HD For Indies

This write-up is a nice distillation of what people in the Mac business have known for years:

The heart of a Macintosh is in it's software and Steve Job's dream not to make half-assed software products, AND The heart of Apple's BUSINESS is selling hardware.

Using that model, one can predict all of Apple's future moves, more or less.
 

i'm going to have to disagree with nate, to some extent. the heart of a macintosh is also just as much it's hardware. seeing OS X running on PCs (by hackers) nowadays makes me sick. the hardware is a CRUCIAL part of what makes a mac a mac. the powerbook with its graceful design, the imac g5/core duo and how they fit all that on one hinge... without the mac hardware, a mac is not a mac. its just hacked software running on some ugly PC, even if that PC is an alienware rig.
 

Dude,

Apple makes PCs nowadays. Get over it.

So Apple cannot rely on utter nonsensical benchmarks to "compete" it has to do so by ensuring OSX stays head and shoulders over other options.

Bootcamp is important in two ways, firstly it shows Apple is confident that its own OS will impress side by side with the XP on the same machine. Secondly its the first step down the road of virtualisation.

The competitive advantage Apple's PCs will have are their ability to run "anything" and not to mention their trademark good looks.

For the vast majority of business users running OSX might be a big "so what" but for people like me who have long recognised DVD Studio, Shake and Motion as extremely competent products but have not found trading all their XP applications a compelling arguement, well that's all changed now.

Do I buy a Dell with its, er, looks and run XP or shall I but a Macbook Pro with its drop dead good looks, uncluttered design and run OSX and XP? The choice is yours.......

Cake and eat it springs to mind.

I bet more than a few Apple users will embrace the dark side if not for productivity's sake certainly for recreational purposes.