After a pretty short gap from when the ‘booting Windows on a Mac’ prize was given out (which does lead me to think that this has been planned for a while), Apple have come out with an official solution – Boot Camp. Putting aside how sick the people who stumped up cash to encourage the hackers to solve the problem must be feeling at this point, the Apple solution is, as might be expected, a lot more slick.

I’m expecting a real-life report from Mr Durdle once he’s done, but until then the feature list includes:

• Non-destructive partitioning of the drive – the hacked version required you to clear down the whole internal drive, the Apple solution creates the XP partition from free space.
• Apple provided drivers for all the Mac hardware – the big issue with the hacked version was that there were no graphics drivers. Here the Boot Camp process produces a CD with everything you need.
• A nice little boot loader that allows you to boot into XP, which handles the whole issue over the Mac’s not having the BIOS needed by Windows.

Certainly it makes a Mac, as a tool for people who have to work with Windows for part of the time a viable proposition. Although Apple quite pointedly don’t offer support with Windows, they are going to include this as part of the next major release of MacOS X.

Even if you don’t have an Intel based Mac just yet, the Boot Camp pages make an amusing read for the subtle and not so subtle digs at Windows. Gems include the following paragraph discussing EFI and BIOS:

Macs use an ultra-modern industry standard technology called EFI to handle booting. Sadly, Windows XP, and even the upcoming Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS. But with Boot Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries.

The real interesting question is whether Apple will release a version of MacOS X to run on regular PC’s. Personally I would be surprised if they do. Firstly, Apple hardware is seen as a premium product, and as such commands a premium price. They tried the clone route back in the nineties, but Steve Jobs effectively pulled the plug on the programme. The point to remember is that Apple make their money from hardware, so having a monopoly on machines that run both MacOS X and Windows XP would increase demand for their computers – releasing a version of MacOS X that could install on any cheap PC does not, if anything it would reduce it. Whichever way they go, it will certainly be interesting to see what effect this has on the sales of Mac’s now.