Any negative consequences from Boot Camp
I keep thinking that Boot Camp has the potential to screw over mac
users. On the short term I'm happy because my stock shot up $10. My
two big worries are:
1) Developers stop creating mac ports of software to save money
forcing mac users to buy XP. I use Photoshop constantly & the idea
that I could potentially lose it just gives me agita.
2) Pandora's box is opened when it comes to viruses, worms, etc. If
I had to get XP because of concern 1 above, then I'm setting myself up
for a big hurt when the next PC virus goes s#*thouse on my mac.
Does anyone else have any concerns about this?
users. On the short term I'm happy because my stock shot up $10. My
two big worries are:
1) Developers stop creating mac ports of software to save money
forcing mac users to buy XP. I use Photoshop constantly & the idea
that I could potentially lose it just gives me agita.
2) Pandora's box is opened when it comes to viruses, worms, etc. If
I had to get XP because of concern 1 above, then I'm setting myself up
for a big hurt when the next PC virus goes s#*thouse on my mac.
Does anyone else have any concerns about this?
Comments
Developers cannot guarantee that users have taken the initiative to purchase and install windows. VPC has been available for years and it has not harmed the development of Mac apps.
Partitioning isolates the Windows from OS X. Anything that brings down the computer would have to damage the hard drive or something else vital to both and that's relatively rare.
What Apple does with Boot Camp is allows Macs to be sold in situations where Windows support is non-negotiable. If you are a law student your exams are PC only, if you are in the medical field you have vertical apps that are PC only. Apple now has an option for people that want and need both platforms.
There's hardly any downside to this. Peering into the future shows the decline of the single OS platform. Virtualization isn't just a cool buzzword. Companies are putting it to work to more efficiently utilize their computing hardware.
Just recently read a story about how a school reduced their Server Farm from 5 racks down to 3 by moving to Blades running VMWare ESX Server and "creating" servers on the fly on an "as needed basis" for running tasks that previously resided on dedicated servers. Saved their school $356k doing this. Virtualization is the key to saving money in the long term and utilizing your resources efficiently.
Apple's clearly taken the first step
Originally posted by hmurchison
Undue concern
Developers cannot guarantee that users have taken the initiative to purchase and install windows. VPC has been available for years and it has not harmed the development of Mac apps.
Partitioning isolates the Windows from OS X. Anything that brings down the computer would have to damage the hard drive or something else vital to both and that's relatively rare.
I'm glad to hear that partitioning will protect the mac side but I'm
still not sure about you comments about VPC. Running a PC app at full
speed is a whole different ballgame compared to emulating it in VPC.
Would gamers choose to play Half Life 2 now or wait for a year or two
to see Aspyr's version if it's ever ported at all. I'm a console gamer
but companies like Aspyr have got to be worried.
little app that is essential but PC only and doesn't run
in VPC.
There are companies that will not approve a Powerbook PPC laptop sale with VPC because of compatibility issues. With Macbook Pro's they have no recourse...it's fully native.
Redhat is putting full virtualization in Enterprise 5.0 which is forthcoming. Fedora Core has support for XEN. In 5 years I expect every midrange computer to have Virtualization options right out the box.
The best way for software vendors to survive is to make their applications indispensible. The lines between OS and applications will blur.
Meanwhile, I think this will help certain Mac users so they can justify their Mac purchase to IT/Manager drones.
The Intel Mac juju keeps ramping up! Ack! I can't take it anymore! I can't wait to replace my rev A Ti PowerBook! (500 MHz aint what it used to.)
Originally posted by mello
I'm glad to hear that partitioning will protect the mac side but I'm
still not sure about you comments about VPC. Running a PC app at full
speed is a whole different ballgame compared to emulating it in VPC.
Would gamers choose to play Half Life 2 now or wait for a year or two
to see Aspyr's version if it's ever ported at all. I'm a console gamer
but companies like Aspyr have got to be worried.
Depends how you see it...
But let me make this one clear: Half Life and Half Life 2 will never get ported to the Mac...Gabe Newell, in all his anti-Mac glory, wills it so.
Aspyr has said that they've got PC and console versions of games to keep itself afloat. The next 2 years may get rough for Aspyr and other Mac game porters because there will undoubtedly be people that will boot into Windows to play a game that will be out in a few months on Mac. There will also be people that will only buy the Windows version because it is probably faster under Windows.
Buuut...the sheer advantage of the Mac being able to boot OS X and Windows and have hardware that is on par with the PC market makes it the undeniable winner of computers.
Advantages of Macs:
Boots XP and OS X <- by far the biggest advantage
High quality components
They look slick
So far faster than the PC equivalent (see Photoshop runs faster on the MBP than any PC laptop)
They're not much more expensive than the equivalent PC. In some cases, they are *cheaper* (Mac mini). And even if they were 200-300 dollars more expensive, this 300 dollars is more than justified by the fact that you have 2 computers in one...one that actually LOOKS GOOD and doesn't resemble like a colored turd with D-E-L-L etched in it.
Not everyone will suddenly snap out of their Windown Syndrome and see the light...realize that for just a few bucks more or even a few bucks less, they can get two computers in one...but I'm gonna bet that enough will and double Apple's Mac market share within the next 2 years.
At 8-10% market share...are developers gonna be so dense as to not create an OS X native version of their app or game? If they are going to be so dense, at what point will they stop being so dense? 15%, 20%? 50%?
I think their financial statements will tell them when it's time to wake up and smell the coffee.
I can tell you right now that for most people, Boot Camp and Parallels Workstation is "peace-of-mind"-ware...knowing that you can run Windows and that your old PC apps will run is comforting. But "peace-of-mind"-ware is just that...for the most part, people that will have used OS X extensively will dread booting Windows to play a game or use an app that isn't available on Mac.
I'm curious to see how many people will buy Intel-based Macs with the initial intention of installing Windows XP to complement OS X but after a few days of playing around in OS X, scrap the idea of installing Windows XP.
Originally posted by mello
I'm glad to hear that partitioning will protect the mac side but I'm
still not sure about you comments about VPC. Running a PC app at full
speed is a whole different ballgame compared to emulating it in VPC.
Would gamers choose to play Half Life 2 now or wait for a year or two
to see Aspyr's version if it's ever ported at all. I'm a console gamer
but companies like Aspyr have got to be worried.
Still we return to hmurchison's initial comments.
1 - Today the percentage of Intel core based Macs (ICBMs for short)
2 - Once the day comes that Most **INSTALLED** Macs are ICBMs then it will come down to who has choses to either steal Windows and install it (shock of shocks it has and will happen) or be honest and purchase it for legal install. The percentage will ALWAYS be something less than 100% and those who chose to keep it on around after the novelty wares off... Something even less than that.. If you wanted to pin me down, a totally "pulled outta the air guess" could be 40% to 50% and even that seems like it would be on the high side of things.
3 - Next pull out those who's virtual machines / Windows partitions become so unusable (due to bots, virius, trojans, spy ware, worms, etc) that they just give up going into it. (Hell this happens to Windows users every day it will surly happen to a Mac User Transplant - with even greater frequency I'm sure.
4 - So finally if you were a software developer who has been making a living off of you Macintosh software sales. Are you going to risk tell them 'just use our windows product' and damn the consequences that I've outlined above?
Where will dual-boot work most successfully?
1 - Hard core gamers who can struggle with the annoyances all for the love of the game - while at the same time want to use OS X for their real work / communications / etc.
Where will virtualization be most successful?
1 - Corporate environments that have the staff and resources to troubleshoot Windows machines & have a population of Mac users & have insert_app_list that is Windows only that everyone in the company needs to run (Outlook perhaps, Access maybe, Project?, you get the idea, non-3d win-only apps) The IT group will (if they are smart) install the prerequisite blockers security patches and remote management software along with the desired applications and then LOCK that Windows box like they all the others on their network (a company that isn't LOCKING their Windows boxes is insane)
2 - Hard core Mac geeks that have the talent, knowledge & desire to maintain not only their OS X partition (not too much to do their) as well as their Windows partition (thats where the ..ahem.. fun ..ahem.. is
So I ask again... if your company made a profit from selling OS X native software would YOU risk it all when this is how things will most likely turn out in the end? I know I wouldn't.
Who's in for some shakeup? No doubt the OS X game houses - lets face it, 'young snappy kids' are their bread and butter - if anyone is willing to acquire Windows via peer-to-peer and I don't mean to paint with a broad brush it's those very same 'young snappy kids' (look at most of the people sued by the music industry) - hey this Internet enabled world is a world that they grew up in and know it like the back of their hand and know how to find most anything if they really wanted to.
So with hard-core-gamers like those above the Mac game industry isn't really going to notice since if they'd have no problem acquiring Windows online they MOST LIKELY wouldn't have a problem grabbing the game they wanted at the same source. Yea some may be saying yea but I wouldn't feel bad screwing MS but I'd buy the game... and thats why I said MOST LIKELY and not simply group everyone in the same boat.
Now what do we have left... Hard core Mac gamers that own ICBMs have chosen to purchase a legit copy of Windows XP - install it, and keep it in good working order. Yes... those folks will most assuredly go out and buy the Windows version of the game (so long as the Mac version isn't available at the same time) and run that instead.
Finally we have the occasional gamer market... Those users who are still playing and enjoying games like The Dooms, Civilization III, StarCraft and Halo (and others) and have only just recently thought about going out to get Unreal Tournament 2004, The new Doom or .... whatever that other really hot massive multiplayer game is but then they realize they have to pay every month and that makes them not want to bother with that one or the hardware requirements are just too high for the system they currently own.
Those users will still be buying whatever Mac games are available to them for purchase and I'm sure someone will be around to collect the money from those people.
In the end the market that will get the biggest facelift is hands down the Mac game market. Will it shrivel up a wither? It doesn't have to... and I don't think it will but the landscape is going to change in the years to come that's pretty clear but then again those game houses knew about all this since last WWDC so this isn't exactly a shock to any of them (unless they were truly diluting themselves all this time)
Well it turned out to be long-winded (shock of shocks) but that's how I see this stuff going forward.
Oh and some final comments and observations.
1 - In a perfect world Mac owners would rather use OS X
2 - Dual boot is only really good for games since you loose access to OS X while in Windows.
3 - Virtualization while quite snappy doesn't do 3D at all (that I know of)
4 - And this is most important:
Its one thing to be able to run a Windows App but for a Mac users the experience will still SUCK when compared to a OS X native version. When a developer starts hearing more and more users demand a native version they'd be silly not to at least entertain the idea and if the OS X market-share is continuing to rise a 'flat out no' can quickly change to 'its in the works' since developers will ultimately come to the conclusion that far more potential OS X customers are NOT willing to boot into Windows and wants those sales before one of their competitors beats em to it. Remember there is just a tad more cutthroat competition with developers on the Windows side of the fence and I'm willing to be they are more hungry than we give them credit for.
Dave
Originally posted by kim kap sol
Depends how you see it...
..snip..
I can tell you right now that for most people, Boot Camp and Parallels Workstation is "peace-of-mind"-ware...knowing that you can run Windows and that your old PC apps will run is comforting. But "peace-of-mind"-ware is just that...for the most part, people that will have used OS X extensively will dread booting Windows to play a game or use an app that isn't available on Mac.
peace-of-mind-ware!
Well said, well said!
Dave
Originally posted by mello
1) Developers stop creating mac ports of software to save money
forcing mac users to buy XP. I use Photoshop constantly & the idea
that I could potentially lose it just gives me agita.
Now the general public knows what Aperture was really for.
Unless Adobe goes insane and wants its No. 1 money maker to be rudely kicked off the world's premiere graphics platform, Photoshop CS3 will be announced for Intel Macs this year and ship by MWSF '07.
End of story.
Originally posted by Frank777
Unless Adobe goes insane and wants its No. 1 money maker to be rudely kicked off the world's premiere graphics platform, Photoshop CS3 will be announced for Intel Macs this year and ship by MWSF '07.
Photoshop CS3 has been announced as a Universal Binary.
If Apple hadn't made the move to Intel, where would they be and what would the future look like?
I don't think we need to think too much about that one. Once OS X was up and running on Intel Macs, one way or another Windows was going to run on a Mac. That was something they could not stop so better to go with the flow. I think the whole DRM thing is lurking just below the surface here and anybody who's believed Steve's spin about supporting DRM (on any digital content) should think again. He didn't lie in the Rolling Stone interview but he's been bullshitting his head off ever since. (Thank heavens).
Consider this. To varying degrees, Adobe has to compete with other graphics SW companies who charge for their product and the open source community and illegal copies of Photoshop. I don't think they want to add Apple to the list. They need every fucking customer they can get.
Somebody said in the main Boot Camp thread, that Mac sales of Photoshop represented about 27% (IIRC) of total sales. And people are worried Adobe are about to take their bat and ball and go home?
Best outcome is users buy a Mac and use only OS X or use it as their primary OS. Apple has been through the pain. How many Mac users are jumping ship these days do you reckon? <crickets chirping> Not only has the flow of users from the Mac platform been staunched it has almost certainly been reversed. It's simply a question of by how much.
The new Apple likes to give itself options. Vertical integration is now more a form of value adding for Apple rather than a business model that saw it locked into its own little world with nowhere else to go. They have a lot of wiggle room. The first wave of switchers were enticed by the iPod/iTunes bait. They were sufficiently tempted they were prepared to make a blind leap of faith to the Mac. You can bet the ones who need their hand held represent far greater numbers.
Worst case scenario, for whatever reason OS X whithers and dies. As someone pointed out in the main thread, Apple can continue as a PC seller. But I think this move improves OS X's chances of survival in some form. For Apple, the second OS War doesn't have to be a win-lose situation. Now they can just win a bit. Cool. Because, for the time being at least, that bit (NPI) will be running on a Mac.
I was speaking with a well educated lady last night and she confessed to me that she liked macs but was hesitant to switch because she knew windows.
I asked her how often she did a virus check and a spyware check and she told me "almost daily sometimes more. After my daughter is on the internet"
I told her I didn't need to. The OS is stable, secure and visually elegant. My wife then added "even powerpoint looks better on the mac than the pc at work"
Give the macintosh 20 minutes of ernest use and you will be in heaven.
I told her about the mini and a kvm switch and told her to give it a try and to call me with any problems.
I am not afraid of bootcamp ruining marketshare. I believe that it will cause most fence sitters to switch. It will be their safety net of familiarity. After a time they won't even use it regularly and they will be clamoring for the disk space back.
Originally posted by kim kap sol
They're not much more expensive than the equivalent PC. In some cases, they are *cheaper* (Mac mini). And even if they were 200-300 dollars more expensive, this 300 dollars is more than justified by the fact that you have 2 computers in one...one that actually LOOKS GOOD and doesn't resemble like a colored turd with D-E-L-L etched in it.
Keep in mind, A pc that is the same price as the mini will have a 7200 RPM HDD and usually a DVD burner, not to mention easy, streight forward ram upgrade access.
I would gladly put my Dell 2.5 GHZ p4/768MB ram box that is 3 years old and at the time it was new cost $749+$50 for ram=800 against a Mac Mini Core Duo with Win XP any day, I dont think you will see much differance.
Originally posted by DanMacMan
I think that it would be interesting if someone installed XP on their Mac, with no firewall or spyware/virus blockers and just left it alone, unprotected on the internet. It'd be funny to see how much spyware could get installed in say a 24 hour period, if left unattended.
Well, that would be the same as installing Windows on any computer...and it took me about 20 minutes connected to the internet on dial-up to start noticing strange files in the c: \\ drive (which is apparently now a problem because it takes longer to download the patches for Windows than it does for Windows to become infected).
Originally posted by a_greer
Keep in mind, A pc that is the same price as the mini will have a 7200 RPM HDD and usually a DVD burner, not to mention easy, streight forward ram upgrade access.
I would gladly put my Dell 2.5 GHZ p4/768MB ram box that is 3 years old and at the time it was new cost $749+$50 for ram=800 against a Mac Mini Core Duo with Win XP any day, I dont think you will see much differance.
But then we're comparing a minitower to a Small Form Factor. An iMac would be a better comparison.
However as to a Dell 2.5Ghz beating my ICD Mini
Not a chance pt 1
Not a chance pt 2
If a ICD 2Ghz is as fast as a Athlon X2 2Ghz and faster than a Pentium D 3Ghz there's no way your 2.5Ghz P4 is going to be my ICD 1.67Ghz on anything other than disc based benchmarks. My mother has a 2.6Ghz pentium with 768MB of RAM and my Mini runs circles around her computer.