Earlier this week, Apple unexpectedly released their Bootcamp software, which allows owners of Intel based Macs to dual-boot into Windows XP. Bootcamp itself appears to mainly consist of the required Windows XP drivers, whereas a firmware update is actually responsible for enabling the dual boot feature.
For the most part, this sounds like a pretty good deal to me. I don’t own a Mac, but I am pretty certain that my next computer (Notebook or Desktop) will be a Mac, and this feature adds extra confidence to first time Mac users that they will be able to continue to run their Windows applications. For me, that mostly applies to games, as I have otherwise mostly switched to Linux. On the other hand, I see some danger in this feature: Relatively few games are being released for Mac right now, with some notable exceptions like World of Warcraft. I am hoping to see an upwards trend in Mac support, but I wonder if game developers will use the fact that Mac users can now dual boot into Windows as an excuse not to do any native Mac ports. We’ll see…