Wow. Apple did it. They created a beta program called Boot Camp that lets you dual-boot Windows XP on a Mac. And according to the SuperSite for Windows review, published just today, it works quite well.

Paul Thurrott (author of SuperSite for Windows articles) gave an interesting an opinion on why Apple would do this:

One might wonder why Apple would create such a thing. After all, with barely 2 percent of the market for computer operating systems, should Apple be trying to win market share for Mac OS X and not offer a way for Mac users to run Windows? Not exactly. Unlike Microsoft, Apple doesn’t actually make a lot of money directly from sales of its OS. Instead, Apple makes most of its money–even now, in the heady days of iPod supremacy–by selling computer hardware. So one might think of Boot Camp as a win-win. Apple wins because a much wider audience of users can now consider its Mac systems, secure in the knowledge that they can run Windows if they want to. Microsoft wins because these users will still be using–and paying for–Windows. And best of all, we as users win, too, because now we can have the best of both worlds: the elegance of Apple hardware coupled with Windows, the operating system that runs all those applications we want to run.

Some Mac users don’t see it that way. They’d like you to believe that Mac OS X is all anyone would ever need, and they’re actually quite a bit distressed that anyone would want to run Windows on a Mac. Get a life: This software will open up the world of Apple to a much wider audience and if OS X is as great as they think it is, surely some of those people will start spending time with OS X instead of Windows. I can’t really see the issue there.

The review also said that:

A future version of Boot Camp will be included with Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard,” due in late 2007. That version, presumably, will support Windows Vista as well.

I do daresay that I’m actually getting somewhat excited about this. I’ve never wanted to switch from Windows because it is, as I consider it, the ultimate progamming platform. With a dual-boot setup like this, I could still do programming etcetera on Windows and then doodle with Mac OS X if I ever wanted to. Hmm…