A discussion about the software industry and their coders

The stock market has responded positively to the Boot Camp Beta release by Apple Computer Inc. Apple's stock price has risen by $4 in 2 days. The market clearly is excited at the prospect of Apple increasing its share of PC sales and at Intel Macs becoming mainstream hardware that runs Windows -- the OS that runs around 90% of the world's desktops.

What is Apple's strategy? Clearly Boot Camp is an important part of Apple's Strategy to push for Intel Mac sales and grab a larger market share. Macintosh sales account for almost 45% of the Apple Computer's revenue of about $ 13.9 billion.

 Users, Apple, and Microsoft -- all would be winners with MicroApple! According to Apple Boot Camp will be a feature in Leopard, Apple’s next major release of Mac OS X (v 10.5). This Beta release of Boot Camp is therefore a preparatory step for the general availability in Leopard. Thus, with Leopard users will get a well tested version of Boot Camp to install Windows XP on Intel Macs. Apple would then possibly go for Vista compatibility and if that happens I expect to see Microsoft touting Macintosh to be the "coolest" new PC for Vista and a great new channel for sales of Vista.

Walter Mossberg has run preliminary tests on installing and using Windows XP applications on Boot Camp. He has given a thumbs-up. In his review he states:

I've been testing Windows on a new iMac for several days and except for a couple of trifling annoyances, it runs perfectly, just like a stand-alone Windows PC. I was able to install Boot Camp and Windows XP Pro on the Mac in under an hour. After that, I installed 15 Windows programs, most unavailable in Mac versions, and all ran properly.

The implications are staggering. In next 2-3 years if Apple:

• swallows some undue pride (With the Boot Camp release Philip Schiller said “Apple has no desire or plan to sell or support Windows”)
• and fixes speed issues and bugs

Intel Macs could become as mainstream as DELL and HP laptops and PCs. Are Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller afraid of that? I guess they are secretly smiling.