Maybe the most interesting news to come out of Macworld is Apple’s quiet confirmation that you’ll be able to install and run Windows on its new Intel-based computers. Apple’s top marketer, Phil Schiller, told the Associated Press that “the company won’t sell or support Windows itself, but also hasn’t done anything to preclude people from loading Windows onto the machines themselves.” He also felt compelled to get in a little dig: “”If there are people who love our hardware but are forced to put up with a Windows world, then that’s OK.”
Now, we’ll finally get to see if Windows users actually do suffer from Mac-envy. Will business travelers, for instance, buy the new PowerBooks – sorry, MacBooks – and use them as Windows machines? Anyone have any insight into the ramifications? Is this going to be a big deal, or trivial?
UPDATE: Venerable Apple writer Henry Norr sees big potential in running Windows on Macs, but Nate Mook rains on the parade.
Of course not. The attraction of the Mac is the hardware and the OS/X operating system – and the apps which run atop it – together. If you want a MacBook without OS/X (dumb, IMHO), buy a Sony VAIO.
The dual-boot capability is more useful to corporate users who mainly run OS/X, but who must periodically do something in Windows and can’t or don’t want to use a virtual-machine environment like VPC.
I’m not a hardware geek or anything, but an obvious question that came into my mind is device driver support. I’m guessing most of the hardware components are common enough with the PC world for Windows support, but for the more specialized device, like optical audio input/output, I don’t know…
Hello!
http://www.betanews.com/article/XP_Wont_Run_on_Intel_MacBook_iMac/1137003330
Cheers, Roman
As a graduate student in Technology Management program at Stevens Institute, NJ, I have come across few of your artciles on IT and Business. Interesting view…
Here is my take on Apple’s announcement of Intel based Apple PCs.
Intel based Powerbooks are definitely going to change the perception of how people viewed the Apple computers so for.
People traditionally viewed them as either cool kid’s computer or high end digital studio hardware.
The primary reasons for this view are,
1) High Price for new and upgrade hardware
2) Lack of productive consumer applications availability and compatibility with the rest of the PC world.
The new Intel based architecture will now open up all the existing Intel based peripheral and software vendors to sell to the Powerbook owners leading to competition, availability of useful productivity applications and finally reduction in overall cost of ownership for average consumers.
This new business strategy I think will be a big deal for Apple after iPod’s success, to gain a significant market share in the PC hardware business.
It always seemed to me to be the opposite, i.e. that people will want to run the MAC OS on Intel based computers.
I was wondering why Apple never tried to fight Microsoft, they had and still have, very good chance to take very good chunk of the market share.