Dare I say this aloud? Boot Camp is a gimmick (CNET News.com):
When America’s doughboys returned from World War I, the question was how they’d ever remain on the farm after seeing Paris. When Windows users get a gander of the Mac, how many will remain loyal to Ctrl-Alt-Delete?
You know, from time to time, I wonder how really good columnists or journalists come up with such sentences. The comparision is so great I had to publish it.
Though I think Charles Cooper is repeating something most Apple users have said around a thousand times last week, I think it means a lot more if it comes from a respected site like CNet.
It was obvious that this is the reasoning behind Apple’s introduction of Boot Camp. I have mentioned it in many, many forums: BootCamp is just a gimmick, because it is not really a feasible option to re-boot your Mac in order to run Windows Software. It’s merely a marketing trick.
Why is it not feasible? Because, once you get used to using Mac OS X, you usually have your environment setup and you usually don’t shut down your Mac – you just put it asleep in order to continue where you had left off when you left your Mac. This is the reason, I believe, why reboot into Windows doesn’t make sense for most of the Windows software.
My argument in the forums was that having the option to install Windows to boot is nice for gamers and other people, who need native graphics cards speed. But it really doesn’t make sens, lets say, for my wife. She would like to use MS Access and some other office-type applications on Windows. But she’d prefer having a Virtual-PC-type solution because she would like to stick to her Mac browser, Apple Mail and other things (iTunes, iPhoto, our WLan-Network at home with Airport Express, etc). Since she doesn’t really need native graphics-cards speed, she’d definitely prefer running Virtual-PC-type solution.
Another benefit of having a Virtual-PC-type solution is that I usually install the virtual-machine for her with all applications she needs, then duplicate it and let her run whatever she wants inside the virtual machine, without bother for viruses and such. Once she has a virus, I just delete her virtual machine and re-install it from the copy (a matter of 2 minutes). Since all the documents she creates are saved inside a Mac-folder instead of the harddisc, she doesn’t even lose data.
You can’t do this with BootCamp, because you can’t make a copy of the Windows installed by using BootCamp.
So, BootCamp-Windows is good for 3D-games, but apart from that it is what Charles Cooper says: A gimmick to lure the Windows-users into buying Macs. A great idea, though, but still, a gimmick.