The Will it or Won't it Boot Windows Debate surrounding Apple's new Intel Macs keeps swirling around, and the swirl just got a little swirlier with this article from APCMag. Apparently someone from Intel Australia lets us know that if Apple includes a Compatibility Support Module (CSM) that allows the new Macs to be compatible with the BIOS technology that runs all current Intel machines, then dual booting into XP is possible.
Good thing or bad thing? Hmmm? I agree with James Kendrick when he says:
Let me be frank- Apple, you need dual-boot. You will sell a lot more hardware if you can get Windows XP owners to upgrade for the ability to dual-boot. You can increase your market share by penetrating the Windows XP segment with dual-boot systems, something that may not happen if consumers have to wait for Vista to appear.
He's spot on in his market forecasting and a dual booting Mac would indeed be very sweet. I know I'd be incredibly tempted to give it a try. But I've got some other thoughts that might veer right into a wall of my own ignorance here.
The announcement of Apple's move to Intel and this "dual-boot or not" quandary, combined with the extreme (IMHO) Web 2.0 vision that sees a future of all web based software, casts a scent into the air of some sort of down the road convergence.
Standing in the way of any sort of dual-boot convergence that would allow any real exchange of data or content (like it appears we might see with the DualCor cPC, yes, very different but an interesting analogy nonetheless and that name adds an interesting immediacy to the argument) would be the age old proprietary battles waged in protecting market share. I don't think anyone today could project a market vision that would erase those battle lines or ego fortresses. But from a sheer technological standpoint, I'm betting it could be done far easier than anyone really wants to let on at this point in time.
But would that be a good thing in the long run? And is it really a good thing in the short term that the Intel Macs be able to boot XP?
While it would be cool to have that today, and it would most assuredly increase Apple's market share, it seems to me that Apple, with its new Intel future, and Microsoft, with Vista on the horizon, both have chances to respectively, and in a rare spirit of collaboration (apart from Office, hmmm?) wipe some slates clean and start afresh. Hopefully that would prevent any of the legacy hangovers that Windows has suffered from through several iterations, and to a lesser degree Apple has as well. That sort of schizophrenia (pushing the future envelope while hanging onto the legacy past) can only hold back innovation.
And given the inevitable rush for the media content pot of gold at the end of the rainbow maybe a rare collaborative effort brought about by this kind of convergence could lead to a resolution with the bevy of DRM issues that we face now and are sure to face down the road. I know that is idealistic thinking, but hey, it's worth a thought.
