BootCamp run Windows on Mac

[fryke]

Ah, RacerX, don't go all Doomsday on us. At least not *all* the time. I'm with ElDiablo here: Hey, it's Windows. Nothing to see here, move along... I mean: If Adobe _wants_ to kill CS for the Mac, they _can_ do that whether Windows runs on Macs or not. Whether Adobe asks us to install Windows (349 USD?) or buy a PC with Windows (399 USD?) is more or less the same thing. They don't. They know they have a loyal customer-base on the Mac. If I've seen *any*thing from Adobe lately, it's that Mac support is good and thriving.

Booting Windows on your intel Mac can be

1.) an alternative to using Mac OS X if you're a Windows user. Then you'll reformat the whole drive and install Windows instead of OS X. Apple has won a hardware user, lost nothing, in fact, because the user was a Windows user to start with.

2.) a way of playing Windows games on your Mac. This will probably hurt the development of Mac games. So what, I say. If people _really_ want to play games, they'll install Windows or buy an Xbox or Playstation or whatever, anyway.

3.) Something like Virtual PC, but worse, because you have to reboot.

The fourth case, where a long-time Mac user installs Windows and finds out that he actually likes Windows more: Do you *REALLY* think that'll happen?!

Your concerns are more aimed at the virtual-Windows part, I guess, where Windows apps live on Mac OS X. But this, Boot Camp, is *NOT* about that.

 

[Cat]

P.S.

A quote from Omni’s CEO Ken Case, found on the omni blog:

In general, I think we’ll see Microsoft selling more copies of Windows to Mac users (like the [copy] I’m just about to buy), and Apple selling more Macintoshes to Windows users: I know it will be a lot easier for many people to buy Macs now that they’re not an either/or proposition, which naturally means a larger market for our software.

This will definitely help the transition to Intel and pull people off the fence, especially when it will be included by default with Leppy.

 

[fryke]

Oh. Have to add that to my message above: http://www.parallels.com/en/products/workstation/mac/ ... They now have virtual machines running on Mac OS X as a public beta. Product should cost about 50 bucks when final. So the other thing, i.e. running Windows at native speed but on top of OS X, is coming now, too.

 

[powermac]

I am just a Psychologist, not a business person at all. I rest assured that Apple knows what they are doing. As some one mentioned, the Mac will be a swiss army knife computer, with the possibility of running Linux, OSX, and Windows, which increases its appeal to more consumers. That is great news for Apple.
I am not initially convinced that PC people who love Windows, are going to purchase a Mac. Sure, the Hardware is great, we all know that. Those people are not going to purchase a Mac, to run Windows. That is a high cost to absorb at first. You have to purchase a Mac, then purchase Windows. Too costly for people who are used to purchasing a cheap PCs, and upgrading as they go along, with video/audio cards etc. Can't add video cards and the like to Imacs, or laptops, and probably not the Mac Mini. So in the end, what appeal running Windows on a Mac have for PC people?
I think BootCamp is just for Mac users looking to run Windows. Highly doubtful it is going to attract PC users to Apple Hardware.

 

[RacerX]

SGI was a more specialized market thatn the Mac and Apple is still not selling or supporting windows-boxen.

By 1990 SGI saw that desktop systems were starting to eat away at the workstation market. This started SGI into thinking about the fact that workstations alone may be a bad idea for the future. And so started MOM (Move Over Mac) at SGI where they pushed very hard to get into the desktop publishing market. Applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat and Framemaker were all brought over to SGI IRIX based systems.

By the mid 90's SGI realized the value of IrisGL and other technologies that they had developed and started back into a more specialized market of 3D graphics and animation (this was about the time that they bought Alias|Wavefront as I recall). Even though they had backed off the push into the desktop publishing market, they had a strong hold on the Video/Film and 3D Graphics/Animation markets.

Then they made their first big mistake... making another attempt at the desktop market. Only this time they thought they could do it by making Windows based systems.

Do you know how many ads SGI ran in Mac publications pushing their NT based systems in 1998?

What it did was introduce doubt into the mind of both developers and users of their IRIX based systems. And even when they eventually dumped the Windows based systems, they followed it up with Linux/Itanium based systems (which, in my opinion, made matters worse).

Add to this the fact that SGI sold many of their patents to Microsoft, and soon they were going no where fast. I'll be surprised if they see 2007.

In contrast to Be and the BeOS, Apple is already well past the application barrier and has several dedicated mac-only developers, is backed by the big firms (MS, Adobe) and develops lots of (professional) stuff in house.

Adobe has been known to pull software from the Mac at it's whim.

Take Premiere as an example. Not only did it pull Premiere from the Mac platform, the last version was actually crippled (to aid their Windows Preferred campaign). And Adobe is already complaining about making Photoshop and the other Creative Suite apps Universal.

Microsoft has threaten to pull Office many times before.

And I would point out that even though they have promised to continue to make Office for the Mac, they made the same promise about IE and Outlook Express (yes, Microsoft promised to make a Mac OS X version of Outlook Express... and didn't).

NeXT attracted developers _in droves_ because of the developing environment, but was relatively new and never attained significant mainstream market- and mindshare.

What a lot of people don't realize is that developers like Adobe started to distance themselves from NeXT when NeXT closed down hardware production.

More to the point, NeXT stopped making hardware months before they had a shipping version of NEXTSTEP for other platforms. Like SGI, this introduced doubt into both the development and user communities.

OS2 had other problems, like price, hardware requirements etc. Moreover it was co-developed by IBM and Microsoft initially and then MS abandoned it for NT.

By 1995 IBM had made a massive campaign blitz pushing OS/2 Warp. This was happening on a number of fronts... First was a strong television campaign to get people thinking about OS/2 Warp. Second was the creation of CDE for Unix based systems which was designed to make people's work environments and personal computing environments feel the same.

Before the release of Windows 95, OS/2 Warp had a larger market share than Apple has right now.

What killed OS/2 Warp was apathy of the users. They weren't demanding apps from developers, so developers had no reason to develop OS/2 Warp apps.

It is this example, by the way, that led the Linux community to emulate the Mac community in attempting to be vocal about their platform. The squeaky users keep their platform.

As so comes the danger of what we have here. So many of you who use both Macs and Windows are now showing contentment over this new ability. You are happy that now you can run your Windows apps and Mac apps on the same hardware.

... and that is the problem.

See, now those Windows apps are even less likely to be ported (that would be the first step). Later, when developers notice that Mac users seem okay with running Windows on their Macs, will come developers no longer upgrading Mac versions of their software.

Think this isn't possible? Lets see how popular it becomes to run Photoshop in Windows on Macs rather than running Photoshop in Rosetta on Macs. If Adobe gets even a hint that Mac users are willing to boot into Windows on their systems for Photoshop and the like, then we've seen the end of those apps on our platform.

Ah, RacerX, don't go all Doomsday on us. At least not *all* the time.

I'm just making sure that all sides of this are presented... how else can I say "I told you so" about this in the future if I don't tell you about it now?

Besides, like I said, I hope I'm wrong.

2.) a way of playing Windows games on your Mac. This will probably hurt the development of Mac games. So what, I say. If people _really_ want to play games, they'll install Windows or buy an Xbox or Playstation or whatever, anyway.

Here is the problem... if being able to play Windows games on Macs is going to hurt Mac game development... why wouldn't being able to run Windows apps on Macs hurt Mac app development?

See, the exact same factors that will hurt Mac game development can hurt all development on the Mac.

 

[powermac]

I am sure this latest development is going to have some consequences for Mac development, that is commonsensible. I am sure Apple knows this. It is one thing if Hackers got Windows to work on Intel Macs, totally another when Apple has no shown signs of supporting it. Of course, if developers get the idea that Mac users are booting windows, and comfortable with it, why developed a Mac version? It is not cost efficient to do so. All companies are in business to make $$$$$.

 

[serpicolugnut]

Adobe has a lot invested in the code base of Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign on Macs. The best reason I can give that Adobe won't cease development of CS3 for the Mac and suggest that Mac users run the Windows version is this: a huge portion of the Mac base is still on PPC and can't run the Windows version. Same goes for Microsoft. I believe the next version of Office will probably be out in early 2007, right around the time of Office Vista (or whatever they are calling it). Now, this will probably be different for the product cycle after CS3/Office2007, but for now, the PPC installed base is the reason this won't happen.

You are probably right about the games market though. I think a few die hard developers like Aspyr will continue to produce Mac games (they've got porting down to a science), especially since the move to Intel will ultimately mean the port can be done quicker. But the incentive for game developers to create a Mac only version just got smaller.

I wouldn't have believed it before today, but now that Boot Camp is out, I believe it is step 1 in a 3 step process.

1. Step 1 - Release boot camp, make it pretty easy for people to dual boot Windows on a Intel Mac. Double Mac sales. Widen the base of users.

2. Step 2 - Release Leopard which will include virtualization, making it possible to load Windows while OS X is still running without a reboot.

3. Step 3- Resurrect the Yellow Box for Windows. This further strengthens the already strong Cocoa developer community. This gives Apple the trump card on both Adobe and Microsoft. If Adobe and Microsoft decide not to release CS3/Office natively for the Mac, Apple counters with a graphics productivity package that is more powerful than CS3, built in Cocoa, and can run on both Mac and Windows. Microsoft kills Mac Office? Apple doubles the size of the development team working on iWork, adds the missing applications, and releases a version that can run on both Mac and Windows.

Step 1 is a huge risk all by itself. I don't believe Apple would have made this step if the 2nd and 3rd steps weren't planned.

What I like most about this strategy is that it is risky, but so long as you have contingencies, the bigger the risk, the bigger the prize.

 

[serpicolugnut]

Adobe has been known to pull software from the Mac at it's whim.

Take Premiere as an example. Not only did it pull Premiere from the Mac platform, the last version was actually crippled (to aid their Windows Preferred campaign). And Adobe is already complaining about making Photoshop and the other Creative Suite apps Universal.​

Very good point. But another good point is that Adobe is coming back to the Mac with their video offerings. Why the reversal? Because the Mac video market is huge. If you are doing video, you use a Mac. Adobe is obviously not selling the Video Production Studio in numbers that they are happy with to just Windows users.

Adobe isn't stupid. Dumping Photoshop and Illustrator on the Mac will create a vacuum that Apple would be all too happy too fill. If you ask me, I welcome it. While I use Photoshop and Illustrator every day, as applications they have become huge, bloated, inefficient and unresponsive to customer requests. If Apple comes along and offers a Photoshop like program for $299, do you think I'm going to care one bit if Adobe drops Photoshop support? Nope. Adobe doesn't want to get Final Cut Pro'd again. And dumping CreativeSuite for the Mac will ensure that it happens. Look at After Effects. It once held 100% of the mid to low end compositing market. Enter Apple Motion, and After Effects sales on the Mac plummet. Apple released a better product (for most tasks) at half the price. Apple can afford to do this, since they have so many revenue streams (iPod, Software, Hardware, Peripherals) to bank on. Adobe just has software.

Seriously, I think it's all moot. The next logical move is for Apple to buy Adobe. It's the only way Steve can beat Bill. And I really believe it's all still about Steve beating Bill.

 

[mw84]

I've just been thinking about this a bit more, if OS X falls on it's face i.e. major developers, Adobe and such, WERE to stop producing Mac compatible versions of their software, wouldn't that basically be an end to OS X?,

I mean who's going to buy an 'expensive' Mac running an OS (OS X) that only supports apps that are so limited? And who's going to buy an 'expensive' Mac just to install Windows on it, when they can go down to the local computer shop and buy a PC for a quarter of the price, pre-installed with Windows? Maybe a few rich kids but not enough to keep Apple afloat.

Apple really couldn't afford to have this happen, in my opinion, if it did the only thing that I see them being able to do is dramatically lower the prices on their hardware and turn solely into a hardware developer and possibly on the side developing their own apps such as those included in iLife for Windows and I really don't see this happening.

I mean, if that's their intention why bother to continue developing Leopard? I think Apple has other ideas.

 

[powermac]

Good point.
I don't believe BootCamp is going to attract new users to the Mac. We have to look at this from a PC users perspective. Why would I buy a Mac, if I love Windows? To play with OSX for a few weeks, and realize I still love Windows? Too costly to attract new users to buy Mac hardware, not even practical to do so.

Usually switchers are those users that are looking for a new computer, and take the plunge to purchase a Mac. They usually keep their outdated PC around for a few months for safety.
Assuming that a PC user, who favors Windows, is going to purchase a dual-boot Mac, and discover OSX, and stop using Windows, is a arrogant point of view of us Mac users. OSX is great, we all know that. It does not appeal to everyone, especially to die hard Window users.

In short, I feel BootCamp is not going to increase Apple's Hardware sales significantly enough to make a difference. Why would it ?
My other concern is the message it sends, does Apple have doubts about the future of their OS?

 

[Cat]

See, now those Windows apps are even less likely to be ported (that would be the first step). Later, when developers notice that Mac users seem okay with running Windows on their Macs, will come developers no longer upgrading Mac versions of their software.

Most of Macintosh software (~80-90% ballpark) is not software ported from windows, but developed specifically for the Mac. Why would that cease? You have to qualify your statement, which, by the way, does note follow from what you said above, where you essentially agreed with me that Apple is in a very different situation from all those other companies. The developers you are talking about are only those that already develop their applications both for windows and OS X. All the windows specific people are not going to care, all mac developers will see the installed user base and marketshare of Apple grow and they will be happy about it (cf. the Omni comment.) Now those that develop for both the platforms will have to ask themselves how they can maximize sales and profits versus investment in codebase and expertise. My humble opinion is that it is profitable for both Adobe and microsoft to keep distributing their products for OS X. As long as Mac marketshare does not decline below say 1% all mac-only companies are going to keep developing for OS X. I fail to see why BootCamp would actually _reduce_ marketshare.

Lets see how popular it becomes to run Photoshop in Windows on Macs rather than running Photoshop in Rosetta on Macs.

Has The Gimp killed Photshop sales on any platform? I don't see "photoshop-on-the-mac-rebooted-in-windows" killing Rosetta Photshop either. People who rely on PPC-native speed programs will hold out at least until the "Pro Mac" (dual-dual/quad) intel towers come out. I'm sure Rosetta Photoshop will run well enough on them.

 

[fryke]

Yeah. It's your own point that Photoshop on the Mac is better than Photoshop on Windows. I mean: Even if Photoshop currently (!!!) performs better on WinXP on an intel Mac than through Rosetta, I'd *still* use it through Rosetta - and most graphics artists *I* know, would, too. For them (and me), not having an intel-native Adobe CS is a reason not to buy an intel Mac currently, but certainly not a reason to go all Windowsy... Also: It's not as easy or cheap as you make it sound... Imagine a graphics artist now buying a MacBook Pro (2499?), a Windows license (349?) plus Adobe CS 2 Premium for Windows crossgrade (dunno the US price... 1000+? can't find a crossgrade, upgrade is 599, full version 1199, crossgrades don't exist on the Adobe store...) - only to then buy the update pack for Adobe CS 3 for, maybe, _both_ platforms? I dunno... I think people will use "the other platform" differently. They'll have _one_ preferred platform. For me, that'd be Mac OS X. For a PC user, it might be Windows XP. Now: Sure, I'll want to play the occasional 3D game not yet out for the Mac. I'll boot into Windows for that. Same the other way 'round: A PC user might boot into Mac OS X to do some stuff in iLife. But *I* wouldn't start to buy Windows software and a PC user - until switching completely - probably won't buy Mac software. You won't become a _true_ citizen in both worlds. In one world, you'll be a freeloader, I guess... *ONE* OS will be your base. Where your digital life is. Your E-Mail, calendar, addresses etc. Your everyday files. And also your main workhorse apps. And I truly believe that for Mac users, this will be OS X. And I _also_ truly believe that OS X has advantages over Windows so the general movement will be towards the Mac and away from Windows for users of intel Macs. 'nuff said.

 

[Captain Code]

I look at SGI (they started to die when they started selling Windows based workstations), Be (could never get past the Applications Barrier to Entry on the PC hardware platform), NeXT (who lost many of their developers when NEXTSTEP started co-existing with Windows on PCs) and OS/2 Warp (whose compatibility with Windows apps kept developers from writing native OS/2 apps) and can't help but think this has to be the worst possible thing Apple could do to the platform.

All those platforms with the exception of probably SGI(since I don't know much about them) didn't have any existing programs like Photoshop, MS Word etc did they? We do, so it's not like those companies have to do any more work than they already are.

To create a linux verision of Photoshop is a lot more work than maintaining the Mac version. Also, Macs are well entrenched in the publishing and multimedia firms.

I agree it could stop game makers from wanting to port their games to the Mac but for most other things there are going to be a lot of people still writing Mac specific programs.

 

[bbloke]

Inside Mac Games has some comments from developers:

The market of Mac game players is going to explode if consumers can play the entire library of Windows games plus the entire library of Mac games on their Macs. Most of these users are going to want to spend as much of their time in MacOS, rather than Windows. Destineer/MacSoft's plans, first and foremost, are to release Mac versions of Destineer's internally developed games simultaneously with other platforms and also to continue releasing conversions of Windows games on an opportunistic basis where we believe we can serve users who prefer not to run Windows on their Macs.

It's an interesting move on Apple's part. I hope that Mac users will continue to support Mac specific software in the future, and not turn their shiny new Intel Macs into dumbed down Windows machines just to play games. Of course Aspyr also publishes some PC only games like Dreamfall and Spellforce 2, so if the mac game market shrinks, something like Boot Camp may be the only way to play those on the Mac. We'd much rather have a healthy, growing Mac game market that made it viable for us to make Mac specific versions of those kinds of games though.

Great news for Mac Users! As usual, game makers are on the bleeding edge of the latest technology, emphasis this time on the bleeding

I'd say the same thing that I said before re: this issue, which is that Apple is clearly doing this because they believe it will help sell more computers Whenever Apple sells more computers, it is good for us -- people will get sick of dual-booting, and would prefer to run native games, just like Linux users prefer native games.

From a business standpoint, I suspect Aspyr is, in the short term, going to continue releasing Mac ports as before and see where the market takes us. If Mac sales tank, we've got enough revenue coming in from PC and console ports that it probably won't hurt the company too much and we'd just focus on the other platforms. It's possible that the Mac market share could increase so dramatically that the demand for Mac games increases enough to offset the costs of the loss of sales to dual-booting, but I'm not so optimistic about that. From a personal standpoint, it probably means the end of my current job, but I'm going to ride it out to the end and see where that takes me. I love doing Mac game ports, so in a way I wish I were strictly a Mac user now and didn't have a job that is in total collision with this new development.

Overall, I'm a bit wary of the news. In some ways, it sounded great. It could entice people to buy one computer, a Mac, and be able to run Windows or OS X or both. It could be a move that encourages enough people to take the chance, or makes it easier for developers. But... I do also worry that the Windows version of any program becomes the lowest common denominator, and there might be less motivation to create OS X versions, which would lead to the decline of the operating system. I'm hoping that won't be the way it pans out!

 

[Cat]

THe companies that are going to suffer are those like Aspyr that have their main revenue from porting games from windows to mac. Of course they are going to suffer: why wait six months to a year for Civ 4 when you can buy it right now? Why spend ~$50.- on Civ 4 in six months if you can pick up the windows version in the discount bin for $5.-? Aspyr and the like did a great job by functioning as "arbitrageur", i.e. bringing products to a market where they were previously unavailable and making profit from that. Now there is going to be more market equality. Nevertheless the programmers from companies like Aspyr are probably highly trained in development for both platforms, windows and mac, and hence are a valuable asset to any company working on both. If indeed Aspyr is going bust in the next years because of this, then that is too bad for them, but at the same time there are going to be a lot more happy mac gamers around.

It will be interesting to see what companies like Blizzard will do, who have always released their games in hybrid fashion: both windows and mac version at the same time on the same media.

I guess someone like Blizzard will abandon the mac version only if we will get classic-like virtualisation at 90% native speeds and with quasi full hardware access.

 

[bigdoug]

so does this mean all games, as long as our gphx cards are good enough will be available for mac?

doug

 

[Myke]

What do we care about most here? Is it the OS or the applications? If popular software such as Photoshop or Word can be made to run seemlessly on the Mac - even if it takes Windows running in the background - where is the problem?

You may ask - why bother running the MacOS at all then ...but I think we all know the answer to that.

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

so does this mean all games, as long as our gphx cards are good enough will be available for mac?

doug

No, it just means that you'll be able to run Windows natively, and any games that you have for Windows will run under Windows on your Mac.

When someone says "available for Mac" that usually means that there's a version that will run under the Mac OS X operating system. While game developers may or may not develop a Mac OS X-specific version, it does mean that you can play Windows games under Windows on your Intel-based Macintosh.

 

[mindbend]

1. Adobe dumped Preimere because Final Cut kicked Premiere's ass and Premiere for Mac was no longer profitable. It's that simple. Photoshop and the CS suite are profitable for Adobe, they are not going to dump them.

2. Did someone actually suggest that the ability to run Windows on Macs (via Boot Camp) won't help Mac sales? Are you crazy? Apple just sold two today (from my company) because of this announcement. This is a huge development that will yield a noticeable increase in Mac hardware sales. There are boatloads of folks like me who want/need this kind of flexibility. I can point you you to plenty of forums where Windows folks are basically revealing that this announcement "sealed the deal" for them in terms of buying a Mac.

 

[chadwick]

My guess is this won't make much, if any, negative impact to the Mac games market. Game PCs have been so cheap for so long that people just bought a $500 PC to play their game with if they really wanted to... So my guess is the end result will be a wash.

Increasing market share of the Mac hardware can't be nothing but good!