A hacker’s machine
A little timeline here (without many dates, cause I can’t remember them):
2005: Apple announces it will be moving the Macintosh over to Intel-based motherboards. Geeks all over the place ask if they can run Windows on them too: Apple says it won’t intentionally block the ability, but won’t support it either.
Later 2005: We discover that Intel Macs don’t use a BIOS to start up their operating system, but something called EFI. Since all versions of Windows use a BIOS, this is a terrible incompatibility, making Windows on a Mac seem unlikely.
2006: Apple releases Intel Macs.
March 2006: Hackers are able to cajole, trick, and otherwise force Windows XP to boot without a BIOS. It doesn’t run great, but it runs. Other excited hackers start working on the “runs great” part.
April 2006: Apple, seeing that it’s about to run out of time on its little 10.5 surprise, says, “oh okay, we were gonna wait ’til later, but look. Here’s Boot Camp. Go ahead and install Windows. It’s beta software, so don’t expect much.” It runs great.
One machine that runs OS X, XP, Linux, BSD, and/or a half-dozen other OSes on command? I’m suddenly a little more interested in a shiny-new Intel Mac…
Me too! Me too! Now I can get rid of the two machines sitting on my desk and just get one nice, new, shiny Mac Pro laptop.
… I’m a happy miser …