By Rob Pegoraro
Thursday, April 6, 2006

Good news for Microsoft: It's just gained access to a new base of customers who need to pick up their own copy of Windows XP.

Bad news for Apple: A Mac can now get any of the viruses, worms and spyware that afflict Windows machines.

Terrific news for indecisive computer shoppers: They no longer have to choose between getting a Mac or a Windows machine, because an Intel-based Mac can be both.

All these developments come courtesy of a new, free program Apple released yesterday. Boot Camp makes what was once impossible, then mind-numbingly difficult, easy: You can put a copy of Windows XP on a Mac, then choose to run either XP or Apple's Mac OS X at each start-up.

This isn't like running a copy of Windows inside emulation software such as Microsoft's Virtual PC; XP runs as fast as if it were on a "real" PC, thanks to the Intel processors inside Apple's Mac mini, iMac and MacBook Pro.

It's also unlike the tricky, home-brewed software released last month that first allowed a side-by-side XP and OS X setup: Because Apple has also provided a set of drivers for almost all of a Mac's hardware, XP should be able to run just about any program it could handle on a machine from Dell, Gateway or HP. And yes, that includes all the viruses, worms, spyware and Trojan horses you'd otherwise never see on a Mac.

I spent many late nights trying to set up XP using the software and directions at the earlier site ( http://www.onmac.net ), with a near-total lack of success. But I had XP installing on a 20-inch iMac within maybe 15 minutes of downloading Boot Camp ( http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/ ).

Apple does note that this software, an 83-megabyte download, remains in a beta-test state and outright warns against using it "in a commercial operating environment or with important data." But if you can handle installing software on a Mac in the first place -- much less installing Windows XP itself -- you should be able to manage.

The first step was to download and install Apple's latest operating system patch, 10.4.6, and a firmware update to the boot-up software on the test Mac, an Intel-based iMac.

Then I loaded and ran the Boot Camp software, which put a set of Windows drivers on a blank CD and split the iMac's hard drive into Windows and Mac portions -- without requiring me to erase the drive first. I then selected how much drive space to make available to Windows and waited a couple of minutes for the job to complete.

But when I rebooted, the fun ended -- installing Windows XP is just as tedious on a Mac as on a PC. That copy of Windows needs to be a full -- not upgrade -- version that includes the Service Pack 2 update.

Once you've trudged through the XP setup and are staring at the familiar Windows desktop, pop in the driver CD and it will install the necessary driver software for you.

There were some weird moments on the test iMac during my brief evaluation yesterday; for instance, I had to guess that an Apple keyboard's "clear" button would stand in for the Num Lock key. But overall, it looked and acted like any other copy of Windows.

You can't see the Mac side at all from within Windows without buying extra software, but from OS X you can read, and depending on your choice of Windows disk formats, write to the XP partition.

Just having this option should end the uncertainty that some potential Mac switchers feel about the prospect of giving up every piece of software they've known. That quasi-existential dread is gone; if you need to run the one weird Windows-only program your office requires -- or the Windows-only games your kids require -- you just need to reboot, holding down the Option key to choose an operating system to run.

(Some lazy software developers might use Boot Camp's existence as an excuse to avoid developing Mac versions. But smart ones will write software for the operating system already installed, not the one that might be added later. Given a choice of running XP or OS X, how many people who have already bought a Mac really want to spend more time in Windows?)

Boot Camp should get better over time. Apple's drivers probably have some bugs in them (users have already reported some "blue screen of death" crashes), and don't support some Mac hardware (for instance, iSight webcams and Apple's external USB modem).

Furthermore, Apple says that Boot Camp will be built into the next release of Mac OS X, which it plans to preview publicly in August. It's hard to predict what other Windows-on-Mac options this habitually secretive company has in store for that version.

For now, one thing is clear: Apple's made it exciting again to put a copy of Windows XP on a new computer.

Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro atrob@twp.com.