Whenever Apple releases a new product, observers, writers, and analysts tend to see the item in very narrow terms. A good case in point is the recent release of Boot Camp. To be sure, Apple is gauging the response to this product, but if the degree of general excitement…[is] any indication, Apple will be pleased with the results of the downloads.
The other thing that Apple does very well is to try to understand the customer needs and to leverage off of those needs by building an ecosystem around successful products — like the iPod. As a result, I tend to see Boot Camp as a likely beginning — just step one in a sequence of well-planned phases that will ignite another fire.
Take the time to read the details of Martellaro’s article. The pieces and premises fit well together — and his background certainly qualifies the analysis.
In accordance with Apple’s stated policy: “We have no desire and no plan to sell or support Windows,” Apple could nevertheless encourage Apple VARs to pre-install Vista making it even easier for the consumer. (Not much encouragement seems required.) In fact, this has already started with XP and Boot Camp.
Next, attack the problem of the security infrastructure of Windows. Since Mac OS X can take care of itself fairly well, Apple could build tools that protect Windows: scan for kernel changes, VM rootkits, modified files, malware, and so on. (Technically, this isn’t support. Just good housekeeping.) If Windows becomes badly damaged, blow it out and reload a protected image from disk. As John Gruber put it so brilliantly, Windows Vista, becomes a ghetto OS…It’s protected by Mac OS X and lives on under the supervision of and at the pleasure of Mac OS X.
Now we’re several years down the road. Customers who are thinking about buying a PC have a choice.
* Buy a standard PC with, for the sake of marketing-speak, a “naked” copy of Windows.
* Buy a Macintosh on which one can install (or have pre-installed) a “protected” copy of Windows.
None of the other PC OEMs is going to put up the resources to duplicate what Apple has achieved. They’ll beg Microsoft to produce a “protected” version of Vista. Or they’ll beg Apple to license Mac OS X. (Which Apple still won’t do.) It’ll be a critical point for the PC industry and Microsoft.
Opportunities for Apple will abound.
Rock on!
I wonder when people will start bashing Apple?
So, can I safely assume that Apple’s marketing slogan would be: ” I want YOU to want ME.”
Ryan
An interesting idea, and you get bet that something like this will happen even if Apple aren’t the push behind it…
… however, I don’t see it as the huge push for Apple that the writer does. Apple still needs to lower their prices to be seen as a truely competitive “PC” maker… even though they are quite good for what you get, people are used to the low quality cheap PC prices.
I wonder when viruses for the Mac will start to promulgate…
Saying that OS X is virus free is a fallacy. However, unlike Gates & Co, Apple and the Darwin community patch any security flaw as quickly as possible. God bless Darwin, God bless open-source.
BTW, if a company such as HP, Dell, or Gateway were to embrace a Linux or FreeBSD system to protect Vista, Apple may have competition in the “protected” Windows race. Microsoft, are you listening?
Microsoft should buy Apple. I would be immensely amused if that were to happen.
I am just waiting for the smoke to settle on this. It could also turn out that after many Mac users have hacked a copy of XP from somewhere just to try out Bootcamp they may also be looking at a similar situation of running a Commodore emulator on a PC – it’s really cool that it can be done, but now what? I’m sure most of us nerds in the PC world have played with an emulator that clones the computer from our 8-bit glory days, but after the thrill of playing Dig Dug, we forgot about it.
A better analogy may be a PC user dual-booting Linux – this is a small percentage. The die-hards have either switched 100% to Linux, or have a dedicated box for each OS.
Until we see seamless integration of Windows on a Mac (switch back and forth without rebooting) we may also be looking at the latest version of computer fluff. When seamless becomes real, I may even be Mac shopping. 🙂
… finally, until a Mac keyboard has ALT-CTRL-DEL on it, a Mac user will never experience the full experience of Windows. heh heh
I think this is a great article with lots of insight (vs guff and emotion). I can really see this happening. As a Win XP user at work and an OS X user at home i was amazed at how different my Home XP experience was when i converted my Intel iMac into a dual boot machine.
On OS X i went around on the web with no fear. When on XP, my background programs were constantly running and I became paranoid about what i was doing and where I was going.
It’s like living in a neighborhood where everyone leaves their doors unlocked and commuting everyday to work in the ghetto – nasty and no one trusts anyone – you’re always watching your back.
OS X might not convert any business users who work in secured environments, but to me it’s a no brainer for home users. Every dual boot mac i think will in time convert users to spending more time on OS X.
I love Bootcamp. After living in the Windows world for a few years, I was thrilled to return to Apple with the purchase of a PowerBook G4, which is one of my all-time favorite Macs! For the past two years I haven’t surfed much on my Windows machine, so I was surprised that it was taken down by spyware a few weeks ago. Rather than buy another machine I don’t have any interest in, I was able to take advantage of the Intel Duo iMac. I don’t like running Windows on such an elegant machine, but need to run a few key programs for work purposes and couldn’t have justified getting the 20 in so soon. One thing I am doing is not allowing my Windows side to go online. I transfer files using the Windows HD image and also transfer files to my PC. I’ve disabled all networking on the Windows side. I use a Microsoft comfort keyboard and a Kensington trackball for Windows. When I use the Mac side, I’m going with the keyboard and mouse that came with the computer (although I also have wireless. Just haven’t switched over yet for the iMac. My virus protection, firewalls, spyware protection, etc. didn’t prevent me from losing everything on the Windows machine. Since I had SP 1, I couldn’t even get it back online long enough to upgrade to 2 before my drivers were being taken out. I had it plugged into the router via Ethernet. Decided to go with Airport Express after that experience. Getting WPA security was a breeze.