Your browser may have trouble rendering this page. See supported browsers for more information.

This page shows the source for this entry, with WebCore formatting language tags and attributes highlighted.

Title

Boot Camp for Mac OS X

Description

<img src="{att_link}boot_camp_logo.png" align="right" class="frame"><a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/">Boot Camp</a> is the newest product recently released with the OS X 10.4.6 update. With it, Mac users can resize their hard drive, create a new partition and install Windows XP on it. It burns a CD with all the necessary drivers prior to Windows installation. Windows XP is not included. In order for Boot Camp to do what it does, Apple adjusted its EFI-only firmware to be able to emulate an old-style BIOS so that Windows recognizes it. They also built an initial set of Windows drivers for their specialty hardware. That's it. There is no magic; the technology itself isn't so earth-shaking. No, the interesting thing about Boot Camp is not how it does what it does, but what it does. It allows users to switch between Mac and Windows on one set of hardware. The burning question is: Why would Apple want that? <h>What it Means To Apple</h> Opinions differ as to what this means for Apple, Microsoft and, most importantly, the dear, dear consumer. Any conflicts largely revolve around the following talking points: <ol> Why this product will drive users away from Apple in droves Why this product ushers in the end of Microsoft Apple should open-source its operating system Apple should release OS X for generic PC hardware Boot Camp is proof of virtualization<fn> in Leopard<fn> </ol> <h>Weaning Away From Windows</h> Point (1) is founded on the idea that software developers may now safely ignore Mac-native versions because they can assume that a Mac user will simply be able to run their Windows version. First of all, dual-booting is, at best, a desperate solution used only for the most direly needed software---it is not a viable long-term solution. Second of all, the installed base of users with Boot Camp is likely to remain quite small. People buy Macs because they want a Mac; Windows computers are everywhere. The user base is different on a Mac---we expect not to reboot for upwards of 4 or 5 weeks at a time. As the journal entry, <a href="http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2006/4/8/3524" author="John Siracusa" source="Ars Technica">Boot Camp</a> says: <bq>Any vendor that decides to stop development of its Mac applications and directs its customers to boot into Windows and use the Windows version of the software instead is in for a very rude awakening. Mac users will not do this, and they will hate you for even suggesting it. Mac users want Mac software. Hell, even some actual Mac applications are met with an upturned nose. ... We're a finicky bunch.</bq> Some say that this snobbish attitude will lead to obsolesence for Mac users. Not so. Mac OS X has enough users---high end users with money and willing to spend it on software---to keep the Mac software market profitable. The release of Boot Camp will only increase this market as it removes a barrier for new users; it answers the question: "What if I absolutely, positively need to run something on Windows?" With this crutch in place, more people will make the move (if Apple salespeople are halfway competent) and discover that, after a few months, they can't remember the last time they booted into Windows. As the article <a href="http://news.com.com/Dare+I+say+this+aloud+Boot+Camp+is+a+gimmick/2010-1041_3-6059118.html" source="CNet">Dare I say this aloud? Boot Camp is a gimmick</a> put it: <bq>Boot Camp functions as a security blanket for PC users who would wet their beds without their favorite Windows application. With one download, Apple removed any lingering barriers holding back the potential universe of switchers.</bq> <h>Apple's Core Business</h> We can discard point (2) from the outset as well. In fact, it's easy to see that Microsoft must be delighted with Boot Camp: part of their core business is selling operating systems and Apple just opened up a new market for them. For free. Users that want to dual-boot Windows XP or Vista (not yet available) will need to buy a full-priced copy since Apple is not shipping OEM copies with their machines. Points (3) and (4) are suggestions offered by the computer press to "help" Apple. Let's examine whether these business ideas hold water. You can't evaluate the wisdom of a business decision without knowing how the decision relates to that company's---in this case, Apple's---core business. Apple's core business is selling hardware and it always has been. The article, <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/asinine_and_or_risky_ideas" title="Several Asinine and/or Risky Ideas Regarding Apple's Strategy That Boot Camp Does Not Portend" source="Daring Fireball" author="Jon Gruber">Several Asinine and/or Risky Ideas...</a> has a good analysis with several examples. Though <iq>Apple is famous for its software</iq> as well as its hardware, <iq>they make way less money selling Mac software than they do selling Mac hardware.</iq> The upshot, then, is to analyze each Apple business decision by asking how it will <iq>help Apple sell more Macs or more iPods</iq>. In this light, it's simple to see what Boot Camp offers Apple: a leg up on the competition by offering users computers <iq>that can run both Mac OS X and Windows up against all other PC-hardware that can only run Windows</iq>. Releasing more<fn> of its OS as open-source does nothing to increase Apple's profits, so that's not going to happen. OS X is pretty, people like it, they can only get it with Apple hardware, they buy Apple hardware. Letting them download it for free so that it runs---for free---on almost any PC is horrible for Apple. In the same vein, selling just the OS will only harm Apple's hardware sales. Apple makes much more profit per computer than they do per OS X upgrade; they want to focus on increasing hardware market share. As Jon Gruber put it: <bq>...gaining one percent of the market by selling one percent more of the total computers would be way more profitable than selling that many $130 copies of Mac OS X.</bq> <h>Boot Camp II</h> Point (5) is up in the air only because it is wholly unrelated to Boot Camp as it is today. Leopard's support for Windows <i>within</i> OS X has nothing to do with being able to <i>boot</i> Windows on Apple hardware. There are virtualization solutions available, and, coupled with the move to Windows-compatible hardware, they stand a chance of running much better than previous attempts ran under the PowerPC architecture.<fn> However, the presence of Boot Camp neither confirms nor denies whether Leopard can run Windows in an emulation more-or-less natively. It is interesting to to follow the logic above and see what we could expect to happen, were Leopard to have such integration: <ol> It would probably boost sales of Apple hardware even more than Boot Camp. Microsoft would be even happier with Apple as they get to sell even more copies of Windows It would cause more companies to <i>consider</i> dropping OS X--native versions (because, using virtualization, Windows is even easier to get to than using Boot Camp). This would likely buy time as a stop-gap measure, but would fail to last as a long-term hold on Mac users for all but the most irreplaceable of products.<fn> Mac-native gaming is an exception to the previous rule, expecially if performance under virtualized Windows is up-to-par<fn>. </ol> Jon Siracusa, cited above, described virtualization chances thusly: <bq>It's not even that I doubt that Apple is working on adding virtualization to Mac OS X. The question is, will it ship with Leopard? I see Boot Camp just as it's described by Apple: a beta test of dual booting. Early adopters will wring it out, the drivers will be further debugged and improved, and it'll all come together in the form of seamless, problem-free dual booting in Leopard.</bq> Further conjecture is just that. <hr> <ft>Virtualization is provided by software that runs processes in operating systems in a virtual environment, which is abstracted from the actual hardware. Virtualization mechanisms have always been available for running Windows under Apple operating systems---they have historically been quite slow. With Apple's move to the same hardware instruction set as that used by Microsoft Windows, virtualization of Windows inside Mac OS X should be much faster.</ft> <ft>Leopard is the next version, 10.5, of Mac OS X. It is set to be publicly previewed in August and is due for release by the end of the year. See <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_v10.5" source="Wikipedia">Mac OS X v10.5</a> for more information.</ft> <ft>Portions of it have always been available as "Darwin". The <a href="http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html">Apple Open Source</a> page has links and more information about their open source products.</ft> <ft>Those versions were doomed to poor performance by the marked differences between the chip architectures.</ft> <ft>A comment by Dogger Blue at <a href="http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/bootcamp-apples-insanely-bad-idea/">Boot Camp: Apple's Insanely Bad Idea</a> notes that products that are Windows-only will survive only as long as there is no replacement---and a Mac OS X-native replacement need only be sufficient, not stellar. Companies relying on Boot Camp will find that another <iq>developer will come along and take advantage of the fact that they have just left the door wide open for competitors.</iq></ft> <ft>Jon Siracusa notes that there is a big upside for Mac gaming with the transition to the Intel architecture, since <iq>Mac game porters should have an easier time with CPU optimization now that they can directly benefit from the work done on Windows.</iq> On the other hand, there are still the Windows API--specific things to deal with, such as <iq>DirectX [which] is still a thorn in the side of Mac gaming</iq>.</ft>