of its intention, Boot Camp has already replaced the tricky hack that the contest winners released to the public. Apple’s version, as one would expect from Apple, is simple enough for most Mac users to use. Boot Camp’s simplicity it will most likely encourage its use beyond the geek community.
The release of Boot Camp is welcome news to many people, even though it is only a beta release. Professional people who prefer the Mac but are forced to use Windows for work have needed this for some time. I know this all too well. When I worked as a computer support person for an advertising agency, I had both a Mac and a Windows box on my desk. The only reason I needed both was many of the company resources where accessible only from a PC. Mac users know all about the inequality of available software titles for the Mac compared to Windows. Home users can exercise choice when buying software, but businesses and schools don’t have that luxury. There are times when a piece of Windows-only software is the best tool available. That’s when a dual-booting Mac may become the best solution.
The two drawbacks to permitting Windows to boot on a Mac are less certain than the benefits, but are also more serious in consequence. The first drawback will of course be viruses. On the Boot Camp page, Apple posts a “word to the wise” reminding Mac people that the Windows on their Mac will suffer the same pitfalls as any other Windows computer. That means Trojans, spyware, viruses, and worms. Updates are required in the Windows world, not just recommended. Apple has provided a weapon against this, at least within the Mac OS, by forcing you to partition your hard drive before installing Windows, and forcing you to re-boot into either platform.
The second drawback is with software and web development. Many software companies already ignore the Mac market and some websites need Active-X, which is only found in Internet Explorer for Windows. For whatever reason, they have determined that 5% of the market is not worth the development costs. That has been a fact of Mac life for many years now but it has been changing. Apple has made it easy for developers to write Mac software and Apple’s many successes have drawn the attention of talented technical people. And while I believe that this will not change, I do think that Windows on a Mac will slow the growth of Mac software development. The software companies that had considered developing for the Mac will see the availability of those Macs running Windows as an alternative way of selling to new customers without any added expenses. The sales incentive of the small Mac market will drop below the cost of development for the Mac because Windows is now available. It will not matter if few people install Windows on their Mac because the software companies might think, “if they really want our software they can easily use the Windows version.” This perception already exists with Virtual PC as the available solution. For instance, UPS told me that the only way there would be a version of their Worldship software running on a Mac was with Virtual PC and they have no plans to develop a Mac version.
Virtual PC and all its predecessors have been poor solutions for Mac users in a Windows world. The dual booting Mac will undoubtedly be a welcomed improvement over emulators like Virtual PC in terms of speed and efficiency with Windows applications. The success of Windows on the Mac may be just the incentive for some software makers to delay or discontinue their Mac development, because they now have nearly 100 percent of the computer market to run their Windows applications.
On the other hand, the leading producer of the top commercial titles for the Mac over the last few years has clearly been Apple. Final Cut, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, Logic Pro, GarageBand, Aperture, Shake and more have become compelling reasons to own a Mac all on their own. Another long term plus is that Apple is going to have more incentive than ever to make sure the Mac OS is superior to Windows as many more users will have a more direct comparative experience. That may be the best news out of all of this, because it’s clear Apple cannot survive as a manufacturer of hardware that runs only, or even mostly, Windows.
The reality of Boot Camp’s pros and cons is most likely going to be milder than we think. Macs are still going to be bought by people who like Macs or really hate Windows. Except for the enlightened few, software developers will continue to marginalize Mac applications. And some may feel that allowing Windows to boot a Macintosh taints the uniqueness of the Mac. Seeing the Windows desktop on an iMac screen makes it look like any other computer. If I wanted to be like everyone else I would have joined the establishment. But alas, I’m a pirate. Arrrgh.
