Slug: dual-boot-macintel-boxes-contd Date: 2005-06-11 Title: Dual-boot Mac/Intel boxes, cont’d layout: post

Jim Roepcke took me to task for my previous comment about dual-booting an Intel-based Mac with Windows. I said:

>Would make my life easier as a developer.

Jim responded:

>Easier? How? Easier as in, don't need to port your app to Mac OS X now?

>Dual-boot is a dual-edged sword. The Mac could effectively be dead for gaming. Why would anyone spend the money to port a game to the Mac now when you can just say "install Windows". Anyone who's spent enough money on a Mac good enough to run new games on is probably not going to flinch at spending the money to install Windows to play games.

>Ditto for plenty of other Windows apps.

Jim makes a good point, though in my case I was referring to the fact that it would be convenient for testing web apps on Windows. However, on an Intel-based Mac, a product like VMWare would run Windows with near-native performance, so dual booting becomes a non-starter.

I do wonder sometimes what second- and third-order consequences this "switch" of Apple's will have…