Apple

Windows on Mac (Officially)

Once upon a time, there was a man who told his boss that they should buy a MacBook Pro because you can use it to dual boot Windows and Mac OS X. Well shortly he learned it wasn’t that simple, and a lot of hacking was required. So he started a contest, where people would donate money to a large jackpot for any person(s) to dual boot Windows on a Mac. $13,000+ later, two guys narf and blanka succeeded in doing so. Soon all Intel-based Macs were running XP.

Jump to the future, yesterday Apple officially launched their Boot Camp beta. This pretty much makes the process of dual booting 10x simpler for the common user. Why would you do such a thing? I have no idea. Personally I haven’t had any problems or issues regarding software compatability or finding software that I needed to do my work well. However, for those who do find the need to use Window’s only programs, then dual booting is now available and becoming supported. Remember though, this is only beta.

What does this all imply? Well, a Mac Mini is now really a home theater machine. Once Windows Media Center is supported, then there is nothing really that keeps the Mac mini into something so desireable as a media player. Quality build, enough input/outputs, and running a great software program managing all your media with a keyboard or remote. Once virtualization comes around, switching between the two operating systems will make interpolarity even more extensible. However, settings and user profile data to be used between the two OS’s without duplicating information still requires development. There is a lot of potential going on and I think when Dvorak said Windows on a Mac was what Apple has been planning for, well this is it!

Links:
Review [via Yahoo News]
News Round up [via Engadget]