Prior to WWDC 2005 I was incredulous. Apple switching the Mac to Intel chips? That couldn’t be true. I got over the shock quickly.
Now that Intel based Macs are available there’s a prize for the first person to find a way to dual boot Mac OS X and Windows XP. Yawn.
Link: Contest: Dual-booting WinXP and Mac OS X on Intel Mac - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).
Maybe there’s a market for Windows compatible machines built by Apple but not in my household. In 1999 I bought a dual processor Dell workstation and I expected that I had probably purchased my last Mac. Today I still have and use that Dell workstation but I suspect it is probably the last Windows machine I will ever buy.
Given a choice between Windows XP and Mac OS X, I prefer Mac OS X. I have met people who are dismissive of Mac users. I have also met people who seem to get incensed by the idea that there’s something that might be preferred over Windows. I don’t proselytize for Macintosh and I don’t abide extreme OS fanaticism. Mac OS X works better for me. Your mileage may vary.
I do have a need to run Windows. I need to be able to test under Windows and I need a machine where I can do native .Net development.
Right now .Net doesn’t pay the bills. There’s a good chance there will be a .Net project in my future but until then I can’t justify replacing my existing Windows machine.
It would be a better value if I could do everything on one machine. So why don’t I care about dual booting? Because dual booting is disruptive and inefficient. I want to extend the set of tools available to me, not create two separate sets of tools. Dual booting is like a modal user interface.
Microsoft is being coy about whether there will be a Mac OS X Intel version of Virtual PC but that’s the type of solution I’m looking for: a virtualized OS in a sandbox.
Maybe VMware will come through.
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