Text 10616, 111 rader
Skriven 2006-04-08 08:23:50 av Mike '/m' (1:379/45)
  Kommentar till text 10611 av Geo (1:379/45)
Ärende: Re: Berk! Windows on Mac
================================
From: Mike '/m' <mike@barkto.com>

On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 19:06:46 -0400, "Geo" <georger@nls.net> wrote:

>"RobertB." <rb28@nyu.edu> wrote in message
>news:rb28-F73CA7.11165207042006@w3.nls.net...
>
>> Obviously, because it's a Mac! There's a coolness factor here George.
>
>Ok it's cool. But it's cool like an Edsel that can uses unleaded gas is
>cool. It's going to appeal to a subgroup of Mac users and ex Mac users but
>not to the general public.


http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060406.html

===
Twenty-five years ago, my Thursday nights were mainly spent playing poker with
a group that included legendary sportswriter Leonard Koppett from the New York
Times and The Sporting News. "Koppy," as everyone called him, was a short,
round wide man of infinite good humor who I can't imagine as a baseball player,
yet as a baseball writer, he eventually made it to Cooperstown and the Hall of
Fame. What made Koppy legendary was his invention of a certain type of baseball
story, one that looked at the game from a technical perspective, relying
heavily on statistics. Where the stock in trade for baseball writers had always
been describing Ruth pointing to the outfield or Mays making a blind catch,
Koppy had the ability to say that at the moment Mays was making that catch the
game -- and possibly the season -- was already lost, and why. Too few
journalists realize the power of this kind of dissection, which can be applied
to almost any industry. (Yes, baseball is an industry.) But you have to know
what you are talking about. I try to apply it here from time to time and when I
come up with the odd story like this one that is based as much on what is
unseen as what is seen, well you can blame Koppy, who died in 2003....



Now to Apple and its Boot Camp utility announced this week to allow Intel Mac
owners to boot into either OS X 10.4 or Windows XP. Readers (and Wall Street)
took this to mean much more than I did, and I like to think I am correct.

Let's take a look and see what this product does -- and doesn't -- do for
Apple.

First, we should have seen it coming last week when Apple joined the BAPCo
Intel benchmarking group. BAPCo, a consortium of PC hardware and software
companies and computer publications, produces standardized benchmark tests, but
only for Windows computers. So by joining BAPCo, Apple was saying that it
intended to run some version of Windows on Macintosh hardware. Apple doesn't
join standards organizations lightly, so Cupertino must expect that the
IntelMacs will show quite well against more standard Windows platforms.

Boot Camp, itself, is unexciting. So you can boot into Windows or OS X, big
deal. You can't boot into Windows AND OS X. You can't cut and paste data
between the two OS's or even access the same data, as far as I can see. For
this you'd need Virtual PC - a Microsoft product - if only a version existed
for the IntelMac platform.

Some cunning readers see this as a huge coup for Apple that will somehow keep
Microsoft from shipping Vista (explain that to me again, please) and eventually
take the hardware leadership away from Dell and the software leadership away
from Microsoft. Yeah, right.

Boot Camp makes no revenue for Apple and never will. IT IS BETA SOFTWARE. I
doubt that its existence, especially as a beta product, is going to make some
Fortune 500 company suddenly sanction the purchase of Macs because they can,
with some effort and an extra $100, pretend to be Windows machines. While Boot
Camp might help show prospective purchasers the superiority of Apple hardware,
those purchasers would have to buy their Macs first and then convince
themselves that they had done the right thing, which is totally backwards.

Readers and pundits alike seem to think that Boot Camp is a surprise for
Microsoft, which I guarantee you it is not. I'll get to explaining why that is
in a minute, but for the moment just realize with me that the only company that
truly benefits from Boot Camp is Microsoft, because they'll get to sell a
retail copy of Windows XP for every copy of Boot Camp and retail XP makes
Microsoft about three times as much money as the OEM version.

Microsoft LOVES Boot Camp and I am sure they'll say that shortly. After all,
Boot Camp sells more copies of Windows without threatening more sophisticated
products like Microsoft's own Virtual PC.

One reason why Microsoft isn't surprised by Boot Camp is because Microsoft has
been working with Apple to make sure that Windows Vista runs well on IntelMacs.
Apple will support Vista dual boot, though I don't know if they will become a
Vista OEM, but I can't imagine why they wouldn't if it will help sales.

If Boot Camp is part of an OEM deal worked out with Microsoft, that suggests
that Microsoft will take the high ground by offering a version of Virtual PC
for IntelMacs. To be perfectly honest here, I KNOW about the Vista
compatibility through Microsoft (not Apple) sources, but I am only guessing
about the Virtual PC part.

Microsoft and Apple are happy with each other for the moment, and rather than
representing some Apple attack on Microsoft, Boot Camp just represents the
state of their happy partnership. But this won't last for long. It never does.

I predict that Apple will settle on 64-bit Intel processors ASAP (with FireWire
800 please), and at that time will announce a product similar to Boot Camp to
allow OS X to run on bog-standard 32-bit PC hardware, turning the Boot Camp
relationship on its head and trying to sell $99 copies of OS X to 100 million
or so Windows owners.

That's the point when, as Koppy used to write, the game turns.
===

Not sure i completely agree, but it is an interesting viewpoint.

 /m

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5
 * Origin: Barktopia BBS Site http://HarborWebs.com:8081 (1:379/45)