Object of desire.
(This blog's audience seems to have a high geek quotient, but for those of you who wonder why this is a big deal, Intel is the CPU standard in the PC/Windows world; IT people often use "Wintel" as shorthand for the "Windows + Intel" architecture. With Apple having switched to the Intel architecture, all kinds of new cross-platform computing possibilities are presenting themselves.)
I have long had a bad case of Geek Envy over Apple's OS X, the prettiest Unix in existence, but am currently tethered to the Wintel World, since I work in a Windows shop and have literally thousands of dollars invested in Windows software... including a few programs I live and die by, like Visio, that simply aren't available in Apple's world.
Existing solutions for running Windows software on an OS X Macintosh involve software-based Windows OS emulation, which has improved a great deal over the years but is still unsatisfactorily slow and buggy.
Well, now. Couple the introduction of Intel-based Macs with quiet little announcements like this...
Apple Computer Inc. won't thwart users from loading Microsoft's Windows operating system onto its new Intel-based Macintosh computers -- but don't expect Apple to start offering a Mac running Windows.Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said in an interview Tuesday that the company won't sell or support Windows itself, but also hasn't done anything to preclude people from loading Windows onto the machines themselves.
Heh. These machines are orderable now, and shipping in February.
Once they're on the street, it's going to take the geek community about a week to come up with a stable dual-boot configuration for OS X and Windows XP Professional on one of these new beauties.
And once that happens, the over/under on me whipping out the plastic is about ninety days.
Links:
UPDATE: Evidently, it has already been determined that Windows XP will not run on the new Macintels... but Windows Vista should. (link to betanews article)
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