DISQUS

mark · 3 years ago

Under Jobs, Apple has been a hardware company, with software and peripherals added to make a core system that meets user needs. The original Mac shipped with MacWrite and MacPaint. Today's Macs ship with iLife. The iPod ships with iTunes, and the iTunes Music Store provides "software" for the iPod.

And now, Boot Camp is just a first step to get a former Windows user to try the Mac hardware but with the safety net and comfort of Windows as the base OS. Once people are comfortable with this, Apple will shift to virtualization, whereby the Mac OS becomes the base OS, with Windows apps running in windows. The benefit of this more seamless approach in virtualization (vs. reboot) could convince many Windows users using Mac hardware to shift over to the Mac OS and use Safari, Dashboard, and iLife instead of IE, etc.

For people who are already Mac users, Boot Camp will allow them to save hundreds of dollars - all they need is Windows, not a Windows PC, to run those few apps that others require of them for interoperability. And it expands the Mac users toolset since there are many developers who refuse to create Mac versions - Doc Searls brings up the Garmin GPS as an example. And as more Mac hardware users use these Windows-only tools, they may create a large enough pool to get those Windows-only developers to more seriously consider a Mac version, since those Mac users will prefer a Mac version if they could get it.

Mathew · 3 years ago

Thanks for the comment, Mark. I think you might just be right.

Mathew