Apple...Did they miss the brass ring with Windows Users?

But there will be a full VM, Microsoft is working on it as we speak, they have Guaranteed that they will have their VM ported over, and it will run faster. Also, Wine will be available for OS X pretty quickly as well if I don't miss my guess. Dual Booting while not supported will occur, making a boot loader for XP will probably be one of the first things hobbyist get going.

Just because Apple isn't offering the product, doesn't mean it won't be there. Most small Apple developers like the fact that it won't be in there, at least to a point, it gives them something to do.

Running Windows on a Intel Mac should be possible once Vista arrives. The problem lies in the fact that the new Intel Macs use EFI instead of a BIOS. Right now, no version of Windows supports EFI, but wait a year and Vista will!

C'mon, would you really want to have to reboot every time you wanted to use that one program?

Plus, it's not Apple's fault, it's Intel's because they use EFI instead of BIOS. Vista should support EFI.

First off, Mighty Mouse. It's great and it is a sign of Apple's changing ways.

As for the rest of the entry...

WINE is the answer my friend. Not only will you not have to leave OS X, running the windows and mac software side by side. Not only that, your computer will still be safe from windows malware.

As for running Windows, wait a month or two (maybe less!) and you will see a solution for XP. Once you get past EFI, it should be smooth sailing. If Microsoft can emulate the whole x86 architecture on Power PC's, I'm sure that they can make a boot loader. Better yet, there is about $8000 waiting at www.winxponmac.com for the first hacker to solve the problem.

Id like an OS switching thing in the style of the user switching in OSX (the rotating cube thing). That is if of course they cant make it as transparent as Classic in OSX.

The problem is the Mac isn't using the old, outdated BIOS, and windows does not yet support EFI. Once someone writes a hack to get XP to boot in EFI, there will be no problems with running Windows on your Mac.

Even Phil Schiller said that Apple will "not preclude users" from running Windows on their Mac. But they're also not interested in helping Microsoft sell more copies either. So, it's just a waiting game.

Both scenarios -- being able to dual boot and run XP or Vista in a virtual machine -- will happen, but they just take time. My belief is that Microsoft is stalling on the Virtual PC port; WINE, GuestPC, and Wintel emulators are already in the field now, and given that Virtual PC from Connectix (the company Microsoft bought for this emulation technology) already ran on x86 Unix-based platforms, it's not like this is rocket science. Finally, I believe that Steve could get a world-class multi-environment system pretty quickly by calling Diane Green over at VMWare and saying, "lets make a deal.". VMWare also is already available for Linux and I am sure would be happy to have another customer.

Dual-booting isn't hard, but Apple chose a more modern booting platform that WinXP doesn't support. I believe that someone will figure that out fairly quickly. But I agree with the comments above; who wants to dual-boot their machine all the time? Better to just run multiple environments under Mac OS and keep the security issues within into the Windows environment instead of infecting the entire machine. Keep a copy of your XP image on your disk, and if you get infected or corrupted, just copy the image and you are back up and running. And you won't have to reboot your actual machine to do it, either.

Finally, Apple sells a four-button mouse called the Mighty Mouse with a two-dimensional scroll wheel. But just as Newsvine tries to keep a clean interface for casual users, I still believe that one button is plenty for average users. I have a friend who still struggles with when to click, where to click, and whether to single-click or double-click. Two mouse buttons would just annoy him more.

-Carl

Hmm interested article but I guess you haven't really been keeping up with tech news recently. For starters, Apple specifically said that they are doing nothing to stop people from installing Windows on the Macbook Pro and iMac intel computers. Microsoft even commented by saying "the more computers that can run windows, the better". This goes hand in hand with the fact that Microsoft and Apple now have a 5 year deal to have Microsoft continue development of their OS X products like Office, and Messenger.

XP doesn't run natively on the Macbook Pro because XP was designed before EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface http://www.intel.com/technology/efi/) was implemented. And since EFI is what Macbooks run on, it doesn't know how to boot XP properly without emulation. However, when Vista is released it will natively support EFI, and so therefore it should natively run on the Macbooks since Apple has not implemented any tools to stop people from doing so (this is a smart move by them).

Tada?

We've always had the option of running multiple platforms on one Mac. I've had Yellow Dog, Debian and now Ubuntu partitions on various Macs since I started using computers. Windows is the only one I haven't been able to get running natively.

Dual booting and VM are so 90's, though. To be of any real use, you need performance and drag/drop/cut/paste across multiple platforms running natively on your machine. Intel's roadmap includes this possibility. It's not that Apple has missed the brass ring, it's that the ring is actually golden, and it hasn't been dispensed just yet.

Did any of them not read ANYTHING on the internet while in development?

Taking business direction from "the internet" is a bit like shooting yourself in the foot, only somewhat more deadly. Maybe in the appendix?

If Apple wants more of the consumer market share, they are going to have to do a better job of wooing over Windows users. Selling a $50 mouse that really doesn't have any buttons, but is a four button mouse is not the answer.

Look, the two-button mouse argument has been beaten beyond death; yes, Apple's bundling a multi-button mouse with their desktops now. No, most Windows users *don't* use it. No, the type of mouse that's included with the system has nothing to do with its viability as a "switching" platform. People don't buy computers for the mice that come bundled with them.

("it" in "most Windows users don't use it" = right mouse button, not the Mighty Mouse)

intresting. i agree with M.e. it is about performace and the multiple platmores seeamless and natively.