After the initial wow factor of Apple’s announcement of Boot Camp and support for Windows on their new Intel-based hardware, I’m now a little less enamored with the idea. The two things that I haven’t missed about life with Windows XP is the less than stellar plug-and-play experience with peripherals and the inevitable sluggishness and disk churn caused by Windows caching and file system fragmentation. I went through two hard drives on my previous WinTel laptop and I’m convinced (evidence be damned) it’s in part due to the stress the OS puts on the hard drive. Now, I know with Boot Camp everything is neatly sandboxed and partitioned, but I can’t help thinking how will Windows behave with the physical hardware? Will drives die faster? And, back to plug-and-play, will I have to cross my fingers every time I plug in a USB thingamajig?
Some folks I’ve talked to think that when Windows users get their hands on a Mac, their introduction to Mac OS X will result in a ready-made Switch campaign. Maybe. Maybe not. But I wonder if rather than a rising tide lifting all boats to meet the excellence of OS X, we may instead see Mac hardware flake out just as badly as the Dells and HPs out there. I mean, let’s face it, we aren’t talking about the most rugged platform (my original Mac 128K will forever be known as the MacMelt, thanks to a burned out power supply).
The question boils down to: what kind of company does Apple want to be? Hardware? Software? Entertainment? Platform? Applications? Lifestyle? And how strategic or reactionary is the Boot Camp move? Is it a clever way to accelerate migration from G4/G5? A way to quiet the gamers? And what is the fate of Microsoft software for OS X like Office and Remote Desktop? Time will tell.